i put stuff here. like my thinkings. and my seeings.
— @t_f
Posts tagged Xtianity
Posted 10 months ago
3 Notes
don’t waste your life
by God’s grace i don’t live according to my failures. i have lots. i was separated from my creator because i believed and acted like i was my own god - i hated him. in my utterly broken and miserable life God came to me. because the eternal immortal infinite God of the universe came to me in the person of Jesus Christ to deal with my rebellion, sin and broken soul i have been reconciled to my creator. he lived a perfect life that i could never (ever) live and then made an exchange with me through his death. he died a death of righteous condemnation on a cross at the hands of a roman executioner. this was my death that i deserved. because God is more loving than i could ever have imagined, in return for nothing i could offer, Jesus gave me his perfect right standing before a holy and righteous God.
now i am free from the bondage of sin and death - my life is Jesus’. my failures are no longer counted against me - Jesus’ perfection is what God sees when he looks at me. where i was once an orphaned child of wrath, God has now adopted me into his family of perfect and holy children, made pure by the blood of his sacrifice.
Christ’s kingdom is already here (but not yet in its fullness); simultaneously a journey and a destination. Jesus is coming back again; this time not as a servant, but a warrior. he will judge every person that has ever lived and is now living by one thing:
Do you believe that Jesus is God and that he is the only way to be reconciled to God?
Posted 10 months ago
2 Notes
How could God ask that of me?
Excellent article from Nancy Guthrie
If we read the Bible assuming that we are expected to follow in the footsteps of those who are featured in its pages, we will find ourselves always trying harder to sacrifice and obey but never measuring up. We’ll assume that God asks us to do things that will make us miserable just to put us through a test of our allegiance—diminishing, rather than magnifying God in our hearts. But when we read the Bible recognizing that it is not about what we must do for him, but about what he has done for us through Christ, rather than being offended by what we fear he may ask of us, we find rest in what he has done for us.
Read full article here.
Posted 1 year ago
2 Notes
Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.
J. I. Packer
Posted 1 year ago
via joeholland
1 Notes
New Birth and Worship // or "What it Really Means to be a Christian"
A theology of spiritual new birth is one of the most important and misunderstood concepts in Christianity. I’m grateful for Driscoll’s clarity.
Source: joeholland
Posted 1 year ago
2 Notes
… those spiritually glorious interviews, holy courtings, most superlative but most sincere commending and cordial entertainings of each other, those mutual praisings and valuings of fellowship, those missings, lamentings, and bemoanings of the want thereof, those holy impatiencies to be without it, swelling to positive and peremptory determinations not to be satisfied nor comforted in any thing else, those diligent, painful and restless seekings after it till it be found and enjoyed, on the one hand; and those sweet and easy yieldings to importunity and gracious grantings of it, on the other; with those high delightings, solacings, complacencies and acquiescings in and heartsome embracings of one another’s fellowship … O what will he make of his church when sinless and in heaven, when he makes so much of her when sinful and on earth! And how incomprehensibly glorious must he be in himself, that he puts such passing glory on her! These transports of admiration at one another, … and finally these vehement joint-longings to have the marriage consummated and the fellowship immediate, full, and never any more to be interrupted.
In The Epistle Dedicatory to James Durham’s Clavis Cantici of 1668, his wife Margaret describes personal communion with Christ.
we don’t have too much passion - we have too little.
Source: thegospelcoalition.org
Posted 1 year ago
12 Notes
q+a
Question: What do you say to the person who says that church is not relevant and is boring?
R.C. Sproul: If we go to the Scriptures and see the record of individuals who encounter God in this world (e.g., Jacob at Bethel, Abraham in Genesis 15, Moses and the burning bush, Habakkuk, Job, Jeremiah, Isaiah), you’ll see a wide range of human emotions and reactions. Sometimes it’s a giddy joy. Sometimes it’s just an awe inspiring silence. Sometimes it’s the quivering lip and the trembling belly. Sometimes it’s the rottenness that enters the bones. Other times it’s weeping. There is no singular, monolithic, prescribed, human emotional response to an encounter with God’s presence in holy Scripture. If you canvass all of those events, the one emotion you will never ever, ever find in Scripture is that people are bored in the presence of God. So instead of trying to entertain and keep people’s attentions, why don’t we simply present God to the people and develop our worship in every way to awaken the people to the presence and character of Almighty God? If you bring people into the presence of God and give them His word, how can it not be relevant?
Posted 1 year ago
via christianity
4 Notes
Your Worldview Isn't Enough
What I’m not suggesting is that Christians lessen the intensity of their convictions as much as I am advocating for an appeal to our convictions that may need to be funneled through alternate means.
Take, for example, an appeal to the superiority of traditional marriage. If traditional marriage as understood by the Christian tradition is true and comports with reality, then it must be true apart from an appeal to Scripture. I arrived at this thinking after reading an article from the conservative quarterly of the University of Chicago, Counterpoint (which is available for free PDF download and a must read). In the most recent edition, the pseudonymous “Carl Roberts” makes an appeal for traditional marriage according to sociological data in his article titled “Rationally Based: Social Science’s Case for Traditional Marriage.” His conclusions are entirely palatable to a Christian understanding of traditional marriage, but Roberts arrived at his conclusion apart from appeals to Scripture.
In a culture that laughs at the notion of biblical authority, the Bible’s authority is going to have to be proven apart from the traditional recitations of Scripture. The Bible will still be true, but that does not mean that evidence which comports with Scripture is any less truer. Scripture’s truthfulness does not need to be proven outside itself, but our attempts at arriving at culturally satisfying and preserving explanations do.
Source: christianity
Posted 1 year ago
via christianity
35 Notes
Late have I loved You, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved You! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for You. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which You created. You were with me, but I was not with You. Created things kept me from You; yet if they had not been in You they would not have been at all. You called, You shouted, and You broke through my deafness. You flashed, You shone, and You dispelled my blindness. You breathed Your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for You. I have tasted You, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.
Source: i-am-anointed
36 Notes
My understanding of faith is that you don’t just believe that Jesus as the Son of God died for your sins, rose again, reigns in heaven, is coming again, and forgives my sin. That’s only factual. It’s also a being satisfied with that, treasuring that. Faith is not just an intellectual assent to doctrines. Faith is an affectional embrace of the Savior for my deepest longings.
John Piper (via brianmolloy)
Posted 1 year ago
God, give us tears for our sins. Forgive us for being so shallow in prayer, so thin in our grasp of holy verities, so content amid perishing neighbors, so empty of passion and earnestness in all our conversation. Restore to us the childlike joy of our salvation. Frighten us with the awesome holiness and power of Him who can cast both soul and body into hell. Cause us to hold to the cross with fear and trembling as our hope-filled and offensive tree of life. Grant us nothing, absolutely nothing, the way the world views it. May Christ be all in all… Humble us, O God, under Your mighty hand, and let us rise, not as professionals, but as witnesses and partakers of the sufferings of Christ. In His awesome name. Amen.
John Piper (via mindfulcreation)
