By “Little-Faiths”, Spurgeon here means people who are not great in faith and deed.  There are no Moses, or Paul, or Peter, or Augustine, or Luther, or Calvin.  They aren’t even  ”Joe-Schmoe” Christians, but something less than that.  They are people whose faith is full of doubts, whose morality is often feeble.  They are not spiritual giants but spiritual midgets.  Here Spurgeon speaks a word of comfort to folks just like this, and shows that the blessings of Christ are every bit their’s as they are to the spritual giant.  Maybe these words will be a comfort to you.  I know it spoke a word of comfort to me…

Now I want to say one or two things to Little-Faiths this morning. The little children of God who are here mentioned as being bruised reeds or smoking flax are just as safe as the great saints of God. I wish for a moment to expand this thought, and then I will finish with the other head. These saints of God who are called bruised reeds and smoking flax are just as safe as those who are mighty for their Master, and great in strength, for several reasons. First of all, the little saint is just as much God’s elect as the great saint.When God chose his people, he chose them all at once, and altogether; and he elected one just as much as the other. If I choose a certain number of things, one may be less than the rest, but one is as much chosen as the other; and so Mrs. Fearing and Miss Despondency are just as much elected as Great-Heart, or Old Father Honest. Again: the little ones are redeemed equally with the great ones! the feeble saints cost Christ as much suffering as the strong ones; the tiniest child of God could not have been purchased with less than Jesus’ precious blood; and the greatest child of God did not cost him more. Paul did not cost any more than Benjamin—I am sure he did not—for I read in the Bible that “there is no difference.” Besides, when of old they came to pay their redemption-money, every person brought a shekel. The poor shall bring no less, and the rich shall bring no more than just a shekel. The same price was paid for the one as the other. Now then little child of God, take that thought to thy soul. You see some men very prominent in Christ’s cause—and it is very good that they should be—but they did not cost Jesus a farthing more than you did; he paid the same price for you that he paid for them. Recollect again, you are just as much a child of God as the greatest saint. Some of you have five or six children. There is one child of yours, perhaps, who is very tall and handsome, and has, moreover, gifts of mind; and you have another child who is the smallest of the family, perhaps has but little intellect and understanding. But which is the most your child? “The most!” you say; “both alike are my children, certainly, one as much as the other.” And so, dear friends, you may have very little learning, you may be very dark about divine things, you may but “see men as trees walking,” but you are as much the children of God as those who have grown to the stature of men in Christ Jesus. Then remember, poor tried saint, that you are just as much justified as any other child of God. I know that I am completely justified.

Read the rest.

h/t: Awakening Grace

Did anyone make a New Year’s resolution to read through the Bible in a year?  I hope so.  Of all of the spiritual disciplines, I have found this the most fruitful.

If you’re still looking for a plan, or to get started but don’t know where to start, Nicky Gumbel at HTB has put together a great Bible reading resource.  It’ll take you through the entire Bible in one year and he offers a bit of explanation and application with each daily reading.  Best of all, you can have it sent right to your phone, iPad (or whatever), computer.

Here’s a snip from today’s selection:

The Bible has a great deal to say about walking with God.  It is how we were intended to live.  It was only Adam and Eve’s sin that made them hide when they ‘heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day’ (Genesis 3:8).

God’s desire for each of us is that we should walk humbly in a relationship (Micah 6:8).  This is what Jesus has made possible – for us to walk as Jesus did (1 John 2:6).  Now we stumble, but one day we will walk with him dressed in white (Revelation 3:4).

Each of the passages for today tell us something more about what it means to walk with God.

Click here to read the rest of today’s entry, and, if you wish, to sign up.

Get your Kleenex out:

Back story is here.

Tim Keller gave the sermon for the service from Hebrews 13:7, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” Keller presented five ways to imitate Stott’s life and faith.

Read it all.

At SAMP, we’re working out way through an extended series on the Epistle of James.  Our text this past Sunday was James 2.1-13 and our topic was, “Favoritism in the Church.”  It was a challenging text and it convicted me, yet again, of the darkness in my heart and the manner in which I continually fall short and am in desperate and ongoing need of repentance, forgiveness and grace.

I guess I was about 20 years old when I met Ernie.  He came church one Friday evening for a young adult gathering.  Nobody had ever seen him before, and everyone wondered where he had come from.  Our curiosity stemmed not so much from the fact that he was new to the group.  New people were coming in every Friday.  No, we noticed Ernie because he was different.  By different I mean many things.  He came across as disheartened and looked like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Ernie was unkempt.  He dressed poorly, often wearing a filthy “wife-beater” undershirt and ripped, stained pants.  He was balding and what hair he had was greasy.  He smelled bad.  Very bad.  All the time.  For whatever reason he introduced himself to me.  In the course of our brief conversation, Ernie told me that he came to the group because a guy he worked with told him about it.  As the weeks went on Ernie continued to come and soon weeks turned into months.  For some reason, Ernie decided he was going to be my friend.  He began to call me for rides to the meeting.  This soon gave way to wanting to go and shoot pool, or some evenings just wanting to hang out.  But I felt uncomfortable around him.  He demanded too much, he was overbearing, he was abrasive and I just wanted him to leave me alone.  So I began to make excuses why I couldn’t meet him and gradually Ernie began to understand that I just didn’t to spend time with him and he faded away.

I was reminded of Ernie this week when I came across this week’s reading from James:

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.  For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?  Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?  But you have dishonored the poor man.

Ouch.

I’m not proud of the way I treated Ernie.  And I wish that I could tell you that my encounter with him had a happy ending.  Unfortunately, I can’t.  I haven’t seen him in almost 25 years.  I haven’t had any news about him for about 15.  I still pray that God will send someone into Ernie’s life who will love him and show him kindness, someone who’s not afraid to share life with him.  I am thankful, though, that God brought Ernie into my life.  Through that encounter God exposed the ugliness of my sin to call me to repentance and into a new way of life – teaching me that if I want to serve and love Him, I do this best by welcoming, by serving, and by loving the people He loves as if I were welcoming, serving and loving Christ Himself.

I ran across this fictional interplay between a Christian pastor and a TV interviewer by Trevin Wax.  I liked his thinking.  See what you think.

Just once, I’d like to see a TV interview go more like this:

Host: You are a Christian pastor, and you say you believe the Bible, which means you are supposed to love all people.

Pastor: That’s right.

Host: But it appears to me that you and your church take a rather unloving position when it comes to gay people. Are homosexuals welcome to come to your church?

Pastor: Of course. We believe that the gospel is a message relevant for every person on the planet, and we want everyone to hear the gospel and find salvation in Jesus Christ. So at our church, our arms are outstretched to people from every background, every race, every ethnicity and culture. We’re a place for all kinds of sinners and people with all kinds of problems.

Read the rest.

Al Mohler reports that response to his CNN article (a fantastic article!) answering this question has generated 75+ pages of comments on the CNN site.  Quite telling about the volatility of the question.

Here’s the CNN article.

Thoughts?

We addressed a bit of this idea last night at our School of Theology.  From her blog:

In the Christian religion, the ultimate reality is three Persons with each other in such perfect, dynamic communion that God is Three in One. Jesus is—my heart sings to say it—God withus, Emmanuel.  (Isaiah 7) The core promise of Scripture, I will be your God and you will be my people, comes to concrete incarnation in Christ. It comes to culmination at the end of the story: “Now the dwelling of God is with men…” (Rev. 20)

Consider this: the goal of Christian discipleship is to be godlike—not god-ish. Not even in the renewal of all things will we become God. God must like it that we are ourselves—a duh statement that somehow I continually must remind myself of. God is not interested in absorption.  It is wonderful to talk of being partakers of the divine nature, as Scripture does, union with Christ, and so on. But we may never hear in that the misinference that we disappear, as real beings, in the process. No—in fact, we become more distinctly ourselves in communion with God.

Read the rest.

Sarah from St. Andrew’s Church on Vimeo.