Help from (John) Owen

I taught a Sunday school class on John Owen yesterday (he's a Puritan theologian that our family is particularly fond of), and in preparing for the class I started to re-read the first part of his book (or series of books), Overcoming Sin and Temptation, edited by Kelly Kapic and Justin Taylor. It's a fabulous book, and perhaps I'll say more about it as I begin to work back through it. Owen helped me this morning to more clearly see some truths in God's Word about my own sin and about the work of the Spirit within me, and I wanted to pass along a few of his summary statements in his exposition of Romans 8:13: "If you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body you shall live."

• "The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin" (p. 47).
• "The mortification of indwelling sin remaining in our mortal bodies, that it may not have life and power to bring forth the works or deeds of the flesh, is the constant duty of believers" (p. 49).
• "The vigor, power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh" (p. 49).
• "Indwelling sin is compared to a person, a living person, called 'the old man,' with his faculties and properties, his wisdom, craft, subtlety, strength; this, says the apostle, must be killed, put to death, mortified - that is, have its power, life, vigor, and strength to produce its effects taken away by the Spirit. It is, indeed, meritoriously, and by way of example, utterly mortified and slain by the cross of Christ; and the 'old man' is thence said to be 'crucified with Christ' (Rom. 6:6), and ourselves to be 'dead' with him (Rom. 6:8), and really initially in regeneration (Rom. 6:3-5), when a principle contrary to it and destructive of it (Gal. 5:17) is planted in our hearts; but the whole work is by degrees to be carried on toward perfection all our days" (p. 49).

More to come from (John) Owen...

More from Charles Brown

A well-put exhortation to feast on the Word of God:

"Dwell ever among the green pastures of the Word of God. Make it indeed your bosom companion. Feed on the Scriptures till they come to be incorporated with your spiritual being. Not only pray and read, but pray reading, with your Bible open before you, gazing into its exceeding great and precious things, waiting till you apprehend them, or rather, till they apprehend you - literally 'getting them by heart' (as our expressive phrase is) longing to say with David, 'I rejoice at thy word as one that findeth great spoil', and with Jeremiah, 'Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and they were unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart' (Psa. 119:162; Jer. 15:16)."

Weariness and worship

I've been reading a great little book recently called The Ministry, by Charles Brown, a Scottish pastor in the 1800s. Much of what he says applies directly to ministers, but also has relevance for all Christians. I might string together a few great quotes over the next few days for your edification.

This first one jumped off the page at me and got me thinking about its implications not for public worship (which was Brown's intention) but for private worship (personal Bible reading, prayer, meditation on the Bible reading, etc.). In speaking about the inordinate length of some public prayers, Brown cautioned, "When weariness begins, devotion ends." When weariness begins in the worshipper (due to "unduly prolonged prayers"), it dampens a devotional spirit in the worshipper.

Boy is that true in private worship as well, and in all of life. When we are weary and tired, it is so much harder for us to be attentive to God's Word and to be earnest in prayer. We are more prone to be downcast, and to listen to the inner sermon of unbelief rather than the refreshing and reinvigorating truth of the Word. I think we should praise God that our access to Him is based not on our physical or emotional condition, but on the finished work of our great high priest (Hebrews 4:14-16). And when we are weary, we should recognize our heightened vulnerability to fleshly-mindedness, and lean hard into the grace of God for help and strength.

Of Walmart and God's Calling

Our Super Walmart is a crazy place. Mysteriously, it is always crowded. It is a cross-cultural experience. It is a great training ground for virtues like patience and humility.

However, the one time (it seems) that it is not busy is early on Monday mornings, and therefore that is the time that Kristen and the boys typically do the weekly grocery shopping for our family. We usually have our regular morning routine all together, and then I leave for work at the same time they leave for the store (just before 8am). Kristen pulls out, then I pull out, and I follow them out of our court, down Gayton Road about a hundred feet, and then down Blue Jay Lane about a hundred feet, at which time Kristen turns right, and I keep going straight. That moment is often a defining moment in my week.

It's at that moment that I'm often awakened to the fact that we are called by God to do the things we are doing. In God's wise providence, He has called me to be a pastor (among other things), and He has called Kristen to be a mother/homemaker (among other things). She goes right, to Walmart. I go straight, to the church. We go our separate ways, but our ultimate purpose is not separate, but aligned: to glorify and enjoy God through the Spirit-empowered fulfillment of our God-given roles. Both callings, by God's appointment, are vital in the expansion of God's kingdom and are thus significant in His eyes. There are a million implications of this, but I'll leave that to you to think through.

Like I said, that moment is often a defining moment in my week. I'm grateful for it as a continual reminder, because boy do I need it.

Take 5 minutes for this

I just came across some great 5-minute interviews of David Powlison (by C.J. Mahaney), and they are fabulous...very insightful and convicting/encouraging. Here they are:

1. A Narrated Bibliography with David Powlison (this one is actually about an hour).
2. Good Advice vs. Good News (4:41).
3. Cravings and Conflict (7:19).
4. What Is Real vs. What I Feel (5:45).
5. The Value of Human Emotion (5:28).

I recommend you start with Good Advice vs. Good News to get a flavor for the content, and I trust you will be edified.

Am I influencing you for good or ill?

Some of you may be familiar with the curriculum called Changing Hearts Changing Lives, put out by the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, and taught by David Powlison and Paul David Tripp. It's a DVD of thirteen 30-minutes sessions, and Kristen and I have just started working through it together. I've watched most of the sessions previously, and I highly recommend it (and I look forward to watching and discussing the rest of them with Kristen).

It is basically about biblical counseling and the role that each of us play in helping one another along in our growth in Christ. Here are the 2 foundational assumptions that were communicated in the first session, about our lives as believers:

1. All of us are people in need of change.
2. God has called all of us to be instruments of change in his redemptive hands.

One big takeaway for me was the biblical truth that, in one sense, all of life is counseling. We are constantly giving and receiving counsel, either knowingly and directly or unknowingly and indirectly. We are all influencing each other to one degree or another, so an important question to ask is, Am I influencing you for good or ill? Am I pointing you to Christ as your source of hope and joy, or to something else? As Tripp put it, "You are influencing people every day. The question is: Is that influence Biblical?"

Cultivating God-honoring humility

We recently went on a beach weekend with some of the young adults from our church, to Corolla, NC. 24 adults in one house, plus one Owen and one Baxter. It was lots of fun. Here is the group shot we took at the end of the weekend.



I taught 3 sessions on Cultivating Humility, using much of C.J. Mahaney's book, Humility: True Greatness (I highly recommend this book). It seemed to be a fruitful time of learning and discussion (each teaching time was followed by a time of small group discussion/application). C.J.'s handy definition of true, God-honoring humility is this: "Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God's holiness and our sinfulness." Isaiah 6:1-7 is a good place to go in Scripture for this.

I think it can only help us to ask ourselves at any given moment, "Am I presently motivated by pride or by humility?...am I big right now (in my estimation) and God small, or is God big right now and me small?...who is currently at the center of my universe: God, or me?", and to ask the Holy Spirit for the grace and power to change.