Take Note: Watchman Nee

Watchman Nee:

"The Lord is all and in all.  If today I am patient, it is not I but He who lives in me who is patient.  If today I love, it is not because I try my best to love, for the power of love is not in me; but it is because there is One who loves in me.  If today I am humble, it is not because I remind myself how proud I am and, therefore need to be humble.  He is my humility, therefore I am humble."

Romans 8: 1-11

Such Truth.

Take Note: Paige Benton Brown

This past weekend The Gospel Coalition held a conference for women in Orlando!

Source.

My discipler got to go, so for a lot more and accurate notes and more reflective wisdom, check out her upcoming posts :)

The conference's main sessions were streamed LIVE--words cannot express how happy I was/am about this.  The way I worship, fear, and view God has been shifted.  This brings Him more glory, and for that, I am so so grateful.

I only got to watch about four (I say about because I was only half-listening to one) talks, but my favorite one that I got to hear was Paige Benton Brown's, In the Temple: The Glorious and Forgiving God.

Source.

She taught from 1 Kings 8:1-30, 52-63.  And she spoke for over an hour.  And none of it was boring.  Impressive.

A few great points/quotes:

- All other religions present a relationship between god and his people that is causative--If you do ____, god will give you ____. 

- Christianity presents a relationship between God and His people that is contradictory -- He says that we have done nothing to merit His love, favor, mercy, etc...yet He freely gives it as a gift despite our failure. 

- She referenced verses 27-28: "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You; how much less this house I have built? Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O Lord my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before You this day." 

- That "Yet" is huge -- it indicates that Solomon knows he does not deserve answered prayer, or anything good, from God, yet he asks for it, knowing that God keeps His promises: "'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who with His hand has fulfilled what He has promised with His mouth to David...'" (v. 15). 

- God keeps His promises; therefore we can trust Him. 

- The purpose of God's will is relationship, not forgiveness.  Forgiveness is required for relationship. 

- He gives up His rightful throne to take on my rightful Cross. 

- As the temples was the dwelling place of God, now because of Jesus, WE are the temples in which God dwells. 

- Does my hatred, jealousy, doubt square with the fact that I house the glory of God? 

- Work, reason, wrestle FROM the "templeness" that Jesus has given to us, not TO it--you can't.

- He tells us to "...be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18) -- therefore, if we are filled, "there ain't no room for anything else." 

- Being a temples of the living God changes the amount of time I spend investing in the way that I look, how I spend money, etc. 

- There is no room for the attitude that "the way I spend my money, time, and efforts is up to me, because He fills ALL of it.  

I have never before considered, to this degree, that I am a temple of God.  Not as some princess-like jewel that God doesn't want anyone to scratch, but I literally house the presence of God.  Therefore, fickle discipline and doubt of God's sovereignty is laughable; my prideful desire for control and fear at the thought of relinquishing control seems not just erroneous, but ugly.

I am always more wretched that I think I am; He is always more good, more holy, and more glorious than I think He is.

Take Note: Paul

These words have been putting my type-A, success-driven, fearful, results-seeking heart to rest.

{Romans 4:1-8}

Jesus is my righteousness; not me.

Be still me heart.

Take Note: Relationships

Relationships are huge to me.  For one, relationships, by and large, are enjoyable to me.  People are interesting; conversation is interesting, and holds my attention.  

With that in mind, engaging in relationships is necessary as a human, and commanded by God for believers.

Relationships: A Mess Worth Making is a book that my mentor gave me months some time ago that I have yet to return. 

I was reading it yesterday, and stumbled across this:

This quote was extremely relevant to a sermon that I had watched a few hours prior that the small groups pastor at my church, Spence Shelton, gave last week.  His message was on the community of believers and how integral it is to our walks with Christ.  

Hebrews 3:12-14 says:

"Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.  But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.  For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end."

Spence explained that we must share our thoughts, sin, disappointments, marriages, and relationships with other believers--to prevent any one from "[falling] away from the living God."  We also must "exhort one another every day", to remind each other that Christ is better.  He is better than financial; marital; relational; personal success.  We are sons and daughters that have the privilege of laboring for our King who rescued us.  

We must confess to, share with, and exhort one another.

Relationships are for the purposes of sanctification and witness to the Gospel.

They are not supposed to make us uncomfortable--that is where our sin destroys God's perfect design.

Spence stated that when you are finally known for who you really are and you experience love and not condemnation, you experience the Gospel...and it changes you.

Take Note: Charles Spurgeon

Charles Spurgeon was a 19th century British Baptist pastor whose fervor for the Risen Jesus is something by which believers are still inspired and challenged.

The following is an excerpt from a sermon he delivered on August 1, 1875.  The sermon was entitled "The Choice of a Leader."

"We must be all conscious that we imitate those whom we admire. Love has a strange influence over our nature, to mould it into the form beloved. A true disciple is like clay on the wheel, and his Master fashions him after his own image. We may be scarcely conscious of it, but we are most surely being conformed to the likeness of those to whose influence we submit ourselves.

"Whoever then your Master may be, dear friend, you are changing into his image: if you choose to be led by the votary of pleasure, you will become more and more frivolous; if you admire the slave of avarice, you will become avaricious, if you feel the sway of the minion of vice, you will grow vicious yourself. If a man who despises the word of God becomes your hero, you will ere long despise it too: while men are gazing upon him with admiration, a kind of photography is going on, and you, like a sensitive plate, receive his image. I charge you, therefore, to be careful who becomes your guide."

I need to preach this to myself daily.  Every influence I submit myself to should be intentional, so as to refine my character and labor for Christ's fame.  Though I deem the influence to which I submit myself is mostly aware of sin and worshipful of Jesus, I need to constantly check myself.  Am I actually worshipping Jesus?  Or am I worshipping someone(s) who love Him?


I am extremely apt to people please and therefore need to ensure that I am aiming to please and give glory to the Giver of Life, not another person.


Jesus is my treasure, my hope, and my rock.  He died for me; He took my place--no one else did that.  Submitting to church authority and seeking wise council is a part of submitting to God, but I need to remind myself that Jesus pursued me before anyone else did.  I need to study Him before I can study another's thoughts.


He is the perfect example of fulfilling the law; no other person has done or will ever do this.


My life is hid with Him; I will give an account to Him and Him alone.

Take Note: Tim Keller

My pastor often refers to Dr. Keller as “Yoda”. I wouldn’t disagree.

Tim’s points:

- All religions cannot be equally right–Christianity is either false and irrelvant or true.

- All religions cannot be equally wrong–there is a single truth.  Stating that no religion has all the “parts” of “truth” is a claim of truth in and of itself.

“A fact isn’t narrow…it’s a fact that you’re going to wither and die if you don’t eat.  It’s not narrow, it’s just a fact.  And if Jesus Christ is the Son of God, your soul will shrivel without Him, and you’ll die.  And that’s not narrow, it’s just a fact.”

“What you really need in this world is people who’ve got an exclusive truth that humbles them.”

Yoda, I tell ya.

Take Note: A. W. Tozer

This past Christmas break, Bradley and I drove up to RDU early on Sunday morning to go to our church.  That particular morning, Matt Papa, a worship leader at the Summit preached. He preached Jesus–and that is what I most recall.

In the conclusion of his sermon, he quoted A. W. Tozer when he said:

“I think it would be a wonderful thing if every preacher in America would begin to preach about God and nothing else for one solid year.  Just one solid year to preach about God.  Who He is, His attributes, His perfections, His being, the kind of God He is, why we dare to trust Him, why we can trust Him, why we should trust Him, why we can love Him, why we should love Him, why we dare not fall short.  And keep on preaching on God, the triune God, and keep on until God fills the whole horizon and the whole world.  Faith would spring up like grass by the watercourses.  Then let a man get up and preach a promise and the whole congregation would say, ‘I can trust that promise; look who made it.’”

I pray that all church leaders and believers would be filled with the Holy Spirit enough so that Jesus and our desperate need for Him would be proclaimed and received–over and over again.

May “faith spring up like grass by the watercourses”; may you use us, Lord.