John Piper – The Deepest Cure to Our Pitiful Addictions

How Then Does the Knowledge of the Supremacy of Christ (Opened to Us by the Gospel) Guide and Guard and Govern Our Sexual Lives?

How does it make our sexuality sacred, satisfying, and Christ-exalting? Of all the ways this works, I will mention only two.

First, knowing the supremacy of Christ enlarges the soul so that sex and its little thrills become as small as they really are. Little souls make little lusts have great power. The soul, as it were, expands to encompass the magnitude of its treasure. The human soul was made to see and savor the supremacy of Christ. Nothing else is big enough to enlarge the soul as God intended and make little lusts lose their power.

Vast starry skies seen from a mountain in Utah, and four layers of moving clouds on a seemingly endless plain in Montana, and standing on the edge of a mile-deep drop in the Grand Canyon can all have a wonderfully supplementary role in enlarging the soul with beauty. But nothing can take the place of the supremacy of Christ. As Jonathan Edwards said, if you embrace all creation with goodwill, but do not embrace Christ, you are infinitely narrow. Our hearts were made to be enlarged by Christ, and all creation cannot replace his supremacy.     Continue at CrossQuotes

Getting Healthy: Fighting Spiritually

I believe the life of a Christian is a life of fighting. We fight against sin and temptation. We wage a spiritual war against everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. But it wasn’t until I found myself in my weakest condition that I had to fight the most intense battles of my Christian life. It was frightening? I was too weak to fight, but this was when God called me to fight in raging battles.

My temptations were stronger, but my spirit was weaker. The Devil often accused me as a guilty sinner and one of weak faith. I struggled with crippling doubt concerning my own work, and was I fearful in all ministry contexts. I was anxious before preaching beyond a healthy fear that should be upon all who preach the word of God. I was uncertain after every message and meeting that I had done well. Most of the time I felt I was a failure, even when everything pointed to success. Even though I was certain of my calling I was equally certain of my frailty, which led me to a level of uncertainty about myself in every other area. I knew I was called, but was I still called to remain where I was? Perhaps I had done all that I could. This was terrifying, for there is no other place I want to be than serving my church.

This pressing anxiety was ever-present. It was literally hard to breathe. This drove me deeper into prayer and dependency on Jesus, but I found only small measures of comfort and relief after extended time in prayer. Or, when God’s grace to seemed to calm all storms in my heart, it only lasted for hours.   Continue at Joe Thorn

Fighting the Unholy Trinity

The principal fight of the Christian is with the world, the flesh, and the devil. This is their never-dying foes. These are the three chief enemies against whom they must wage war. Unless they get the victory over these three, all other victories are useless and vain. If they had a nature like an angel, and were not a fallen creature, the warfare would not be so essential. But with a corrupt heart, a busy devil, and an ensnaring world, they must either fight or be lost.

The Christian must fight the flesh. Even after conversion they carry within them a nature prone to evil, and a heart weak and unstable as water. To keep that heart from going astray, there is need of a daily struggle and a daily wrestling in prayer. “I discipline my body,” cries Paul, “and bring it under subjection.” “I see a law in my members at war against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity.” “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?” “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts.” “Mortify your members which are upon the earth” (1 Cor. 9:27; Rom. 7:23, 24; Gal. 5:24; Col. 3:5).

The Christian must fight the world. The subtle influence of that mighty enemy must be daily resisted, and without a daily battle can never be overcome. The love of the world’s good things, the fear of the world’s laughter or blame, the secret desire to keep in with the world, the secret wish to do as others in the world do, and not to run into extremes—all these are spiritual foes which beset the Christian continually on their way to heaven, and must be conquered. “The friendship of the world is enmity with God: whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God.” “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” “Whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world.” “Be not conformed to this world” (James 4:4; 1 John 2:15; 1 John 5:4; Rom. 12:2).   Continue at J. C. Ryle Quotes

Fight Your Sin

By Jonathan Dodson, Gospel-Centered Discipleship

Yesterday we posted the first of three in a series on fighting sin. Check out the post on the importance of knowing your sin. Once we know our sin, the challenge is to actually fight it.

Know that victory over sin has already been won.

Before we address fighting sin, it is worthwhile to point out that the victory over sin has already been won in Christ. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has defeated sin, death, and evil through his own death and resurrection and is making all things new, even us. Paul explains Jesus' victory over sin and its implications for us in Romans 6:6-11:

• The power of sin has been rendered powerless, as we are no longer enslaved to it but to Christ!
• However, disciples will continue to battle sin until our final reunion with Christ. This is why Paul exhorts us to “consider” ourselves dead to sin and alive in Jesus.
• The time between the cross and the return of Christ will be filled with battles against sin, but in these battles we possess a new life which enables us to defeat sin through Christ’s decisive victory.
• The fight of faith is a fight to be our new, authentic selves in Christ, free from sin and alive to God in righteousness. Knowing our sin, we fight against it by fighting to be who we already are in Christ.

Why Fight?

Fighting your sin is a tenacity to put sin to death, which arises from our life in Christ. Unfortunately, many disciples do not walk in their newness of life but in old patterns of sin. Perhaps this lackadaisical approach to sin is because we value Jesus’s atonement for our guilt and the penalty of sin, but at a heart level fail to value and understand how his atonement has also freed us from the power of sin? Or perhaps our indifference to fighting sin springs from a false belief that God accepts us just as we are, not as who we will be? Why fight if we are already accepted?  Continue at Jonathan Dodson

A Warning To Professing Christians

Some thirty years ago, when I was a university student, I came across a statement by Bishop J C Ryle that powerfully riveted itself to my mind. I made a small A4-size poster of it and put it up on the notice board in my room. I lost it when I graduated from university. Since then I have looked for it and failed to find it. I have tried to Google it, but even that has not yielded the desired fruit. I finally found it today (13 January 2012).

Bishop J C Ryle

All along I had been searching in the wrong place. I knew that the statement had something to do with a warning to Christians. Hence, I kept looking in Ryle’s A Warning To The Churches. I literally searched the book, sentence by sentence, several times over. Now that I have found it, I realize that it was in Ryle’s Holiness. The statement is found in the chapter, “Visible Churches Warned.” I will not reproduce the whole chapter here, as the book is readily available on the Internet. In fact, you can even read a PDF version of the chapter HERE. It is chapter 14 in the book.

 

The first paragraph below is the statement that shocked me out of my socks some thirty years ago. I have added a few more paragraphs to make this a fuller blog post and to also give my readers some more of the heart of this great bishop. I wish that all bishops today—including myself—could write and preach like this!  Continue at Some thirty years ago, when I was a university student, I came across a statement by Bishop J C Ryle that powerfully riveted itself to my mind. I made a small A4-size poster of it and put it up on the notice board in my room. I lost it when I graduated from university. Since then I have looked for it and failed to find it. I have tried to Google it, but even that has not yielded the desired fruit. I finally found it today (13 January 2012).  Continue at Conrad Mbewe

Practical Guidelines for Mortifying Sin

Often today Christians go to Paul to tell them what to do and then to the local Christian bookstore to discover how to do it!

Why this bifurcation? Probably because we do not linger long enough over what Paul is saying. We do not sink our thinking deeply into the Scriptures. For, characteristically, whenever Paul issues an exhortation, he surrounds it with hints as to how we are to put it into practice.

Notice how this passage (Col. 3:1-17) helps to answer our “how-to” questions:

1. Learn to admit sin for what it really is. Call a spade a spade – call it “fornication” (Col. 3:5), not “I’m being tempted a little”; call it “uncleanness” (v. 5), not “I’m struggling with my thought life”; call it “covetousness, which is idolatry” (v. 5), not “I think I need to order my priorities a bit better.” This pattern runs right through the whole section. How powerfully it unmasks self-deception – and helps us to unmask sin lurking in the hidden corners of our hearts. Read more HERE

Is Truth Worth Fighting for?