This and That Kind of a weird good news 101612

There still remains some wildness in the thoughts and fancies of the best Christians, to humble them; but if you find a concern before to prevent them, and opposition against them when they come, and grief and sorrow afterward, you find enough to clear you from the charge of reigning hypocrisy.  John Flavel

For all the bad press the Puritans get it's amazing how it's refuted when we actually read their works.  But they we a practical and realistic people who knew that living here for Him is a moment by moment fight.  They also knew that sometimes we get whipped.

They knew that the great victory was sure but they also knew some battles would go to the other side.  Their works are full of comforts like those above.  Read and consider the following:

If any upright soul should hence infer, 'I am a hypocrite too, for many times my heart departs from God in duty; do what I can, yet I cannot hold it close with God!' I answer, the very objection carries in it its own solution. You say, 'Do what I can, yet I cannot keep my heart with God.' Soul, if you do what you can, you have the blessing of an upright, though God sees good to exercise you under the affliction of a discomposed heart.  John Flavel

Though I hate to use the term, this middle ground or no-mans-land where the fighting is tooth and tallon is where we tend to be condeming when we ought not.  From the above quote we can see that the Puritans understood the nature and measure of the battle we fight and they considered fighting them evidence of our uprightness in Him.

Who else but a believer would be concerned with potential hypocricy?  Who else but a believer would have any conerns God-ward?  Who else but a believer would concern themselves with living out the faith?

We need to see our struggles as comforts and encouragements - as evidences that we are of the faith.  To be able to see and to be broken by the fact that we are not good enough to apporach the throne is to celebrate and acknowledge His grace and love.  Dead men and women do not so worry and distress themselves.  They can't, they are dead.  They may pretend to life, somehow being animated in a religious fashion but they are dead pretenders, hypocrites.

You, however, who have great and grave concern for the honor and glory of God in your lives, should, even in the midst of your weeping, rejoice that God has so softened and enlivened your heart that you may be broken.  Oh that all men and women would be so tender hearted - so sensitive to sin.  A hypocrite never fears hypocricy for it is their normal condition.  You, however, find even the hint of hypocricy in your life to be a matter of crying out to God and drawing closer, tending to your duties with greater diligence and calling our for His provision in a loud and weeping voice.  

You also are blessed in recognizing the weakness of your strength and your need for Him.  You do all you can and it is not enough.  But dear brother and sister it would never be enough - it could never be enough.  This fact is as critical to the Gospel as any other.  Indeed it is the very furrow in which the seed of the Gospel is planted and grows.  How blessed are we who know our need for Him in all things especially in living for Him.

It fascinates me though that so many books are written about material, physical and even emotional struggles as being indicative of the state of our walks and yet so few books are written about the state of our hearts.  Is not the heart the very core of the matter?  Does not our Lord tell us that it is out of the heart evil comes?  And yet we see so few works addressing the heart.

You are at great loss materially and you question if you are His?  You are ill and wonder about His love?  You are living with some psychological or psychiatric conition and you doubt your usefulness to Him?

The problem is not your money or your helth our your mental condition.  the problem is your heart.  Poor, terminally ill or crazy as a loon, you are His, He loves you forever and is using you to His glory and honor.  You may not see it, you certainly may not feel it but I don't see the air and I don't feel the air and yet air is.  I'll be bold - He can not NOT love you and us you.  He paid too great a price to redeem you to let you sit on the bench.

Everyone of the struggles that make you cry out and reach out to Him is, at least in part, His calling you closer to Himself.  He will do it in His own way according to our need but it is done out of love.