Gossip: sorrow for sin?

Saturday, October 19, 2019
    Feast of Henry Martyn, Translator of the Scriptures, Missionary in India & Persia, 1812
Meditation:
    Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”
    —Haggai 1:5-6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    In prayer we express deep penitence and contrition for our shortcomings, using sorrowful and self-accusing words. And this often in all sincerity. But, at other times, we are not really much disturbed about it; or, at least, not nearly so much as our heaped-up language would imply. What we imagine that we are achieving through this unreality I do not know. We shall not fool the All-wise; nor induce Him to believe that we are anything other, or better, than we actually are! Were it not saner to tell Him the truth, exactly as it is—not that we are overwhelmed with sorrow for our sinfulness, if it is not so; but rather this, that, to all our other sinfulness, we have added this last and crowning sinfulness, that we are not much worried about it, or, at least, not nearly as much as we ought to be. Be pleased, in pity, to grant us such measure of sorrow for our failures as will lead us to a true repentance; and, through that, to a new way of life.
    ... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), In the Secret Place of the Most High, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947, p. 27-28 (see the book)
    See also Hag. 1:5-6; Mark 2:17; Luke 10:13; 13:1-5; Rom. 2:1-5; Eph. 5:13-14
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me true sorrow for my sins. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Whately: interpreting the promises spiritually

Friday, October 18, 2019
    Feast of Luke the Evangelist
Meditation:
    You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.
    —1 Thessalonians 1:6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Now if all these things were to come to pass, the determined expectation of which caused the Jews to reject Christ,—if he should actually appear, with miraculous splendor, as the restorer of the Jewish nation, and city, and Temple, reigning over the whole world as a great earthly sovereign, and reserving peculiar privileges for his own nation,—if, I say, all these expectations should be fulfilled, to which the Jews have so long and so obstinately clung, surely this would not be so much a conversion of the Jews to Christianity as a conversion of Christians to Judaism; it would not be bringing the Jews to the Gospel by overcoming their national prejudices, but rather carrying back the Gospel to meet the Jewish prejudices; it would be destroying the spiritual character of our religion, and establishing those erroneous views which have hitherto caused the Jews to reject it.
    We may conclude, then, that all the promises and predictions in Scripture relative to the future glories of the Jews and of Jerusalem, are to be understood of the Christian church, of which the Jewish church was a figure; and all that is said of feasting and splendor, and wealth, and worldly greatness and enjoyment, is to be interpreted spiritually of the inward comfort and peace of mind, and “joy of the Holy Ghost,” which is promised to sincere Christians in this life, and of the unspeakable happiness prepared for them after death.
    ... Richard Whately (1787-1863), A View of the Scripture Revelations Concerning a Future State [1829], Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857, p. 158 (see the book)
    See also 1 Thess. 1:6; John 6:15; 18:36; Rom. 8:15; Gal. 3:20
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your Spirit comforts me and strengthens me always. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Packer: heralds of the Sovereign

Thursday, October 17, 2019
    Feast of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Martyr, c.107
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.
    —John 10:27-29 (NIV)
Quotation:
    There is abroad today a widespread suspicion that a robust faith in the absolute sovereignty of God is bound to undermine any adequate sense of human responsibility. Such a faith is thought to be dangerous to spiritual health because it breeds a habit of complacent inertia. In particular, it is thought to paralyse evangelism by robbing one both of the motive to evangelize and of the message to evangelize with. The supposition seems to be that you cannot evangelize effectively unless you are prepared to pretend while you are doing it, that the doctrine of divine sovereignty is not true. I shall try to make it evident that this is nonsense. I shall try to show further that, so far from inhibiting evangelism, faith in the sovereignty of God’s government and grace is the only thing that can sustain it, for it is the only thing that can give us the resilience that we need if we are to evangelize boldly and persistently, and not be daunted by temporary setbacks. So far from being weakened by this faith, therefore, evangelism will inevitably be weak and lack staying power without it.
    ... James I. Packer (b. 1926), Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God [1961], Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1991, p. 10 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 11:25; John 10:27-29; Acts 17:24-26; Eph. 4:4-6
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are Your people’s eternal shepherd. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Latimer: the purpose of suffering

Wednesday, October 16, 2019
    Commemoration of the Oxford Martyrs, Hugh Latimer, Nicolas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer, bishops and martyrs, 1555
Meditation:
    Then [Jesus] said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
    —Hebrews 10:9-10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It may fortune thou wilt say, “I am content to do the best for my neighbor that I can, saving myself harmless.” I promise thee, Christ will not hear their excuse; for He himself suffered harm for our sakes, and for our salvation was put to extreme death. I wis, if it had pleased Him, He might have saved us and never felt pain; but in suffering pains and death He did give us example, and teach us how we should do one for another, as He did for us all; for, as He saith himself, “He that will be Mine, let him deny himself, and follow Me, in bearing My cross and suffering My pains.” Wherefore we must needs suffer pain with Christ to do our neighbor good, as well with the body and all his members, as with heart and mind.
    ... Hugh Latimer (1485?-1555), in The World’s Orators, Guy Carleton Lee, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900, p. 160-161 (see the book)
    See also Luke 9:59-62; Matt. 16:24; Heb. 10:9-10; 1 Pet. 2:21
Quiet time reflection:
    Show me, Lord, the sacrifices I must make for my neighbor. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Teresa of Avila: knowing ourselves in God

Tuesday, October 15, 2019
    Feast of Teresa of Avila, Mystic, Teacher, 1582
Meditation:
Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.
The LORD sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground.
    —Psalm 147:5-6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God, for, beholding His greatness, we realize our own littleness; His purity shows us our foulness; and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble.
    ... Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), The Interior Castle [1577], tr., E. Allison Peers, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961, p. 47 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 147:5-6; 29:2-4; Isa. 53:7; Matt. 11:29; Jas. 4:10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I cannot stand before You except by Your grace. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Augustine: nothing to worry about

Monday, October 14, 2019
Meditation:
    But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
    —Philippians 3:20-21 (NIV)
Quotation:
    At the resurrection the substance of our bodies, however disintegrated, will be united. We must not fear that the omnipotence of God cannot recall all the particles that have been consumed by fire or by beast, or dissolved into dust and ashes, or decomposed into water, or evaporated into air.
    ... St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), The City of God, v. II, Marcus Dods, ed., as vol. 2 of The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Edinbugh: T & T Clark, 1871, XII.xx, p. 515 (see the book)
    See also 2 Cor. 4:14; Isa. 26:19; John 11:25-26; Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 6:14; 2 Cor. 5:1-4; Phil. 3:20-21; 1 Thess. 4:14-16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, in You is our eternal hope. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Lewis: keeping the commandments

Sunday, October 13, 2019
    Feast of Edward the Confessor, 1066
Meditation:
    [Nicodemus] came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
    In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
    —John 3:2-3 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The very activities for which we were created are, while we live on earth, variously impeded: by evil in ourselves or in others. Not to practice them is to abandon our humanity. To practice them spontaneously and delightfully is not yet possible. This situation creates the category of duty, the whole specifically moral realm.
    It exists to be transcended. Here is the paradox of Christianity. As practical imperatives for here and now, the two great commandments have to be translated “Behave as if you loved God and man.” For no man can love because he is told to. Yet obedience on this practical level is not really obedience at all. And if a man really loved God and man, once again this would hardly be obedience; for if he did, he would be unable to help it. Thus the command really says to us, “Ye must be born again.” Till then, we have duty, morality, the Law. A schoolmaster, as St. Paul says, is to bring us to Christ. We must expect no more of it than of a schoolmaster; we must allow it no less.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1964, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002, p. 147-148 (see the book)
    See also John 3:3; Rom. 10:4; Gal. 2:19; 3:24-25; 4:1-5; Heb. 10:1
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I have become new-born forever in You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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