You know what, there are times in the Psalms when David implores the Lord to judge him according to His righteousness. "Judge me, O Lord my God, according to your righteousness..." Ps. 35:24. Are you so confident in your walk with the Lord that you could implore God to judge you in His righteousness with the assurance that He would be pleased? Apparently it's an attainable state that we can acquire. Where are you at? Are you dealing with sin swiftly and righteously, are you washing your heart with the water of God's word? Can you say with David, "Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, And I have trusted in the Lord without wavering." Ps. 26:1.
John Owen from The Mortification of Sin
"Now I say when a man comes to this state and condition that lust is weakened in the root and principle, that its motions and actions are fewer and weaker than formerly, so that they are not able to hinder his duty nor interrupt his peace; when he can, in a quiet, sedate frame of spirit, find out and fight against sin, and have success against it; then sin is mortified in some considerable measure, and notwithstanding all its opposition, a man may have peace with God all his days."
Blessings,
Ryan
7 comments:
Sorry to hear about the craziness of all this. We will be praying for this to work out and the Lord to provide. We can't wait to see y'all tomorrow. Hopefully this will all be settled soon, right? :)
Beebz,
Yeah, I know the feeling of being taken advantage of by the business world...ugh.
My abridged version of that Owen quote is:
"sin + walking by the Spirit = mortification."
Yeah, they just substituted a formula for the quote. Weird.
P
I'm glad you are in town. I'm glad I get to see you tomorrow. :) That's all.
That quote is from chapter 6. I know that without even looking it up because I just read that chapter a couple of days ago. It is a deeper subject than you might think to kill the sin in your life.
No kidding Chad. Killing sin is almost as tough as reading John Owen books. Ok, maybe it's tougher. People always say, "just walk by the spirit and you won't sin any more." Then my only question is, "what does it mean to walk by the spirit?"
Thank the Lord that Owen has put his heart to explaining this difficult subject.
Let me know when you finish the book, i'd like to talk to ya about it.
Owen is a hard read for sure, but well worth the effort. The spirit does not work outside of our own efforts, but with us by preparing our minds to know how our heart tricks us and lies to us. Sounds almost semi-pelagian.
Glad to hear you are rejoining the Chick-fil-A work force. You, too, can now splatter milkshakes all over yourself several times a day. Woo hoo!
My last comment sort of seemed snobby. I didn't mean it as saying I know how to walk by the Spirit, but just meant it as a reference to Romans 8:5. The spirit and mind are connected in some sort of way. We certainly must make effort. That is why Owen can write a whole book on that one narrow topic using language I have to look up in a dictionary. It's exciting to know someone else has read or is reading it too.
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