How Do I, "Be Holy?" (2)

Great word from Ryle...

I should as soon expect a farmer to prosper in business who contented himself with sowing his fields and never looking at them till harvest, as expect a believer to attain much holiness who was not diligent about his Bible reading, his prayers, and the use of his Sunday's. (Ryle, Holiness pg. 26)

How Do I, "Be Holy?"

As we have been studying at Meadowview scripture calls us to Holiness, "...as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct" (1 Pet. 1:15). So how can we become Holy as God is Holy?  Here is how RC Sproul answers that question,

The key method Paul underscores as the means to the transformed life is by the 'renewal of the mind.' This means nothing more and nothing less than education. Serious education. In-depth education. Disciplined education in the things of God. It calls for a mastery of the Word of God. We need to be people whose lives have changed because our minds have changed. 

True transformation comes by gaining a new understanding of God, ourselves, and the world. What we are after, ultimately is to be conformed to the image of Christ. We are to be like Jesus, though not in the sense that we can ever gain deity. we are not god-men. But our humanity is to mirror and reflect the perfect humanity of Jesus. A tall order! 

To be conformed to Jesus, we must first begin to think as Jesus did. We need the 'mind of Christ.' We need to value the things He values and despise the things He despises. We need to have the same priorities He has. We need to consider weighty the things that He considers weighty. 

That cannot happen without a mastery of His Word. The key to spiritual growth is in-depth Christian education that requires a serious level of sacrifice. That is the call to excellence we have received. We are not to be like the rest of the world, content to live our lives with a superficial understanding of God. We are to grow dissatisfied with spiritual milk and hunger after spiritual meat. (The Holiness of God, 164)

Deceitfulness of Sin

Sunday while studying the issue of Church Discipline we spent some time considering the warnings and instruction found in Hebrews 3:12-13.

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 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.

Commenting on that last line and the deceitfulness of sin J.C. Ryle writes, "You may see this deceitfulness in the wonderful proneness of men to regard sin as less sinful and dangerous than it is in the sight of God; and in their readiness to extenuate it, make excuses for it, and minimize its guilt." (Holiness, pg 8)

Does "readiness to extenuate sin" and "making excuses" describe you? Of course it does! We are all prone to sins deception and we all need the watchful eyes and truth speaking lips of our brothers and sisters in Christ to help us faithfully follow Jesus.

Ryle continues,

I fear we do not sufficiently realize the extreme subtlety of our soul's disease. We are too apt to forget that temptation to sin will rarely present itself to us in its true colors, saying, "I am your deadly enemy, and I want to ruin you forever in hell." Oh no! sin comes to us, like Judas, with a kiss; and like Joab, with an outstretched hand and flattering words. The forbidden fruit seemed good and desirable to Eve; yet it cast her out of Eden. The walking idly on his palace roof seemed harmless enough to David; yet it ended in adultery and murder. Sin rarely seems sin at first beginnings. Let us then watch and pray, lest we fall into temptation. 

Friends watch and pray and while you're at it remember that love compels us to watch out for and pray for others too.

Your Phone Is Changing You

I recently read 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke and let me begin with a strong encouragement to follow the link and purchase a copy for you and your family.

This book challenged me on so many levels and I would love to share all of those with you, but that post would be entirely too long to read - and I would rather you just read the book - so instead let me summarize Reinke's main points and then I will share a few quotes that challenged me specifically.

Here are Reinke's points in summary, the last being the most important.

Our phones amplify our addiction to distractions, which splinters our perception of our place in time.  

Our phones push us to evade the limits of embodiment and thereby cause us to treat one another harshly.  

Our phones feed our craving for immediate approval and promise to hedge against our fear of missing out. 

Our phones undermine key literary skills and, because of our lack of discipline, make it increasingly difficult for us to identify ultimate meaning.  

Our phones offer us a buffet of produced media and tempt us to indulge in visual vices.  

Our phones overtake and distort out identity and tempt us toward unhealthy isolation and loneliness.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes,

"If you want to internalize a piece of knowledge, you've got to linger over it. But we have been trained to not linger over digital texts." (84) 

"Point-and-shoot cameras may in fact be costing us our most vivid recollections." (98) 

"Compulsive social-media habits are a bad trade: your present moment in exchange for an endless series of someone else's past moments." (101) 

"...if people see us bored with God, absorbed with ourselves, and conformed to worldly celebrities, they will not see the image of Jesus reflected in us. If we fail to reflect Christ, we fail to be what God created us to be; we lose our purpose." (115) 

"His omnipresence shatters the mirage of anonymity that drives so many people to turn to their phones and assume they can sin and indulge without consequence." (137) 

"...our hearts delight in and relish a Christ we cannot yet see, a Christ we take by faith, a Christ who is so true and so real to us that we are filled in moments of this life with a periodic and expressive joy that is full of glory. Our imaginations must come alive to Christ so that we can 'see' that we live in him, so that we can turn away from the visual vices grabbing our eyes, and so that we can live by faith and share a present joy as we anticipate the unimaginable future joy of his presence." (142) 

"When I grow bored with Christ, I become bored with life - and when that happens, I often turn to my phone for a new consumable digital thrill." (143) 

"My appetite for diversions and new daily curiosities has been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer the old me that lives online, but Christ living in me, and the life I now live online I live by faith in Christ, who loved me so much that he shed his blood for me." (181) 

"If I consider my phone only as a tool to 'instantly express' my life, then my phone use is vain. I must ask: Am I lazy and careless with souls, ignorant of the power of words, images, and links on others? Or am I using my digital chitchat as a way to build into someone (or some online community) with a larger relational goal of edification? These questions determine whether my texts, tweets, and images are thoughtless fragments or purposeful strategies to point others to find their joy, meaning, and purpose in God. This is digital chitchat with historical (and eternal!) purpose." (184) 

"Aimlessly flicking through feeds and images for hours, we feel that we are in control of our devices, when we are really puppets being controlled by a lucrative industry." (193) 

"Apps can help me stay focused on my Bible reading plans and help me organize my prayer life, but no app can breathe life into my communion with God." (194)

Get this book! Read it! Apply it!

False Conversion

In yesterday's post we looked at how Scripture defines Real Repentance (using Michael Lawrence's book Conversion). Today consider how Lawrence describes false converts...

A false convert is someone who is excited about heaven, but bored by Christians and the local church. 

A false convert is someone who thinks heaven will be great, whether God is there or not. 

A false convert is someone who likes Jesus, but didn't sign up for the rest - obedience, holiness, discipleship, suffering.  

A false convert can't tell the difference between obedience motivated by love and legalism.  

A false convert is bothered by other people's sins more than his or her own.  

A false convert holds grace cheap and his own comfort costly. 

If you're reading this list and recognize these wrong beliefs and practices in your life then consider your conversion. Consider your repentance. Consider your faith. Talk with another mature follower of Jesus and share your concerns. Come talk with me. As Peter encouraged us in Second Peter 1:10, "...give diligence to make your calling and election sure."

Real Repentance

I've really been enjoying Michael Lawrence's new book, Conversion: How God Creates a People. A few chapters into the book Lawrence writes about repentance and the dangers of false repentance. Here is how Lawrence defined repentance...

Real repentance is a new worship. It looks like a changed life, but the changed behavior results from a change of worship, not the other way around.  

Repentance is being convicted by the Holy Spirit of the sinfulness of our sin - not the badness of our deeds but the treachery of our hearts toward God.  

Repentance means hating what we formerly loved and served - our idols - and turning away from them.  

Repentance means turning to love God, whom we formerly hated, and serving him instead. It's a new deepest loyalty of the heart. 

So what do you think? Is your repentance genuine or false? Tomorrow I'll post how Lawrence describes false converts.

Where Have You Drifted?

Recently our church has been studying the holiness of God. We are praying this study will lead us to greater repentance and a passionate love for our Savior and our neighbors. Along these lines I recently read this challenging paragraph from the book Revitalize:

It is precisely because a church has drifted from holiness that it needs to be revitalized. At some point, it ceased trembling at God's holiness, and its members began seeking to fill that emptiness with the idols of Babylon. They fell into secret patterns of sin. They began having conflicts with one another, as would carnal people. Their marriages began falling apart, sometimes because of adultery. They failed to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They busied themselves with the pursuit of money and other earthly goals. They became less discerning doctrinally and less passionate for biblical truth. They stopped reaching out with the gospel and started seeking the world's applause rather than the world's repentance. They forsook their first love and embraced the illicit love of the world. Ultimately, they began to wither and die. If one could take a spiritual 'flight' through the secrets of the church members' hearts as Ezekiel did through the temple in Ezekiel 8, they would see modern versions of the abominations that provoked God to jealously. A church does not die apart from a decisive move away from holiness. And revitalization begins with repentance from unholiness and a commitment to what God says: 'You shall be holy, for I am holy' (1 Peter 1:16)        

 *Andrew M. Davis, Revitalize, 66