I was going to write a comment on Mike Ratliff’s site but decided to just reblog it. Too long. If you read it listen to his words of challenge. I write this to illustrate a bit of how I try to follow that exhortation.
I’m talking about getting into the Word of God, praying and worshipping Him. Fast and pray whenever possible. Start taking time away from feeding your flesh and give that time to God. Fast from the world and feast on God
I don’t have in special secret for doing this. Nor Mike’s gift in writing.
Thirty some years ago I went through a season of 10-15 years where I was actively pursuing this via the Techniques of Spiritual Formation, and I increasingly see people trying these ancient methods resurrected by our modern popular Christian leaders like Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, among many others. After many years I became concerned about those original sources of the Desert Fathers , and IGNATIUS LOYOLA. You can read about them in the links.
Plus the more I studied the more my concerns focused on the blending of Christianity with the Eastern Religious practices of mysticism, and how all this had an appearance of neo-Gnosticism, a new modern form of NEW Knowledge, lost, but recently rediscovered, ancient and good or perhaps better than our old ways of doing things, particularly our old Reformed teachings.
Most of this was with very good intent. But I was lead to a path that brought me back to the richness of historical reformed teaching.
It’s a difficult area to talk about since I know so many disagree and it’s complex because many of the practices are truly rooted in good Biblical terms like Mediation, and Prayer and Fasting…but I see something off in the emphasis on the techniques and those behind them.
As for me, I find I’m drawn to look more deeply into the Bible. And take the time to reflect upon passages I read, correlate them with other similar passages, or take some work like Mike’s post or a Spurgeon Devotion, etc and dig into it. I frequently, look up the scriptures quoted, read a good old commentary like John Gill’s. I could do more in the area of Prayer, especially praying that eyes can be open to God’s Word. Fasting, which is not about losing weight, but is about separating for a time from worldly activities, particularly ones that consume our time and mess with our minds and souls or just distract us from the Word, as such fasting is a good thing.
Anyway, that is way too much about me….
Mike’s post is framed around 1 John, and in chapter one John speaks about the light. (All verses are in the KJV, which closely parallel the Geneva Bible from which it was greatly influenced.)
Walking in the Light
1Jn 1:5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
1Jn 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
1Jn 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
1Jn 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
1Jn 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1Jn 1:10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
One can see that John goes into more detail about light but also darkness a theme he presented years before in his Gospel.
BTW…John is the focus of a year long Bible Study I’m doing with my wife…reading John’s Gospel and listening to the old Dr. S. Lewis Johnson sermons from the 80’s. He is a bit more concise (only 62) sermons, than the overwhelming (262) ones that Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones did twenty years earlier.
Jhn 1:4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
Jhn 1:5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
Jhn 1:6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
Jhn 1:7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
Jhn 1:8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
Jhn 1:9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
Jhn 1:10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
Jhn 1:11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
When John writes in 1 John:
1 John 3:1 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
Old John Gill describes this as…a process that actually leads to persecution…and this is one of the major reasons texts like this are not preached or studied in our “Visible” Churches today. Nobody wants to hear a message embracing persecution. I’ve made some recent posts about persecution and hell, you can look them up.
therefore the world knoweth us not; that is, the greater part of the world, the world that lies in wickedness, the men of the world, who have their portion in this life, whom the god of this world has blinded, and who only mind the things of the world, and are as when they came into it, and have their conversation according to the course of it; these do not know the saints are the sons of God; the new name of sons is what no man knoweth but he that receiveth it;
they do not own the saints as theirs, as belonging to them, but reckon them as the faith of the world, and the offscouring of all things; nor do they love them, and that because they are not their own, but hate them and persecute them: the reason is,
because it knew him not; neither the Father, whose sons they are, and who has bestowed the grace upon them; wherefore they know not, and disown and persecute his children; see Jhn 17:25;
nor the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, the firstborn among many brethren; who, though he made the world, and was in it, was not known by it, but was hated, abused, and persecuted; and therefore it need not seem strange that the saints, who are the sons of God by adoption, should be treated in like manner.
Mike wrote briefly about the condition of the modern church.
Genuine worship in spirit and truth is replaced with “entertaining” music accompanied with appropriate light shows and sound and visual effects. Instead of hearing the Law and Gospel preached as it should be with the emphasis on man’s depravity and utter separation from our Holy God by their sin with the only remedy being belief and repentance in light of our Lord Jesus Christ’s death on the cross in their place, fleshly crowds hear feel good sermons that attempt to market Christianity to people as if they were taking Jesus out for a test drive.
Are Christians called to be church going people who are bound to a certain local church financially, or are they called to walk in the Light?
I’d say one of the major areas missing today is the discussion of Sin, and the consequences thereof. It’s not a topic the world or even the church wants to hear.
The small Reformed Church I’m becoming more involved with is just starting a new Bible Study of an old book written in the 19th’s century.
The Grace of Christ
Sinners Saved by Unmerited Kindness
by William S. Plumer
“We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved.” Acts 15:11
The Introduction has these statements…
It ought not to be denied that there are difficulties in the way of every inquirer. The prejudices of men are strong and their passions violent. These mightily hinder our reception of the truth. The world also is full of error. Men love darkness rather than light. The friends of sound doctrine are often both timid and unresisting. The propagators of false notions are lively and confident. It is easy to embrace error. To know the right way demands patience, inquiry, humility. The great things of God are not to be learned by those who restrain prayer. How few men are found crying, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law!”
The salvation of the gospel is common to all, who are “sanctified by God the Father, preserved, in Jesus Christ, and called.” Jude 3. In this first Synod we have the Christian faith in epitome. From that age to the present, the true faith has often been obscured, marred and corrupted by many, yet it has always won the love and confidence of people and communities, just in proportion as they loved our Lord Jesus Christ, and abounded in the knowledge of his salvation. At times it has seemed as if all the world would soon be drunken with the sorcery of fatal error. But when the enemy has come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord has lifted up a standard against him; and the cause of truth and righteousness has revived.
I expect it to be a rich reading in which the author presents the essentials of Biblical Truth in a way that reflects the reformed teaching captured and summarized in the old Confessions and Catechisms, and texts like the Canons of Dort.
The Book is about God’s grace…but beware the first eleven chapters are on our sin. (Free copes are available online, or you can buy the book on Amazon)
Enjoy.
Rainbow Trout 