If We’ve Only Got One Life…

Living The Cross Centered Life

So I’ve deviated a bit from my published plan from a few weeks ago.  I’m halfway through God Is The Gospel, but it’s a slow read, so I’ve begun reading C. J. Mahaney’s Living The Cross Centered Life.

This could become one of my favorite books, I think.

I’ll post much more thoroughly from it in the coming days, but let me leave you with the following thoughts/quotes (bolding mine, italics not):

“Only those who are aware of God’s wrath are amazed at God’s grace.”

In a chapter on feeling:

“Lloyd-Jones reminds us that ‘what we have in the Bible is Truth; it is not an emotional stimulus…and it is as we apprehend and submit ourselves to the truth that the feelings follow.’”

“Lloyd-Jones then proceeds to this profound application: ‘I must never ask myself in the first instance: What do I feel about this?  The first question is, Do I believe it?’”

“Knowing and wholeheartedly believing the truth will always bring you, in time, to a trustworthy experience of the truth.  But if you trust your feelings first and foremost, if you exalt your feelings, if you invest your feelings with final authority - they’ll deposit you on the emotional roller coaster which so often characterizes our lives.”

“‘Have you realized,’ [Lloyd-Jones] observed, ‘that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?’”

“On a daily basis, we’re faced with two simple choices.  We can either listen to ourselves and our constantly changing feelings about our circumstances, or we can talk to ourselves about the unchanging truth of who God is and what He’s accomplished for us at the cross through His Son Jesus.”

And the next few chapters….

“John Calvin wisely instructs us, ‘When we behold the disfigurement of the Son of God, when we find ourselves appalled by his marred appearance, we need to reckon afresh that it is upon ourselves we gaze, for he stood in our place.” 

“When you’re tempted to doubt God’s love for you, stand before the cross and look at the wounded, dying, disfigured Saviour and realize why He is there.  I believe His Father would whisper to us, ‘Isn’t that sufficient?  I haven’t spared My own Son; I deformed and disfigured and crushed Him - for you.  What more could I do to persuade you that I love you?’  That’s how far God’s love goes.”

“R. C. Sproul wrote that the most perplexing theological question is not why there’s suffering in this world, but why God tolerates us in our sinfulness.  Considering how our sin must appear in the pure sight of the righteous and holy God who created us, why are we even still here, alive and breathing?  God’s mercy is indeed an incredible mystery.”

“When you tell non-Christians, ‘God loves you,’ they aren’t surprised, they aren’t perplexed, they aren’t stunned.  Regrettably, the same is true among most evangelicals, who simply assume this gracious disposition of God - and therefore presume upon it.  And we’ll continue to do this until we learn to see our condition more fully from God’s perspective.”

I’ll comment on these, and undoubtedly have more to post, in the coming week.

-Ben