Defeated by Life?

There are only two ways to cope. Every one of us, at every point of adversity, goes in one direction or the other. Look to yourself, or look outside yourself. Either 'take control, raise your hands, get ride of it' or 'take it to the King.' The way of strife and misery or the way of relief and sanity. Our choice.

Jerry Root on C. S. Lewis

HT @TonyReinke

From the Man Who Preached 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God'

They that find Christ [discover that] though he be so glorious and excellent a person, yet they find him ready to receive such poor, worthless, hateful creatures as they are, which was unexpected to 'em. They are surprised with it.

They did not imagine that Christ was such a kind of person, a person of such grace. They heard he was an holy Savior and hated sin, and they did not imagine he would be so ready to receive such vile, wicked creatures as they. They thought he surely would never be willing to accept such provoking sinners, such guilty wretches, those that had such abominable hearts.

But behold, he is not a whit the more backward to receive 'em for that. They unexpectedly find him with open arms to embrace them, ready forever to forget all their sins as though they had never been. They find that he as it were runs to meet them, and makes 'em most welcome, and admits 'em not only to be his servants but his friends [Luke 15:11-24]. He lifts 'em out of the dust and sets 'em on his throne; he makes them the children of God; he speaks peace to them; he cheers and refreshes their hearts; he admits 'em unto strict union with himself, and gives the most joyful entertainment, and binds himself to them to be their friend forever.

So are they surprised with their entertainment. They never imagined to find Christ a person of such kind of love and grace as this. 'Tis beyond all imagination or conception.

--Jonathan Edwards, 'Seeking After Christ,' in Works, Yale ed., 22:290

Immanuel Theology Group 2013-14 (Nashville)

What Romans 8:28 Means

Things will be quiet around here for about three weeks as I head out of the country to do some teaching.

I sign off with a sentence I read this morning from Edwards which, if true, ought to root out all kinds of fear and despondency from our hearts as faltering children of God. He's reflecting on Romans 8:28.

Though it is to the eternal damage of the saints, ordinarily, when they yield to, and are overcome by temptations, yet Satan and other enemies of the saints by whom these temptations come, are always wholly disappointed in their temptations, and baffled in their design to hurt the saints, inasmuch as the temptation and the sin that comes by it, is for the saints' good, and they receive a greater benefit in the issue, than if the temptation had not been, and yet less than if the temptation had been overcome.

--Jonathan Edwards, letter to Thomas Gillespie, Scottish pastor, 1746; in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Yale ed., 2:488-89

That one sentence is worth at least three weeks' blogging.