Thy Mercy, My God

It's been a while, dear old blog.  How is it that we get so easily distracted from the things we hold so dear?


I was singing this song today as I shampooed the carpets (exciting stuff, I know).  It lept into my heart, and worship poured forth.  I LOVE this song.  It's probably my favorite of the modern worship songs (in general, I tend to be partial to hymns).


Just read that first verse:

Thy mercy my God is the theme of my song,
The joy of my heart, and the boast of my tongue.
Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last,
Hath won my affection and bound my soul fast.

There's different versions out there, but this is the one I'm partial to:

All praise to the Spirit, whose whisper divine

Seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine.

The (Suburban) Missional Church-- Simple

via Missional in Suburbia

He Wants Books!

"When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all, the parchments."

~ 2 Timothy 4:13

C.H. Spurgeon:

We will look at Paul’s books. We do not know what the books were about, and we can only form some guess as to what the parchments were. Paul had a few books which were left, perhaps wrapped up in the cloak, and Timothy was to be careful to bring them.

Even an apostle must read. Some of our very ultra-Calvinistic brethren think that a minister who reads books and studies his sermon must be a very deplorable specimen of a preacher. A man who comes up into the pulpit, professes to take his text on the spot and talks any quantity of nonsense is the idol of many. If he will speak without premeditation, or pretend to do so, and never produce what they call a dish of dead men’s brains – oh, that is the preacher!

How rebuked they are by the apostle! He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has been preaching for at least thirty years, and yet he wants books! He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet wants books! 

He had been caught up into the Third Heaven and had heard things which it was unlawful for a man to utter, yet he wants books! He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books! The apostle says to Timothy, and so he says to every preacher, “Give attendance to reading” (1 Tim. 4:13).

The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers and expositions of the Bible.

Spurgeon's  Sermons on New Testament Men, Book 2 

via Trevin Wax.

Rescued to Do Something

LOVE this (via Take Your Vitamin Z):

God wants us to join him in his work of renewing peoples, places, and things. He wants Christians to renew their cultures to the honor and glory of God. God wants those he’s redeemed to work at transforming this broken world and all its broken structures—families, churches, governments, businesses—in a way that reflects an answer to the Lord’s Prayer: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). We’re to fill every aspect of the earth with the knowledge of God, our creator and redeemer. We’ve been redeemed by God to become agents of renewal.

In redeeming us, God doesn’t simply rescue us from our sin; he also rescues us to do something—to develop the world around us to the glory of God. Therefore, when God saves us, we no longer have to settle for creating our own transitory meaning. How many of us spend our lives manufacturing our own reasons to live? Maybe it’s raising our kids well so they’ll turn out okay, and if they do, we’ll think our life was worthwhile. There’s so much talk about the need to leave a legacy. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I don’t like it. My life is not about leaving a legacy that makes people remember Tullian Tchividjian. God’s mission for me and for all of us is so much bigger than that, which is liberating, because it means we don’t have to try to manufacture our own passing legacy. 

When God saves us, he gives us a new reason to live that’s so much more significant than our fleeting legacies. We become part of an infinitely larger story than our personal history, larger even than the story of our family and nation. We no longer have to work for our own causes; instead we get to work for God’s universal cause. That’s a mission worth getting on board with!

God’s mission and the direction it’s going are so much bigger than our misconceptions. His mission is the one thing we can give our life to that will never be lacking in fulfillment and will never end.

~Tullian Tchividjian, Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels 152, 153

The Gospel cannot be preached and heard enough

“The gospel cannot be preached and heard enough, for it cannot be grasped well enough..."


Martin Luther


(via Justin Taylor via Sovereign Grace Ministries)




C.J. Mahaney recommends some books that preach the gospel here.

On Finding Your Calling

I enjoy subscribing to the Resurgence blog ("The Resurgence is a reformed, complementarian, missional movement that trains missional leaders to serve the Church to transform cultures for Christ."), and in particular, I like Mark Driscoll's entries on that blog.


I was particularly struck by the recent one entitled, Train the Called-- Do Not call the Trained.  In it, he focuses on finding your calling.  He writes:

So I was talking to a new Christian recently and they were unsure about God's calling on their life. "I don't know what God wants me to do. Got all these new decisions to make in life now that I'm a new Christian." And they were very kind of panicked about it, "What do I do?" I said, "Don't worry about God's calling, first worry about God. The Bible says, 'Delight yourself in the Lord, and he'll give you the desires of your heart.'" I said, "Are you enjoying the Lord?" They said, "Yeah, I'm reading my Bible. I'm praying. I'm in a community group and reading good books, and I'm repenting of sin, and I'm seeing the ways that I'm not like Jesus, and my life is changing and yeah, I feel like there's momentum, and I'm really excited about Jesus, and I'm growing." "Great."

This person looked at me and said, "Well, what do I do?" I said, "Do whatever you want." They're like, "What? Do whatever I want?" "Yeah, because if you delight yourself in the Lord, he'll give you the desires of your heart. He'll put desires on your heart, so that God's desires become your desires." Augustine said it this way, "Love God and do whatever you please." I said, "Well, what do you like?" They're like, "Well, I like serving people, and I'm pretty extroverted and, you know, I like welcoming people." "So you want to be a greeter?" "Yeah, I'd love to be a greeter. And I love hospitality and I love getting people together." "So someday you'd like to be a community group leader?" "That'd be great. I'm not ready yet, but maybe I could apprentice and get ready." "Yeah, that'd be a great idea. How does that sound?" "That sounds really fun. Should I do it?" "Do you want to?" "Yeah, well, how do I know if it's God will or my will?" "Well, if you're enjoying the Lord, his will becomes your will. He's glorified, you're satisfied, other people are helped. Everybody wins, that's ministry." It's more about our heart enjoying the Lord, and then we'll want to do what he wants us do.

I really do recommend reading the whole post, but that last part is what resonated with me.  What are the desires of my heart?


A few years ago, while living in New York City, I was encouraged by a dear friend to begin a women's Bible study with some of my girlfriends.  I began with a lot trepidation-- fears about whether I was qualified to lead other women in the study of the Bible, about whether the girls would even want to be a part of something like that, and questions about what the heck we'd even talk about.  I jumped in head first, and God immediately blessed me and the others in that undertaking.  I learned that I loved theology, and enjoyed teaching others, and what's more, I saw real growth among all of us during that time.  On a recent trip to New York, I met with some of women, and was delighted to hear that they're still meeting together-- seven years later!  There are new faces now, and some of the women have gone on to start other studies with other women.  What a blessing that is!


When I picture the future, a frequent vision I have is a home where I can have people over.  I'd love to have a guest room that is always available to travelers in need.  More than that though, I picture a weekly open house.  I'd love to cook meals and let everyone know that every Tuesday night is family meal night.  Anyone who wants to drop in can, and after dinner we'll talk theology-- maybe going through a book of Systematic Theology together.  I picture a mixed crowd, so while I'd be happy to facilitate the discussion, I picture my husband (I don't have one yet-- that's also in the vision!), or another Christian male taking the honors.  This is the desire of my heart.


And while I don't have the home yet to make that dream reality, I can certainly get involved with small groups in my church.  I can prayerfully seek out younger (in the faith) Christian women and meet with them.


What desires has God planted in your heart?

Turning From Sin

via DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed:

“[I]t is certainly empirically true in history,” writes Richard Lovelace in Dynamics of Spiritual Life, “that a failure to assert the Trinity and the sacrificial death of Christ has involved a waning of spiritual life in the church, and eventually its extinction” (97). Lovelace goes on to elaborate:

The substitutionary atonement is the heart of the gospel, and it is so because it gives the answer to the problem of guilt, bondage and alienation from God. The earlier this answer can be spelled out in the process of evangelism and nurture, the better. Persons come to Christ initially for a variety of reasons, some of which are eccentric to their principal need for redemption: loneliness, a sense of meaninglessness in the godless life, suffering, fear and so on. Only those are lastingly converted, however, whose eventual motivation is to turn from their sin to God and receive the answer to sin in the work of Jesus Christ: “For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.” (Jn. 3:20-21). Spiritual life results from fellowship with God. But walking in light is essential to fellowship with the Father and the Son. Believers who are truly established in Christ have experienced the shattering of their spheres of of ignorance and darkness by a growing understanding of the nature of God, their sin and God’s provision of grace in Jesus Christ. This darkness can only be destroyed by the presentation of the preconditions of renewal and by the proclamation of the heart of the gospel in depth. (97-98)

Any denominational or ecclesiastical renewal that is not centered on the gospel of Christ’s sacrificial death for sin is bound to be shallow, short-lived, and, in the end, counterproductive.