The Imperfect Pastor by Zack Eswine might be the most helpful and profound book I’ve read in years. If you’re in pastoral ministry grab a copy.
If you just know God, have a sense of His depth of love and abundance of grace all for you in Christ, you’ll consequently find wealth appropriately unimpressive and suffering appropriately untroubling. This.
In Christ’s grace, there is freedom to be honest and transparent. When we embrace that security and freedom, then we end up pointing others to the only Source of healing and forgiveness.
A sure way to have someone crushed by their doubt is to preach a sermon on how to remove your doubt.
The reason Christians get married “before the church” is not to give a religious appearance to the ceremony but because Christians hold the marriage covenant in the context of the community of the body of Christ. Seeking the support and counsel of family is an extension of this.
A lot of times, the reason we struggle to feel and receive the love of God – to see ourselves as His beloved, adopted children – is because we’re not pursuing in our everyday lives those things His Word describes as being valuable and significant.
As we continue to look for “developmental deficiencies” in our maturation in Christ, how are you doing in the area of contentment? How quick is your impulse to find satisfaction in Christ, to go to the joy of the gospel in times of stress, frustration, disappointment, and trouble?
And what we learn in the Song of Songs is that a marriage shaped according to this gospel of grace, forged over years of hard-earned trust and forgiveness, can be an unsafe place for sin but a very safe place for sinners. In a gospel-centered marriage, when two souls are mingled together with the Holy Spirit’s leading, we find confirmation after confirmation that grace is true, that grace is real – that we can be really, truly, deeply known and at the same time really, truly, deeply loved.
When we live with a lack of anxiety about the future, even in those tightrope kind of times, we communicate the truth that our God is indeed worthy of our trust.
The net that catches me when I confront traumatic events is that 10,000 years from now, they will be a reason for rejoicing.
It is this spiritual stability, born of a gospel-focused heart, that gives Paul peace and contentment – and yes, joy – no matter where he finds himself.
So what does it look like to live a life worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ? It looks like walking with, loving with, and doing life with those who are different from you. What binds you together is Christ. It looks like striving together to make Christ known. What motivates you is Christ. And it looks like standing with courage against all oppressors, natural or supernatural. What secures you is Christ. To live is Christ, and to die is gain.
The gospel creates a new reality that deepens our understanding of the world and our place in it.
Maturing men and women, when tempted to fall prey to anxiety, go to the Lord, humble themselves, and hand their anxieties over, trusting Him to answer however He sovereignly sees fit. In their minds, they constantly dwell on what is true, right, honorable, excellent, just, and lovely – mind and heart in sync, maturing unto the Lord.
It is arrogant to believe that you know what is true for you. Surely you know in your own life with you that you cannot be trusted.
As men and women get older, they get crustier and not more fun.
Romance in marriage, for it to be truly a mingling of souls, cannot simply be a mingling of body parts. No, we must acknowledge both the blessing and the danger of beauty.
If the gospel is reduced because of our preferences or misunderstandings, we leave ourselves open to heresies and to attacking our brothers-in-arms.
Fearless faith results from holding on to Christ as our treasure. Gospel courage comes from gospel preciousness. If we truly believed that our reward in heaven far surpasses all the comfort and convenience and collections of the world, we, too, would be willing to consider them all as loss.
If you look at Isis beheading women and children, if you are like me, you are not thinking, one of these would make a great missionary.
Moralistic, therapeutic deism is fine with sin hiding in a foxhole. The gospel wants to nuke the hole.