Category Archives: Meditations

The Giving of Thanks and My Obedience

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@Jim LePage Crux Sola Project

“The giving of thanks can only begin when the gift of the divine Word is acknowledged; indeed, only when I am immersed in the study of the divine Word. How could one begin to give thanks to God and not concern oneself with his Word? What kind of thanks would it be to receive the gifts but refuse the required obedience to the giver? It would be a pagan thanksgiving, which is indeed widely practiced.
That is not a giving of thanks to the Lord God, but rather to an impersonal fate or fortune to which I am in no way obligated. Thanks to God that does not proceed from an obedient heart is presumption and falsehood. Only when God’s revealed Word has made our heart want to obey him can we thank God for earthly and heavenly gifts… 

I thank God because I want to learn and know what he requires of me, but I thank him as one who is still only learning, who still lacks everything when measured by God’s righteous judgments. So thanksgiving leads me back to the giving God and then forward to the commanding God, in order finally to find in him his righteousness, which I experience anew as righteousness given to me. “Whoever offers me the sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me; but to those who keep in my way will I show the salvation of God” (Ps. 50:24).”

Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the Word (emphasis mine)

Today as I fix my heart on the Cross, and I am drawn to give Him thanks -over and over again- for His perfect sacrifice, for His atonement, I am also drawn to pray, “Lord, help me to show you my gratitude through my love and obedience to your Word.”

Becky

When My Mind Wanders

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You know how it goes, one day -almost without noticing- you entertain one thought, one worry, one doubt, one fear, one question, one… and then two days later, and then three days later, and the next week, and the week after that you have a wandering mind, with no limits whatsoever, your spirit is troubled, and of course, you feel heavy burdened.

What to do now?
Go back to the Word of God.

Go back to the Scriptures and mediate on them day and night.  Memorize God’s Word, pray it, recite it, mutter it. The Word of God will dissipate all doubts, all fears, it will strengthen your heart. It will help you fight those vain thoughts.

James Smith said,

“We must mix faith with the Word; seek to hold fellowship with God through every portion; and realize the presence of the Holy Spirit, who alone can render the Word profitable”

How true this is! Let us come, to the Word. Let us abide in it, let us persevere with all diligence to keep it in our heart and mind.

Jesus said, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.”  How do we come to Him? We come to Him in prayer and we find Him in the Word. It is there where we hear Him speak to our need, to our troubled soul.

Is your heart troubled and your mind wandering today?

Go back to the Word of God.

Under His sun and by His grace,

Becky

Recommended article:

Profiting from the Scriptures by J.C. Ryle

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Sola Scriptura and Prayer

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Shiloh Photography



Sola Scriptura is one of the 5 pillars of the Reformed Faith, and it means that the Scriptures, God’s infallible Word, are the uttermost authority in our lives, in the Church. It means there is nothing above them, that the Scriptures are sufficient. The Scriptures were breathed by God, and therefore are the very speaking of God.

Now, we also know how important prayer is in the life of the believer. Prayer and a desire to learn the Scriptures are the natural responses from those who have been born again. Both draw us to the Throne of Grace.

Have you consider how Sola Scriptura applies in the life of prayer? Many times, we simply don’t know how to pray, we are short-sighted. We say we want God’s will to be done, but as we pray we pray hoping that ours may be done. We sometimes pray as if we were trying to persuade God to do what we think is the best for us, for our children, for our husband, or for our friend.

Bringing our theology to our mundane life is what we ought to do; we need it when trials come, we need it when life is good, we need it when we do dishes and bake a cake, and when serve our family and the needy among us. But we also need it in our prayer closet.

When we pray, let us pray the Scriptures. Let the Word of God guide us to the Throne of Grace. Let the Word of God be our most wonderful prayer companion. When we don’t know how to pray (and also when we think we know how to pray) let us turn to the Word of God, and let us make it our utmost prayer book.

M. Horton has said it well, “There can be no communication with God apart from the written and living Word. Everything in the Christian faith depends on the spoken and written Word delivered by God to us through the prophets and apostles.”

This is another reason why we (my friends from Doctrines in the Kitchen, Out of The Ordinary, and Desiring Virtue) are always trying to encourage women to love the Word, to study it, to memorize it, to make it our supreme rule of life. Sisters, if we want to be women of prayer, we need to be women of the Word; if we want to become “warriors” in the prayer closet, let us learn how to use The Sword. There are no shortcuts.

Under His sun and by His grace,

Becky

The Greatest Drama Ever Staged is the Official Creed of Christendom

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The Person and Works of Christ by Jim LePage

This is the title of the first chapter of Dorothy Sayers’ book, Creed or Chaos? And in it she says,

 

“We are constantly assured that the churches that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine -“dull dogma,” as people call it. The fact is precise the opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes fur dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man -and the dogma is the drama.

That drama is summarized quiet clearly in the Creeds of the Church, and if we think it dull, it is because we either have never really read those amazing documents, or have them recited so often and so mechanically as to have lost all sense of their meaning. The plot pivots upon a single character, and the whole action is the answer to a single central problem: What think ye of Christ?”

 

  The Apostles Creed
 
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
   the Maker of heaven and earth,
   and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
 Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
        born of the virgin Mary,
         suffered under Pontius Pilate,
         was crucified, dead, and buried;
 He descended into Hades.
     On the third day He arose again from the dead;
     He ascended unto heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
    from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
 I believe in the Holy Ghost;
    the holy catholic church; the communion of saints;
    the forgiveness of sins;
    the resurrection of the body;
    and the life everlasting.
 Amen.


The Nicene Creed 
 I believe in one God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things visible and invisible.
 And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God,
begotten of the Father before all worlds;
God of God,
Light of Light,
very God of very God;
begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father,
by whom all things were made.
Who, for us men and for our salvation,
came down from heaven,
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary,
and was made man;
and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate;
He suffered and was buried;
and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures;
and ascended into heaven,
and sits on the right hand of the Father;
and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead;
whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life;
who proceeds from the Father and the Son;
who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified;
who spoke by the prophets.
 And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;
and I look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
May we recite this Lord’s Day our Creeds with all our hearts; and may we live the rest of the week accordingly to what we proclaim to believe.
Becky
Visit Jim LePage Art & Design Website

The Love Story of a Passionate God and His Bride -Part 2-

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©Katie Lloyd Photography

 

You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be. You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the whore. And you took your embroidered garments to cover them, and set my oil and my incense before them. Also my bread that I gave you—I fed you with fine flour and oil and honey—you set before them for a pleasing aroma; and so it was, declares the Lord God. And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them? And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, wallowing in your blood.

“And after all your wickedness (woe, woe to you! declares the Lord God), you built yourself a vaulted chamber and made yourself a lofty place in every square. At the head of every street you built your lofty place and made your beauty an abomination, offering yourself to any passerby and multiplying your whoring. You also played the whore with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, multiplying your whoring, to provoke me to anger. Behold, therefore, I stretched out my hand against you and diminished your allotted portion and delivered you to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewd behavior. You played the whore also with the Assyrians, because you were not satisfied; yes, you played the whore with them, and still you were not satisfied. You multiplied your whoring also with the trading land of Chaldea, and even with this you were not satisfied.

“How sick is your heart, declares the Lord God, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute, building your vaulted chamber at the head of every street, and making your lofty place in every square. Yet you were not like a prostitute, because you scorned payment. Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different.

“Therefore, O prostitute, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, Because your lust was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your whorings with your lovers, and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from every side and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness.

Ezekiel 16: 13-37

John Piper says,

“There’s the picture of the faithless Israel. Her idolatry -her turning from the Lord God to foreign gods- is pictured as the work of a whore. And I say again...God created us with sexual passion so that there would be a language to describe what it means to cleave to him in love and what it means to turn away from him to others.”

God’s judgement is then pronounced (v35-37) and Piper makes us consider this,

“It may look as though God has finally finished with Israel. Judgement had fallen. The wife was put away. But that is not the last word. God hates divorce. Therefore, though he judge and separate, he will not finally forsake his covenant people -his wife. He will make with her a new covenant and bring her back to himself at the cost of his Son and by the power of his Spirit:”

 

“For thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant. Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you take your sisters, both your elder and your younger, and I give them to you as daughters, but not on account of the covenant with you. I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God.” Ezekiel 16: 59-63

 

“The end of the story is that God, after giving up his faithless wife into the hands of brutal lovers, will not only take her back, and not only make with her a new and everlasting covenant, but will himself pay for all her sins. Are there debts this prostitute owes? This husband will pay them. “When I atone for… all that you have done, declares the Lord.” Indeed he will pay with the life of his own Son.” J.Piper

Praise God for His Passionate love for his Bride , for His irresistible Grace, for His coming to us!

Alleluia!

Becky

Note: This excerpt has been taken from the book Sex and the Supremacy of Christ (p.29-30).

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The Love Story of A Passionate God and His Bride -Part 1-

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@Katie Lloyd Photography

“Again the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations, and say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.

“And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.

“When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God.”

Ezekiel 16: 4-14

John Pipers says,

“That’s a picture of God’s utterly free and undeserved mercy. That is how Israel was chosen. That’s how you were brought from death to life and from darkness to light and from unbelief to faith, if you are a believer. “I said to you,’Live!’ and made you flourish. I married you. You are mine.” That’s how Israel began. That’s how the Christian life begins. The mighty mercy of God.” (Sex and the Supremacy of Christ)

May we never, not for a second, forget where we were when He found us.

Becky