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What sustains us under pressure?

What a fun start to our day! I got to look up a Bible commentary for Fred on my LibraryThing.com, and then I got to flip through a bunch of hanging file folders filled with “important” (really, just OLD) documents from Fred’s past. (With Fred), I flipped through sermon notes, camp journals, and even a two-page hand-written testimony he gave once. (He knows not when, but a girl did write him a note on top of the page. 🙂 )

He found what he was looking for and is working now on his devotional for Peacemakers. I found a Sinclair Ferguson book that I should really go back and read one of these days:

The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction

What a great book! So rich. so practical.

Let me share just a snippet from it to start our Tuesday off right:

“The point to be underscored is that these great truths, which we tend to isolate in a category of “doctrines,” are in fact the very foundation of Jesus’ encouragement of his disciples and even himself in an hour of great practical need. It is as though he were saying, “Only the man who has a grasp of these heights will be able to hold firm when he descends to the depths of human experience. We must therefore, in the light of this, recognise how practically important Christian doctrines are …

For too many Christians for too long, “doctrine” has been thought of as impractical, stodgy, and relatively useless. But we cannot obediently hear our Lord (surely the most practical Man who ever lived), if we turn away from his doctrine. For he teaches doctrine in order to fill our lives with stability and grace …

Here are the essential elements of a life of devoted loyalty to Christ: Christians, use your minds! Give your bodies to the Lord “as an act of intelligent worship.” Let “God re-mould your minds from within.”

We will respond with the kind of sharp-edged consecration which proves fruitful in Christian living only as our eyes are wide open to the mercies of God. As we understand and appreciate the mercies of God we will live more fully for Christ …

God’s love for us began before the dawning of time and extends until time’s last rolling year has gone:

“Who the can e’er divide us more
from Jesus and his love,
Or break the sacred chain that binds
the earth to heav’n above?

Let troubles rise, and terrors frown
  and days of darkness fall;
Through him all dangers we’ll defy
and more than conquer all.

Nor death nor life, nor earth nor hell,
nor time’s destroying sway,
Can e’er efface us from his heart
or make his love decay.”

How this plan of salvation begins to touch our lives is the first thing we must consider …”

Amen! The first thing and the last thing and everything in between.

May our hearts be confident of this: God loves sinners. God loves us.

Happy, blessed Wednesday to you!

Your friend,
Tara B.