for when i am weak, then i am strong.

The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation (Exodus 15:2).

For the past decade or so, discovering our strengths has been the buzz in North America, particularly in leadership and management circles. Lots of books have been published and numerous tests developed to help us identify of our strengths.

The Bible tends to refer to “gifts” rather than “strengths.” The difference in focus, I think, is important for us. We tend to think of our strengths as inherently part of our identity. Strengths are our value-add; our competitive edge. But gifts connote grace. A gift does not originate with us. It’s something we receive from God and steward for his sake. Therefore our gifts are not so much our identity as our offering. And since God has given us these gifts, he’s not obliged to always put us in places where we can use them fully.

In fact, God frequently places us in positions where we struggle and feel weak for the very reason that he receives particular glory by showing his strength through our weaknesses.

This motif is woven through redemptive history: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27). Why? “So that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:29). God shames human strength to humble humans.

The Apostle Paul, who had extraordinary strengths, came to understand this so profoundly that he said, “Therefore I 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).

So this is Paul’s strength-finders theory: our weaknesses are when Christ’s power — our true strength — is most clearly on display. Therefore we ought to boast in and be content with weaknesses.

What God really wants is for us to be “strong in the Lord” (Ephesians 6:10). And becoming strong in the Lord almost always requires that God weaken us. For it’s when our weakness forces us to depend on his strength that we grow in our understanding of the gospel and learn to walk by faith. And usually our deepest, most precious encounters with God occur in the context of our weaknesses, not our strengths.

There are helpful things to glean and apply from the world’s strength-finders resources. But don’t focus too long them. Focus on the Bible. It’s the best strengths-finders manual out there. Because it’s not our strengths that it helps us to find. It helps us find God’s strength.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Psalm 73:26).

original post here.

i desperately miss this show. that’s pretty much it.

Lent or no Lent, life is war.

 

Lent or no Lent, not doing some things you feel like doing is the daily pattern for the disciples of Jesus. Yes, daily. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

In the resurrection there will be no self-denial because none of our desires will be sinful or foolish. Till then we have sinful and foolish desires daily. Hence, “Let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.”

What Paul Says

This is so essential in Christian living that Paul made it part of his one-time sermon to Felix (“he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment,” Acts 24:25); he made it part of the fruit of the Spirit (“faithfulness, gentleness, self-control,” Galatians 5:23); he made it part of the qualifications for overseers (“self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined,” Titus 1:8).

And he gave us a taste of the sort of thing he meant: “But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry” (1 Corinthians 7:9). So he means there are times for denying some of the desires we have for sex.

It’s the sort of thing that athletes do. “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things” (1 Corinthians 9:25). Paul had very little trust in the desires his body threw at him daily: “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27). That’s an innocuous translation. Literally: “I give my body a black eye (hupopiazō) and make it a slave (doulagōgō).”

The Christian Experience

This is normal, daily, Christian warfare. Only saints delight in the law of God at their depths. Here is how they talk: “I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind” (Romans 7:21–23).

A war indeed. Daily. “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:17).

And make no mistake, sexual desires are not our most deadly desires that need daily denial. Anger, resentment, fear of man, discouragement (yes), self-pity, self-promotion, hardness, envy, moodiness, sulking, indifference to suffering, laziness, boredom, passiveness, lack of praise, lack of joy in Jesus, disinterest in others, etc. These need daily killing (Romans 8:13).

Is this Christian Hedonism? Yes. Why does Paul live like a self-disciplined athlete? Simple: Greater joy. “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable” (1 Corinthians 9:25).

________

original post here.

don’t give up on God’s Word: hold fast.

Don’t rest on past reading. Read your Bible more and more every year. Read it whether you feel like reading it or not. And pray without ceasing that the joy return and pleasures increase.

Three reasons this is not legalism:

1. You are confessing your lack of desire as sin, and pleading as a helpless child for the desire you long to have. Legalists don’t cry like that. They strut.
2. You are reading out of desperation for the effects of this heavenly medicine. Bible-reading is not a cure for a bad conscience; it’s chemo for your cancer. Legalists feel better because the box is checked. Saints feel better when their blindness lifts, and they see Jesus in the word. Let’s get real. We are desperately sick with worldliness, and only the Holy Spirit, by the word of God, can cure this terminal disease.
3. It is not legalism because only justified people can see the preciousness and power of the Word of God. Legalists trudge with their Bibles on the path toward justification. Saints sit down in the shade of the cross and plead for the blood-bought pleasures.

So lets give heed to Mr. Ryle and never grow weary of the slow, steady, growth that comes from the daily, disciplined, increasing, love affair with reading the Bible.

Do not think you are getting no good from the Bible, merely because you do not see that good day by day. The greatest effects are by no means those which make the most noise, and are most easily observed. The greatest effects are often silent, quiet, and hard to detect at the time they are being produced.

Think of the influence of the moon upon the earth, and of the air upon the human lungs. Remember how silently the dew falls, and how imperceptibly the grass grows. There may be far more doing than you think in your soul by your Bible-reading. (J. C. Ryle, Practical Religion, 136)

source.

an argument for love

If you were having a cup of tea with C. S. Lewis on Valentine’s Day, and you asked him   sincerely, “Mr. Lewis, am I better not to love because it’s so risky?” — he might say something like this:

Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as “Careful! This might lead you to suffering.”

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that his teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.…

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

The Four Loves, (New York, Harcourt, 1960), Kindle Location 1541.

 

original post here.

encouragement

in “7 marks of a right heart before God,” JC Ryle gives a perfect voice to my feelings and emotional/spiritual experiences as of late. it is incredibly encouraging to know that there is the best kind of internal construction happening within:

6) A right heart is a heart that feels CONFLICT within it (Gal. 5:17). It finds within itself two opposing principles contending for the mastery—the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. It knows by experience what Paul means when he says, “I see a law in my members warring against the law of my mind” (Rom. 7:23). The wrong heart knows nothing of this strife. The strong man armed keeps the wrong heart as their palace, and their goods are at peace (Luke 11:21). But when the rightful King takes possession of the heart, a struggle begins which never ends until death. The right heart may be known by its warfare, quite as much as by its peace.

full list here.

reasons.

i absolutely love this quote. no idea where it comes from, but there is something sweetly surrendered when i can say it with full faith in my Maker’s plan for my life. and as i know there are a number of people i know who are struggling, i pray they can embrace this prayer with hearts ready to trust and believe that the best really is yet to come:

God knows what needs to be cut back in your life; He also knows what needs to be cut off. Trust Him. Even though you cannot understand what He’s doing, just pray, ‘Lord, if I needed it You would let me keep it, so I open my hand to You today. Send whoever You will and take away whoever you will. I’ll praise You when they come and I’ll praise You when they go, because Your approval is my reward, and Your purpose is my reason to live.

there is a reason. we don’t have the knowledge or foresight to know what each step means, but if we did there would be no need for faith in God, nor a need for that faith to be ever-deepened.

 

revealings

each new step in my understanding of Christ peels off yet another layer of self-centeredness and opens my heart and mind to what is of the most value in this life. just this morning i was overcome by a great wave of gratitude for fellow Christians who are living lives of unashamed and passionate pursuit of God. people who have gone before and those currently striving for Him are great companions to come alongside and glean motivation from. the Christian life is often a lonely one, i’m discovering, as the more entwined you become with God’s Word and His reality, the more disconnected you feel from culture, which is where most people’s worldview, self-perception and understanding of purpose is rooted.
most people don’t understand what is happening within me. they tend to retreat if i share this work…i have literally watched walls raise behind the eyes of those most dear to me because they don’t know what it feels like…and because they’ve learned to be wary of many things God-related.  i find i am still working to get free from these haze-creating entanglements myself, which involves un-doing 27 years of cultural conditioning.  yet another discovery has been that this freeing work could never be done by myself. understanding that God is sovereign, and in control of every element of my life means i must also give credit for this incredible progress only to Him. left to my own longings and impulses, i would wander around forever without purpose. i’d latch onto new ideas or people or things that appealed to my senses and desires, but it wouldn’t last. my wandering in the dark would only continue.

now there is a horizon that only gets bigger as i move toward it, only grows more grand and rich and life-giving. God has given me the greatest gift a Creator could give His creation: Himself. knowledge of Him, and understanding of who i am-that i was wired to crave soul-deep satisfaction which can only be found in Him. nothing else i’ve followed after has given me so much peace and freedom from fear. it’s split everything into 2 realities: our earth-bound, temporal reality and God’s reality. in God’s reality, i gravitate to Him. i draw my strength and peace from His Heart. i accept His sacrifice of Love on the cross as the most incredible gift i’ve been given, and i shape my life around what it means. from the joy and freedom i find there, love pours out and into the lives of others. i offer myself out of the fullness of being offered for in Jesus. i have patience, because He has patience with me. i see my successes not as a personal triumph, but a gift from His Good Hand. i am faithful, filled by His Love enough to keep my commitments to others and endure hardship with His Strength. in the reality of the world, i am fueled by a me-focus. i look out for my interests and spend my time thinking about what will make me happy. i am entertained by the cheap and the meaningless. i tune out my heart with anything i can find so i won’t hear its still-vacant call. i seek, seek, seek. but i never fully find.

all good things flow from the Heart of God. i pray that the work He has done in revealing this knowledge to me will continue to happen. i pray that the Holy Spirit will dwell within me forever, weaving webs of beauty and humility and deep strength. and i pray that others who haven’t yet glimpsed God’s Heart will one day soon have the great opportunity to fall on their knees and thank Him for the unexplainable joy of understanding.

reasons to trust and surrender the world.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. you are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. remain in Me, and I will remain in you. no branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remin in the vine. neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. now remain in My Love.
John 15:1-4 & 9

if the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. if you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. as it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. that is why the world hates you. if they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also. they will treat you this way because of My Name, for they do not know the One Who sent Me. when the Counselor (Holy Spirit) comes, Whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth Who goes out from the Father, He will testify about Me. and you also must testify, for you have been with Me from the beginning.
John 15:18-21 & 26-27

unless I go away, the Counselor (Holy Spirit) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. when He comes, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgement: in regard to sin because men do not believe in Me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see Me no longer; and in regard to judgement because the prince of this world now stands condemned. I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. but when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His Own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to Me by taking from what is Mine and making it known to you.
John 16:7-14

in threatening our utterly inadequate foundations for security (health, relationships, money, etc) the Bible is drawing us relentlessly and lovingly back to the only Foundation of Security that will last…God.

God is so passionately committed to being glorified in a redeemed people forever that He’s not about to leave it up to you whether or not you make it to Glory. therefore, He sends His Holy Spirit into your lives and gives His Holy Spirit instruction to glorify Him forever.

God wants you to feel secure in Him, and in His Love. He comes with a a preserving seal to lock in your faith. He comes with an authenticating seal to make sure you have a stamp of authenticity. He comes with a protecting seal to guard you from forces that would lead you astray. you were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance.

John Piper

the person and the work of the Holy Spirit

i had to copy and paste this sermon word-for-word, as it hit me like no other has in a long time. leave it to john piper to so fearlessly and truthfully and beautifully describe the human condition and God’s wonderful plan to transform us.

1 Corinthians 2:14–16

The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

The manual of operation for the Christian wartime mentality is the Bible. It was inspired and authorized by the Commander, and contains all the truth needed to win people over from the enemy camp, deprogram their old thought patterns, train them in strategies of righteousness, and equip them with armor and weapons to defeat Satan and liberate his captives (2 Timothy 3:16–17; Ephesians 6:10–19).

God’s Manual and Our Inability to Understand It The manual is one of a kind. The Communists had their Manifesto. The Maoists had their Little Red Books. The Muslims have their Koran. But only the Bible contains the writings taught not by human wisdom but by the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:13). Only the Bible reveals “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). The Christian manual of operation is unique because it reveals “the things of the Spirit of God”—things from God that man can’t find out on his own, things that are often very foreign to our way of thinking. And therein lies a great problem.

I want to talk about that problem today and how God works by his Holy Spirit to overcome it. The problem is described in 1 Corinthians 2:14. “The unspiritual man does not receive (i.e., welcome) the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” The NASB gives a more literal rendering when it says, “A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.” The problem is: what good is a manual of operation that can’t be understood by ordinary people? If the Bible reveals the “things of God” and the natural man is not able to understand them because they are spiritually appraised, then how will this book ever be able to win anyone over to God’s side?

Let’s begin by making sure we understand the situation described in verse 14. We need to understand first what Paul means by “natural man” and by “the things of the Spirit of God.”

What Is a “Natural Man”? The word for “natural man” is used one other time in the New Testament to refer to people, namely, in Jude 19, which says, “It is these who set up divisions, worldly people (i.e., natural people), devoid of the Spirit.” Natural people are defined here as people who do not have God’s Spirit. They are simply ordinary people whose hearts and minds are not touched with the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. The opposite of “natural man” is “spiritual man”—a person whose mind and heart are renewed by the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:12 confirms this. “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.” In verse 14 the “natural man” cannot understand the “things of the Spirit of God” because they are “spiritually discerned.” In verse 12 Paul is able to understand them because he has received the Spirit. Therefore, a “natural person” is a person who has not received the Spirit. That’s why he can’t understand “the things of the Spirit of God.”

What Are “the Things of the Spirit”? But now what are these “things of the Spirit of God” which people can’t grasp without the Spirit? The context makes this pretty clear. Notice the word “folly” or “foolishness” in verse 14. Whatever “the things of the Spirit of God” are, they are folly to the natural man. Chapter 1, verse 18 shows us what this is: “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” The same thing in verses 23–24: “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” In other words, what the natural man can’t understand is the heart of the Christian message—the word of the cross. But the word of the cross is not just a simple statement that Christ died on the cross for our sins. The word of the cross is a radical indictment of human pride. It describes a way of salvation which according to 1 Corinthians 1:29 has this purpose: “that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (cf. 3:21).

The word of the cross is a message about my crucifixion, not just Christ’s. Paul said in Galatians 6:14, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Therefore, when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that “the things of the Spirit of God” are folly to the natural man, he means that the gospel of Christ crucified and all its devastating implications for natural human pride are simply foolishness to the natural man. A view of reality which aims to take away every ground of boasting from in man and put it all in Christ crucified is foolishness to humans in their natural state apart from the Holy Spirit. So the natural man is a person without the Holy Spirit, and “the things of the Spirit of God” refers to the word of the cross and its devastating implications for human pride.

The Problem Is Not Intellectual Inability Now with these definitions let’s see if we can restate the situation described in verse 14. The reason this is important is that if we misunderstand the problem Paul raises in verse 14, we will almost certainly misunderstand the work of the Spirit in solving the problem and may well look to the Spirit for a work he was never intended to perform. You’ll see what I mean as we dig into verse 14. Take the phrase, “He is not able to understand them,” that is, the natural man is not able to understand the things of the Spirit of God. What does this mean? Does it mean that the natural man does not have access to sufficient information? Does it mean that he lacks the mental powers to construe the meaning of Paul’s sermons? If it means either of these, how shall the man be held accountable to receive the things of the Spirit?

In Romans 1:20 Paul talks about the basis of accountability and says, “Ever since the foundation of the world God’s invisible nature . . . has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. Therefore they are without excuse.” In other words, the availability of knowledge is necessary for accountability. If you had never heard the gospel, and a Chinese evangelist stood up here and preached the word of the cross to you and you didn’t receive it because you didn’t understand a word of what he said, would you be an illustration of the natural man in verse 14? I don’t think so. Romans 1:20 would imply that you are not accountable to believe a message whose meaning was not available to you because its language was unintelligible. So when Paul says that the natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit, I don’t think he means, the natural man can’t construe the meaning of the gospel.

It Is the Moral Inability to Judge Value Rightly On the contrary, Paul implies that the natural man can construe the meaning of the gospel because when he does, he calls it foolishness. The things of the Spirit are foolishness to the natural man not because he can’t see their meaning but because he sees it and regards what he sees as a waste of time. The problem in verse 14 is not a lack of clear speech nor a lack of intellectual power to interpret. The problem is that when the word of the cross is clear and the intellect of the natural man has interpreted it adequately, he regards it as foolishness.

The last phrase in the verse confirms that this is the problem. The RSV says, “They are spiritually discerned.” The word for “discern” here is the same one translated twice in verse 15 as “judge”—”the spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.” It’s a shame that the RSV and NIV and KJV did not use the same meaning for this word in verse 14 that they did in verse 15. The NASB is excellent here. It says, “He cannot understand [the things of the Spirit] because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man.” The word means to assess or appraise or make value judgments about something.

So when Paul says in verse 14 that the reason the natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit is that they are spiritually assessed or appraised or judged, it becomes clear that the basic problem is not an intellectual inability to construe the meaning of Paul’s message; the problem is the moral inability to assign the right value to it. There is a big difference between saying that the things of the Spirit are gibberish and saying that they are foolish. “Foolish” is an assessment you make of something you have understood but regard as ridiculous. Gibberish is a description of sounds that are unintelligible. The problem with the natural man is not that he describes the gospel as gibberish but that he assesses it as foolishness. So what Paul means in verse 14 when he says that the natural man “is not able to understand” is that he is not able to understand the things of the Spirit as valuable. He can see their meaning, but he cannot see the meaning as precious. He can restate Paul’s argument and comment about its implications; but then he simply rejects it out of hand as religious rubbish.

The Word of the Cross and the Pride of Man What this text teaches, then, is that all of us by nature recoil from the truth of God; we recoil from the truth of the Bible and from the word of the cross. We hear the call of the gospel to submit to a crucified Christ and we defend ourselves against it by saying it is foolish. What the natural man means when he says the gospel is foolish is that he cherishes something which the gospel demands that he give up. We call advice foolish when it asks us a higher value for a lower one. If you advise me to jump off a bridge, I’ll say that’s foolish because I value my life. If you advise me not to spank my sons when they disobey me, I say (perhaps to myself) that’s foolish because I value the wisdom of Proverbs and the good effects of loving discipline. And if you advise a natural man to follow Christ crucified, he will say that’s foolish because he values the self-reliance and self-exaltation he would have to give up.

The main point of 1 Corinthians 1–4 is to show that God has accomplished our redemption in such a way that every prop of human pride is knocked out from under us. “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God . . . Let him who boasts boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:27–31; cf. 2:5; 3:7, 21; 4:6).

When the natural man hears that, he says that’s foolish. Why? Not because he doesn’t understand its meaning, but because he loves the praise of men. He loves the exhilaration of accomplishing great things in reliance on himself. He loves the autonomy of pulling his own strings. He loves the sense of esteem that he can get through the use of his intelligence or skill or talent or strength. The suggestion that all this should be left on the bridge while he jumps off into the arms of Christ is to him simply ridiculous. In our natural condition we cannot prefer Christ over self-glorying. The desire for credit is too great. Jesus said, “How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44). Faith in Christ is foolishness to the natural man because the essence of the natural man is his love of self-determination and the sense of power and pride that come from it, while the essence of faith in Christ is to say, “God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of Christ.”

How Can We Understand the Things of the Spirit? What hope is there, then, that anyone will welcome the things of the Spirit? How can Christ crucified come to be valued as the power of God and the wisdom of God and the source of infinite joy? 1 Corinthians 2:14–15 says, “They are spiritually appraised. The spiritual man appraises all things, but is himself appraised by no one.” The spiritual person is the opposite of the natural person. The spiritual person has the Spirit of God. Verse 12 says, “We have received . . . the Spirit which is from God that we might know the things given to us by God.” When the Spirit of God is at work in your life, then you will appraise things the way God does. You will not regard the Word of God as folly but as the most precious word imaginable. The first and most fundamental work of God’s Spirit in the life of the natural man is to shatter pride. The Spirit enables us to see on the one hand our desperate helplessness and on the other hand the all-sufficiency and beauty of Christ crucified. We begin to see and appraise things with the eyes of Christ.

This is what verses 15 and 16 are getting at. The Spirit enables us to appraise things with their true value, but when natural men appraise us, they will always go wrong. Why? Verse 16: Because apart from the Spirit no one thinks or appraises like the Lord, but we who possess the Spirit have the mind of Christ. We have begun to view and assess things the way Christ does. Therefore we do not reject but receive the things of the Spirit, even when they mean death to self; because now we know what is really valuable.

 

What the Work of the Spirit Is and Is Not

Now let’s go back to where we began. The manual of operation for the Christian wartime mentality is the Bible. It contains the truth needed to win us over from the enemy to Christ, to deprogram our old thought patterns, to train us in strategies of righteousness, and to equip us with armor and weapons to defeat Satan and liberate his captives. But we have a natural aversion to this truth. Therefore, the work of the Holy Spirit is utterly indispensable as we make use of this manual. But now we can see more clearly what this work of the Spirit is and what it isn’t.

The work of the Spirit is not to tell us what the manual of operation means. That we must determine by a disciplined study of the text. The Spirit inspired these writings and he does not short-circuit them by whispering in our ear what they mean. When we pray for his help, we do not pray that he will spare us the hard work of rigorous reading and reflection. What we pray is that he would make us humble enough to welcome the truth. The work of the Spirit in helping us grasp the meaning of Christ’s manual of operation is not to make study unnecessary but to make us radically open to receive what our study turns up, instead of twisting the text to justify our unwillingness to accept it.

The lessons are plain for those who long to fight the fight of faith and be an integral part of the war effort. We must be diligent students of the Commander’s manual. And we must soak all of our study in prayer that his Spirit would humble us to submit to every truth and commandment in it. The work of the Holy Spirit is to make us say from the heart as we take up the manual, “Far be it from me that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world was crucified to me, and I to the world.” If our pride has not been crucified by the Holy Spirit, the Bible will be a wax nose and we will call it foolish or mold it to fit our own natural desires. In either case, the word of the Commander will not be obeyed and the war effort will languish and the cause of the enemy will go unchecked.