Hope in God

 When we wonder what God is doing, we need to talk to ourselves:

"Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?" While not denying the harsh reality of our circumstances, we preach to ourselves a simple message: Hope in God. We put our hope in God when the pain is chronic, or the illness is incurable, when the persecution is unavoidable, or the relationship has turned poisonous. We put our hope in God when the days are oppressively gray, and sadness has set in like a thick fog, hiding all from view. We put our hope in God when the horror of sin overwhelms like a tsunami, when the foundations of society begin to crumble, and we fear for what the future might hold, when we begin to feel our own mortality with the passing of the years. We put our hope in God, remembering that “if He smiles on us, it is enough, though the whole world should be against us.” From The Heart Taken Up: 90 Days with the Puritans by Stephen Yuille — a 90-day devotional drawing on the richest Puritan writers to move truth from the head to the heart.

God's Refusals

"God's refusals are always mercies." -Elisabeth Elliot.

Chart by Jerry Bridges

Category (Old),Old Way of Law,

Category (New),New Way of Spirit

External Code,"1. The moral precepts of God are only an external code of conduct. The law commands obedience but provides no inclination or desire to obey."

,Internal Desire,"1. The moral precepts of God are written on our hearts as well as being an external code. The Spirit inclines our hearts and gives us a desire to obey."

Commanding,2. The law commands but gives no enabling power for obedience.,Enabling,2. The Spirit enables us to obey the law's commands.

Hostility,"3. Because of our hostility to God's law before our conversion, the commands of the law actually provoked and incited us to sin.",

Delight,"3. The Spirit, by removing our hostility and writing the law on our hearts, actually causes us to delight in God's law."

Fear,"4. The law produces a legalistic response to God. We try to obey because of a fear of punishment for disobedience or in order to win favor with God.",

Gratitude,"4. The Spirit, by showing us God's grace, produces a response of love and gratitude. We obey, not out of fear or to earn favor, but out of gratitude for favor already given."

Working,"5. Under the law, we perform in order to be accepted by God. Since our performance is always imperfect, we never feel completely accepted by Him.",

Relying,"5. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are accepted by God through the merit of Christ. By relying solely on His perfect righteousness, we feel accepted by Him."

We died to the law in order that we might live in the realm of grace. We died to the law that we might bear fruit to God. And according to Romans 7:6, we died that we might "serve [God] in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code [the law]."

Go to Sleep

“You are worrying and troubling yourself, and you can do nothing; go to sleep.” --Charles Spurgeon

Guilt-Laden Believers

**Pharisee-type believers** unconsciously think they've earned God's blessing through their behavior. **Guilt-laden believers** are sure they've forfeited God's blessing through disobedience or lack of discipline. Both have forgotten the meaning of grace — God's unmerited favor to those who deserve only His wrath.

Most of us probably entertain either of these attitudes on different days. On a good day (as we perceive it), we tend toward self-righteous Pharisaism. On a not-so-good day, we allow ourselves to wallow in a sense of failure and guilt. Either way we've moved away from the gospel of God's grace, trying to relate to God directly on the basis of our performance rather than through Christ.

-- Jerry Bridges

Sob and Lament

 “I sob and lament for that I cannot be rid of sin. I desire to live a more perfect life.”

-John Knox

Not saved because of faith

 "We are saved not because of faith but through faith. It is Christ not faith that saves us."

-Iain Murray.

God loves us

 “God does not love us because we are valuable, but we are valuable because God loves us.”

-Martin Luther

God Himself is Happiness and Peace

 God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

—C.S. Lewis