Jeff Ling

“The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton. In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself.

You hold your breath to listen.

You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart…The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.”

— Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark, pp. 2,3

The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place.

When they knew God, wrote Paul, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Then followed the worship of idols fashioned after the likeness of men and birds and beasts and creeping things. But this series of degrading acts began in the mind. Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.

Perverted notions about God soon rot the religion in which they appear. The long career of Israel demonstrates this clearly enough, and the history of the Church confirms it. So necessary to the Church is a lofty concept of God that when that concept in any measure declines, the Church with her worship and her moral standards declines along with it. The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God.

Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, What is God like?and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind.

The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him – and of her. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place. We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past.

- A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (emphasis added)

In his book What Did You Expect?: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage
Paul David Tripp offers the following on forgiveness:

“A lifestyle of unforgiveness is rooted in the sin of forgetfulness.

We forget that there is not a day in our lives that we do not need to be forgiven. We forget that we will never graduate from our need for grace. We forget that we have been loved with a love we could never earn, achieve, or deserve. We forget that God never mocks our weakness, never finds joy in throwing our failures in our face, never threatens to turn His back on us, and never makes us buy our way back into His favor.

When you remember, when you carry with you a deep appreciation for the grace that you have been given, you’ll have a heart that is ready to forgive.

That doesn’t mean that the process will be comfortable or easy, but it will mean that you can approach your needy spouse remembering that you are just as in need of what you’re about to give to him or her.”

Tripp writes this in a book about marriage but could not the word “spouse” be substituted with friend, co-worker, parent or child? I pray for us all, a grace of forgiveness rooted in remembering who we are before the throne of God’s holiness and the cross of His love.

“The question has been discussed: which is prior, faith or repentance? It is an unnecessary question and the insistence that one is prior to the other is futile. There is no priority. The faith that is unto salvation is a penitent faith and the repentance that is unto life is a believing repentance… It is impossible to disentangle faith and repentance. Saving faith is permeated with repentance and repentance is permeated with faith.”

- John Murray

These are actual conditions…
Fear of Chickens : Alektorophobia
Fear of Bald People: Peladophobia
Fear of the Pope: Papaphobia
Fear of walking: Ambulophobia
Fear of Heaven: Ouranophobia

These are irrational fears. Rational fears make more sense – keeps me from jumping off of tall buildings or trying out snake handling. Holy fear makes the most sense of all for it liberates rather than enslaves. Proverbs 1:7 – “Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. Only fools despise wisdom and discipline.”

Sadly, I find myself playing the fool way to often. What a waste of time and energy. In His love I’m free. In His true path I am liberated. The fear of the Lord is the fear I need.

Take heed to yourselves, lest you live in those sins which you preach against in others, and lest you be guilty of that which daily you condemn. (Ro 2:1) Will you make it your work to magnify God, and, when you have done, dishonor him as much as others? Will you proclaim Christ’s governing power, and yet condemn it, and rebel yourselves? Will you preach his laws, and willfully break them? If sin be evil, why do you live in it? If it be not, why do you dissuade men from it? If it be dangerous, how dare you venture on it? If it be not, why do you tell men so? If God’s threatenings be true, why do you not fear them? If they be false, why do you needlessly trouble men with them, and put them into such frights without a cause? Do you “know the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death;” and yet will you do them? “Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?  Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, or be drunk, or covetous, art thou such thyself?  Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?” (Ro 1:32; Ro 2:17; Ro 2:21, Ro 2:22, Ro 2:23, Ro 2:24) What! shall the same tongue speak evil that speakest against evil? Shall those lips censure, and slander, and backbite your neighbor, that cry down these and the like things in others? Take heed to yourselves, lest you cry down sin, and yet do not overcome it; lest, while you seek to bring it down in others, you bow to it, and become its slaves yourselves: “For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought into bondage.” “To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness.” O brethren! it is easier to chide at sin, than to overcome it. (2Pe 2:19; Ro 6:19)
- Richard Baxter,The Reformed Pastor