Church Sign Fail!

from failblog.org

T.M.I.!

As in, Too Much Introspection!  This is something I am guilty of everyday, most of the day, and it does me no good in terms of assurance of salvation.  We are commanded to examine ourselves, yet we can go too far.  My pastor always reminds us to preach the gospel to ourselves, as the psalmists did, and this is what we need to do to counter all that unhealthy self-analysis.  I want to share something by John Piper that has helped me a lot regarding "TMI" and assurance, which I re-read every once in awhile:

When the question arises, "Is my faith authentic?"—which it should, because the Bible says, "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith"—the answer is almost never found with the kind of soul-satisfying certainty that you want by looking in and peeling the onion of your heart.

Jonathan Edwards just laid me bare in 1971 and '72 when I was reading his book Religious Affections. I can remember several nights where, in his chapter on evangelical humiliation, he began to peel back the onion layers of my soul.

He would say, "So you think you're humble? What if you're boasting in your humility?" And you admit, "Yes, I probably am boasting in my humility." And he would ask, "Well, what if your confession that you are boasting in your humility is really a pose, and you're still boasting in your humility?"

He gave question after question that made you realize, "There's no center to this onion." You peel and peel and peel, and the last peel just disappears, because you can always ask yourself, "How do you know?" You can always doubt yourself. There's no way, by mere self-analysis, to come to a point where you're looking at something that you can say, "Definitely authentic!" Because the capacity of the human brain to doubt is always there.

So where in the world does assurance come from? The answer is that, even though introspection is commended and wise up to a point, the bottom line of assurance comes when you stop analyzing and you look to Christ (emphasis mine) and you look and you look and you look until Christ himself in his glory and his sufficiency by reflex, as it were, awakens a self-forgetful "Yes!" to him.

Your best moments of assurance are not the moments when you're thinking about your assurance. Because the very moment that you're thinking about your assurance, you have the capacity at that moment to doubt your assurance. This little voice, whether it's your conscience or the devil, is saying, "You think you have assurance, but..."

And so the answer comes, "Look to the cross! Look to Christ!" And if you're able to look to the cross, if you're able to see him as sufficient and satisfying and powerfully able to carry all your sins, and you find yourself drawn out of yourself to say "Yes" to him, that's what you want. You are assured. He is your assurance at that moment. (John Piper, DesiringGod.org)

Church Cabin-in

Last, last weekend I went up north for my church "advance" (as my pastor would say, "we don't 'retreat' - we 'advance!'") and it was awesome!  Of all the church retreats I've ever been on this was hands down, the best.  Not surprising, since this was my first retreat with my new church (attending since Dec '09), the first Reformed environment I've ever been in.  The theme was John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, taught by Pastor Gordon Taylor (of ARBCA) and it was excellent.  During one of the sessions, I found myself relating to the pilgrim "Christian", who was burdened by his sin even after he was saved, and it wasn't until much later at the cross where he found the joy of salvation and was relieved of his great burden.  Some people upon accepting Christ have immediate joy, but I am not one of these, indeed I rarely have assurance and joy of salvation.  Although I am a Calvininst (all five points), I act like an Armenian: "when I've attained x, y, and z, I'll feel saved".  My mentor once helpfully pointed out these great lines in "Come Ye Sinners, Poor and Wretched":

Let not conscience make you linger,
nor of fitness fondly dream;
all the fitness he requireth
is to know your need of him.

Come, you weary, heavy laden,
lost and ruined by the fall;
if you tarry till you're better,
you will never come at all.

Isn't that great?  I love these lines, and they came to mind when Pastor Taylor ended this teaching session (five in total), and coincidentally we sang it right then!

Here's a video from the weekend.

My family's first pet.

This is meow-meow, my 5 month(ish) old kitten/cat, adopted in July.  I'm training him to use the [human] toilet (using "CitiKitty").  It's going pretty slow and he's had a lot of "accidents", but he's back on track.  The main floor of our basement (which meow thinks is his second toilet) is inaccessible due to a bloackade of desk, books, blankets, stepstool, exercise ball, and whatever else my mom could find down there.  Hopefully, meow-meow will be using the toilet by the end of this year.