Weekly Roundup: 2019.07.12
The pain of seeing people go, suffering and Psalm 119, and Calvin on how the Christian man is constantly mortifying the flesh.
Resources
The Pain of Seeing People Go | Jordan Standridge | The Cripplegate
In this article, Jordan expresses the pain of seeing saints move to new churches. All of us have suffered through this, and I think he provides some helpful words.
Perhaps the hardest thing is just not being able to spend time with them. To talk about ministry. To just enjoy each others’ company. But the fact of the matter is that nothing in this life lasts forever. Though the Lord could cause us to live near each other again in the future, we know one thing for certain is that we will spend eternity together.
Suffering and Psalm 119 | David Powlison | The Journal of Biblical Counseling
This is an article about the Scriptures smashing into real life. It’s a longer read, and worth every minute.
Psalm 119 is where I go to learn utter and utterly appropriate honesty. Here I learn how to open my heart about what matters, to the person I most trust. I plainly affirm what I most deeply love. I’m candid about my deepest ongoing struggles. I express pure delight. I lay the sufferings and uncertainties I face on the table. I cry out in need, and shout for joy. I say what I want, and want what I say. I hear how to be forthright— without any stain of self-righteousness. I hear how to be weak—without any stain of self-pity. I learn how true honesty talks with God: fresh, personal, direct. Never formulaic, abstract, vague. I hear firsthand how Truth and honesty meet and talk it over. This Truth is never denatured, never rigid, never inhuman. This honesty never whines, never boasts, never rages, never gets defensive. I leave that conversation nourished. I find and experience the brightest and sweetest hope imaginable. I hear how to give full expression to what it means to be human, in honest relationship with the person who made humanness in His image.
For more articles saved over the years, see my Evernote collection.
Quote
Plato sometimes says, that the life of the philosopher is to meditate on death. More truly may we say, that the life of a Christian man is constant study and exercise in mortifying the flesh, until it is certainly slain, and the Spirit of God obtains dominion in us. Wherefore, he seems to me to have made most progress who has learned to be most dissatisfied with himself. He does not, however, remain in the miry clay without going forward; but rather hastens and sighs after God, that, ingrafted both into the death and the life of Christ, he may constantly meditate on repentance. Unquestionably those who have a genuine hatred of sin cannot do otherwise: for no man ever hated sin without being previously enamored of righteousness. This view, as it is the simplest of all, seemed to me also to accord best with Scripture truth.
— Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin. Book Third, Chapter 3, Section 20. Copied from https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/calvin-institutes-christianity/book3/chapter-2.html on July 9, 2019.