A bit more help. Thanks, Mike.

Just read this tonight on my pastor's blog.

God's effectively-powerful sanctification process shown in Peter's denial of His Son. Why? Humility.

How fitting...

Why does the Lord let this happen? Why does he let us go our own way? If he gives us the grace to keep coming back in repentance, why doesn’t he give us the grace to never depart from him again? Because he wants to cure us of the folly of self-reliance. The arrogance of relying on willpower and neglecting prayer for strength to withstand temptation.

Soli Deo gloria.

More confusing ramblings. But less confusing, hopefully.

So... still thinking about this sanctification stuff and discussing the idea with various peeps.

The more I discuss it, though, the more confused I tend to get. Yuck.

Here's a few questions which may help clear things up:


When do we feel more like God is conforming us to the image of His Son? When we aren't struggling with open sins (mind you, the heart is an idol factory, and I'm not claiming that fallen humans can ever not struggle with sin!), or when we are struggling?

When do we feel that the Spirit is doing the most powerful work in our lives? During times of spiritual prosperity or spiritual dryness?

Does God ever purposefully ordain periods of spiritual dryness in our lives in order to make us realize that we are fully reliant upon His grace for everything that we do?

Does God ever do the same with our own sin?


Or should we even make the distinction?


Again, please forgive me if I am working too much off of philosophical nonsense right now. I haven't had the time yet to seriously tackle this question through Scripture, so I'm still at the beginning stages of mulling things over in my own teeny brain.

Thoughts? Is anyone even reading this stuff?

Confusing ramblings on sanctification

Yesterday's sermon was on Romans 8:28.

I'll give the text, so's we's all on the same page:

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

Pastor Mike asked a question that many ask in response to this verse: What about our sins?

We can see in the following verse (v. 29) that the main "good" that Paul is referring to here is sanctification: "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son." So, that being the case, how can (no, does!) God work our own sin (a part of all things) for our sanctification?

The answer that Mike gave has had me thinking for the past 24 hours. He said that the primary good that God works through our own sin, which is evil, is humility. God providentially uses our sin to give us knowledge of that sin, so that we may be kept aware of our daily, continual reliance upon His effectively-working grace.

I know, and have known, that God uses our sin to sanctify us, but I wonder exactly how God uses something that is evil to slowly conform us into the image of Someone who is perfectly holy. I guess I always assumed that sin was just a part of the process: you have to first give into sin before God can give you the power to resist sin. Otherwise, what are we being conformed from? But is this really the only way in which a providential and sovereign God can use our evil for our good?

I think that there may be a danger here: in limiting the role of sin in our lives to those acts that we perform (or fail to perform) which are not evidence of our sanctification, we may be losing out on a great blessing... one which may even be one of the primary ways in which God sanctifies us by using that sin.


Okay, this may be getting confusing, so I'll try to simplify the randomness here:

1. What is sanctification?
-Sanctification is the act of God (slowly) conforming us "to the image of His Son".

2. In what ways do we not currently bear - and will not fully bear until the Beatific Vision - this image of the Son?
-Jesus never sinned because He was not a sinner. We choose to sin because we are sinners. God is working in all Christians to give them not only the desire, but the ability, to choose holiness over sin.

3. Is this the only way in which we sin? Is a sin merely an act that we choose to perform?
-When we sin, we are choosing to follow the lie that we are creatures who are not in need of their Creator. Even Jesus, God Himself, realized that He was fully reliant upon His Father (John 5:19), and obedient to His commands (Matt. 26:39, 42).


So, my question is this: what is the primary role of sanctification? Does God work in us primarily to conform us to His Son's ability to turn away from sinful acts? Or does He work in us primarily to reveal to us our complete dependence upon Him?

If we concentrate on this first definition of sanctification, we may ignore the second definition. However it seems that the second definition, which also implies the first, gives us a more complete picture of our creatureliness and of God's holiness. In essence, it moves us away from legalism (but not towards licentiousness!), whereas the first may move us toward it.

Okay, I'm getting into the realm of philosophy and logic, and away from Scripture, so I'm going to shut up now.

Is God's Demand for Worship Vain?

Well, I may not have much time lately to be writing posts, but at least I can regurgitate what I am reading! The following is a letter from John Piper in his book entitled "Life as a Vapor" (my current bathroom time-killer, if you must know....). It is an open letter to Michael Prowse. My prayer for all of you who read this is the same as Piper's for Prowse: that you will see and savor the beauty of your Maker and your Redeemer.

Dear Mr. Prowse,

It would be my great joy to persuade you that God's demand for worship is beautiful love, not ugly pride. On March 30, 2003 you wrote in the London Financial Times:

Worship is an aspect of religion that I always found difficult to understand. Suppose we postulate an omnipotent being who, for reasons inscrutable to us, decided to create something other than himself. Why should he . . . expect us to worship him? We didn't ask to be created. Our lives are often troubled. We know that human tyrants, puffed up with pride, crave adulation and homage. But a morally perfect God would surely have no character defects. So why are all those people on their knees every Sunday?

I don't understand why you assume that the only incentive for God to demand praise is that he is needy and defective. This is true for humans. But with God there is another possibility.

What if, as the atheist Ayn Rand once said, admiration is the rarest and best of pleasures? And what if, as I wish Ayn Rand could have seen, God really is the most admirable being in the universe? Would this not imply that God's summons for our praise is the summons for our highest joy? And if the success of that summons cost him the life of his Son, would that not be love (instead of arrogance)?

The reason the Bible gives why God should be greatly praised is that he is great. "Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised" (Psalm 96:4). He is more admirable than anything he has made. That is what it means to be God.

Moreover, the Bible says that praise - overflowing, heartfelt admiration - is a pleasure. "Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant" (Psalm 147:1). And this pleasure is the best there is, and lasts forever. "In [God's] presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11).

The upshot of this is that God's demand for supreme praise is his demand for our supreme happiness. Deep in our hearts we know that we are not made to be made much of. We are made to make much of something great. The best joys are when we forget ourselves, enthralled with greatness. The greatest greatness is God's. Every good that ever thrilled the heart of man is amplified ten thousand times in God. God is in a class by himself. He is the only being for whom self-exaltation is essential to love. If he "humbly" sent us away from his beauty, suggesting we find our joy in another, we would be ruined.

Great thinkers have said this long before I did. For example, Jonathan Edwards said:

It is easy to conceive how God should seek the good of the creature . . . even his happiness, from a supreme regard to himself; as his happiness arises from . . . the creature's exercising a supreme regard to God . . .in loving it, and rejoicing in it. . . . God's respect to the creature's good, and his respect to himself, is not a divided respect; but both are united in one, as the happiness of the creature aimed at is happiness in union with himself. (Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World, in John Piper, God's Passion for His Glory, p. 248f.)

C. S. Lewis broke through to the beauty of God's self-exaltation (thinking at first that the Psalms sounded like an old woman craving compliments). He finally saw the obvious:

My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. (C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms [New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958, pp. 93-95])

Both Edwards and Lewis saw that praising God is the consummation of joy in God. This joy flows from the infinite beauty and greatness of God. There is no one who surpasses him in any truly admirable trait. He is absolutely enjoyable. But we are sinners and do not see it, and do not want it. We want ourselves at the center. But Jesus Christ taught us to be human in another way, and then died for our sin, absorbed God's wrath against it, and opened the way to see and savor God. "Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18).

Therefore, the reason God seeks our praise is not because he won't be complete until he gets it. He is seeking our praise because we won't be happy until we give it. This is not arrogance. It is love.

I pray that you will see and savor the beauty of your Maker and your Redeemer.

John Piper

Common views of Christianity

So, hopefully nobody reading this takes Christianity so seriously that they can't find the humor in these videos. They are short clips (à la Mystery Science Theater 3000) that some church made in response to common misconceptions of Christianity.

I don't think these are blasphemous... but they are dang funny! Watch and laugh.