A beautiful hymn

Paul and Silas sit in prison in Philippi, after causing some havoc in the town (what else is new, right?)

And what do they do? They pray and sing. I pray that someday I will be able to simply be at rest in trial and suffering, praying and singing to the Lord who holds me in the palm of His hand.

If I were in the position of Paul and Silas, this might well be the hymn that I would belt out at the top of my lungs. Enjoy.

Out of the depths I cry to You,

Lord, hear my voice of pleading;

Bend down Your gracious ear, I pray,

Your humble servant heeding.

If You remember each misdeed,

And of each thought and word take heed,

Who can remain before You?

Only by grace, by grace alone.

Your pardon is a gift of love,

Your grace alone must save us,

Our works will not remove our guilt,

The strictest life would fail us.

Let none in deeds or merits boast,

But let us own the Holy Ghost

for He alone can change us:

Only by grace, by grace alone.

Though great our sins and sore our woes

His grace much more aboundeth;

His helping love no limit knows,

Our utmost need it soundeth.

Our kind and faithful Shepherd He,

Who will set all His people free

From all their sin and sorrow:

Only by grace, by grace alone.

- Martin Luther

New Zealand's darkest day

As many of you know, on February 22, 2011, at 12:51pm, the New Zealand city of Christchurch was struck by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake that as of 3pm the following day, has left 75 people confirmed dead and roughly 300 missing.

The hard part for me about this situation is resting in the sovereignty of God in suffering. While events like this are obviously consequences of sin in the world, we can still be at peace knowing that God is completely in control of every brick that falls in the streets of Christchurch. I am sure that He has an amazing plan for this that we may never know in this lifetime.

Therefore, lets unite our hearts in prayer together all over the world for the people of Christchurch.
May there be a revival of repentance and faith in Christ in Christchurch that will then permeate through the entire country because of this horrible disaster.

Lets pray BIG.

"Even as you loved me."

"The glory that you have given men I have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me." - John 17:22, 23


What a profound statement!

Jesus Himself declares His desire for people that are in Him to be united to the point of resembling the Father and Son; perfectly united in mind and heart. So we obviously need to strive to live in unity with each other, living lives of love toward each other where we are known as Christ's disciples by the way in which we love each other (John 13:35).

However, the statement that I would like you to focus and meditate on is the last part in bold. Jesus wants the world to know that God the Father loves the people to whom Christ's sacrifice has been offered, AS MUCH AS he loves Christ himself, the perfect God-man!

Just think about that. What an amazing God we serve, who makes Himself known to us in such beautiful, but mysterious ways.

May this be the cry of our hearts

When my soul was embittered,
when I was pricked in heart,
  I was brutish and ignorant;
I was like a beast toward you.


Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
  You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will receive me to glory.
  Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
  My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
 (Psalm 73:21-26 ESV)


This psalm is one that I constantly return to remind myself of my standing before the Lord. Whenever I fall into sin and self-righteousness, I TRY to crawl back to this psalm and the truth it speaks to my heart.

Out of my own fallen nature, I constantly fall back into sin, causing my Heavenly Father displeasure. BUT nevertheless, God keeps me in His hand and lifts me out of the dirt, cleansing me from my sin and disobedience (v. 23, 24a, 1 John 1:9), until eventually, after sanctifying me through His beautiful gospel (1 Corinthians 15:2), He will glorify me into His awesome, indescribable presence for the rest of eternity (v. 24b).

The Lord is faithful beyond words in the ENTIRE process of redemption and salvation. Our hearts regeneration, the faith and repentance needed, the legal justification, righteousness, sanctification and glorification all belong to the Lord and are splendid gifts to us; an unworthy and helpless people in the hands of a powerful and merciful God.

May we acknowledge the inadequacy of our own flesh and hearts and simply run into the hands of our loving Saviour, who offers rest to all who realise they can no longer run the race by themselves (Matthew 11:28-30).

Striving, side by side.

Something I have been thinking a lot about the last few days is the much neglected ideal of gospel community. Community where believers are constantly spurring each other on to love and good deeds, and where we are also constantly reminding each other of the grace and love that has been lavished on us through Christ.

This is something that Paul urged the churches he was writing to be continually doing and unfortunately, it seems to have slipped away over the past 2000 years.

I know from personal experience how much I need this in my life, a group of people who genuinely love me and who can remind every day of the amazing grace of God shown in the gospel. I also desire to be able to do this for people too.

Reminding believers of their standing in Christ, based purely on His work and NOTHING else, is something ALL of us need. Choose one person you can help with this and get reminding! If you need to, make notes to remind you to remind them!

Rejoice! It's a command! (Part 2)

Personally, I see this next topic as being MUCH more difficult than the last post. Paul Washer addresses this issue very well in a video of his on YouTube, titled "Joy from Christ, not your performance."

And it is: Rejoicing in the Lord and his saving grace when things are going fine and there seems to be no suffering going on in your life. You are doing a good job at fighting your sin, you are reading your Bible daily and spending an hour in prayer every day. You shared the gospel with four people this week! Things are just looking up man! The sky is the limit!

But then, things change. A sin that you used to struggle with sneaks back into your life, you don't read your Bible, you forget to pray for people that have asked you to pray for them, and you feel like you have completely gone off the rails of your faith. To be straight up, Washer calls this idolatry. And he is right. This person is beginning to place their confidence and faith in themselves and their own performance. We know that this is pointless, because our attempts at righteous deeds are as filthy rags before a holy God (Isaiah 64:6). The only thing that we can cling onto and put forward before God as the source of our justification is the blood of Christ, spilt from His completed work on the cross.

Take joy from Christ's performance and not our own. Otherwise it is idolatry.

Give thanks to the Spirit for giving you the power to live a life that is glorifying to God, but ultimately all the merit you can ever have, is due to the finished work of Christ and His precious blood.

Rejoice! It's a command! (Part 1)

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice." - Philippians 4:4


Again, another extremely difficult discipline to put into practice, but yet again, one that is absolutely essential for growth in the Christian life.

It is always hard to rejoice in hard times. For example, someone who falls into constant sexual sin will often fall into a prolonged state of despair, which can often be the worldly regret that 2 Corinthians 7 talks refers to. Learning to rejoice in these difficult times is something that the apostle Paul so masterfully described later on in that same letter. After praying to God to remove the "thorn" in Paul's flesh, Jesus replies:

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I (Paul) will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong." - 2 Corinthians 12:9, 10


This is a beautiful truth! We need to be content in our hardships, no matter what they are, because Christ covers us with a grace that exceeds all sin, enabling and empowering us to cling fast to the gospel of redemption through faith, by which we were made right with God purely by the merit of Christ. Our daily sin cannot revoke the invaluableness of Christ's blood, but rather helps us to realise our hopelessness in mortifying our sin with anything other than the gospel.

Join me next blog for something much more challenging, I find. Rejoicing in the Lord when things are going really well! Man, I can't wait!