To All the Roses Out There

Where I've Been

It has been almost five months since my last blog. The best way to describe where I have been during this time is with a picture like this one. No, I haven’t been in Colorado, but I have been at the top of a proverbial mountain – a spiritual mountaintop, if you will. To borrow an analogy from John Piper, I feel as though I have been standing at the top of the mountain, speechless with my mouth hanging open, gaping at the vastness that lies before me. God has shown me some remarkable things about Himself on this mountaintop. In so doing, He has greatly enlarged my view of Him and shown me how much more I have to learn and how many more wonderful peaks there are to climb.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor? Or who has given a gift to Him that he might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. – Romans 11:33-36 (ESV)

I dare say the past five months has perhaps been the greatest time of spiritual growth I have experienced thus far in my walk with the Lord. Much of what God has revealed to me has literally left me speechless, which is quite a feat. Silencing this chatty gal is no easy task. However, silence and solitude were quite necessary for me to learn what the Lord had to teach me. For months, I simply could not find the words to articulate what He was revealing to me about Himself. My perception of the very nature and attributes of God was challenged and dramatically enlarged during this time. While I have found it almost impossible to blog about, it was equally impossible to blog about anything else because it spilled over into every other area of my life. As Paul Washer says, "a true Christian cannot bear or even survive a divorce between emotion and intellect or between devotion to God and the doctrine of God." The word "doctrine" is often perceived to be a cold, churchy and legalistic word. The word actually just means the truths taught in the Bible. So doctrine, a.k.a. truth taught in the Bible matters....it matters a lot.

"Sound, biblical doctrine is a necessary aspect of true wisdom and authentic faith. The attitude that scorns doctrine while elevating feelings or blind trust cannot legitimately be called faith at all, even if it masquerades as Christianity. It is actually an irrational form of unbelief." - John MacArthur

But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Titus 2:1 (ESV)

The truths/doctrines revealed in the Scriptures must be the very foundation upon which we build our belief and behavior. Theology and reality are forever intertwined for the Christian. One cannot be separated from the other.

Through my study of the scriptures over the last several months, my eyes have been opened to some wonderful things about the sovereignty of God in all things, including salvation. It is no coincidence that God was simultaneously showing my husband the same things in his personal study of reformed theology and the historic doctrines of Christianity. It was everywhere we turned and there every time we opened our Bibles - God is truly Sovereign over all and this truth has become an integral part of the very fabric of our beings. God’s electing love was never more evident than in His sovereign act of selecting Israel to receive His grace while withholding it from Pharaoh.

For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. Deuteronomy 7:6 (ESV)


"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." So then He has mercy on whomever He wills, and He hardens whomever He wills. Romans 9:15-18 (ESV)

It is with great fear and trembling that I attempt to articulate what it is He has shown me by His grace. It is as though I have been shown the door to a room that I never knew existed. I have barely begun to explore all that is contained within, and already I am awestruck of the vastness of His sovereignty and glory. It is overwhelming, to say the least, to think that the only thing that has saved me from the wrath of God is His own good will and pleasure. He saved me because He saved me, not because I had great faith or merit or because I gave Him permission to enter my heart. He doesn’t need permission to do anything. He is the Lord of the universe. I am not sovereign over my own salvation…He is. The fact that He predestined me for salvation before the foundation of the universe has almost been too much to wrap my brain around.

Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. Ephesians 1:4-6(ESV)

As I look back over the last year, I realize now that He began to prepare my heart many months ago. In a post from October 2008 called “New Glasses”, He was beginning to teach me about spiritual blindness. He is now beginning to reveal the depth of that is greater than I thought. I used to think my salvation was 99% God and 1% me – that He did the grace part and I did the faith part – that I was “bright” enough to understand the gospel, and “humble” enough to repent and believe. What He has shown me has brought me to my knees in gratitude. I am beginning to understand that even my repentance and faith are gifts from Him. Apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, I would not have ears to hear or eyes to see the beauty and glory of the Gospel.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. I Corinthians 2:14 (ESV)

No one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father. John 6:65 (ESV)

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Romans 8:7-8 (ESV)

How grateful I am that He lifted the veil and allowed me to see myself condemned under the Law. Without it, I would have never known my need for a Savior. He raised me from death to life, and brought me out of the dominion of darkness into the Kingdom of the Son whom He loves. It is the grace of God, not my own strength or faithfulness, even less my righteousness that has saved me. Salvation is 100% of the Lord (Jonah 2:9) - achieved by the effectual call of the Father, the atoning work of the Son, and the new life through the Spirit. A friend of ours likens our spiritual condition apart from Christ to being dead at the bottom of the lake. When Christ saved me, I was lifeless, without a pulse in need of spiritual CPR. I wasn't just blind, I was dead. I wasn’t just drowning and scrambling for air near the surface of the water. Jesus didn’t throw me a life raft to grasp onto. I couldn’t have grabbed ahold of it if he did. It would have hit my cold dead corpse without a response. In the same way, I could no more choose Christ and be born again than Lazarus could have walked out of the tomb without Christ first resurrecting him. Before Christ saved me, I wasn’t just sick….I was dead - spiritually dead. He had to breathe life into me before I could even see Him as Savior and Lord. My repentance and faith aren’t what earned my salvation – that would give me some kind of merit and then grace wouldn’t be grace. My repentance and faith are gifts of the salvation He Himself solely and sovereignly accomplished for me.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins. For by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast. It is a gift of God. Ephesians 2:1,8, 9 (ESV)

So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
Romans 11:5-6 (ESV)

Our sovereign Lord is the only One who can remove the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh. The new birth in Christ is truly a miracle graciously wrought by God in converting the soul of man. May He receive all glory, honor and praise!