As far as the east is from the west....

Here I am, it is 9:30 in the morning and I have already sinned about 192 times, and that is since I woke up at 8:45; I think I will break the record today. How pathetic.

I remember once a long time ago, I heard a guy at church say "I'm so excited, I didn't sin yesterday! My goal is to stop sinning" Man, I thought, he must be really spiritual; wow, not to sin for just one day, I wish I could do that, I wonder how he did it, I don't have any will power. It destroyed the rest of my joyful Sunday. That was about 20 years ago.

Boasting about not sinning is a sin; thinking that one could stop sinning for 24 hours is an illusion; thinking that way shows that I don't understand human nature, and it shows that I really don't understand grace. How prideful and arrogant is the heart in imagining that it has the power to stop functioning in sin; yeah, pride and arrogance are the fuel of the fires of religion.

Jesus called those who thought this way "white washed tombs full of dead men's bones", and "brood of vipers"; ouch.

God has never expected me, and He will never expect me to stop sinning while I live in this body of flesh; thinking that He does is demonstrating my ignorance of His character. That is how deceitful the heart really is, the worst thing is that some people don't see it; others don't want to hear it, they need to keep on trying, they really think they can do it and so they never enter into His rest.

It sounds like I am not making any sense so I'm going to have to elaborate. I am not saying that I should not try to stop sinning, or that I should not think about doing what is right, or that is useless to pursue holiness; I have to clarify because when I talked about grace before people have accused me of being licentious; even of being a Calvinist, as if being a Calvinist meant that sin doesn't matter. The level of ignorance of some people really amazes me; in their minds grace equals Calvin and that's a very bad thing.

If I am to accuse someone else of being licentious and tie it with being a Calvinist, I either don't understand what licentiousness really is, or I have never read any of Calvin's writings and I am just being a parrot, brainlessly repeating what I heard someone at church say about the reformer; but this is a matter that has nothing to do with what I am talking about, so I will leave it at that.

If I could stop sinning it would render Jesus' blood useless; I wouldn't need Him to have died for my sin; but even if it was true and I could actually stop doing what is wrong in actions, I would still be left with my thoughts, and that is exactly where the problem is.

Jesus said it; is not what what goes into a man's mouth what defiles a man, but what comes out of it, because it proceeds from the heart, the source of adultery, greed, idolatry and murder, and many other self-centered behaviors (like getting drunk with your buddies watching the Charger game), is an evil heart; and we all have one of those; that is precisely why Jesus died on that cross.

Mat 15:19 "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.... The context of this verse is the outward appearance of "cleanliness", or the lack thereof, of which the disciples were being accused by the Pharisees; in fact He had just railed them Pharisees by saying "You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: 'THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.'"

I think Jesus was a Calvinist since He was so full of grace; indeed grace and truth came through Jesus Christ said John; and Calvinism did not come from Calvin, said I.

So why am I talking about this? Just one reason, I need to be reminded. I need to remember that there is not a single thing that is good in my flesh, and contrary to popular opinion, we are totally depraved; if you are thinking that you are not completely depraved, you just proved that you are.

In all the thousands of years of human history there has not been a single person who made it without sinning; not one, except of course Jesus of Nazareth. No sir, not even one; and the proof of that is that everyone dies, and everyone will eventually die, at least once. Death is part of the curse of sin, we die because of sin, gee, even animals die because of the curse of sin.

God is amazingly gracious to His children; He knows we can't perform what is good so He works in us to will and to perform of His good pleasure, and so we work it out with fear and trembling knowing that He whom He loves He chastises, and He scourges every son whom He receives. He is the One who leads us in the paths of righteousness for His name sake, and that is a very good thing.

I will probably sin some more, I can't really help it, the flesh wars against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh so that I can't do the things that I would really want to do; and no, it is not an excuse, but I know who has delivered me from the body of this death; and I know without the smallest shadow of a doubt that goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I'm going to stop counting now; I just remembered what King David said:

Psa 103:8-14 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.

He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever.

He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.

For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.

For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.

Have a nice day.

http://makariotes.blogspot.com

Bloodlines...

There is a new book by John Piper called Bloodlines; part of the promo for this book is this video from Crossway. It is actually very cool, check it out:

Bloodlines Documentary with John Piper from Crossway on Vimeo.

http://makariotes.blogspot.com

Simple enough....

How often I forget the simplicity that is in Christ. I have a natural tendency to complicate things, just by thinking, by trying to reason things out, by over-analyzing matters.

I have been accused of spiritualizing everything, you know; as if looking at life from the heavenly places was a bad thing to do. Looking at life from the earthly perspective always drives me to despair, so I can't help it, I need comfort for my soul, and I can't find it anywhere else but in heaven, where Christ is.

The reality is that God is the One person who made me a Christian, no one else has that kind of power, and the reality is that I was an enemy of God when He did it, I was a child of wrath as Paul says in Ephesians:

Eph 2:1-6 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus......

My point is that I was dead and now I'm alive; at one point I was following the desires of my mind which always lead to death, and now I have different desires; one of them is to think about life from the heavenly perspective. If I am seated with Christ in the heavenly paces, then it follows that I should be thinking about everything as one who lives there.

The amazing thing about this kind of reasoning is that I find it impossible to do it; if by nature I indulged the desires of the mind and the flesh; a new nature implies following the desires of the new mind and the new being, but this is something that I cannot force to happen; it should happen naturally, just as a branch bearing fruit; and that, along being born again, is the work of God, not mine.

This is where I start complicating things by over analyzing them; and because of the way we are made, we look for something we can do, and so it happens that our natural human heart is always looking for something to perform.

We have been raised in a culture that exalts a system of penalties and rewards for our behavior, and so we look to be rewarded because not only there is pleasure in the reward but also approval from our peers; we all want to be accepted and admired; at least I do. That is my natural way of thinking.

At the same time I hate the thought of being chastised, I don't like pain and embarrassment, and I don't like to be humbled either; but I need it often. I have to admit that most of the time I refrain from doing what is wrong and pleasurable because of this fear, instead of fearing that I will grieve God and dishonor Him; this is a very self centered way of looking at sin, this is where my heart shows it deceitfulness.

But what am I saying....... I should get back to my initial point; which is that God sees me already there with Him. I don't have to perform for Him, I don't have to be religious for Him, I don't have to try to gain His approval, I don't have to make myself a list of things that I should do because they will get me brownie points with Him. All of the above has nothing to do with God liking me, or loving me more or less; all of the above is just me thinking from an earthly perspective; over analyzing leads me to religiosity, every single time....and God doesn't like religion.

That is the heavenly perspective, isn't it? If I look at myself from God's point of view I see myself wrapped in the righteousness of Jesus, all my sins, past, present and future have been washed away by His blood; they have been cast as far as the east is from the west to be remembered no more; I see the end of my life, the point where I finally die and suddenly appear at the feet of Jesus, completely transformed and without blame, or blemishes or any such thing. Ahhh, what a view!! I like it a lot.

The day is coming in which I will, without a shadow of a doubt, look into those eyes of fire; and my ears will hear those famous words: "well done, my good and faithful servant". On that day God will parade me as His trophy; as His work of art, "this is my work" He will say, "it is finished".

Philippians 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

That should be simple enough.

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It's my heart again....

The human heart is so deceitful, it is appalling. Jeremiah 17:9 is probably my predilect (is that a word in English?) verse in the bible; even when I believe that I have a new heart I still see my fleshly nature creeping up all the time; and there is nothing I can do about it, it's completely out of my control.

One moment I can be raptured in praise to my God, and then the next moment these ideas that are completely opposed to Him just jump into my field of thought; they just appear, I swear, by themselves. It amazes me with exceeding amazement.

That is the time when it hits me hard: I am doomed. If God doesn't save me, no one can. It is a struggle; just as Paul describes it in Romans; the things I want to do I don't, and the things I don't want to do I do, oh wretched man that I am, who could deliver me from the body of this death? Thank God for Jesus; and I do thank God for Jesus, and I thank Jesus for Him. I thank God for His grace, this amazing grace that covers me.

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us to be called His children, and so we are, said John; and so I am, and there is nothing I can do about it. This is the evidence, this is the proof, the struggle with this heart that never gives up wanting, that never gives up desiring and deceiving.

This is the truth; there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit; when I realize that my heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, I am walking in the Spirit. When there is a struggle to yield or to resist, I am walking in the Spirit; this fight is the evidence of things not seen.

And this fight is the joy; the joy is not in the struggle, it is in the knowing that I am fighting, and resisting and struggling, in knowing that if I was not a child of God I would not struggle at all; that is the way it was before I was brought to life, before God brought me back from the dead; back then there was no struggle because I did whatever my mind dictated; there was no fight, just a lot of regrets and boasting in the flesh, and sometimes the weight of a dirty conscience.

I thank God that it is not up to me to finish what He started; if it was I would never finish, I would have already thrown in the towel and ran to my corner to hide my head in the spit bucket; but I'm still in the ring, I'm still standing, and all the jabs are being deflected by my advocate, my champion of the world, the King of the universe.

Yeah, even though my heart is deceitful, I have this covering of grace; this amazing and sweet grace that washes my sins away with the Blood of the Lamb; we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

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