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-In Christ alone,
The Holowell's (Josh, Whitney and Tyko)

I just finished reading God is the Gospel by John Piper. It is a wonderful exposition on why God himself is the best and final gift of the gospel.
As I was reading the book I had a chance to meditate a little on Psalm 143, so here is the Psalm and some of my thoughts on how delighting in God as the final gift of the gospel and the events of the gospel relate.

Psalm 143:
1 Hear my prayer, O LORD; give ear to my pleas for mercy! In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness!
2 Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.
3 For the enemy has pursued my soul; he has crushed my life to the ground; he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead.
4 Therefore my spirit faints within me; my heart within me is appalled.
5 I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of your hands.
6 I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah
7 Answer me quickly, O LORD! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit.
8 Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.
9 Deliver me from my enemies, O LORD! I have fled to you for refuge!
10 Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground!
11 For your name's sake, O LORD, preserve my life! In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble!
12 And in your steadfast love you will cut off my enemies, and you will destroy all the adversaries of my soul, for I am your servant.

David appeals to God's character for his deliverance, for his salvation. He does this because he knows he is not righteous before God "for no one living is righteous before you" (v. 2). So if God would act he must act out of his own free gracious character, his own faithfulness, his own righteousness. It must also be as David appeals "For your name's sake, O LORD." If God is to act on David's behalf, David knows it must be born in the character of God and not him, and ultimately for the glory of God and not him.

David knows this because God is his greatest delight, "my soul thirsts for you like a parched land" (v. 6). But at the same time, David thirsts for God like this because he understands the depth of free grace in the character of God, and his purpose in acting- his glory.

There I think is the key to the relationship- they both feed each other. Meditating on gospel events (the free grace of God given in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus) fuels a passion for delighting in God himself. That passion for God then fuels a desire to dwell deeply in the gospel for it is "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (2nd Cor. 4:6).

But this righteous and holy delight in God is only good news to an unrighteous sinner like me if it is freely given. And it is! It is only in His righteousness (Christ's) that we can come and thirst for God. So let us pray with David "Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul." (v.8). The steadfast covenant love of God poured out on us through Jesus on the cross frees us to delight in God and His glory.

-In Christ alone,
The Holowell's (Josh, Whitney and Tyko)

I have been meaning to write this post for a while but just haven't gotten around to it. This is mainly from a book I read earlier in the year A Lifting Up for the Downcast by William Bridge. The book is a collection of 13 sermons Bridge preached on Psalm 42:11 - "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God." This particular sermon is a lifting up in the lack of assurance.
One of the things that Bridge brings up to lift up his people in the time of discouragement is the promises of God. But he as a good Puritan "physician of the soul" asks the objections that a person would have in banking on the promises of God for encouragement and assurance. One objection that he raises and then answers is that of conditional promises.

"Oh, you reply, but yet, when I go to the Scripture, I find that God's promise still runs upon some condition, and I cannot perform that condition. I do not find that condition in myself; and therefore I fear that I may not go to these promises and that I have no right to them."

He answers this question in several ways, but two are striking to me. The first is that the condition of some promises in Scripture is the promise of other promises. An example:

Repentance is the condition of the promise in 2 Chron. 6:36-40- "36 "If they sin against you-for there is no one who does not sin-and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to a land far or near,
37 yet if they turn their heart in the land to which they have been carried captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captivity, saying, 'We have sinned and have acted perversely and wickedly,'
38 if they repent with all their mind and with all their heart in the land of their captivity to which they were carried captive, and pray toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city that you have chosen and the house that I have built for your name,
39 then hear from heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their pleas, and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you.
40 Now, O my God, let your eyes be open and your ears attentive to the prayer of this place."

And yet, repentance is the promise of Ezekiel 36:26 - "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."

Faith and coming to Christ is the condition of the promise in Matthew 11:28 "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And in John 6:37 it is the thing promised: "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out."

Obedience is required in one promise: Isa. 1:19 "If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land" and promised in Ezekiel 36:27 "And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."

So, the point of this is not that we should not repent or obey, or come to Christ in faith, but that we should see great encouragement in conditional promises because in Christ for God's people they are promised by God in His mercy and grace. So we can cleave to the promise of repentance and faith in Christ because God has done everything for our salvation and promised the very conditions of it! What grace upon grace! We can be assured and run to the promises.

The second striking thing he noted was that if we are in Christ, he has perfectly performed the condition for us and his covenant keeping obedience is credited to us! What could be better. We have not met the conditions, true, but Jesus has done it perfectly and we are in union with Him by faith. So, Christian, take hold of Christ and the promises of God, especially the conditional ones, for there we see that God's grace not only true but over-abundant and wonderful.


-In Christ alone,
The Holowell's (Josh, Whitney and Tyko)

You may have seen in the news that we are entering the process of changing our name from Campus Crusade for Christ to Cru. The decision was announced at our national staff conference and will go into effect in early 2012. We are very excited about this new change. But, because it is a change, and because some of the news coverage has been unfair with some unfounded claims, let me explain it here briefly. The only thing that is changing is the name of the US ministries. That's it. We are still the exact same people with the exact same passion for boldly presenting the gospel so that everyone in the world gets an opportunity to respond to Jesus. The name change in no way was done for the sake of political correctness or because of us being ashamed of the gospel, but was done for the sake of the name of Jesus being lifted high. This name allows us to be more effective (and has already been in use for many years on college campuses like Ball State as many of you know) because it removes people's preconceptions about who we are and allows us to engage in conversations about Jesus more easily, removing as many stumbling blocks to the gospel as we can. The leadership of our organization has done an exemplary job in leading us through this process and presented compelling research to show that we will be more effective in bearing witness to the gospel. So, really, we are the same people with the same passion, but a new name.




-In Christ alone,
The Holowell's (Josh, Whitney and Tyko)