One again, another’s pain, is CNNZ’s gain

This title is well worth your time, effort, and talent.

QUOTATIONS FROM BATTLING UNBELIEF, by John Piper

Battling unbelief and fighting for faith in future grace means that we fight fire with fire.  We throw against the promises of sin the promises of God.  We take hold of some great promise God made about our future and say to a particular sin, ‘Match that!’  In this way we do what Paul says in Romans 8:13, ‘By the Spirit… put to death the deeds of the body.’  John Owen wrote a book on that verse and summed it up with, ‘Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.’ Page 16

Trusting God and being arrogant are opposites: ‘An arrogant man stirs up strife, but he who trusts in the Lord will prosper’ (Proverbs 28:25, NASB).  That’s why Stephen Charnock said, ‘A proud faith is as much a contradiction as a humble devil.’  Page 38

… the heart of the biblical faith is coming to him for the satisfaction of all that God is for us in him [Jesus].  Page 38

Belief is not merely an agreement with the facts in the head; it is also an appetite for God in the heart, which fastens on Jesus for satisfaction.  Page 39

Every turning from God – for anything – presumes a kind of autonomy or independence that is the essence of pride.  Turning from God assumes  that one knows better than God.  Thus pride lies at the root of every turning from God.  It is the root of every act of distrust toward God.  Page 40

The itch of self-regard craves the scratch of self-approval.  That is, if we are getting our pleasure from feeling self-sufficient, we will not be satisfied without others’ seeing and applauding our self-sufficiency.  Hence Jesus’ description of the scribes and Pharisees: ‘They do all their deeds to be seen by others… [A]nd they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings  in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others’ (Matthew 23:507).  Page 49

The key to patience is faith in the future grace of God’s ‘glorious might’ to transform all our interruptions into rewards.

In other words, the strength of patience hangs on our capacity to believe that God is up to something good for us in all our delays and detours.  This requires great faith in future grace, because the evidence is seldom evident.  Page 75

If you hold a grudge, you doubt the Judge.  Page 110

Lloyd-Jones believes this issue of preaching truth to ourselves about God’s future grace is all-important in overcoming spiritual depression.

“I say that we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing ‘ourselves’ to talk to us!  Do you realize what that means?  I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self.  Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical?  Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?  Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning.  You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc.  Somebody is talking.  Who is talking to you?  Your self is talking to you.  Now [the psalmist's] treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself.  ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’  His soul had been depressing him, crushing him.  So he stands up and says:  ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you… Why art thou cast down? – what business have you to be disquieted?’… And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who he is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do.  Then having done that, end on this great note:  defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: ‘I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.’”  Pages 126, 127

The final lesson of Gethsemane and Calvary and the book of the Psalms is that all the dark caves of despondency are really tunnels leading to the fields of joy – for those who don’t sit down in the dark and blow out the candle of faith in future grace.  Page 131

AMEN!

For the Fame of His Name

Man of Spin