How's Your Contentment Quotient?

September 7, 2010 By revheff in Spiritual Life Tags: contentment, Puritans 2 Comments

Find out by checking out this month’s edition of Free Grace Broadcaster.

Here’s a sample from Plumer’s piece, the first of several Puritan writers on the subject:

But what is contentment? And how may it be known from evil states of mind somewhat resembling it?
Contentment is not carelessness or prodigality.3 It is not obtuseness of sensibility.4 It is a disposition of mind in
which we rest satisfied with the will of God respecting our temporal affairs—without hard thoughts or hard
speeches concerning His allotments5 and without any sinful desire for a change. It submissively receives what is
given. It thankfully enjoys present mercies. It leaves the future in the hand of unerring wisdom. Nor is there
anything in true contentment to make men satisfied with the world as a portion or as a permanent abode. The
most contented person may long for the day when Christ shall call him home. He may, like Paul, be in a strait
betwixt two, not knowing whether to desire to abide in the flesh for the sake of others or to depart and be with
Christ, which is far better (Phi 1:23)…

Check it out. This stuff will challenge your socks off but given the economy and a host of other reasons the people of God need in these times to feast on truth like this.

A Sweet Way to Fall Asleep

July 26, 2010 By revheff in Spiritual Life Tags: productivity, roles, sleep 3 Comments

Tomorrow morning our weekly prayer group will continue our discussion over breakfast of C. J. Mahaney’s helpful article on biblical productivity.

We’ve progressed in our reading beyond the challenges of busyness masquerading as productivity and procrastination to now some guidance and help in how to ensure real productivity in our lives.

Mahaney casts a vision for the reader in one simple sentence: It is sweet falling asleep knowing we have redeemed the time. That’s a reference to Eph. 5:16 and Col. 4:5 which the ESV renders as making the best use of the time.

His prescription for arriving at this day’s end sweetness on a regular basis he summarizes like this:

As I hope you will discover for yourself in this series, our biblical productivity depends upon a schedule, which depends upon clear goals, which depends upon clearly defined roles. Working toward clarity on understanding my present roles is my first (and most important) step in developing biblical productivity.

Mahaney contends that planning for a particular week doesn’t begin with one’s schedule but rather with considering one’s God-given roles. He says, If I am not fulfilling my roles, my goals will be misdirected, and I will be vulnerable to all manner of requests and fail to devote myself to what is most important.

Don’t underestimate the significance of this principle. There is great liberation in the reminder that we are not called to do everything.

Mahaney quotes Gene Veith:

In our earthly lives, we do not have to do everything. Earthly life—and this is operative with non-believers no less than believers—consists of giving and receiving, serving and being served, in a network of economic and social and personal interdependence (The Spirituality of the Cross, p. 76).

So here’s the formula: productivity = roles + goals + schedule.

What are your God-given roles? Go ahead. Write them down.

You just might sleep better tonight.

The One Thing We Must Never Lack

July 14, 2010 By revheff in Spiritual Life Tags: godliness, humility 2 Comments

Puritan Thomas Watson asserted that, “Pride is the greatest sacrilege; it robs God of his glory” (The Godly Man’s Picture).

If that is correct, then we ought to concern ourselves seriously about the cultivation of pride’s antithesis, humility.

Peter thought so when he exhorted the churches, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’” (1 Peter 5:5).

We certainly don’t want to end up on the wrong end of that equation.

What does this kind of humility that brings forth much needed grace look like?

Watson proposed a tenfold test of humility by which we may measure ourselves:

A humble soul is emptied of all swelling thoughts of himself.
A humble soul thinks better of others than of himself.
A humble soul has a low esteem of his duties.
A humble man is always preferring bills of indictment against himself.
A humble man will justify God in an afflicted condition.
A humble soul is a Christ-magnifier.
A humble soul is willing to take a reproof for sin.
A humble man is willing to have his name and gifts eclipsed, so that God’s glory may be increased.
A humble saint likes that condition which God sees best for him.
A humble Christian will stoop to the meanest person and the lowest office; he will visit the poorest member of Christ.

Occasional Puritan hyperbole notwithstanding, how do you fare when you shine the light of these qualities against your own disposition?

Watson declared, “It is better to lack anything rather than humility.” Do you see the Lord growing you in this all-important virtue of humility?

We would do well to make John the Baptist’s rally cry in John 3:30 our own. “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

May the Lord grant us grace upon grace for less of us and more of Him.

Look Away From Self & Towards Christ

April 28, 2010 By revheff in Spiritual Life Tags: faith, gospel, self Leave a comment

Someone sent me this great word by J. C. Ryle recently:

Look not to yourselves! You are by nature wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked; you cannot make atonement for your past transgressions, you cannot wipe out a single page in that long black list. And when the King shall ask you for your wedding garment you will be speechless. Look simply unto Jesus, and then the weight shall fall from off your shoulders, the course shall be clear and plain, and you shall run the race which is set before you.

The Puritans used to say for every one look at self you need to take ten looks at Jesus. May the gospel of Christ empower us to live a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called.

How to Get a Richly Supplied Soul

January 9, 2010 By revheff in Spiritual Life, Sunday Morning Tags: means of grace, prayer, sanctification, spiritual reformation Leave a comment

Proverbs contrasts the sluggard who craves and gets nothing with the diligent whose soul is richly supplied, or literally, made fat (13:4).

No matter how much the sluggard craves something, his inherent laziness precludes him from acquiring anything. He is a victim of his own sins of sloth.

There is only one road to a richly supplied, spiritually fat soul. It’s called diligence. If you and I want a richly supplied soul by God’s grace, we must work at it. Hard.

J. C. Ryle, in his book, Holiness, said true Christianity will cost a man his love of ease.

He must take pains and trouble if he means to run a successful race toward heaven. He must daily watch and stand on his guard, like a soldier on enemy’s ground. He must take heed to his behavior every hour of the day, in every company and in every place, in public as well as in private, among strangers as well as at home. He must be careful over his time, his tongue, his temper, his thoughts, his imagination, his motives, his conduct in every relation of life. He must be diligent about his prayers, his Bible reading, and his use of Sundays, with all their means of grace. In attending to these things, he may come far short of perfection; but there is none of those who he can safely neglect. “The soul of the sluggard desires, and has nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat” (Prov. 13:4) (emphasis mine).

Two emphases tomorrow at OGC will converge towards the end of promoting richly supplied souls for those who participate. In the 9:30 hour (meeting in the sanctuary this week) we will continue our study in Carson’s book, A Call to Spiritual Reformation. We have resupplied our resource table with copies that will be available tomorrow. Few books can help us more with how to grow in diligence in our prayers for a richly supplied soul. In the worship service I will preach another New Year’s sermon, this one from Colossians 3:1-4, entitled How to Stop the Sinful Self-Indulgence of the Flesh. Paul uses a diligence verb in his command in verse one – seek the things above where Christ is. Praying is one important way we do seeking that our souls may be richly supplied.

Diet all you will in the New Year that the body may return to fitness after the indulgence of the holidays. But take pains, eschew your love of ease, be diligent, seek the things above, that your soul may be made fat, richly supplied indeed.

Get a good night’s sleep and, Lord willing, I will see you tomorrow.

Lessons from the School of Prayer

January 7, 2010 By revheff in Spiritual Life, Sunday Morning Tags: prayer, spiritual reformation 4 Comments

That’s the title for chapter one in Carson’s book A Call to Spiritual Reformation, our text for the 9:30 equipping hour during the first quarter of 2010.

Apart from my bleeding mouth (so sorry about that for those who saw it – near as we can figure I bit myself in an area numbed by my cancer surgery – I had no idea it happened until Nancy pointed it out to me), we got off to a smashing start in our study on prayer.

At the end of the class on Sunday I challenged us to four action steps for the quarter:

Read the book.
Attend the class.
Enlist a prayer partner.
Pray through the church directory.

As I made my way yet another time through chapter one in preparation for this week’s study, I was struck by something when I came to the third lesson Carson lists: At various points in your life, develop, if possible, a prayer-partner relationship (p. 22). He talks about several variations on that theme including meeting with a handful of people weekly, perhaps in the early morning, for an hour or more of intercessory prayer.

God has given me just such a group in our staff, interns, and others on Mondays from 6:30-7:30 AM.

The participants change from time to time. This picture was taken on our last day with several of the guys who recently took positions elsewhere around the country. But we continue to meet and it remains a highlight of my week to join with these men in pouring out our hearts to God. We never fail to pray for Monday’s group of folks in the directory!

My hope for what we do in those prayer meetings is well summed up by Dr. Carson on p. 25:

Such clusters of prayer partners have been used by God again and again to spearhead powerful ministry and extravagant blessing. They may continue unnoticed for years, except in the courts of heaven. Some little groups grow and become large prayer meetings; others multiply and divide, maintaining the same principles. But whatever the precise pattern, there is a great deal to be said for developing godly prayer-partnership relationships.

How about you? With whom do you have a prayer-partner relationship? I for one am so grateful for the men God has given me on Monday mornings!

A Valuable Resource for Memorizing Scripture

January 5, 2010 By revheff in Spiritual Life Tags: Scripture memory, spiritual growth 5 Comments

This Sunday will mark a significant milestone for me. With my recitation of Titus 3:1-15 I will have finally completed memorizing Paul’s pastoral epistles! It has taken me over two years to get the task done, but I have managed, by God’s grace, to stick with it. Perhaps more significantly I have kept up my review of all thirteen chapters so as to retain them.

It is difficult to express just how valuable this spiritual discipline is to one’s walk with God. As a result I feel more armed with the precious promises of God’s word for my spiritual life. I feel more equipped to fight temptation in my walk. I enjoy increased knowledge of God by seeing things I have never seen before. I find wisdom from these pages particularly for me as a pastor of a local church. I experience conviction of sin in different ways. I enjoy more of the Spirit in my life by letting this word of Christ dwell richly within me. And these reasons don’t begin to tell the manifold benefits of memorizing especially extended portions of Scripture.

Dr. Andrew Davis has written an extremely helpful booklet for equipping believers for memorizing whole chapters and books of the Bible. Among other things, he makes this plea for committing to memory more than just isolated verses here and there:

Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) Paul said “All Scripture is God-breathed, and is useful for teaching rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness…” (2 Timothy 3:16) Memorizing individual verses tends to miss intervening verses that the individual does not feel are as significant. Furthermore, most of Scripture is written to make a case… there is a flow of argumentation that is missed if individual verses are memorized. Furthermore, there is also a greater likelihood of taking verses out of context by focusing on individual verses.

We have copies of this booklet available at our resource table on Sunday mornings or you may access the text online here. I commend it to you in hopes that 2010 may see you commit more Scripture to memory than at any time in the past.

Why Read Through the Bible in a Year or More?

December 26, 2009 By revheff in Spiritual Life Tags: Bible reading, sanctification, spiritual growth Leave a comment

469px-Robert_Murray_McCheyne-234x300 I say a year or more because I don’t want people to get overwhelmed by the size of the challenge. While I want to encourage believers to stretch to accomplish the task in a year, far better that we do it in a longer period of time than not at all.

It has been my practice to read according to a plan for covering Genesis to Revelation in a year for the last ten years. Few disciplines have more thoroughly shaped my spiritual life. I plead with you – pick up a copy of the Robert Murray McCheyne plan at church this Sunday or access one of the several alternative approaches you can download on line. Or purchase a copy of one of several brands of a through-the–bible-in-a-year bibles available at your bookstore. For the last two years I have used the TNIV of one of those and have enjoyed it thoroughly. This means of grace will change your life!

In case you need convincing about this, I submit to you sixteen biblical reasons for giving yourself to reading through the Bible in a year.

All Scripture is inspired by God (2 Tim. 3:16). Inspired means breathed out. It comes from God Himself to us as a gift. We dare not neglect any portion of the sacred text.
That same Scripture in entirety equips us for a life of good works (2 Tim. 3:17).
That same Scripture in entirety leads us to a proper knowledge and experience of the gift of salvation and the eternal life it bestows (Phil. 2:16; 2 Tim. 3:15; Jas. 1:21; 1 Pet. 1:23).
The Word of God is His appointed means for fighting sin, Satan, and temptation in the spiritual warfare that constantly assaults us (Matt. 4:1-1; Eph. 6:17).
Scripture pierces the heart with Holy Spirit conviction to purify thoughts, intentions, and motives of the heart (Heb. 4:12).
Scripture conveys to us the grace of God and helps to build us up in our most holy faith (Acts 20:32; Jude 21).
The Word of God is the means whereby God sanctifies us – sets us apart for His use and purposes (John 17:17; Eph. 5:26). It provides the spiritual nourishment whereby we may grow with respect to our glorious salvation (1 Pet. 2:2).
Scripture keeps us from the peril of spiritual error (Matt. 22:29).
The Bible charts out for us the path to true blessing and happiness (Luke 11:28).
Scripture fosters faith and counters unbelief (John 20:31; Rom. 10:17).
The Word clothes us with a nobility similar to the Bereans who searched the Scriptures daily (Acts 17:11).
God’s Word transforms the mind in such a way to make a powerful antidote for being squeezed into the world’s mold (Rom. 12:2).
Scripture increases patience, comfort, and perseverance in the testing that comes with trials (Rom. 15:4).
The Bible sets apart the everyday gifts of God like food and sex by informing our understanding of the proper use and enjoyment of such things (1 Tim. 4:5).
The Scriptures act as a preserving agent keeping us from the disaster of apostasy and spiritual shipwreck (Heb. 2:1-3).
The Bible yields to us the exceedingly precious promises of God whereby we may become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4).

There are probably more. But you get the point. Oh how many benefits come to us by the discipline of daily reading the Scriptures! If you make any resolution for 2010 I pray it would be this one. Take up and read through the entire Bible this year.