philip henry was one of those who feared an oath and said,
'oaths are edged tools and not to be played with.'
in reference to his own improvement, his diary...
'covenants renewed in these particulars.
by the Lord's help, i purpose to be
more substantial in secret worship;
more sparing of precious time;
more constant in reading the scriptures alone,
and meditating upon them;
more careful to improve all opportunities of doing good to souls;
not taking, but seeking them;
less fearful about events when in a way of duty...
'when others are afflicted, we are to conclude
it is for trial,
when ourselves,
for sin.
and here it may be very pertinent to observe,
how industrious mr. henry was at this time,
when he and his friends suffered such
hard things form the government,
to preserve and promote a good affection
to the government notwithstanding.
it was commonly charged at that time
upon the nonconformists in general,
especially from the pulpits,
that they were all a factious and turbulent people,
as was said of old-ezra 4.15-
hurtful to kings and provinces
that their meetings were for the sowing of sedition and discontents..
but how peaceably they carried themselves,
is manifest to God, and in the consciences of many.
for an instance of it, it will not be amiss
to give some account of a sermon,
which mr. henry preached in some very private meetings,
such as were called seditious conventicles,
in the year 1669, when it was a day of treading down,
and of perplexity;
it was on that text, psalm 35.20.
against them that are quiet in the land.
whence (not to curry favour with rulers,
for whatever the sermon was,
the very preaching of it had been known.
must have been severely punished,
but purely out of conscience towards God)
he taught his friends this doctrine,-
that it is the character of the people of God,
that they are a quiet people in the land.
'this quietness he described to be an orderly,
peaceable subjection to governors and government in the Lord.
we must maintain a reverent esteem of them, and of their authority,
in opposition to despising dominion, II peter 2.10;
we must be meek, under severe commands, and burdensome impositions,
not murmuring and complaining, as the israelites against moses and aaron;
but take them up as our cross in our way,
and bear them as we do foul weather.
we must not speak evil of dignities, jude 8,
nor revile the gods, exodus 22.28.
paul checked himself for this, acts 23.5;
i did not consider it, if i had, i would not have said so.
we must not traduce their government,
as absalom did david's, II samuel 15.3.
great care is to be taken how we
speak of the faults of any, especially of rulers, eccl. 10.20.
(note: Lord, forgive me.)
the people of God do make the word of God their rule,
and by that they are taught.
1. that majesty is God's ordinance,
and magistrates God's ministers;
that by him kings reign,
and the powers that be are ordained of Him.
2. that they, as well as others,
are to have their dues, honour and fear and tribute.
3. that their lawful commands are to be obeyed,
and that readily and cheerfully, titus 3.1.
4. that the penalties inflicted for not obeying unlawful commands,
are patiently to be undergone.
this is the rule, and as many as walk according to this rule,
peace shall be upon them,
and there can be no danger of their unpeaceableness.
they are taught to pray for kings and all in authority, I tim. 2.1-2
and God forbid we should do otherwise;
yea, though they persecute, jeremiah 29.7.
peaceable prayers bespeak a peaceable people, psam 109.4.
if some professing religion have been unquiet,
their unquietness hath given the lie to their profession, jude, 7,11-2.
quietness is our badge, colossians 3.12.
it will be our strength, isaiah, 30.7,15.
our rejoicing in the day of evil, jeremiah, 18.18:
it is pleasing to God, I tim. 2.2-3:
it may work upon others, I peter, 2.12-3.
the means he prescribed for the keeping of us quiet,
were to get our hearts filled with
the knowledge and belief of these two things.
1. that the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, job, 18.36;
many have thought otherwise, and it made them unquiet.
2. that the wrath of man
worketh not the righteousness of God, james 1.20;
he needs not our sin to bring to pass His own counsel.
we must mortify unquietness in the causes of it, james 4.1:
we must always remember the oath of God, eccl. 8.2:
the oath of allegiance is an oath of quietness.
and we must beware of the company
and converse of those that are unquiet. proverbs 22.24-5.
though deceitful matters be devised,
yet we must be quiet still;
nay, be so much the more quiet.
..he was..oft successful in persuading people
to recede from their right for peace sake;
and he would for that purpose tell them luther's story
of the two goats,
that met upon a narrow bridge over a deep water;
they could not go back, they durst not fight;
after a short parley,
one of them lay down, and let the other go over him,
and no harm was done.
(foot.. the moral is easy.
be content thy person be trod upon for peace sake.
thy person,k i say, not thy conscience. p.henry)
..his house at broad oak was by the road side,
which, though it had its inconveniencies,
yet, he would say, pleased him well,
because it gave his friends an opportunity of calling on him the oftener.
(foot: one of my dear father's remarks was this,-
that, though it be comfortable to have friends to visit, and comfort in them;
yet it is more to have a comfortable home; such as this world affords.
blessed be God for the remaining rest.
..the learned henry jessey could not 'brook fruitless visits
and wrote his mind concerning it over his studie door accordingly,
directions to all visitors.
no fruitless visits. no, nor speech.
for time is precious: hinder none.
let words be few,-good, then cease.
dispatch:-prepare for death. I'm/we're gone.
..he was very charitable to the poor, and was full of alms deeds,
which he did, not which he said he would do
or which he put others on to do,
but which he did himself,
dispersing abroad and giving to the poor,
seeking and rejoicing in opportunities of that kind.
and whenever he gave an alms for the body,
he usually gave with it a spiritual alms,
some good word of counsel, reproof, instruction, or comfort,
as there was occasion,k
and in accommodating these to the persons he spoke to,
he had a very great dexterity.
he was very forward to lend money freely
(foot: this was the practice of dr. hammond. it is said of a renowned nobleman,
that he would often give to labouring men
'good summes of money, making them beleeve
that hee did but lend it them;
and causing some about him to passe their words
for the repayment
when hee never meant to receive it again;
but did that as himself was wont
to tell us in policie to make them
continue their labour and to be good husbands.
to any of his poor neighbours that had occasion,
and would sometimes say,
that in many cases there was more charity
in lending than in giving,
because it obliged the borrower both to honesty and industry.
when one of his neighbours, to whom he had lent three pounds,
failed, so that he was never likely to see a farthing of it,
he writes thus upon it;
-notwithstanding this, yet still i judge it my duty to lend,
nothing despairing;
so dr. hammond reads it, luke 4.35.
though what is lent in charity be not repaid,
yet it is not lost.
when those that had borrowed money of him
paid him again,
he usually gave them back some part,
to encourage honesty.
he judged the taking of moderate interest for money lawful,
(foot: hr. henry has thus recorded the opinion of mr. baxter on this subject.
...'if usury be condemned, 'tis either by law of nature or some positive law.
if the former, then either as an act of impiety, injustice or unmercifulness.
that which can be proved to have any of these i am resolved against,
but there is some usury which i am not able to see any of these in,
nay, i think i could so lend on usury in some cases,
as might be as great an act of bounty or mercy as to give near half the money.
if it be forbidden by a positive law, then either of moses, or of Christ:
not of moses, for the mosaick law is abrogated,
though much of the matte of it be still in force,
-as the law of nature, and of Christ.
not of Christ, for where had Christ any such positive law?
on these grounds i speak against all unjust and unmerciful usury,
but i dare go no further, and yet i will justify none...')
where the borrower was in a way of gaining by it.
but he would advise his friends that had money,
rather to dispose of it otherwise if they could.
it must not be forgotten, how punctual and exact he was
in all his accounts with tenants, workmen, etc.
being always careful to keep such things in black and white,
as he used to say, which is the surest way to prevent mistakes,
and a man's wronging either himself or his neighbour;
such was his prudence, and such his patience and peaceableness,
that all the time he was at broad oak, he never sued any, nor ever was sued,
but was instrumental to prevent many a vexatious law suit among his neighbours.
he used to say,-
there are four rules to be duly observed in going to law;
1. we must not go to law for trifles, as he did who said,
he would rather spend a hundred pounds in law,
than lose a penny worth of his right, matthew 5.39-41.
2. we must not be rash and hasty in it,
but try all other means possible
to compose differences;
wherein he that yields most, as abraham did to lot,
is the better man and there is nothing lost by it in the end.
I corinthians, 6.1-2.
3. we must see that it be without malice, or desire of revenge.
if the undoing of our brother be the end of our going to law,
as it is with many,
it is a certain evil,
and it speeds accordingly.
4. it must be with a disposition to peace,
whenever it may be had,
and an ear open to all overtures of that kind..
he was an enemy to austerity of deportment
and much enjoyed the pleasures of social intercourse.
pest houses, he would say, always stand alone
and yet are full of infectious diseases.
solitariness is no infallible argument of sanctity.
(foot: it is a scandal that is cast upon religion
and the professors of it,
that they are unneighbourly and unsociable.
God Himself loves society,
He loves holy meetings,
Hew loves the communion of saints, the household of faith,
and His delight is to be with the sons of men,
and well approves that the sons of men
should be one with another,
yet so that He may not be excluded. )
it was against the EVILS of society his watchfulness was directed,
and these he uniformly endeavoured to counteract.
hence four rules he sometimes gave
to be observed in our converse with men.
1. have communion with few.
2. be familiar with one.
3. deal justly with all.
4. speak evil of none.
henry was a lover of good men,
and such always met a cordial welcome under his roof;
so that he would pleasantly say sometimes,
when he had his christian friends about him,
-He had room for 12 of them in his beds,
a hundred of them in his bar,
and a thousand of them in his heart.
nor was he unmindful of others;
for he spoke of it with pleasure,
that the situation of his house also
gave him an opportunity of being kind to strangers,
and such as were any way distressed upon the road,
to whom he was upon all occasions cheerfully ready,
fully answering the apostle's character of a bishop,
that he must be of good behaviour,
decent, affable, and obliging, -and given to hospitality;
I timothy 3.2;
like abraham, sitting at his tent door,
in quest of opportunities to do good.
if he met with any poor near his house,
and gave them alms in money,
yet he would bid them go to his door besides,
for relief there.
he was very tender and compassionate
towards poor strangers and travellers,
though his charity and candour were often
imposed upon by cheats and pretenders,
whom he was not apt to be suspicious of;
but would say, in the most favourable sense,
-thou knowest not the heart of a stranger.
if any asked his charity,
whose representation of their case he did not like,
or who he thought did amiss to take that course,
he would first give them an alms,
and then mildly reprove them;
and labour to convince them that
they were out of the way of duty.
and that they could not expect
that God should bless them in it;
and would not chide them,
but reason with them.
and he would say,
if he should tell them of their faults,
and not give them an alms,
the reproof would look
only like an excused to deny his charity
and would be rejected accordingly.
in a word, his greatest care about the things of this world was,
how to do good with what he had,
and to devise liberal things;
desiring to make no other accession to his estate,
but only that blessing which attends beneficence.
he did firmly believe and it should seem few do.
that what is given to the poor,
is lent to the Lord,
who will pay it again in kind or kindness;
and that religion and piety
are undoubtedly the best friend to outward prosperity,
and he found it so;
for it pleased God abundantly
to bless his habitation
and to make a hedge about him
and about his house.
and about all that he had round about.
and though he did not delight himself in the abundance of wealth;
yet, which is far better,
he delighted himself in the abundance of peace; psalm 37.11
all that he had and did,
observably prospered,
so that the country oftentimes took notice of it;
and called his family a family which the Lord had blessed.
..he used to say, that,
therefore many of the scripture parables and similitudes
are taken from the common actions of this life,
that when our hands are employed about them,
our hearts may the more easily pass through them
to divine and heavenly things.
..in the time of trouble and distress, by the conventicle act, in 1670,
he kept private and stirred little abroad, as loath to offend
those that were in power,
and judging it prudence to gather in his sails,
when the storm was violent.
he then observed, as that which he was troubled at,
'that there was a great deal of precious time lost among professors,
when they came together,
in discoursing on their adventures to meet, and their escapes,
which he feared tended more to set up self,
that to give glory to god.
also in telling how they got together and such a one preached,
but little inquiring what spiritual benefit and advantage
was reaped by it;
and that we are apt to make the circumstances of our religious services,
more a matter of our discourse,
than the substance of them.
...in those things wherein the people of God are agreed,
i will spend my zeal;
and wherein they differ,
i will endeavour to walk according to the light
that God hath given me,
and charitably believe that others do so too.
..in evil times it fares best with them
that are most careful about duty
and least about safety.
..Father, Thy will be done;
it is good for us to be at such uncertainties;
for now we receive our liberty from our father fresh every day,
which is best and sweetest of all.
..he that backbites with his tongue wounds four at once;
1. he wounds the good name of his neighbour,
which is dearer to him than the apple of his eye;
2. he wounds the name of god, religion suffers,
when those who profess it thus backbite each other
3. he wounds his own soul,
brings the guilt of great sin upon his own soul,
which he must certainly answer for;
4. he wounds love in him that hears it,
so that the esteem of his brother is lessened.
..did you gather food in harvest?
if aye, bless God;
if no, reflect with grief and shame and make peace,
and UP yet, AND BE DOING...
...look, what oyle is to the wheels,
what weights are to the clock,
what wings are to the bird,
what sailes are to the ship, -that FAITH is to all religious duties and services.
let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth,
but let not the thing formed, say to Him that formed it,
-why hast Thou made me thus?
..and as for the improvement of this affliction
(which, i hope, both of you earnestly desire,
for it is a great loss to lose such a providence,
and not to be made better by it,)
i conceive there are four lessons which it should teach you,
and they are good lessons,
and should be well learned,
for the advantage of them is unspeakable.
1. kings 12.18 art thou come to call my sins to remembrance, and to slay my son?
it is sin, sin that is the old kill-friend,
the jonah that hath raise this storm,
the achan that hath troubled your house;
then how should you grow in your hatred of it,
and endeavours against it,
that you may be the death of that which hath been the death of your dear children?
i say the DEATH of it,
for nothing less will satisfy the true penitent,
than the death of such a malefactor.
2.it should be a SPUR to you, to put you on in heaven's way;
it may be you were growing remiss in duty,
beginning to slack your former pace in religion,
and your heavenly Father saw it, and was grieved at it,
and sent this sad providence to be your monitor,
to tell you,
you should remember whence you are fallen,
and do your first works,
and be more humble and holy and heavenly,
self denying and watchful.,
abounding always in the work of the Lord.
3.you must learn by it,
as long as you live,
to keep your affections in due bounds towards creature comforts.
how hard it is to love and not to over love;
to delight in children or yoke fellows and not over delight;
now God is a jealous God
and will not give His glory to any other;
and our excess this way doth often provoke Him
to remove that mercy from us,
which we do thus make an idol of;
and our duty is to labour when He doth so,
to get that matter amended,
and to rejoice in all our enjoyments with trembling,
and as if we rejoiced not.
4. it should be a means of drawing your hearts and thought more upwards and homewards;
i mean your everlasting home,
you should be looking oftener now than before into the other world
i shall go to him, saith david,
when his little son was gone before.
it is yet but a little while ere all the things of time shall be swallowed up in eternity.
and the matter is not great whether we or our's die first,
while we are all dying;
in the midst of life we are in death;
-what manner of persons then ought we to be.
(looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of the Lord..)
now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God, even our Rather,
be your support..
and give you a name better than that of sons and daughters.
...'if i were to die in the pulpit,
i would desire to die preaching repentance;
as if i die out of the pulpit,
i would desire to die practicing repentance.
..he had often this saying concerning repentance.
HE THAT REPENTS EVERY DAY,
FOR THE SINS OF EVERY DAY,
WHEN HE COMES TO DIE,
WILL HAVE THE SINS OF BUT ONE DAY TO REPENT OF.
even reckonings make good friends.
..(henry had been fined unjustly for something)
it was much pressed upon him to pay the fine,
which might prevent his own loss and the justices trouble.
but he was not willing to do it,
partly, because he would give no encouragement to such prosecutions,
nor voluntarily reward the informers
for that which he thought they should
rather be punished for;
and partly because he though himself wronged in
the doubling of the fine
(in his journal he writes,
this refusal is thought and termed
contempt, stubbornness and what not.
but let God and the world judge.
it is supposed the easier they come by the fines,
the likelier they will be to come again.
besides, as yet, the general practice of
good people throughout the nation is to refuse payment,
and to suffer distress,
though it be found, for the most part,
to inflame the reckoning. )
whereupon his goods were distrained
(constrain by seizing, holding goods) upon,
and carried away;
in the doing of which many passages occurred
which might be worth the noting,
but, that the repetition of them would perhaps grate
and give offense to some.
let it therefore suffice,
waving the circumstances,
to remember only that their warrant,
not giving them authority to break open doors,
nor their watchfulness getting them an opportunity
to enter the house,
they carried away about 33 cart load of goods
without doors, corn cut upon the ground, hay, coals, etc.
this made a great noise int the country,
and raised the indignation of many against the decrees
which prescribed this grievousness;
while mr. henry bore it with his usual evenness
and serenity of mind,
not at all moved or disturbed by it.
he did not boast of his sufferings,
or make any great matter of them;
but would often say,
-alas, this is nothing to what others suffer,
nor to what we ourselves may suffer before we die!
and yet he rejoiced and blessed God
that it was not for debt or for evil doing,
that his goods were carried away.
and saith he, while it is for well doing that we suffer,
they cannot harm us.
..in his diary..
'how oft have we said that the changes are at the door;
but blessed by God,
there is no sting in this!
he frequently expressed the assurance he had,
that whatever damage he sustained,
-God is able to make it up again.
and as he used to say,
-though we may be losers for Christ,
yet we shall not be losers by Him in the end.
he had often said,
that his preaching was likely to do the most good,
when it was sealed to by suffering;
and if this be the time, saith he,
welcome the will of God...
appendix 15..
-the way of doctrinal faith is a good old way...we must try all doctrines by the scripture.
-the way of divine worship in all the ordinances, is a good old way..sabbath religion...continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.
-the way of holiness and close walking is a god old way..enoch..walk with Him..
-the way of heavenly mindedness and contempt of the world, is a good old way...live like pilgrims..here today and gone tomorrow. ..is the world your portion..
-the way of plainness and simplicity is a good old way.
-the way of peaceableness and patience under the cross, is a good old way. ..the old christians took joyfully the spoiling of their goods.
-the way of brokenness and tenderness of heart is a good old way,
-the way of godly sorrow for sin.
(foot: in connection with this, the following observations by dr. doddridge..
some sense of sin and some serious and humbling apprehension of our danger and misery in consequence of it, must indeed be necessary
to dispose us to receive the grace of the gospel,
and the saviour who is there exhibited to our faith.
but God is pleased, sometimes,
to begin the work of His grace in the heart,
almost from the first dawning of reason,
and to carry it on by such gentle and insensible degrees.
that very excellent persons,
who have made the most eminent attainments
ion the divine life,
have been unable to recount any remarkable history of their conversion..
(note: i am certainly no 'excellent person' nor have any 'eminent attainments'
but the poor, wretched sinner before the cross of Christ that i am
takes a real 'bit of encouragement' from this one's assessment and observation.
i keep updating the 'date' of my salvation based upon what i see within and without,
...my hope is in Christ...and that my somewhat confusing experience with Him
is real. if it is not, i have no other hope and no other one i plan to turn to
...i will agonize to enter the narrow door, God helping me, to the moment i die.
thank God i am not without spiritual comfort,
but i'm way too short of fruit and works to rest easy in my 'position' in Christ.
my position, not anything else is my hope, but one day i will stand before Him
and have to answer for what i have DONE
not for what i felt, experienced or anything else.
may i show my love for Christ by my obedience to Him.)
-the way of brotherly kindness and love one to another is a good old way.
the way of unity and unanimity.
see how they LOVE one another was they old remark.
but now..what strangeness and distance....
oh, love this old religion;
strive to excel one another in good ways.
you have a cloud of witnesses.
you have Jesus Christ, who was a traveller in this way.
endeavour to make this new bad world
like the old good one.
there is a promise of a new heaven and a new earth.
be earnest with God to hasten it,
and endeavour, in your own practice to hasten its coming.
it must not be forgotten how ready he was,
nay, how studious and industrious,
to serve and oblige such as had been
in any way instruments of trouble to him,
as far as it lay in his power,
and he had any opportunity to do it;
so well had he learned that great lesson of forgiving and loving enemies...
..it was said of archbishop cranmer,
that the way to make him one's friend,
was to do him an unkindness;
...of another..once, going with some of his sons,
by the house of a gentleman that had been injurious to him,
he gave a charge to his sons to this purpose,
that they should never think of or speak amiss of that gentleman
for the sake of any thing he had done against him;
but whenever they went by his house,
should lift up their hears in prayer to God
for him and his family.
..in advising as to the government of the tongue,
he pressed commencement with the heart
..resolve, to take heed; but resolve in the strength of Christ.
be not hasty in speech.
commit the guidance of your tongue to God in prayer.
He is the maker of the tongue.
(foot:the heart is the scribe that indites matter;
the tongue is the pen that writes it down. psalm 45.1
the heart is as he that rides upon a horse;
the tongue is the horse that is ridden james 3.3
the heart is the pilot in the ship;
the tongue is the ship. james 3.4
the heart is the fountain;
words are as the streams. matthew 12.34
the heart is the treasury;
words are as stuff brought out of it. matthew 12.35
the heart is the root;
words are the fruit. proverbs 15.4
my thoughts of justifying faith and sincere repentance, are,
1. that they are choice gifts of God, ephesians, 2.8; acts 11.18
if He give not to us to believe and to repent,
we can neither believe nor repent;
and therefore, the want of them,
we are to ask them;
and if we ask,
He will give.
2. that they are the fruits of electing love.
those that were, from all eternity, given to Christ,
-to all those and to none but those,
it is in time given to believe, and repent. acts 13.48; john 6.37ohn 6.37; 12.39
if it be said, 'why doth He then find fault?
i should answer,
the decree is secret, which is concerning us,
but that is revealed which is our duty;
and to that we must attend.
3. that they are necessary conditions of pardon.
there may perhaps be such a notion framed of a condition,
as will by no means be applicable to them,
but..they are so required, that,
if we have them not,
our sin remains upon us. luke 13.3-5; john 3.36
if we have them, it is most certainly done away; I john 1.9; john 3.16;
not for their sake, but for Christ's sake.
4. that they are inseparable companions;
where one is, there is the other also.
he that says, 'i believe' and doth not repent,
presumes;
he that says, 'i repent' and doth not believe,
despairs.
FAITH IN CHRIST DOTH NOT JUSTIFY FROM SIN,
WHERE THERE IS NOT GODLY SORROW FOR SIN;
(foot: the motives to repentance are
the shortness of life, and uncertainty of the space for repentance rev. 2.21
the misery and danger of impenitency luke 13.3,5
the commands of God, acts 27.30-1
the goodness of God, romans 2.4
His readiness to forgive us upon our repentance. ps 86.5
the gospels gracious invitations of Jesus Christ matthew 3.2)
neither can sorrow for sin obtain pardon of it,
where there in not faith in Jesus Christ,
because His blood, alone,
cleanseth from all sin.
..self-abhorrency is always the companion of true repentance,
and it flows from a sight of god, in His purity and glory.
mine eye seeth Thee,therefore i abhor myself..
..(foot: there are various signs of uprightness of heart. proverbs 14.2
an upright heart fears the Lord 16.17
he departs from evil psalm 19.13
he is kept back from presumptuous sins 18.23
he is kept from his own iniquity and performs all duties luke 1.6-7
prov. 10.9
he walketh surely matthew 19.21
he is willing to part with any thing for Christ.
he is as good in secret as before others
he keeps a single eye at god's glory II corinthians 1.12
to get an upright heart, walk as always in God's sight I chronicles 38.9, genesis 17.1
it will be a comfort when you lie upon your death bed. isaiah 38.3)
in letter to his only son, matthew..
..it will not be long now ere we shall see you here,
(though multa cadunt inter) and,
i must not say, be filled with your company,
for this is not the world that we must be together in...
(foot: i find my heart inclined to things below,
and am sensible, in some measure,
what a dishonour it is to God, and
what a wrong to myself,
and fain (gladly, willingly) i would that it might be otherwise.
get to know the nature of earthly things,
common things,
such as a man may abound in
and perish everlastingly.
they are empty things,
that will not satisfy;
vexing things, vexation of spirit.
labour for a serious, practical knowledge of this.
beg of God to give you a sight of their vanity
and emptiness.
look into the word prov 23.5; isa. 55.2; matt. 6.24; john 6.27; I time. 9.9-10;
ecclesiastes.
observe and improve your own crosses and disappointments
and the crosses and disappointments of others.
the voice of these dispensations (order, system, arrangement) is.
cease from the world, the men of the world, the things of the world.
consult with dying men and see what account they will give you of earthly things.
actuate this knowledge by meditation and DO IT OFTEN.
there is no duty more profitable, -none more neglected.
study the nature and necessities of thy soul.
thou hast a soul that is greatly in want, a poor though precious soul;
it wants pardon of sin, wants peace with God,
wants His image, wants His grace, wants His spirit.
and can the world furnish these? no. mic.6.6-7
look beyond this to another world.
will these things avail there? no
tis not getting more, but making use of
what we have that will then avail. luke 16.9; II cor. 4.18
cast thy care upon the Lord;
if thou art a believer, He careth for thee. I pet. 5.7
be acquainted with the reality and excellence of heavenly things. heb. 11.1; john 4.10
earthly minded men are like moles, they live in the earth,
and so are blind as to spiritual things;
they see no beauty in holiness, no comeliness in Jesus Christ.
learn to spiritualize earthly things.
it is our sin and misery that earthly thoughts
mix themselves when we are employed in spiritual duties;
it were our profit and advantage if heavenly thoughts might as often mix themselves.
and be as welcome when we are employed in worldly affairs.
choose as much as may be to be in heavenly company.
company is of a transforming nature. prov. 22.24-5; I john 1.2-3
be often discoursing of things above.
labour to tread in the steps of those two have gone before us in heaven's way. phil, 3.17..
letter...
your continued kind acceptance is still my encouragement
to perform this monthly service to you,
wishing i could do it better
to your soul's advantage and edification.
the GRACE OF FAITH IS, indeed, THE GRACE OF ALL GRACES.
1. the grace that God hath most honoured in making it,
-whether the condition or the instrument,-
i am sure, the means of our
justification, reconciliation, acceptation, salvation.
of all graces, faith doth most abase the creature,
and lift up God;
it is self emptying and a God advancing grace;
and therefore, of all graces.
God doth most advance and lift
for so is the word that he hath spoken,
those that honour me, I will honour.
2. the grace that of all graces we do live by;
for the just shall live by faith, hab. 2.4;
than which, i think, there is scarce any on passage
in the old testament more often quoted in the new;
and good reason,
for it is the marrow of the gospel.
A. spiritual as to justification, sanctification, consolation;
in which three stands our spiritual life.
we are justified by faith, rom. 5.1; acts 13.39:
justified from the guilt of sin,
the curse of the law and the damnation of hell.
in the want of which justification,
we are but dead men,
that is, under a sentence of death;
so that in that sense, by faith we live;
we live by it as we are made just by it;
the just, by faith, shall live.
we are sanctified by faith, acts 24.18
as, by it we receive the spirit of sanctification,
who finds us dad in trespasses and sins,
as to our spiritual state,
and the breathes into us the breath of spiritual life,
whereby we become living souls,
alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
we are comforted by faith, rom. 15.13
and that comfort is our life, I thess. 3.8.
now we live, that is, now we are comforted,
if ye stand fast in the lord..
faith comforts as it applies the promises,
which promises are our breasts of consolation,
at which the believing soul sucks and is satisfied.
and there are two of them,
one concerning the things of the life that now is,
the other concerning the things of that which is to come;
for godliness hath both,
and hath need of both,
in order to comfort,
upon one occasion or other,
every day.
they are also called well springs of salvation
and, as such, faith is the bucket by which
we draw water from those wells.
if the well is deep, as good no well as no bucket;
so, as good no promise as no faith.
B. as we live spiritually by faith
(foot: spiritual life is an inward principle in the soul of a believer,
arising from his union with Jesus Christ.
the following are signs of such a life
the knowledge of God and Christ john 17.3
growth in grace and knowledge john 15.2
faith in Jesus Christ john 6.47
heavenly mindedness col. 3.1-2; rom. 6.11
spiritual sense
of sin , the first risings of it rom. 7.24
the sins of others. II pet. 2.7-8
of the withdrawings of God's presence ps. 22.1
of the afflictions of God's people jer 9.1; neh. 1.4; john 3.14
speech
to God in prayer gal. 4.6; acts 9.11; zech. 12.10
for God
appetite I pet. 2.2
care for self preservation job 2.4; comp. I pet. 2.7
desires to communicate, I john 1.1-3
art thou alive?
live at a higher rate than others i cor. 3.3
art thou dead?
make haste to Christ eph. 5.14
He complains
Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life john 5.40
for encouragement to come to Christ,
He raised three to life in the gospel
one in the chamber, secret sinners
another in the street, open sinners,
a third buried, dead four days, aged sinners
in all these three great concernments of our spiritual life,
so we live our life in the flesh
by the faith of the son of God gal. 2.20
He means His life of conversation in the world;
for, that is the life that He lived then in the flesh.
we walk by faith, not by sight,
-not as glorified saints do in heaven by immediate vision,
-nor by carnal sight, as the men of the world,
who look only at the the things that are seen with bodily eyes,
-but by faith.
so that faith is a principle of living
quite different from the one and from the other.
it is far short of living by heavenly vision,
but it is infinitely above and beyond
the live of carnal reason, which men, as men, live.
in the ordinary actions and affairs of life,
1. it is by faith and no otherwise that we
set the Lord always before us,
and see him that is invisible.
and what influence that hath upon the conversation,
to make it what it should be,
they can best tell that have tried.
2. it is by faith and no otherwise,
that we close with the word of God as our rule and square,
by which we regulate and order our conversation.
the commandments are to be believed, ps. 119.66,
as well as the promises.
3. it is by faith that we fetch strength from the lord Jesus,
for the doing of what we have to do every day in every thing,
for without Him we can do nothing
4. it is by faith that we look at the recompense of reward,
which makes us lively and cheerful in our obedience,
both active and passive;
forasmuch as we know our labour shall not be
in vain in the Lord.
and then for life eternal, as we look at it by faith,
so by faith it is that we have title to it;
he that believes shall be saved.
whosoever believes shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
we are all the children of god by faith in Jesus Chris.
and if children then heirs, heirs of god and joint heirs with Christ,
of an inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away.
(foot: there are evidences of saving faith.
faith, however, is the best evidence of itself I john 5.10
as we know the sun shines by its own light.
the following are evidences.
a new nature acts 26.18
heart purity 15.9
at least begun and laboured after.
a low esteem of earthly things phil. 3.8
a high esteem of Christ, I pet. 2.7
joy in tribulation, acts 16.25; rom 5.1-2; I pet 1.7; hab 3.17-8
reliance upon god for things of this life, as well as of heaven
how came we by our faith?
did it come by hearing? rom.10.17
did it begin in doubting? what fruit doth it bear? james 2.14; gal. 5.6
self denial luke 7.6,7,9
fear of offending
a true believer reckons it the hardest thing in the world to believe.)
if all this be true of faith,
and not the one half hath been told..
then there is good reason why it should be called precious faith.
it closes with a precious Christ,
and to them only that believe is He precious.
it embraces precious promises,
and it saves precious souls.
is Christ our all in all?
so, in a sense, is faith our all in all...
....letter...
yet further concerning the grace of faith.
besides that it is that by which we live,
as of Christ it is said, who is our life
so we may say of faith, in a different sense,
it is our life.
as paul says, to me to live is Christ;
so we may say, to us to live is to believe.
i say, besides this,
there are four great things said in scripture concerning faith.
which deserve a particular considerations.
1. it purifies the heart;
(foot: means are to be used to get and keep a pure heart.
we must be sensible of our impurity, prov 30.12
pray for a clean heart, ps 51
it is promised, ezek. 34.25-6
be frequent in self examination
beware of other men's sins, I tim. 5.22
abstain from all appearance of evil, i thess. 5.22-3
act faith. this is a heart purifying grace, acts 15.9
it interests us in the blood of Christ, and that cleanses, I john 1.7; zech 12.1
by it we receive the Spirit;
by it we apply the promises, II pet. 1.3-4
attend upon the ordinances, john 15.3; 17.17; titus 3.5
improve your baptism, it is a cleansing ordinance
affections, when sanctified, are means of cleansing.
watchfulness, ps. 119.9
we must take heed where we tread.
we are in the light and must walk as children of the light,
carefully; cleanly.
purifying their hearts by faith.
faith is a hear purifying grace, elsewhere called,
purging the conscience from dead words, heb. 9.14.
it is done by the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit,
offered himself without spot to God,
meritoriously, and by faith, instrumentally.
Christ's blood is the water of purification,
the true and only water,
and faith is as the bunch of hyssop, dipped in it,
and so purging the conscience,
that is, pacifying it in reference to the guilt contracted,
quieting the mind as to the pardon and forgiveness of it
before God,
which nothing else can do.
all the legal purifyings prescribed by the law of moses.
availed nothing as to this;
it is done by faith only, and, therefore,
the gentiles which is the scope of that place,
ought not to be obliged by circumcision to those ceremonial observances,
seeing there was another nearer, and better way
to that blessed end, and that was, by believing.
we may also, by purifying the heart,
understand the work of sanctification,
wherein faith is greatly instrumental;
but, i conceive the other the design of the place.
2. it works by love gal. 5.6
it is a working grace;
if it be idle, and work not,
it is not genuine faith.
and how works it?
by love.
love in the full extent and latitude of it;
the love of God,
and the love of our neighbour,
which two are the fulfilling of the law;
so that to work by love,
is to work by universal obedience,
which obedience is worth nothing further
than love hath a hand in it,
and love stirs not further
than faith acts it.
he that believes the love of Christ
for poor sinners, in dying for them,
with particular application to himself,
cannot but find his heart constrained thereby,
more or less, according as the belief is,
to love Him again and out of love to Him,
to keep His commandments.
do we find love cold?
it is because faith is weak.
do we love little?
our belief is little.
therefore, when a hard duty was enjoined,
which is that of loving and forgiving enemies,
-Lord, say the disciples, increase our faith;
intimating, without more faith, it would not be possible.
the more strongly and steadfastly we believe
that Christ loved us when we were enemies to Him,
the more frequently and freely, readily and cheerfully,
we shall forgive our brother,
who is become an enemy unto us.
3. it overcomes the world, I john 5.4.
this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.;
where, by world, is meant, especially,
its smiles and frowns;
they are both as nothing to us,
have no power or prevalency with us,
so as to draw or drive us from our christian course,
as long as we keep faith alive and active,
-either upon the past great things
that our great redeemer hath done and suffered for us;
or upon the future invisible realities of the other world ,
that crown and kingdom which He hath set before us,
and made over to us.
4. it quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked, ephesians 6.16;
that is, the devil and all his instruments;
all the temptations of what kind soever, wherewith,
as any time, they may assault us, they are quenched by faith,
loose their hurtful keenness, and wound us not.
but then that faith fust be not in habit only,
but in act and exercises;
as a shield, not hanging up,
but in the hand.
oh, that, to us, then, it might be given always to believe!
how much better would it be with us on this four-fold account,
had we more faith!
..to die profitably is a step beyond dying comforably;
i mean, to die so as to do good to those that are about us,
in dying.
to die so as to convince them of sin
and cxonvert them from it;
which is to die lie sampson,
who slew more philistines at his death,
than in all his life before.
we die profitably when our natural death is a means
of spiritual life to any.
he that doubts, droops, desponds,
calls all into question,
and dies so
rather frightens from, than allures to,
the love of religion and godliness.
what need have we then to pray, and pray again,
-Lord, increase our faith,-
that we may not only have wherewithal to live, while we live,
but wherewithal to die also, when we die!
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
2.24.2013 DO NOT BE EXCESSIVELY RIGHTEOUS
AND DO NOT BE OVERLY WISE. WHY SHOULD YOU RUIN YOURSELF? ecclesiastes 7.16
i, more and more, ask myself, 'why do you insist in going around twisting people's arms about 'spiritual' issues? did God leave you on earth to be the Judge of everyone, the Great One who goes around telling everyone where they are wrong and what to do? mo
i, more and more, ask myself, 'why do you insist in going around twisting people's arms about 'spiritual' issues? did God leave you on earth to be the Judge of everyone, the Great One who goes around telling everyone where they are wrong and what to do? mo
Sunday, February 24, 2013
2.24.2013 MY TRAIN WRECK CONVERSION
...found in christianity today, january/february 2013. p112..
as a leftist lesbian professor, i despised christians. then somehow i became one.
rosaria champagne butterfield
the word JESUS stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk; no matter how hard i choked, i couldn't hack it out. those who professed the name commanded my pity and wrath. as a university professor, i tired of students who seemed to believe that 'knowing Jesus' meant knowing little else. christians in
particular were bad readers, always seizing opportunities to insert a bible verse into a conversation with the same point as a punctuation mark: to end it rather than deepen it.
Stupid. Pointless. Menacing. that's what i thought of christians and their god Jesus, who in paintings looked as powerful as a breck shampoo commercial model.
as a professor of english and women's studies, on the track to becoming a tenured radical, i cared about morality, justice and compassion. fervent for the worldviews of freud, hegel, marx and darwin, i strove to stand with the disempowered. i valued morality. and i probably could have stomached Jesus and his band of warriors if it weren't for how other cultural forces buttressed the christian right. pat robertson's quip from the 1992 republican national convention pushed me over the edge: 'feminism, he sneered, encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians'.
indeed. the surround sound of christian dogma commingling with republican politics demanded my attention.
after my tenure book was published, i used my post to advance the understandable allegiances of a leftist lesbian professor. my life was happy, meaningful, and full. my partner and i shared many vital interests: AIDS, activism, children's health and literacy, golden retriever rescue, our unitarian universalist church, to name a few. even if you believed the ghost stories promulgated by robertson and his ilk, it was hard to argue that my partner and i were anything but good citizens and caregivers. the GLBT community values hospitality and applies it with skill, sacrifice and integrity.
i began researching the religious right and their politics of hatred against queers like me. to do this, i would need to read the one book that had, in my estimation, gotten so many people off track: the bible. while on the lookout for some bible scholar to aid me in my research, i launched my first attack on the unholy trinity of Jesus, republican politics and patriarchy, in the form of an article in the local newspaper about Promise Keepers. it was 1997.
the article generated many rejoinders, so many that i kept a xerox box on each side of my desk: one for hate mail, one for fan mail. but one letter i received defied my filing system. it was from the pastor of the syracuse reformed presbyterian church. it was a kind and inquiring letter. ken smith encouraged me to explore the kind of questions i admire:
how did you arrive at your interpretations?
how do you know you are right?
do you believe in God?
ken didn't argue with my article; rather, he asked me to defend the presuppositions that undergirded it. i didn't know how to respond to it, so i threw it away.
later that night, i fished it out of the recycling bin and put it back on my desk, where it stared at me for a week, confronting me with the worldview divide that demanded a response. as a postmodern intellectual, i operated from a historical materialist worldview. ken's letter punctured the integrity of my research project without him knowing it.
with the letter, ken initiated two years of bringing the church to me, a heathen. oh, i had seen my share of bible verses on placards at gay pride marches. that christians who mocked me on gay pride day were happy that i and everyone i loved were going to hell was clear as blue sky. that is not what ken did. he did not mock. he engaged. so when his letter invited me top bet together for dinner, i accepted. my motives at the time were straightforward: surely this will be good for my research.
something else happened. ken and his wife, floy, and i became friends. they entered my world. they met my friends. we did book exchanges. we talked openly about sexuality and politics. they did not act as if such conversations were polluting them. they did not treat me like a blank slate. when we ate together, ken prayed in a way i had never heard before. his prayers were intimate, vulnerable. he repented of his sin in front of me. he thanked God for all things. ken's God was holy and firm, yet full of mercy. and because ken and floy did not invite me to church, i knew it was safe to be friends.
i started reading the bible. i read the way a glutton devours. i read it many times that first year in multiple translations. at a dinner gathering my partner and i were hosting, my transgendered friend J cornered me in the kitchen. she put her large hand over mine. 'this bible reading is changing you, rosaria, she warned.
with tremors, i whispered, 'J, what if it is true? what if Jesus is a real and risen Lord? what if we are all in trouble?'
J exhaled deeply. 'rosaria, she said, i was a presbyterian minister for 15 years. i prayed that God would heal me, but he didn't. if you want, i will pray for you.
i continued reading the bible, all the while fighting the idea that it was inspired. but the bible got to be bigger inside me than i. it overflowed into my world. i fought against it with all my might. then, one sunday morning, i rose from the bed of my lesbian lover, and an hour later sat in a pew at the syracuse reformed presbyterian
i fought with everything i had.
i did not want this.
i did not ask for this.
i counted the costs. and i did not like the math on the other side of the equal sign.
but God's promises rolled in like sets of waves into my world. one Lord's day, ken preached on john 7.17: 'if anyone wills to do (God's) will, he hall know concerning the doctrine' (nkjv) this verse exposed the quicksand in which my feet were stuck. i was a thinker. i was paid to read books and write about them. i expected that in all areas of life, understanding came BEFORE obedience. and i wanted God to show me, on my terms, why homosexuality was a sin. i wanted to be the judge, not one being judged.
but the verse promised understanding after obedience. i wrestled with the question: did i really want to understand homosexuality from God's point of view or did i just want to argue with him? i prayed that night that God would give me the willingness to obey before i understood. i prayed long into the unfolding of day. when i looked in the mirror, i looked the same, but when i looked into my heart through the lens of the bible, i wondered, AM I A LESBIAN, OR HAS THIS ALL BEEN A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY? IF JESUS COULD SPLIT THE WORLD ASUNDER, DIVIDE MARROW FROM SOUL, COULD HE MAKE MY TRUE IDENTITY PREVAIL? WHO AM I?
WHO WILL GOD HAVE ME TO BE?
then, one ordinary day, i came to Jesus, openhanded and naked. in this war of worldviews, ken was there, floy was there. the church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed. and i was a broken mess. conversion was a train wreck. i did not want to lose everything that i loved. but the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. i weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. i drank, tentatively at first, then passionately, of the solace of the Holy Spirit. i rested in private peace, then community and today in the shelter of a covenant family, where one calls me 'wife' and many call me 'mother'.
i have not forgotten the blood Jesus surrendered for this life.
and my former life lurks in the edges of my heart, shiny and still like a knife.
rosaria champagne butterfield is the author of 'the secret thought of an unlikely convert (crown and covenant). she lives with her family in durham, north carolina, where her husband pastors the first reformed presbyterian church of durham.
as a leftist lesbian professor, i despised christians. then somehow i became one.
rosaria champagne butterfield
the word JESUS stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk; no matter how hard i choked, i couldn't hack it out. those who professed the name commanded my pity and wrath. as a university professor, i tired of students who seemed to believe that 'knowing Jesus' meant knowing little else. christians in
particular were bad readers, always seizing opportunities to insert a bible verse into a conversation with the same point as a punctuation mark: to end it rather than deepen it.
Stupid. Pointless. Menacing. that's what i thought of christians and their god Jesus, who in paintings looked as powerful as a breck shampoo commercial model.
as a professor of english and women's studies, on the track to becoming a tenured radical, i cared about morality, justice and compassion. fervent for the worldviews of freud, hegel, marx and darwin, i strove to stand with the disempowered. i valued morality. and i probably could have stomached Jesus and his band of warriors if it weren't for how other cultural forces buttressed the christian right. pat robertson's quip from the 1992 republican national convention pushed me over the edge: 'feminism, he sneered, encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians'.
indeed. the surround sound of christian dogma commingling with republican politics demanded my attention.
after my tenure book was published, i used my post to advance the understandable allegiances of a leftist lesbian professor. my life was happy, meaningful, and full. my partner and i shared many vital interests: AIDS, activism, children's health and literacy, golden retriever rescue, our unitarian universalist church, to name a few. even if you believed the ghost stories promulgated by robertson and his ilk, it was hard to argue that my partner and i were anything but good citizens and caregivers. the GLBT community values hospitality and applies it with skill, sacrifice and integrity.
i began researching the religious right and their politics of hatred against queers like me. to do this, i would need to read the one book that had, in my estimation, gotten so many people off track: the bible. while on the lookout for some bible scholar to aid me in my research, i launched my first attack on the unholy trinity of Jesus, republican politics and patriarchy, in the form of an article in the local newspaper about Promise Keepers. it was 1997.
the article generated many rejoinders, so many that i kept a xerox box on each side of my desk: one for hate mail, one for fan mail. but one letter i received defied my filing system. it was from the pastor of the syracuse reformed presbyterian church. it was a kind and inquiring letter. ken smith encouraged me to explore the kind of questions i admire:
how did you arrive at your interpretations?
how do you know you are right?
do you believe in God?
ken didn't argue with my article; rather, he asked me to defend the presuppositions that undergirded it. i didn't know how to respond to it, so i threw it away.
later that night, i fished it out of the recycling bin and put it back on my desk, where it stared at me for a week, confronting me with the worldview divide that demanded a response. as a postmodern intellectual, i operated from a historical materialist worldview. ken's letter punctured the integrity of my research project without him knowing it.
with the letter, ken initiated two years of bringing the church to me, a heathen. oh, i had seen my share of bible verses on placards at gay pride marches. that christians who mocked me on gay pride day were happy that i and everyone i loved were going to hell was clear as blue sky. that is not what ken did. he did not mock. he engaged. so when his letter invited me top bet together for dinner, i accepted. my motives at the time were straightforward: surely this will be good for my research.
something else happened. ken and his wife, floy, and i became friends. they entered my world. they met my friends. we did book exchanges. we talked openly about sexuality and politics. they did not act as if such conversations were polluting them. they did not treat me like a blank slate. when we ate together, ken prayed in a way i had never heard before. his prayers were intimate, vulnerable. he repented of his sin in front of me. he thanked God for all things. ken's God was holy and firm, yet full of mercy. and because ken and floy did not invite me to church, i knew it was safe to be friends.
i started reading the bible. i read the way a glutton devours. i read it many times that first year in multiple translations. at a dinner gathering my partner and i were hosting, my transgendered friend J cornered me in the kitchen. she put her large hand over mine. 'this bible reading is changing you, rosaria, she warned.
with tremors, i whispered, 'J, what if it is true? what if Jesus is a real and risen Lord? what if we are all in trouble?'
J exhaled deeply. 'rosaria, she said, i was a presbyterian minister for 15 years. i prayed that God would heal me, but he didn't. if you want, i will pray for you.
i continued reading the bible, all the while fighting the idea that it was inspired. but the bible got to be bigger inside me than i. it overflowed into my world. i fought against it with all my might. then, one sunday morning, i rose from the bed of my lesbian lover, and an hour later sat in a pew at the syracuse reformed presbyterian
i fought with everything i had.
i did not want this.
i did not ask for this.
i counted the costs. and i did not like the math on the other side of the equal sign.
but God's promises rolled in like sets of waves into my world. one Lord's day, ken preached on john 7.17: 'if anyone wills to do (God's) will, he hall know concerning the doctrine' (nkjv) this verse exposed the quicksand in which my feet were stuck. i was a thinker. i was paid to read books and write about them. i expected that in all areas of life, understanding came BEFORE obedience. and i wanted God to show me, on my terms, why homosexuality was a sin. i wanted to be the judge, not one being judged.
but the verse promised understanding after obedience. i wrestled with the question: did i really want to understand homosexuality from God's point of view or did i just want to argue with him? i prayed that night that God would give me the willingness to obey before i understood. i prayed long into the unfolding of day. when i looked in the mirror, i looked the same, but when i looked into my heart through the lens of the bible, i wondered, AM I A LESBIAN, OR HAS THIS ALL BEEN A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY? IF JESUS COULD SPLIT THE WORLD ASUNDER, DIVIDE MARROW FROM SOUL, COULD HE MAKE MY TRUE IDENTITY PREVAIL? WHO AM I?
WHO WILL GOD HAVE ME TO BE?
then, one ordinary day, i came to Jesus, openhanded and naked. in this war of worldviews, ken was there, floy was there. the church that had been praying for me for years was there. Jesus triumphed. and i was a broken mess. conversion was a train wreck. i did not want to lose everything that i loved. but the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. i weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. i drank, tentatively at first, then passionately, of the solace of the Holy Spirit. i rested in private peace, then community and today in the shelter of a covenant family, where one calls me 'wife' and many call me 'mother'.
i have not forgotten the blood Jesus surrendered for this life.
and my former life lurks in the edges of my heart, shiny and still like a knife.
rosaria champagne butterfield is the author of 'the secret thought of an unlikely convert (crown and covenant). she lives with her family in durham, north carolina, where her husband pastors the first reformed presbyterian church of durham.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
2.21.2013 GOD FOCUS VS SELF FOCUS
the following is taken from world magazine 2.23.2013, p79...
..the biggest battle is in the thought life.
in a sense there is no other life than the thought life.
the renewal of the mind effects transformation. romans 12.2
-not abstractly, but in the conscious dimension.
it involves our cooperation and is not a passive work of God
apart from that cooperation.
'kin all your ways acknowledge Him
and He shall direct your paths. proverbs 3.6
i'm no king david, but king david messed up regarding his children,
where i also failed.
he suffered greatly in his private moments.
i can tell.
and we have many words from david left to posterity,
but I LOOK IN VAIN FOR SIGNS OF MORBID
PICKING AT SCABS.
by contrast, at christmastime
i gave my daughter a book of poetry..
and most of them were an obsessive raking over the coals
of an old divorce.
david's deathbed words II samuel 23; I chronicles 28
bare NO HINT OF SELF FLAGELLATION
BUT ARE FULL OF WORSHIP.
his gaze lifted upward,
he speaks of 'the rock ofIsrael',
and the beauty of (His) justice
'like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth'
-revelatory of a man who has learned
how to talk his soul back to joy by meditating on
things eternal rather than temporal.
i was struck by this... the example of david.
is he the man in the bible who takes the prize
for having the most sins revealed to the world by God?
he would be my guess.
i used to think that this was because
God said of him, and no one else,
that he was a man after God's heart..
and God wanted to encourage each person who read
that no matter how many times they sin,
if they follow david as he followed God,
they too could be very intimate with
and very pleasing to God.
but having read this today
i am led to think of another possible reason...
that when he confessed each sin to God
(the most famous confession,
being psalm 51,
where he confesses committing adultery with bathsheba
and then making sure that her husband uriah
was killed in battle against the ammonities)
he not only BELIEVED the truth we read in I john 1.9,
'that if we confess our sin,
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness',
BUT HE BELIEVED IT
TO THE DEGREE THAT
in his mind and heart HIS SIN
WAS
INDEED
G-O-N-E
not to be thought of
(are we to think of what God does not?)
never to be spoken of again,
never to be bemoaned,
totally gone.
why? i am thinking that maybe he treated his sin this way
because he knew that God treated it this way.
..'buried under the deepest sea...
as far as the east from the west...
never to be remembered against him any more!
...and why should he besmear or doubt
what God said He did?
this is specially precious to me.
for it has increasingly come to me,
sometime from my friend ray,
that i am constantly bemoaning my sin and
bringing to remembrance my sin
and, now with sorrow i am now realizing
that i have, in a sense, been publicly
broadcasting to everyone who hears,
that i do not believe what God says.
for if i did i would not disgrace Him
by talking, or even thinking about
that which is GONE as far as He is concerned.
done by His 'hand', as it were.
so with God's help
from this day
i hope never again
to think
talk
or write
of even one of my sins,
once confessed and forsaken
a simple way of saying,
THANK YOU
I BELIEVE YO
..the biggest battle is in the thought life.
in a sense there is no other life than the thought life.
the renewal of the mind effects transformation. romans 12.2
-not abstractly, but in the conscious dimension.
it involves our cooperation and is not a passive work of God
apart from that cooperation.
'kin all your ways acknowledge Him
and He shall direct your paths. proverbs 3.6
i'm no king david, but king david messed up regarding his children,
where i also failed.
he suffered greatly in his private moments.
i can tell.
and we have many words from david left to posterity,
but I LOOK IN VAIN FOR SIGNS OF MORBID
PICKING AT SCABS.
by contrast, at christmastime
i gave my daughter a book of poetry..
and most of them were an obsessive raking over the coals
of an old divorce.
david's deathbed words II samuel 23; I chronicles 28
bare NO HINT OF SELF FLAGELLATION
BUT ARE FULL OF WORSHIP.
his gaze lifted upward,
he speaks of 'the rock ofIsrael',
and the beauty of (His) justice
'like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth'
-revelatory of a man who has learned
how to talk his soul back to joy by meditating on
things eternal rather than temporal.
i was struck by this... the example of david.
is he the man in the bible who takes the prize
for having the most sins revealed to the world by God?
he would be my guess.
i used to think that this was because
God said of him, and no one else,
that he was a man after God's heart..
and God wanted to encourage each person who read
that no matter how many times they sin,
if they follow david as he followed God,
they too could be very intimate with
and very pleasing to God.
but having read this today
i am led to think of another possible reason...
that when he confessed each sin to God
(the most famous confession,
being psalm 51,
where he confesses committing adultery with bathsheba
and then making sure that her husband uriah
was killed in battle against the ammonities)
he not only BELIEVED the truth we read in I john 1.9,
'that if we confess our sin,
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness',
BUT HE BELIEVED IT
TO THE DEGREE THAT
in his mind and heart HIS SIN
WAS
INDEED
G-O-N-E
not to be thought of
(are we to think of what God does not?)
never to be spoken of again,
never to be bemoaned,
totally gone.
why? i am thinking that maybe he treated his sin this way
because he knew that God treated it this way.
..'buried under the deepest sea...
as far as the east from the west...
never to be remembered against him any more!
...and why should he besmear or doubt
what God said He did?
this is specially precious to me.
for it has increasingly come to me,
sometime from my friend ray,
that i am constantly bemoaning my sin and
bringing to remembrance my sin
and, now with sorrow i am now realizing
that i have, in a sense, been publicly
broadcasting to everyone who hears,
that i do not believe what God says.
for if i did i would not disgrace Him
by talking, or even thinking about
that which is GONE as far as He is concerned.
done by His 'hand', as it were.
so with God's help
from this day
i hope never again
to think
talk
or write
of even one of my sins,
once confessed and forsaken
a simple way of saying,
THANK YOU
I BELIEVE YO
2.21.2013 FOLLOWING JESUS' EXAMPLE OF EVANGELISM
the following is taken from world magazine 2.23.2013, p34..
..according to 'miraculous movements' by jerry trousdale (2012),
45 different 'unreached' muslim-majority people groups,
groups that a few years ago had no access to God's word,
now have more than 3000 new churches among them.
and the typical agent of change is himself
olive- or dark-skinned -
most likely an egyptian missionary,
perhaps an ethiopian or a sudanese.
for westerners it's hard to grasp
the result of decades of church growth in the global south:
christian believers in sub saharan africa
and other 'poor' corners of the world
are the ones currently sending missionaries
into the hardest corners of the globe.
one..is a father of two young children
and the husband of an academic researcher.
he lives with his family in a large city in africa
and travels to some of the hardest, unreached regions.
at least one of the house churches
he helped to start among muslims now has 3000 members...
how does this happen?
his answer, not surprising, is that he PRAYS.
three hours a day.
but the second reason..is that he's learned powerful lessons
from making a lot of mistakes...
being bold is not the same as being effective, he said.
this man once followed traditional methods of evangelism-
street corner preaching,
campaigns blanketing towns with tracts and other bible literature,
town hall style meetings
and an emphasis on christian programming piped in via
satellite television
he calls these air force tactics,
when ground troops,
an army of foot soldiers, are critical too.
now he pays more ATTENTION TO THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS..
entering a village and LOOKING FOR what he calls 'A MAN OF PEACE'
with whom he can DEVELOP A FRIENDSHIP
and share in the daily issues of life.
as a result, he KNOWs more about THE PEOPLE he's evangelizing
than simply that they need the gospel.
CONVERTS BECOME his COMPANIONS first,
and discipleship progresses more quickly.
when churches take root and grow,
he has to be WILLING TO LET GO:
'a lot of dependency happens because we are not willing to
lose control'...
..according to 'miraculous movements' by jerry trousdale (2012),
45 different 'unreached' muslim-majority people groups,
groups that a few years ago had no access to God's word,
now have more than 3000 new churches among them.
and the typical agent of change is himself
olive- or dark-skinned -
most likely an egyptian missionary,
perhaps an ethiopian or a sudanese.
for westerners it's hard to grasp
the result of decades of church growth in the global south:
christian believers in sub saharan africa
and other 'poor' corners of the world
are the ones currently sending missionaries
into the hardest corners of the globe.
one..is a father of two young children
and the husband of an academic researcher.
he lives with his family in a large city in africa
and travels to some of the hardest, unreached regions.
at least one of the house churches
he helped to start among muslims now has 3000 members...
how does this happen?
his answer, not surprising, is that he PRAYS.
three hours a day.
but the second reason..is that he's learned powerful lessons
from making a lot of mistakes...
being bold is not the same as being effective, he said.
this man once followed traditional methods of evangelism-
street corner preaching,
campaigns blanketing towns with tracts and other bible literature,
town hall style meetings
and an emphasis on christian programming piped in via
satellite television
he calls these air force tactics,
when ground troops,
an army of foot soldiers, are critical too.
now he pays more ATTENTION TO THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS..
entering a village and LOOKING FOR what he calls 'A MAN OF PEACE'
with whom he can DEVELOP A FRIENDSHIP
and share in the daily issues of life.
as a result, he KNOWs more about THE PEOPLE he's evangelizing
than simply that they need the gospel.
CONVERTS BECOME his COMPANIONS first,
and discipleship progresses more quickly.
when churches take root and grow,
he has to be WILLING TO LET GO:
'a lot of dependency happens because we are not willing to
lose control'...
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
2.19.2013 MISION EVANGELICA: BIBLE READING
i was asked if i would want to contribute anything to the thematic daily bible reading program. last year the church stressed reading through the bible in a year. instead of going from genesis to revelation all the different areas of the bible were read each week, with reading from one area being focused on each day. this year the focus is rather on themes. right now certain themes in I john are the focus. the idea is to move from giving factually correct answers to asking questions that hopefully make the reader think about their own walk with the Lord.
i'm not sure how this will work but said i would start praying about what i might contribute. several days later many thoughts started flowing and i wrote for a while. my goal here is just to get these thoughts down here and continue to think about how any of this could be formed into questions taken from different scripture passages. at heart they form a burden that is growing in me that i might not be so independent but more and more involved in the lives of other believers (and non-believers?) around me.
these questions could apply to people you know either within or outside the church fellowship.
i encourage you to take time to ask God to speak to you and direct your thinking, read the passage(s),
write out an answer and then ask God to show you how to put it into practice one time.
have you done what you wrote?
did you pray before, while, after you did it..asking for guidance?
how did it go?
do you have any questions?
if you do, have you asked any other of the believers?
do you know anyone who needs a faithful friend..someone they can ALWAYS count on to be there in their low times, difficulties, trials, waywardness from God?
are you such a friend?
does anyone in your life give you the definite impression that they LIKE you?
do you genuinely like anyone? do you think they know it?
has anyone ever missed you when you were not at a meeting of the brethren?
have you ever been missed in a way that made you feel good?
what did the person that missed you do/say that made you feel missed and wanted?
how would you describe a good friend who you would never want to lose?
besides Jesus, do you have one?
why do you count them a good friend?
there is a saying, 'he who would have friends would show himself to be friendly'.
would you say you are a good friend to anyone?
in seeing someone in or outside of meeting are you friendly only to one person, to several, or to everyone?
if you were sick and couldn't be at meeting, would you like others to notice, to call, to visit, to
lend a hand if needed or..what would you like?
if you were absent from meetings struggling with difficulties spiritual or otherwise, or because something was wrong,
does anyone call you?
is there anyone you call to let them know?
does anyone call or drop by to talk, encourage you and pray with you?
if no one ever inquired how you were, if you needed help, anything...how would that make you feel?
if Jesus were in souderton and He could only do one or the other, which do you think He would choose? 1. go to meeting or 2.come to see you and make Himself available to help you.
if you came into a meeting for the first time what would most likely bring you back again?
if you were poorly dressed would you feel at home if no one else was?
would you expect the people there to talk to you or would you see it as your job to talk to them?
if everyone was reading a bible, the bulletin or singing a song out of the hymnal or reading the guide for the study and no one offered you one how would you feel?
the Bible says, 'let brotherly love continue'.
have you ever lost a friend?
what was the reason?
what did you do? did you seek to resolve the problem?
if the person remained aloof, how did that feel to be abandoned like that?
have you ever abandoned someone yourself?
do you ever deserve to be abandoned (based on how you treat someone else)?
if you treated someone in a way that you yourself would not like would you be surprised?
how do you usually justify yourself when you move away from another person?
what was one reason why Jesus said friendships end? (matthew 5.21-6)
which does Jesus consider more serious: murder or anger?
which person should seek out the other? the angry one or the other?
what if they are both angry? how long do they have to become friends again? (ephesians 4.26,7)
should you take communion while you are angry at some other believer? (I corinthians 11.28-30)
what may happen if you take communion anyway when you are not friends with all the other believers?
how does it feel to be forgiven and treated kindly when you have a cold, shunning heart toward someone?
how does it feel when you know you have done or are doing wrong and you fly to Jesus for help and forgiveness?
does Jesus ever give you the cold shoulder when you admit you are wrong, have done wrong? I john 1.9
does Jesus ever forgive you based on how you behave yourself in the future?
do you ever spend time with those who are sick, those who are in prison, those who you know are passing through a specially hard time spiritually or otherwise?
do you sit with them, talk with them, read the Bible promises with them, ask them if there is any way you can help, think of things you can do that would encourage them, most of all..pray with them?
if when two believers in Jesus agree as to anything IT SHALL BE DONE,
what do you think happens when all the believers agree in prayer as to what Jesus wants?
david asks God to help him to be continually in His house (intimate presence) INQUIRING OF HIM, but he says nothing about requesting anything of God at all. psalm 27.4
Why is that?
do you do that?
i'm not sure how this will work but said i would start praying about what i might contribute. several days later many thoughts started flowing and i wrote for a while. my goal here is just to get these thoughts down here and continue to think about how any of this could be formed into questions taken from different scripture passages. at heart they form a burden that is growing in me that i might not be so independent but more and more involved in the lives of other believers (and non-believers?) around me.
these questions could apply to people you know either within or outside the church fellowship.
i encourage you to take time to ask God to speak to you and direct your thinking, read the passage(s),
write out an answer and then ask God to show you how to put it into practice one time.
have you done what you wrote?
did you pray before, while, after you did it..asking for guidance?
how did it go?
do you have any questions?
if you do, have you asked any other of the believers?
do you know anyone who needs a faithful friend..someone they can ALWAYS count on to be there in their low times, difficulties, trials, waywardness from God?
are you such a friend?
does anyone in your life give you the definite impression that they LIKE you?
do you genuinely like anyone? do you think they know it?
has anyone ever missed you when you were not at a meeting of the brethren?
have you ever been missed in a way that made you feel good?
what did the person that missed you do/say that made you feel missed and wanted?
how would you describe a good friend who you would never want to lose?
besides Jesus, do you have one?
why do you count them a good friend?
there is a saying, 'he who would have friends would show himself to be friendly'.
would you say you are a good friend to anyone?
in seeing someone in or outside of meeting are you friendly only to one person, to several, or to everyone?
if you were sick and couldn't be at meeting, would you like others to notice, to call, to visit, to
lend a hand if needed or..what would you like?
if you were absent from meetings struggling with difficulties spiritual or otherwise, or because something was wrong,
does anyone call you?
is there anyone you call to let them know?
does anyone call or drop by to talk, encourage you and pray with you?
if no one ever inquired how you were, if you needed help, anything...how would that make you feel?
if Jesus were in souderton and He could only do one or the other, which do you think He would choose? 1. go to meeting or 2.come to see you and make Himself available to help you.
if you came into a meeting for the first time what would most likely bring you back again?
if you were poorly dressed would you feel at home if no one else was?
would you expect the people there to talk to you or would you see it as your job to talk to them?
if everyone was reading a bible, the bulletin or singing a song out of the hymnal or reading the guide for the study and no one offered you one how would you feel?
the Bible says, 'let brotherly love continue'.
have you ever lost a friend?
what was the reason?
what did you do? did you seek to resolve the problem?
if the person remained aloof, how did that feel to be abandoned like that?
have you ever abandoned someone yourself?
do you ever deserve to be abandoned (based on how you treat someone else)?
if you treated someone in a way that you yourself would not like would you be surprised?
how do you usually justify yourself when you move away from another person?
what was one reason why Jesus said friendships end? (matthew 5.21-6)
which does Jesus consider more serious: murder or anger?
which person should seek out the other? the angry one or the other?
what if they are both angry? how long do they have to become friends again? (ephesians 4.26,7)
should you take communion while you are angry at some other believer? (I corinthians 11.28-30)
what may happen if you take communion anyway when you are not friends with all the other believers?
how does it feel to be forgiven and treated kindly when you have a cold, shunning heart toward someone?
how does it feel when you know you have done or are doing wrong and you fly to Jesus for help and forgiveness?
does Jesus ever give you the cold shoulder when you admit you are wrong, have done wrong? I john 1.9
does Jesus ever forgive you based on how you behave yourself in the future?
do you ever spend time with those who are sick, those who are in prison, those who you know are passing through a specially hard time spiritually or otherwise?
do you sit with them, talk with them, read the Bible promises with them, ask them if there is any way you can help, think of things you can do that would encourage them, most of all..pray with them?
if when two believers in Jesus agree as to anything IT SHALL BE DONE,
what do you think happens when all the believers agree in prayer as to what Jesus wants?
david asks God to help him to be continually in His house (intimate presence) INQUIRING OF HIM, but he says nothing about requesting anything of God at all. psalm 27.4
Why is that?
do you do that?
Sunday, February 17, 2013
2.17.2013 ARE YOU A HOMOPHOBE?
DOES JESUS WITH ZACCHEUS equal ME WITH HOMOSEXUALS?
i just got done meditating through the passage in luke 19.1-10
where Zaccheus meets Jesus.
i just got done meditating through the passage in luke 19.1-10
where Zaccheus meets Jesus.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
2.16.2013 LORD BRING ME INTO A BROAD PLACE!
the other day into my spirit floated the word 'broad'
i sensed it was a seed blown by Your breath into my mind.
i searched for 'broad' and this is what i found...
primarily i found the verses that had, in a hidden manner,
breathed the beauty and mystery of this word into me to start.
the first is found in II samuel 22,
the body of words that, as verse 1 recounts,
'david spake unto the Lord the words of this song in the day that the Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of saul'
v20 He also brought me forth into a broad place;
He rescued me, because He delighted in me.
the second is found in psalm 18.19,
this psalm, as titled, is one and the same with II samuel 22
(haven't checked it but if not verbatim, in the same spirit,
and in light of the same occasion.
the other, job 36.16 says,
then indeed, He enticed you from the mouth of distress,
instead of it, a broad place with no constraint;
and that which was set on your table was full of fatness.
job uses the root word, the other two use a word that comes from the root word,
which is used of the land of palestine as promised by God to His people
it's most frequent occurrence, however is in
psychologically revealing phrases
involving parts of the body or bodily attributes.
this usage is completely colloquial
(ordinary or familiar conversation as opposed to formal speech)
and defies literal translation.
rAhab (the hebrew root word) appears
1. with mouth
I samuel 2.1
-then hannah prayed and said,
'my heart exults in the Lord;
my horn is exalted in the Lord,
my mouth SPEAKS BOLDLY
(margin-is enlarged)
against my enemies,
because i rejoice in Thy salvation.
psalm 35.21
-and they OPENED their mouth WIDE against me;
they said, 'aha, aha, our eyes have seen it!
psalm 81.10
-I, the Lord, am your God,
who brought you up from the land of egypt;
OPEN your mouth WIDE and i will fill it.
isaiah 57.4
-against whom do you jest?
against whom do you OPEN WIDE your mouth
and stick out your tongue?
are you not children of rebellion
offspring of deceit.
2.with heart
psalm 119.32
-i shall run the way of Thy commandments,
for Thou wilt ENLARGE my heart.
isaiah 60.5
-then you will see and be radiant,
and your heart WILL THRILL AND REJOICE
(MARGIN- tremble and be enlarged)
psalm 25.17
-the troubles of my heart are ENLARGED;
bring me out of my distresses.
3. with steps
psalm 18.36
-Thou dost ENLARGE my steps under me.
and my feet have not slipped.
of special interest is psalm 4.1 where there is an extremely obscure usage
-answer me when i call, O God of my righteousness!
Thou has RELIEVED ME IN my distress.
be gracious to me and hear my prayer.
proverbs uses the verb only once to apply to the increase of $
in the view of the worldly wise man.
-18.16 a man's gift MAKES ROOM for him,
and brings him before great men.
the word has no single english equivalent..
may be best translated in all of its colloquial usages as
'MADE GREATER EFFECT OF mouth, heart, etc.
this is a clumsy translation but gives some semblance
of the original semitic
(afro-asiatic language group, of which hebrew is one)
flavour in all passages where used.
i sensed it was a seed blown by Your breath into my mind.
i searched for 'broad' and this is what i found...
primarily i found the verses that had, in a hidden manner,
breathed the beauty and mystery of this word into me to start.
the first is found in II samuel 22,
the body of words that, as verse 1 recounts,
'david spake unto the Lord the words of this song in the day that the Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of saul'
v20 He also brought me forth into a broad place;
He rescued me, because He delighted in me.
the second is found in psalm 18.19,
this psalm, as titled, is one and the same with II samuel 22
(haven't checked it but if not verbatim, in the same spirit,
and in light of the same occasion.
the other, job 36.16 says,
then indeed, He enticed you from the mouth of distress,
instead of it, a broad place with no constraint;
and that which was set on your table was full of fatness.
job uses the root word, the other two use a word that comes from the root word,
which is used of the land of palestine as promised by God to His people
it's most frequent occurrence, however is in
psychologically revealing phrases
involving parts of the body or bodily attributes.
this usage is completely colloquial
(ordinary or familiar conversation as opposed to formal speech)
and defies literal translation.
rAhab (the hebrew root word) appears
1. with mouth
I samuel 2.1
-then hannah prayed and said,
'my heart exults in the Lord;
my horn is exalted in the Lord,
my mouth SPEAKS BOLDLY
(margin-is enlarged)
against my enemies,
because i rejoice in Thy salvation.
psalm 35.21
-and they OPENED their mouth WIDE against me;
they said, 'aha, aha, our eyes have seen it!
psalm 81.10
-I, the Lord, am your God,
who brought you up from the land of egypt;
OPEN your mouth WIDE and i will fill it.
isaiah 57.4
-against whom do you jest?
against whom do you OPEN WIDE your mouth
and stick out your tongue?
are you not children of rebellion
offspring of deceit.
2.with heart
psalm 119.32
-i shall run the way of Thy commandments,
for Thou wilt ENLARGE my heart.
isaiah 60.5
-then you will see and be radiant,
and your heart WILL THRILL AND REJOICE
(MARGIN- tremble and be enlarged)
psalm 25.17
-the troubles of my heart are ENLARGED;
bring me out of my distresses.
3. with steps
psalm 18.36
-Thou dost ENLARGE my steps under me.
and my feet have not slipped.
of special interest is psalm 4.1 where there is an extremely obscure usage
-answer me when i call, O God of my righteousness!
Thou has RELIEVED ME IN my distress.
be gracious to me and hear my prayer.
proverbs uses the verb only once to apply to the increase of $
in the view of the worldly wise man.
-18.16 a man's gift MAKES ROOM for him,
and brings him before great men.
the word has no single english equivalent..
may be best translated in all of its colloquial usages as
'MADE GREATER EFFECT OF mouth, heart, etc.
this is a clumsy translation but gives some semblance
of the original semitic
(afro-asiatic language group, of which hebrew is one)
flavour in all passages where used.
2.16.2013 LONELY
You are more and more helping me to see the absolute absence of Your love in my heart and in my life.
Oh Lord, is it in man to set about practicing Your love?
is that not impossible Lord?
but You say that things impossible to man are possible with God, do You not?
You say, 'you have not because you ask not'.
Lord, i ask...'GIVE ME YOUR LOVE OR I DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
is it not Your will that i love You with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, AND my neighbor as myself?
do You not say, 'anything you ask in My name shall be given you'?
i ask this not for myself. i ask this that You would be praised, that Your name, Your true nature,
would be known in a greater way through my small and totlly insignificant life (apart from You).
below i copy two songs written by the brother, now in heaven, who most challenges me and woos me
to You. You were lonely for the right reason. i increasingly believe that i am lonely for the wrong.
in any case i cry out to You to make me like You. all i want is that i am crucified and Christ is seem...
whether i'm lonely or not.
Lord, would You show me the way?
lonely by myself -larry norman (so long ago the garden)
if i could find someone
who really cared for me
someone to share my love
and keep me company
if i could find someone
i'd let them take control
and in exchange for love
i'd give my very soul.
it's such a lonely life
i almost cry each night
cause fate has put me on the shelf
i get so lonely
so lonely by myself
if i could find someone
who'd really love me right
they'd make my life complete
they'd make my soul shine bright
i've looked around the world
i've walked down every street
still i can't find no one
to give me what i need
it's such a lonely life
i almost cry each night
cause fate has put me,
fate has put me on the shelf
i get so lonely
so lonely by myself
i get so lonely
so lonely
so lonely by myself
who can i turn to
is anybody there
doesn't anybody care
oooohhh doesn't anybody listen
doesn't anybody care
i am a servant - larry norman (in another land)
i am a servant i am listening for my name
i sit here waiting i've been looking at the game
that i'v been playing
i've been staying much the same
when you are lonely you're the only one to blame
i am a servant i am waiting for Your call
i've been unfaithful so i sit here in the hall
how can You use me when i've never given all
how can You choose me
when You know i'd quickly fall
so You feed my soul, You help me grow
You let me know You love me
i might feel worthless now but i've made a vow
i will humbly bow before Thee
oh please use me i am lonely
i am a servant getting ready for my part
there's been a change
a rearrangement in my heart
at last i'm learning there's no returning once i start
to live's a privilaege, to love is such an art
but i need Your help to start
oh please purify my heart
i am Your servant
Lord, Your love is unparalleled. no human love comes close. I am nourished, secure in Your love,
but give me unending earthly agonizing until Your love is finally flowing freely THROUGH
a crucified me. oh Lord don't let me meet You emptyhanded.
Oh Lord, is it in man to set about practicing Your love?
is that not impossible Lord?
but You say that things impossible to man are possible with God, do You not?
You say, 'you have not because you ask not'.
Lord, i ask...'GIVE ME YOUR LOVE OR I DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
is it not Your will that i love You with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, AND my neighbor as myself?
do You not say, 'anything you ask in My name shall be given you'?
i ask this not for myself. i ask this that You would be praised, that Your name, Your true nature,
would be known in a greater way through my small and totlly insignificant life (apart from You).
below i copy two songs written by the brother, now in heaven, who most challenges me and woos me
to You. You were lonely for the right reason. i increasingly believe that i am lonely for the wrong.
in any case i cry out to You to make me like You. all i want is that i am crucified and Christ is seem...
whether i'm lonely or not.
Lord, would You show me the way?
lonely by myself -larry norman (so long ago the garden)
if i could find someone
who really cared for me
someone to share my love
and keep me company
if i could find someone
i'd let them take control
and in exchange for love
i'd give my very soul.
it's such a lonely life
i almost cry each night
cause fate has put me on the shelf
i get so lonely
so lonely by myself
if i could find someone
who'd really love me right
they'd make my life complete
they'd make my soul shine bright
i've looked around the world
i've walked down every street
still i can't find no one
to give me what i need
it's such a lonely life
i almost cry each night
cause fate has put me,
fate has put me on the shelf
i get so lonely
so lonely by myself
i get so lonely
so lonely
so lonely by myself
who can i turn to
is anybody there
doesn't anybody care
oooohhh doesn't anybody listen
doesn't anybody care
i am a servant - larry norman (in another land)
i am a servant i am listening for my name
i sit here waiting i've been looking at the game
that i'v been playing
i've been staying much the same
when you are lonely you're the only one to blame
i am a servant i am waiting for Your call
i've been unfaithful so i sit here in the hall
how can You use me when i've never given all
how can You choose me
when You know i'd quickly fall
so You feed my soul, You help me grow
You let me know You love me
i might feel worthless now but i've made a vow
i will humbly bow before Thee
oh please use me i am lonely
i am a servant getting ready for my part
there's been a change
a rearrangement in my heart
at last i'm learning there's no returning once i start
to live's a privilaege, to love is such an art
but i need Your help to start
oh please purify my heart
i am Your servant
Lord, Your love is unparalleled. no human love comes close. I am nourished, secure in Your love,
but give me unending earthly agonizing until Your love is finally flowing freely THROUGH
a crucified me. oh Lord don't let me meet You emptyhanded.
Friday, February 15, 2013
2.15.2013 NOT IGNORANT OF his SCHEMES - II CORINTHIANS 2.11
i am getting more and more aware of lost moments.
after all my time here is growing very short.
the way time blows by
going to be with Jesus could happen
any nanosecond now.
in this state it is starting to become more and more apparent
that satan is CONTINUALLY active,
primarily through the thought life,
('schemes' is voAmata which literally means 'thoughts')
continually chipping away at the number of
'used for Jesus minutes'
that remain available for use.
frustrating.
jostling me gently into not laying down at 9pm
and if i say,
i'm determined!
i WILL get up at 4 anyway!
then i nod off and lose precious time.
constantly seeking to unsettle the mind,
get it OFF FOCUS
in various ways.
may You help me meet every thought, from whatever source, with the sword of the Spirit.
O Lord, what do i need? take these thoughts below and show me.. how do i walk with You continually?
1. CONSTANT PREDETERMINATION through prayer and waiting on God
a. as to how God would have me to use each moment and
b. focused to battle WITH THE WORD, if necessary, to use it that way
2. CONSTANT WATCHFULNESS
a. comparing what is going on within and around
b. to what should be going on and
c. what exactly is hindering what should be going on.
d. BATHING EVERY THOUGHT IN THE WORD
3. CONSTANT PRAYER: meditative? petitioning? enquiring? wrestling? beholding Your beauty!
4. CONSTANT CONFESSION/RENUNCIATION OF EVERY KNOWN SIN! (refuse it any place!)
5. CONSTANT OBEDIENCE
6. CONSTANT READINESS TO INSTANTLY BE FACE TO FACE WITH JESUS
therefore, gird your minds for action,
keep sober in spirit,
fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ
i peter 1.13
after all my time here is growing very short.
the way time blows by
going to be with Jesus could happen
any nanosecond now.
in this state it is starting to become more and more apparent
that satan is CONTINUALLY active,
primarily through the thought life,
('schemes' is voAmata which literally means 'thoughts')
continually chipping away at the number of
'used for Jesus minutes'
that remain available for use.
frustrating.
jostling me gently into not laying down at 9pm
and if i say,
i'm determined!
i WILL get up at 4 anyway!
then i nod off and lose precious time.
constantly seeking to unsettle the mind,
get it OFF FOCUS
in various ways.
may You help me meet every thought, from whatever source, with the sword of the Spirit.
O Lord, what do i need? take these thoughts below and show me.. how do i walk with You continually?
1. CONSTANT PREDETERMINATION through prayer and waiting on God
a. as to how God would have me to use each moment and
b. focused to battle WITH THE WORD, if necessary, to use it that way
2. CONSTANT WATCHFULNESS
a. comparing what is going on within and around
b. to what should be going on and
c. what exactly is hindering what should be going on.
d. BATHING EVERY THOUGHT IN THE WORD
3. CONSTANT PRAYER: meditative? petitioning? enquiring? wrestling? beholding Your beauty!
4. CONSTANT CONFESSION/RENUNCIATION OF EVERY KNOWN SIN! (refuse it any place!)
5. CONSTANT OBEDIENCE
6. CONSTANT READINESS TO INSTANTLY BE FACE TO FACE WITH JESUS
therefore, gird your minds for action,
keep sober in spirit,
fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ
i peter 1.13
2.15.2013 EARLY RETIREMENT
EARLY RETIREMENT PLAN (i can start anytime i want..the sooner the better!)
1. sell ALL that you possess
2. distribute it to the poor
3. come to and follow Jesus luke 18.22
(ie. seek FIRST His kingdom and His righteousness
warning: if you do this you will never have any time for yourself.
warning: if you decide to rather focus on getting/increasing for yourself
getting to heaven will be impossible (have you ever tried to squeeze
a live camel through the eye of a needle?)
what do i get?
1. whatever you need to seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness matthew 6.33
2. as soon as you have done 1,2 and are busy doing 3 above,
what follows until physical death is a kIross.
this is whatever portion of time God has allotted you
that is fit and proper to the doing of what you have set about to do.
a 'season' given totally which yields fruit that remains to His eternal glory.
kind of like a 'season' to plan, another 'season' when you plow,
another 'season' when the plants grow, another 'season' to reap
and finally a 'season' to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
3. of course you have left behind you your possessions
and you have left behind your family
unless they too following the same
early retirement plan as you.
this all being true
you receive 'many times more' of the things you have gotten rid of
and 'many times more' very intimate and enriching relationships luke 18.30
than you would have had if you had not followed this plan.
4. when God wants you, you die, actually its more like falling asleep,
and you wake up looking into the loving eyes of Jesus. psalm 116. 15
(note: the only reason i haven't started yet is that i suffer from insanity
ie. choosing the insecurity, anxiety, fear and emptiness of here and not
instead of His will and...at his time His presence forever. ecclesiastes 9.3
1. sell ALL that you possess
2. distribute it to the poor
3. come to and follow Jesus luke 18.22
(ie. seek FIRST His kingdom and His righteousness
warning: if you do this you will never have any time for yourself.
warning: if you decide to rather focus on getting/increasing for yourself
getting to heaven will be impossible (have you ever tried to squeeze
a live camel through the eye of a needle?)
what do i get?
1. whatever you need to seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness matthew 6.33
2. as soon as you have done 1,2 and are busy doing 3 above,
what follows until physical death is a kIross.
this is whatever portion of time God has allotted you
that is fit and proper to the doing of what you have set about to do.
a 'season' given totally which yields fruit that remains to His eternal glory.
kind of like a 'season' to plan, another 'season' when you plow,
another 'season' when the plants grow, another 'season' to reap
and finally a 'season' to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
3. of course you have left behind you your possessions
and you have left behind your family
unless they too following the same
early retirement plan as you.
this all being true
you receive 'many times more' of the things you have gotten rid of
and 'many times more' very intimate and enriching relationships luke 18.30
than you would have had if you had not followed this plan.
4. when God wants you, you die, actually its more like falling asleep,
and you wake up looking into the loving eyes of Jesus. psalm 116. 15
(note: the only reason i haven't started yet is that i suffer from insanity
ie. choosing the insecurity, anxiety, fear and emptiness of here and not
instead of His will and...at his time His presence forever. ecclesiastes 9.3
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
2.14.2013 HAPPY BIRTH DAY NATE!
DEAR NATE!
happy birth day! you were an great gift from God
on that 3rd valentine's day that God gave mom and I together.
what a gift you have been to us.
You are a comfort, a strength, a joy, a blessing from God...and
we are very grateful to Him for you.
may you (and I) ASAP be radiantly with Jesus!
prayer and the desire of my heart
is that we identify ourselves with Him
and suffer for His name.
Love, dad
ps. i had a bunch of insane ravings on here
but as often happens
when i read what i have written
after a day or two
i just shake my head.
only by His grace and peace
will i have peace when i look in His eyes.
until then..brokenness and agony.
i just want to be found in Him.
i reject just mental assent, 'belief'.
there must be DO,
there must be fruit.
believe obeys...
and i don't obey well.
massive failure...frail indications of having His Life
oh but He is so real
so surpassingly precious, loving, forgiving
yet also grieved, warning, gently guiding
sometimes forbidding, making impossible!
oh changeless One, please change me.
happy birth day! you were an great gift from God
on that 3rd valentine's day that God gave mom and I together.
what a gift you have been to us.
You are a comfort, a strength, a joy, a blessing from God...and
we are very grateful to Him for you.
may you (and I) ASAP be radiantly with Jesus!
prayer and the desire of my heart
is that we identify ourselves with Him
and suffer for His name.
Love, dad
ps. i had a bunch of insane ravings on here
but as often happens
when i read what i have written
after a day or two
i just shake my head.
only by His grace and peace
will i have peace when i look in His eyes.
until then..brokenness and agony.
i just want to be found in Him.
i reject just mental assent, 'belief'.
there must be DO,
there must be fruit.
believe obeys...
and i don't obey well.
massive failure...frail indications of having His Life
oh but He is so real
so surpassingly precious, loving, forgiving
yet also grieved, warning, gently guiding
sometimes forbidding, making impossible!
oh changeless One, please change me.
Monday, February 11, 2013
2.11.2012 HOW TO CHOOSE A CHURCH
in the moody monthly june 1986. by gene getz (additions of mine sprinkled throu
1. do the forms and structure of the church allow for a balance in
learning the word of God,
experiencing fellowship with one another
and time with God
and sharing Christ with others?
2. is the word of God taught clearly and regularly?
3. is the word taught with variety
through verse by verse, topical, biographical and dialogue etc.
or is church locked into one particular approach?
4. is there a balance in the teaching through all parts of the bible?
5. is teaching applied to right now...
is it applied to the regular life habits, the besetting sins of the listeners?
(if the 'teacher' is not regularly out in the homes
and taking an active, ongoing interest in lives of the sheep
ie.'where they are going' spiritually speaking
he won't know what needs to be spoken to,
he won't know the sins he needs to privately or publicly reprove.)
(note: those who are hireling and not true pastors (or spiritual
brothers/sisters) regularly stay away from those
who are crying out for their spiritual concern and demonstrated love.
too often it is
'i see no evil' with hands over the eyes;
i hear no evil with hands over the ears,
so i cannot speak of any evil with my mouth.')
6. does the church consistently and systematically disciple
those who are believers?
(note: this does not refer to mental knowledge but rather to
actual obedience in the doing. (how do i actually meditate on the word,
pray, rebuke sin in another believer...in general, do what God wants.)
7. do the structures of the church allow relationships with God
to grow naturally out of relationships with people?
8. do they allow communion to be a meaningful experience,
involving deep (and godly) relationships with other believers/unbelievers.
(note: for he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself,
if he does not judge (evaluate) the body (and his relationships with it)
rightly.
for this reason many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep.
(note: if every person is not in a correct relationship with every other person
it is deadly. see Jesus' concern in matthew 5.21-6 about this.)
9. is there weekly, vital, dynamic prayer taking place among the church there?
(note: is there a weekly public meeting
dedicated to nothing but real,united prayer?
(ie. pray your requests, don't tell them...others can get in touch to
find out more info and pray with you personally at other times...unless you
are all of one mind to continue the public meeting until all is spoken and
adequately prayed for as a group.)
10. is giving spontaneous, regular and joyful
meant to meet the needs of people?
(note: in other what percentage of the group's giving
goes to themselves and what percentage goes outside the group?)
11. is the music balanced between songs and hymns that teach and admonish,
that exalt and glorify God? is there a variety of musical forms
or is it locked into a culturally conditioned style?
12. do church structures allow opportunities to share Christ with others,
or are people kept so busy in church meetings and events
that they don't have time to build bridges and witness to unbelievers
and neighbors?
13.does the church allow time for members to relate informally to one another
outside the church building
or do relationships consist of attending church meetings, sitting and listening?
14. do families have time to have regular morning and evening devotions
together?
or do the regular church structures compete with family life?
15. does the church allow for freedom in form?
(note: another way to state this:
is mostly everything that bears 'official' or 'approved'
top down,
roots up
or a spirit directed intermingling not untrue to the bible?)
16.
1. do the forms and structure of the church allow for a balance in
learning the word of God,
experiencing fellowship with one another
and time with God
and sharing Christ with others?
2. is the word of God taught clearly and regularly?
3. is the word taught with variety
through verse by verse, topical, biographical and dialogue etc.
or is church locked into one particular approach?
4. is there a balance in the teaching through all parts of the bible?
5. is teaching applied to right now...
is it applied to the regular life habits, the besetting sins of the listeners?
(if the 'teacher' is not regularly out in the homes
and taking an active, ongoing interest in lives of the sheep
ie.'where they are going' spiritually speaking
he won't know what needs to be spoken to,
he won't know the sins he needs to privately or publicly reprove.)
(note: those who are hireling and not true pastors (or spiritual
brothers/sisters) regularly stay away from those
who are crying out for their spiritual concern and demonstrated love.
too often it is
'i see no evil' with hands over the eyes;
i hear no evil with hands over the ears,
so i cannot speak of any evil with my mouth.')
6. does the church consistently and systematically disciple
those who are believers?
(note: this does not refer to mental knowledge but rather to
actual obedience in the doing. (how do i actually meditate on the word,
pray, rebuke sin in another believer...in general, do what God wants.)
7. do the structures of the church allow relationships with God
to grow naturally out of relationships with people?
8. do they allow communion to be a meaningful experience,
involving deep (and godly) relationships with other believers/unbelievers.
(note: for he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself,
if he does not judge (evaluate) the body (and his relationships with it)
rightly.
for this reason many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep.
(note: if every person is not in a correct relationship with every other person
it is deadly. see Jesus' concern in matthew 5.21-6 about this.)
9. is there weekly, vital, dynamic prayer taking place among the church there?
(note: is there a weekly public meeting
dedicated to nothing but real,united prayer?
(ie. pray your requests, don't tell them...others can get in touch to
find out more info and pray with you personally at other times...unless you
are all of one mind to continue the public meeting until all is spoken and
adequately prayed for as a group.)
10. is giving spontaneous, regular and joyful
meant to meet the needs of people?
(note: in other what percentage of the group's giving
goes to themselves and what percentage goes outside the group?)
11. is the music balanced between songs and hymns that teach and admonish,
that exalt and glorify God? is there a variety of musical forms
or is it locked into a culturally conditioned style?
12. do church structures allow opportunities to share Christ with others,
or are people kept so busy in church meetings and events
that they don't have time to build bridges and witness to unbelievers
and neighbors?
13.does the church allow time for members to relate informally to one another
outside the church building
or do relationships consist of attending church meetings, sitting and listening?
14. do families have time to have regular morning and evening devotions
together?
or do the regular church structures compete with family life?
15. does the church allow for freedom in form?
(note: another way to state this:
is mostly everything that bears 'official' or 'approved'
top down,
roots up
or a spirit directed intermingling not untrue to the bible?)
16.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
2.10.2013 PRACTICE RIGHTEOUSNESS
in article 'western civilization at the crossroads' by peter kreeft.
what kind of future awaits us?
what are our choices?
kreeft looks at lewis's view of the king of history we are creating..
...if the Enlightenment helped the modern world
discard notions of original sin and moral absolutes,
it also uprooted the foundations of truth and goodness.
unlike the medieval era, all we have left
are vague political and psychological notions of what works efficiently.
technology has replaced religion as our civilization's summum bonum.
naturalism has replaced supernaturalism.
subjectivism has defined a new age of moral relativity.
'the abolition of Man' contains the most important and enlightening
single statement about our civilization that i have ever read,
'there is something which unites magic and applied science
while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages:
for the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been
how to conform the soul to reality ,
and the solution had been knowledge, self discipline and virtue;
for magic and applied science alike
the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men
and the solution is a technique.
aristotle listed technique, technical knowledge, know how,
third on the hierarchy of values after
contemplation of truth and practical knowledge or knowledge for acting.
modernity simply turns this ancient hierarchy upside down.
..spiritual and physical destruction both loom large, and only minutes away.
to those concerned with peace in our world,
with survival,
with life,
lewis would give the following advice:
'perhaps the world will turn to God.
perhaps a few abrahams will appear to intercede with God
for our modern sodoms and gomorrahs,
and perhaps God will find enough righteous men in them to spare them.
they almost made it last time-
if there had been only ten good men in them,
God would have spared two cities!
the most important thing for each of us to do to save the world...
is to practice righteousness
to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength
and our neighbor as ourself.
you the individual can make the difference.
what kind of future awaits us?
what are our choices?
kreeft looks at lewis's view of the king of history we are creating..
...if the Enlightenment helped the modern world
discard notions of original sin and moral absolutes,
it also uprooted the foundations of truth and goodness.
unlike the medieval era, all we have left
are vague political and psychological notions of what works efficiently.
technology has replaced religion as our civilization's summum bonum.
naturalism has replaced supernaturalism.
subjectivism has defined a new age of moral relativity.
'the abolition of Man' contains the most important and enlightening
single statement about our civilization that i have ever read,
'there is something which unites magic and applied science
while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages:
for the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been
how to conform the soul to reality ,
and the solution had been knowledge, self discipline and virtue;
for magic and applied science alike
the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men
and the solution is a technique.
aristotle listed technique, technical knowledge, know how,
third on the hierarchy of values after
contemplation of truth and practical knowledge or knowledge for acting.
modernity simply turns this ancient hierarchy upside down.
..spiritual and physical destruction both loom large, and only minutes away.
to those concerned with peace in our world,
with survival,
with life,
lewis would give the following advice:
'perhaps the world will turn to God.
perhaps a few abrahams will appear to intercede with God
for our modern sodoms and gomorrahs,
and perhaps God will find enough righteous men in them to spare them.
they almost made it last time-
if there had been only ten good men in them,
God would have spared two cities!
the most important thing for each of us to do to save the world...
is to practice righteousness
to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength
and our neighbor as ourself.
you the individual can make the difference.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
2.9.2013 C.S. LEWIS on HAPPINESS
the last published article by lewis before his death asked:
have we no 'right' to happiness?
after all, said clare, they had a right to happiness.
we were discussing something that once happened in our own neighborhood.
mr. a had deserted mrs. a
and got his divorce
in order to marry mrs. b,
who had likewise go her divorce
in order to marry mr. a.
and there was certainly no doubt
that mr. a and mrs. b were very much in love with one another.
if they continued to be in love.
and if nothing went wrong with their health or their income,
they might reasonably expect to be very happy.
it was equally clear that they were not happy
with their old partners.
mus. b had adored her husband at the outset.
but then he got smashed up in the war.
it was though he had lost his virility,
and it was known that he had lost his job.
life with him was no longer what
mrs. b bargained for.
poor mrs. a, too.
she had lost her looks-
and all her liveliness.
it might be true, as some said,
that she consumed herself by bearing his children
and nursing him through the long illness
that overshadowed their earlier married life.
you mustn't, by the way imagine that a
was the sort of man who nonchalantly threw a wife away
like the peel of an orange he'd sucked dry.
her suicide was a terrible shock to him.
we all knew this, for he told us so himself.
but what could i do? he said.
a man has a right to happiness.
i had to take my one chance when it came.
i went away thinking about the concept of
a 'right to happiness'.
at first this sounds to me as odd as
a right to good luck.
for i believe-whatever one school of moralists may say-
that we depend for a very great deal of our happiness or misery
on circumstances outside all human control.
a right to happiness doesn't, for me,make much more sense than
a right to be 6 feet tall
or have a millionaire for your father,
or to get good weather whenever you want to have a picnic.
i can understand a right as a freedom guaranteed me
by the laws of the society i live in.
thus, i have a right to travel along the public roads
because society gives me that freedom;
that's what we mean by calling the roads 'public'.
i can also understand a right as a claim guaranteed me by the laws.
and correlative to an obligation on someone else's part.
if i have a right to receive $100 from you,
this is another way of saying that you have a duty to pay me $100.
if the laws allow mr. a to desert his wife
and seduce his neighbor's wife, then, by definition,
mr. a has a legal right to do so,
and we need bring in no talk about happiness.
but of course that was not what clare meant.
she meant that he had not only a legal
but a moral right to act as he did.
in other words, clare is, or would be if she thought it out-
a classical moralist
after the style of thomas aqinas, grotius, hooker and locke.
she believes that behind the laws of the state there is a
Natural Law.
i agree with her.
i hold this conception to be basic to all civilization.
without it, the actual laws of the state become
an absolute,
as in hegel.
they cannot be criticized
because there is no norm against which
they should be judged.
the ancestry of clare's maxim,
'they have a right to happiness',
is august.
in words that are chrished by all civilized men,
but especially by americans,
it has been laid down that one of the rights of man is
a right to 'the pursuit of happiness'.
and now we get to the real point.
what did the writers of that august declaration mena?
it is quite certain what they did not mean.
they did not mean that man was entitled to pursued happiness
by any and every means-
including, say,
murder, rape, robbery, treason and fraud.
no society could be built on such a basis.
they meant 'to pursue happiness by all lawful means';
that is, by all means which the law of nature eternally sanctions
and which the laws of the nation shall sanction.
admittedly this seems at first to reduce their maxim to the tautology
that men (in pursuit of happiness)
have a right to do.
but tautologies, seen against their proper historical context,
are not always barren tautologies.
the declaration is primarily a denial of the political principles
which long governed europe;
a challenge flung down to the austrian and russian empires,
to england before the reform bills,
to bourbon france.
it demands that whatever means of pursuing happiness are lawful for any
should be lawful for all:
that 'man', not men of some particular cast, class, status or religion,
should be free to use them.
in a century when this is being unsaid by nation after nation
and party after party,
let us not call it a barren tautology.
but the question as to what means are 'lawful'-
what methods of pursuing happiness are either morally permissible
by the law of nature
or should be declared legally permissible
by the legislature of a particular nation-
remains exactly where it did.
and on that question i disagree with clare.
i don't think it is obvious that people
have the unlimited 'right to happiness'
which she suggests.
for one thing, i believe that clare,
when she says 'happiness'
means simply and solely 'sexual happiness'.
partly because women like clare
never use the word 'happiness in any other sense.
but also because i never heard clare
talk about the 'right' to any other kind.
she was rather leftist in her politics,
and would have been scandalized
if anyone had defended the actions of a ruthless
man eating tycoon
on the ground that his
consisted in making money and he was persuing his happiness.
she was also a rabid teetotaler;
i never heard her excuse an alcoholic
because he was happy when he was drunk.
a dood man of clare's friends,
and especially her female friends,
often felt-i've heard them say so-
that their own happiness would be perceptibly
increased
by boxing her ears.
i very much doubt if this would have brought
her theory of a right to happiness into play.
clare, in fact, is doing what the whole western world
seems to me
to have been doing for the last 40 odd years.
when i was a youngster,
all the progressive people were saying,
why all this prudery?
let us treat sex just as we treat all our other impulses.
i was simple minded enought to believe
they meant what they said.
i have discovered that they
meant exactly the opposite.
they meant that sex was to be treated
as no other impulse
in our nature
has ever been treated by
civilized people.
all the others, we admit,
have been bridled.
absolute obedience to your instinct for self preservation
is what we call cowardice;
to your acquisitive impulse, avarice.
even sleep must be resisted if you're a sentry.
but every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned
provided that the object aimed at is
'four bare legs in a bed'.
it is like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong-
unless you steal nectarines.
and if you protest against this view
you are usually met with chatter about
the legitimacy and beauty and sanctity
of 'sex'
and accused of harboring some puritan prejudice agains it
as something disreputable or shameful.
i deny the charge.
foam born venus...
golden aphrodite...
our lady of cyprus...
i never breathed a word against you.
if i object to boys who steal my nectarines,
must i be supposed to disapprove of nectarines in general?
or even of boys in general?
it might, you know, be stealing i disapproved of.
the real situation is skillfully concealed by saying
that the question of mr. a's 'right' to desert his wife
is one of 'sexual morality'.
robbing an orchard is not an offense against some special morality
called 'fruit morality'.
it is an offense against honesty.
mr. a's action is an offense against good faith
(to solemn promises),
against gratitude
(toward one to whom he was deeply indebted)
and against common humanity.
our sexual impulses are thus being put in a position of preposterous privilege.
the sexual motive is taken to condone all sorts of behavior which,
if it had any other end in view,
would be condemned as
merciless,
treacherous
unjust.
now though i see no good reason for giving sex this privilege,
i think i see a strong cause.
it is this.
it is part of the nature of a strong erotic passion-
as distinct from a transient fit of appetite-
that makes more towering promises than any other emotion.
no doubt all our desires makes promises,
but not so impressively.
to be in love involves the almost irresistible conviction
that one will go on being in love until one dies,
and that possession of the beloved will confer,
not merely frequent ecstasies,
but settled, fruitful, deep rooted. lifelong happiness.
hence all seems to be at stake.
if we miss this chance we shall have lived in vain.
tat the very thought of such a doom
we sink into fathomless depths of self pity.
unfortunately these promises are found often to be quite untrue.
every experienced adult knows this to be so
as regards erotic passions
(except the one he himself is feeling at the moment).
we discount the world without end pretensions of our friends' amours
easily enough.
we know that such things sometimes last-
and sometimes don't.
and when they do last,
this is not because they promised at the outset to do so.
when two people achieve lasting happiness,
this is not solely because they are great lovers
but because they are also-
i must put it crudely-
good people;
controlled, loyal, fair minded, mutually adaptable people.
if we establish a 'right to (sexual) happiness
which supersedes all the ordinary rules of behavior,
we do so not because of what our passion
shows itself to be the experience
but because of what it professes to be while we are in the grip of it.
hence. while the bad behavior is real and works miseries and degradations,
the happiness which was the object of the behavior turns out
again and again to be illusory.
everyone (except mr. a and mrs. b)
knows that mr. a in a year or so may have the same reason
for deserting his new wife as for deserting his old.
he will see himself again as the great lover,
and his pity for himself will exclude all pity for the woman.
two further points remain. one is this.
a society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated
must always be in the long run a society
adverse to women.
women, whatever a few male songs and satires
may say to the contrary,
are more naturally monogamous than men;
it is a biological necessity.
where promiscuity prevails,
they will therefore always be more often
the victims that the culprits.
also, domestic happiness is more necessary to them
than to us.
and the quality by which they most easily hold a man,
their beauty,
decreases every year after they have come to maturity,
but this does not happen to those qualities of personality
(women don't really care two cents about our looks)
by which we hold women.\
thus in the ruthless war of promiscuity
women are at a double disadvantage.
they play for higher stakes and are also more likely to lose.
i have no sympathy with moralists
who frown at the increasing crudity of female provocativeness.
these signs of desperate competition
fill me with pity.
secondly, though the 'right to happiness'
is chiefly claimed for the sexual impulse,
it seems to be impossible that the matter should stay there.
the fatal principle, once allowed in that department,
must sooner or later seep through our whole lives.
we thus advance toward a state of society in which
not only each man but every impulse in each man
claims carte blanche.
and then, though our technological skill may help us survive a little longer,
our civilization will have
died at heart,
and will- one dare not even add 'unfortunately'
-be swept away.
have we no 'right' to happiness?
after all, said clare, they had a right to happiness.
we were discussing something that once happened in our own neighborhood.
mr. a had deserted mrs. a
and got his divorce
in order to marry mrs. b,
who had likewise go her divorce
in order to marry mr. a.
and there was certainly no doubt
that mr. a and mrs. b were very much in love with one another.
if they continued to be in love.
and if nothing went wrong with their health or their income,
they might reasonably expect to be very happy.
it was equally clear that they were not happy
with their old partners.
mus. b had adored her husband at the outset.
but then he got smashed up in the war.
it was though he had lost his virility,
and it was known that he had lost his job.
life with him was no longer what
mrs. b bargained for.
poor mrs. a, too.
she had lost her looks-
and all her liveliness.
it might be true, as some said,
that she consumed herself by bearing his children
and nursing him through the long illness
that overshadowed their earlier married life.
you mustn't, by the way imagine that a
was the sort of man who nonchalantly threw a wife away
like the peel of an orange he'd sucked dry.
her suicide was a terrible shock to him.
we all knew this, for he told us so himself.
but what could i do? he said.
a man has a right to happiness.
i had to take my one chance when it came.
i went away thinking about the concept of
a 'right to happiness'.
at first this sounds to me as odd as
a right to good luck.
for i believe-whatever one school of moralists may say-
that we depend for a very great deal of our happiness or misery
on circumstances outside all human control.
a right to happiness doesn't, for me,make much more sense than
a right to be 6 feet tall
or have a millionaire for your father,
or to get good weather whenever you want to have a picnic.
i can understand a right as a freedom guaranteed me
by the laws of the society i live in.
thus, i have a right to travel along the public roads
because society gives me that freedom;
that's what we mean by calling the roads 'public'.
i can also understand a right as a claim guaranteed me by the laws.
and correlative to an obligation on someone else's part.
if i have a right to receive $100 from you,
this is another way of saying that you have a duty to pay me $100.
if the laws allow mr. a to desert his wife
and seduce his neighbor's wife, then, by definition,
mr. a has a legal right to do so,
and we need bring in no talk about happiness.
but of course that was not what clare meant.
she meant that he had not only a legal
but a moral right to act as he did.
in other words, clare is, or would be if she thought it out-
a classical moralist
after the style of thomas aqinas, grotius, hooker and locke.
she believes that behind the laws of the state there is a
Natural Law.
i agree with her.
i hold this conception to be basic to all civilization.
without it, the actual laws of the state become
an absolute,
as in hegel.
they cannot be criticized
because there is no norm against which
they should be judged.
the ancestry of clare's maxim,
'they have a right to happiness',
is august.
in words that are chrished by all civilized men,
but especially by americans,
it has been laid down that one of the rights of man is
a right to 'the pursuit of happiness'.
and now we get to the real point.
what did the writers of that august declaration mena?
it is quite certain what they did not mean.
they did not mean that man was entitled to pursued happiness
by any and every means-
including, say,
murder, rape, robbery, treason and fraud.
no society could be built on such a basis.
they meant 'to pursue happiness by all lawful means';
that is, by all means which the law of nature eternally sanctions
and which the laws of the nation shall sanction.
admittedly this seems at first to reduce their maxim to the tautology
that men (in pursuit of happiness)
have a right to do.
but tautologies, seen against their proper historical context,
are not always barren tautologies.
the declaration is primarily a denial of the political principles
which long governed europe;
a challenge flung down to the austrian and russian empires,
to england before the reform bills,
to bourbon france.
it demands that whatever means of pursuing happiness are lawful for any
should be lawful for all:
that 'man', not men of some particular cast, class, status or religion,
should be free to use them.
in a century when this is being unsaid by nation after nation
and party after party,
let us not call it a barren tautology.
but the question as to what means are 'lawful'-
what methods of pursuing happiness are either morally permissible
by the law of nature
or should be declared legally permissible
by the legislature of a particular nation-
remains exactly where it did.
and on that question i disagree with clare.
i don't think it is obvious that people
have the unlimited 'right to happiness'
which she suggests.
for one thing, i believe that clare,
when she says 'happiness'
means simply and solely 'sexual happiness'.
partly because women like clare
never use the word 'happiness in any other sense.
but also because i never heard clare
talk about the 'right' to any other kind.
she was rather leftist in her politics,
and would have been scandalized
if anyone had defended the actions of a ruthless
man eating tycoon
on the ground that his
consisted in making money and he was persuing his happiness.
she was also a rabid teetotaler;
i never heard her excuse an alcoholic
because he was happy when he was drunk.
a dood man of clare's friends,
and especially her female friends,
often felt-i've heard them say so-
that their own happiness would be perceptibly
increased
by boxing her ears.
i very much doubt if this would have brought
her theory of a right to happiness into play.
clare, in fact, is doing what the whole western world
seems to me
to have been doing for the last 40 odd years.
when i was a youngster,
all the progressive people were saying,
why all this prudery?
let us treat sex just as we treat all our other impulses.
i was simple minded enought to believe
they meant what they said.
i have discovered that they
meant exactly the opposite.
they meant that sex was to be treated
as no other impulse
in our nature
has ever been treated by
civilized people.
all the others, we admit,
have been bridled.
absolute obedience to your instinct for self preservation
is what we call cowardice;
to your acquisitive impulse, avarice.
even sleep must be resisted if you're a sentry.
but every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned
provided that the object aimed at is
'four bare legs in a bed'.
it is like having a morality in which stealing fruit is considered wrong-
unless you steal nectarines.
and if you protest against this view
you are usually met with chatter about
the legitimacy and beauty and sanctity
of 'sex'
and accused of harboring some puritan prejudice agains it
as something disreputable or shameful.
i deny the charge.
foam born venus...
golden aphrodite...
our lady of cyprus...
i never breathed a word against you.
if i object to boys who steal my nectarines,
must i be supposed to disapprove of nectarines in general?
or even of boys in general?
it might, you know, be stealing i disapproved of.
the real situation is skillfully concealed by saying
that the question of mr. a's 'right' to desert his wife
is one of 'sexual morality'.
robbing an orchard is not an offense against some special morality
called 'fruit morality'.
it is an offense against honesty.
mr. a's action is an offense against good faith
(to solemn promises),
against gratitude
(toward one to whom he was deeply indebted)
and against common humanity.
our sexual impulses are thus being put in a position of preposterous privilege.
the sexual motive is taken to condone all sorts of behavior which,
if it had any other end in view,
would be condemned as
merciless,
treacherous
unjust.
now though i see no good reason for giving sex this privilege,
i think i see a strong cause.
it is this.
it is part of the nature of a strong erotic passion-
as distinct from a transient fit of appetite-
that makes more towering promises than any other emotion.
no doubt all our desires makes promises,
but not so impressively.
to be in love involves the almost irresistible conviction
that one will go on being in love until one dies,
and that possession of the beloved will confer,
not merely frequent ecstasies,
but settled, fruitful, deep rooted. lifelong happiness.
hence all seems to be at stake.
if we miss this chance we shall have lived in vain.
tat the very thought of such a doom
we sink into fathomless depths of self pity.
unfortunately these promises are found often to be quite untrue.
every experienced adult knows this to be so
as regards erotic passions
(except the one he himself is feeling at the moment).
we discount the world without end pretensions of our friends' amours
easily enough.
we know that such things sometimes last-
and sometimes don't.
and when they do last,
this is not because they promised at the outset to do so.
when two people achieve lasting happiness,
this is not solely because they are great lovers
but because they are also-
i must put it crudely-
good people;
controlled, loyal, fair minded, mutually adaptable people.
if we establish a 'right to (sexual) happiness
which supersedes all the ordinary rules of behavior,
we do so not because of what our passion
shows itself to be the experience
but because of what it professes to be while we are in the grip of it.
hence. while the bad behavior is real and works miseries and degradations,
the happiness which was the object of the behavior turns out
again and again to be illusory.
everyone (except mr. a and mrs. b)
knows that mr. a in a year or so may have the same reason
for deserting his new wife as for deserting his old.
he will see himself again as the great lover,
and his pity for himself will exclude all pity for the woman.
two further points remain. one is this.
a society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated
must always be in the long run a society
adverse to women.
women, whatever a few male songs and satires
may say to the contrary,
are more naturally monogamous than men;
it is a biological necessity.
where promiscuity prevails,
they will therefore always be more often
the victims that the culprits.
also, domestic happiness is more necessary to them
than to us.
and the quality by which they most easily hold a man,
their beauty,
decreases every year after they have come to maturity,
but this does not happen to those qualities of personality
(women don't really care two cents about our looks)
by which we hold women.\
thus in the ruthless war of promiscuity
women are at a double disadvantage.
they play for higher stakes and are also more likely to lose.
i have no sympathy with moralists
who frown at the increasing crudity of female provocativeness.
these signs of desperate competition
fill me with pity.
secondly, though the 'right to happiness'
is chiefly claimed for the sexual impulse,
it seems to be impossible that the matter should stay there.
the fatal principle, once allowed in that department,
must sooner or later seep through our whole lives.
we thus advance toward a state of society in which
not only each man but every impulse in each man
claims carte blanche.
and then, though our technological skill may help us survive a little longer,
our civilization will have
died at heart,
and will- one dare not even add 'unfortunately'
-be swept away.
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