Getting You Out of Bed in the Morning

Here’s a quote from Jerry Bridges in Stand: A Call for the Endurance of the Saints. Bridges’ chapter in this book is titled Four Essentials for Finishing Well. As he lists them, the second essential for finishing well is a daily appropriation of the gospel. When he was a new believer, he says, he thought of the gospel as a message for the unbeliever and did not see his own need for the gospel except as a message to share with unbelievers.

But believers, too, need the gospel, because we still have a natural tendency to try to build our relationship with God by our performance.

…[I]f you do not daily appropriate the gospel, you will drift toward a performance relationship with God. And when you do that, you lead yourself in one of two directions. If you have a very superficial view of sin in your life—that is, if you think of sin in terms of the big gross sins that society outside of us commits—then you will tend toward religious pride because you’re not doing those things. But if you are conscientious and if you’re seeing some of these “respectable” sins, such as gossip and pride, jealousy and envy and a critical spirit and these kind of things, if you’re seeing those in your life and you do not live by the gospel, that can lead you to despair. And so oftentimes people in this second category just kind of slack off because they can’t handle the tension. They can’t handle the difference between what they know they should be and what they honestly see themselves to be. And what resolves that tension is the gospel, which reminds us that our sins are forgiven and that we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. At the same time, that which keeps us from spiritual pride is the gospel, because again the gospel is only for sinners. But we are all sinners, still practicing sinners, even though we’ve been delivered from the guilt and the dominions of sin. …[W]e still sin in thought, word, deed, and most of all in motive because we often do the right thing for a wrong reason or for a mixed reason….And so we come to the Lord and we say, “Lord, I come still a practicing sinner, but I look to Jesus Christ and his shed blood and his perfect obedience, his righteous life that has been credited to me. And I see myself standing before you clothed in his righteousness.”

That will get you out of bed in the morning. That will get you excited about the Christian life, when you see yourself daily clothed in his righteousness. And that will keep you from loving the world. You can’t love the gospel and love the world at the same time. So a daily appropriation of the gospel will keep you from getting off course.

…It is our sinful nature that thinks we must somehow earn God’s favor by our own hard work or our own faithfulness. Now we want to be faithful, we want to work hard, but not in order to earn God’s approval, but because we have God’s approval. And so a daily appropriation of the gospel is essential to enduring to the end.

Sunday's Hymn

During this morning’s church service, we sang this hymn. It’s translated from the Welsh, and our hymnal has the “great Redeemer” translation.

Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah

Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,
[or Guide me, O Thou great Redeemer…]
Pilgrim through this barren land.
I am weak, but Thou art mighty;
Hold me with Thy powerful hand.
Bread of Heaven, Bread of Heaven,
Feed me till I want no more;
Feed me till I want no more.

Open now the crystal fountain,
Whence the healing stream doth flow;
Let the fire and cloudy pillar
Lead me all my journey through.
Strong Deliverer, strong Deliverer,
Be Thou still my Strength and Shield;
Be Thou still my Strength and Shield.

Lord, I trust Thy mighty power,
Wondrous are Thy works of old;
Thou deliver’st Thine from thralldom,
Who for naught themselves had sold:
Thou didst conquer, Thou didst conquer,
Sin, and Satan and the grave,
Sin, and Satan and the grave.

When I tread the verge of Jordan,
Bid my anxious fears subside;
Death of deaths, and hell’s destruction,
Land me safe on Canaan’s side.
Songs of praises, songs of praises,
I will ever give to Thee;
I will ever give to Thee.

Musing on my habitation,
Musing on my heav’nly home,
Fills my soul with holy longings:
Come, my Jesus, quickly come;
Vanity is all I see;
Lord, I long to be with Thee!
Lord, I long to be with Thee!

—William Williams

Watch it sung enthusiastically by a Welsh congregation:

Prefer something in a more contemporary style? Try this.

Other hymns, worship songs, sermons etc. posted today:

• Who Trusts in God, A Strong Abode at Hiraeth
• The Mighty God, The Lord at Field Stone Cottage
• Lord’s Day 43, 2008 at The Thirsty Theologian
• Absent From Flesh! O Blissful Thought at joythruChrist
• Lord, Dismiss Us With Thy Blessing at Conjubilant with Song
• Who Is On The Lord’s Side? at Whatever Things…
• Indescribable at The Happy Wonderer
• Come Thou Fount at Practicing Theology
• “Take Up Thy Cross,” The Saviour Said at Nova Scotia Scott

Have you posted a hymn today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by emailing me at the address in the sidebar and I’ll add your post to the list.

Things That I Like: LibraryThing

LibraryThing has got to be one of the best free things available on the internet. What is LibraryThing? It’s an online book catalog where you can list your own library for free (as long as you have less than 200 or them), or, as in my case, your whole church library for $15 per year.

It’s simple to use. All you need to do is type in the ISBN number of a book, or author and a few key words, and there you have it, everything you need to add the book to your online library. Much easier than cataloging on cards with pen and ink, and I should know, because I’m cataloging the books in the church library that way at the same time I’m adding them to LibraryThing.

And your library is searchable—and alphabetically-arrangeable—by author, title, and subject (aka tags). The biggest plus for a church library like mine, as I see it, is that the catalog is available to any member of the congregation while they’re at home during the week, as long as they have web access.

So far, I only have 300 books catalogued—it’s the index card and ink thing that’s holding things up—but I’ll let you take a peak anyway. Just click on either button at the top left to choose whether you view by list or by covers.  And the column heading you click—author, title, or tag—will determine the feature by which the book list is alphabetized.

Yes, we have some books I’d be happier without, but we’ve got some good ones, too. We get our books by donation, so what we have is what we get. You can’t look a gift book in the mouth. And you shouldn’t judge a library by it’s book covers. Or something.

And the best is yet to catalog.