Oh Inconsistent Me

For those of you who haven't picked up on it just yet, the reason I don't post much on here is because I do almost all of my posting here:

www.wieldingthesword.blogspot.com ;) have fun.

I believe Martyn Lloyd-Jones said it perfectly:

"...the greatest need of the hour is a revived and joyful Church... Nothing is more important... than that we should be delivered from a condition which gives other people looking at us, the impression that to be a Christian means to be unhappy, to be sad, to be morbid, and that the Christian is one who 'scorns delights and lives laborious days'... Christian people too often seem to be perpetually in the doldrums and too often give this appearance of unhappiness and lack of freedom and absence of joy.  There is no question at all but that this is the main reason why large numbers of people have ceased to be interested in Christianity."

I hesitate to say it is the MAIN reason, but in reality, he is right!  What are our lives showing the world about Christ? Are they screaming out, "He is more delightful and more fulfilling than sex and pornography and alcohol and drugs and relationships and work and philosophy and food and money? Compared to all other things in existence, He is the greatest!"? If not, why are we not? Is it perhaps that WE OURSELVES have not yet come to believe it? How can we bring people, whose main goal in life is to be satisfied, to the all-satisfying Christ, when we don't SHOW by the way we live that He IS what truly is all-satisfying? Yes, may we be broken and mourning over our sin, but may we rejoice with praise unheard of for the grace that has been given to us.

"True repentance has a distinct and constant reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. If you repent of sin without looking to Christ, away with your repentance. If you are so lamenting your sin as to forget the Savior, you have a need to begin all this work over again. Whenever we repent of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross; or, better still, let us have both eyes upon Christ, seeing our sin punished in him, and by no means let us look at sin except as we look at Jesus. A man may hate sin just as a murder hates the gallows but this does not prove repentance if I hate sin because of the punishment, I have not repented of sin; I merely regret that God is just.

But if I can see sin as an offense against Jesus Christ, and loathe myself because I have wounded him, then I have a true brokenness of heart. If I see the Savior and believe that those thorns upon his head were put there by my sinful words; if I believe that those wounds in his heart were made by my heart-sins; if I believe that those wounds in his feet were made by my wandering steps, and that the wounds in his hands were made by my sinful deeds, then I repent after a right fashion. Only under the cross can you repent. Repentance elsewhere is remorse, which clings to the sin and only dreads the punishment. Let us then seek, under God, to have a hatred of sin caused by a sight of Christ's love."

-Charles Spurgeon

I've been thinking about this more and more...there is a magnificent paradox when we walk in brokenness before the Lord. 

On one hand, we are so sick of ourselves, so full of sorrow over our sinful nature and our inability to live righteously that we cannot even bear to live with ourselves.

We are as Isaiah, crying out, "Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts." (Isaiah 6:5)

And we are as Paul, mourning, " O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24)

And we are as the tax collector, beating on his chest, pleading, "God be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13)

And we are as Job, admitting, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eyes sees You.  Therefore, I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:6)

And we are as Peter, who, after denying his Lord three times, "went out and wept bitterly." (Luke 22:62)

And we are as David dismaying, "For my iniquities have gone over my head; Like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me... For I am ready to fall, And my sorrow is continually before me.  For I will declare my iniquity; I will be in anguish over my sin." (Psalm 38:4,17-18)

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And on the other hand, we are overflowing with joy, consumed in worship, extolling the Lord with every word coming off of our lips because in our utter sinfulness, He is merciful beyond understanding.

We are as Paul, who right after asking his question in Romans 7:24, answers it, "I THANK GOD- THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD!" (Romans 7:25)

We are as the apostles, who were "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." (II Corinthians 6:10)

We are as the people Jesus called blessed when He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit...blessed are those who mourn...blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." (Matthew 5:3a, 4a, 6a)

When all self-sufficiency gives way and we see ourselves as we truly are, Christ then becomes all the more satisfying, all the more beautiful, all the more desirable, all the more perfect and holy and righteous.  He is everything we lack, and though we hate ourselves at that moment, we love and cannot help but praise Him for being so much more than us.