Afterwords -- week 11
"Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these." (Luke 12:27 NAS)
"But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." (Hebrews 3:13 ESV)
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March 5, 2022
Dear friends,
I am thankful for the refreshing work of God in my own heart as I studied the topic of God's glory. And thank you to all who have sent kind and encouraging comments to me about our 2022 Spiritual Life Conference. We were created to see, know, enjoy, reflect, and be transformed by the glory of God. The second verse given above reminds us that there are forces that would seek to thwart that. One goal of encouragement (or, exhortation) is to keep us from becoming hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Note the frequency: "every day." Every day, including today, we are bombarded by lies from the world, Satan, and our own fleshly desires: "Don't be so negative..." "It's no big deal..." "Follow your heart..." "No one will know..." "God just wants you to be happy..." (Or, conversely, "God doesn't want you to be happy...") Someone once said that "sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and make you pay more than you want to pay." One very big goal of Christian fellowship is to help keep each other rooted in the truth.
JESUS AND THE TABERNACLE. Last weekend I spoke of the Gospel of John highlighting Jesus' fulfillment of the imagery of the OT tabernacle. Here's what I was getting at, including a chart.
SPIRITUAL LIFE CONFERENCE. The audio files can be found at sermonaudio/bcf. Here are the services on YouTube: Session 1 here. Session 2 here. And session 3 here. An outline of the sermons in one PDF can be downloaded from here.
WARS AND RUMORS... How often during the pandemic I would say that I was looking forward to things getting "back to normal." And then with recent events in the Ukraine we are reminded that "normal" includes wars. As a family we are praying for the Ukrainian people. Nearly a century ago, as war loomed large in Europe, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the newly-installed pastor at Westminster Chapel in London, preached a series on "Why Does God Allow War?" Here's an excerpt.
OUR PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS. A woman who had experienced chronic depression throughout her life wrote Francis Schaeffer about how much healing she could expect in this life in the area of mental health. He answered, "Increasingly I am so aware that just as there are no perfect people physically so there are no perfect people psychologically. There are differences in intensity of physical problems and differences of intensity in psychological problems. But there is no such thing, since man has revolted against God, as people who are completely well, either physically or psychologically..." Read more of his response to her here.
A PRAYER. "Father in heaven! Draw our hearts to you so that our longing may be where our treasure is supposed to be. Turn our minds and our thoughts to where our citizenship is – in your kingdom, so that when you finally call us away from here our leave-taking may not be a painful separation but a joyful union with you. We do not know the time and the place, perhaps a long road still lies before us, and when strength is taken away from us, when exhaustion fogs our eyes so that we peer out as into a dark night, and restless desires stir within us, wild, impatient longings, and the heart groans in fearful anticipation of what is coming, oh Lord God, fix in our hearts the conviction that also while we are living, we belong to you." (Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations, 58)
It's spring break here in Blacksburg, and the sun is (currently) shining. Have a good week and enjoy the signs of the approach of spring!
Sandy
Photo above of daffodils growing near the sidewalk in Fincastle, VA, taken just this week.