Anxiety in my eyes ... a blessing in disguise?

This economy is affecting everything. I've been worried sick for the last few weeks wondering if I'm going to have a job in the near future. I know for a fact that it's going to come down to one of two people .. one of them is me, and one is a veteran.

I don't know how this company is in regards to loyalty, and if that's their only stipulation, then I'm the next one to go. But if they take bang for the buck, then the wise choice would be to keep me. They know this, too, so it will be clear which way they lean when the decision's made. And if they keep Jack, I would respect that. Loyalty to a company's employees is a virtuous thing.

The blessing in disguise from all this is that the Lord has revealed to me where my own loyalties lie. I've been so anxious over this because I don't truly believe that the LORD is my provision. I believe it is my job -- and more specifically, my own labor. I've prayed for forgiveness from this sin, and know that He is faithful and just to forgive me of this sin and cleanse me from it (1 John 1.9). So in a sense, I'm grateful for this. I don't know if this lesson is going to be enough, or if God has more to reveal to me through a layoff, but I'm willing to suffer through it, if it will yield the fruit of righteousness.

This morning, I read a Grace Gem that was perfectly timed (I act surprised ...), and I'm going to share it here. While I believe this letter from John Newton to be speaking more of physical affliction, mental afflictions are just as precarious. And God can sympathize with the weaknesses of our flesh (Hebrews 4.15), for He Himself became flesh and made His dwelling with men (John 1.14). Praise God for His faithfulness!

Then they hiss and spit their venom!

(Letters of John Newton)

"I know, O Lord, that Your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness You have afflicted me!" Psalm 119:75

"God disciplines us for our good--that we may share in His holiness." Hebrews 12:10

In Scripture, we read much concerning the emptiness, vanity and uncertainty of the present world.

When our minds are enlightened by the Holy Spirit--then we receive and acknowledge what His Word declares to be truth. Yet if we remain long without changes and trials, and when our path is very smooth--we are for the most part but faintly affected with what we profess to believe. But when some of our dearest friends die, or we ourselves are brought low with pain and sickness--then we not only say, but feel that this world must not, cannot be our rest!

We know by experience, that though afflictions in themselves are not joyous--but grievous--yet in due season they yield the peaceful fruits of righteousness. Various are the blessed fruits which afflictions produce:

By affliction, prayer is quickened--for our prayers are very apt to grow languid and formal in a time of ease.

Affliction greatly helps us to understand the Scriptures, especially the promises; most of which are made to times of trouble. We cannot so well know their fullness, sweetness and certainty--as when we have been in the situation to which they are suited, have been enabled to trust and plead them, and found them fulfilled in our own case.

We are usually indebted to affliction--as the means or occasion of the most signal discoveries we are favored with--of the wisdom, power, and faithfulness of the Lord. These are best observed by the evident proofs we have--that He is near to support us under trouble, and that He can and does deliver us out of it.

Likewise, many of our graces cannot thrive or manifest themselves, without trials--such as resignation, patience, meekness and long-suffering. Strength of grace is not ordinarily acquired by those who sit still and live at ease.

Afflictions do us good likewise, as they make us more acquainted with what is in our own hearts, and thereby promote humiliation and self-abasement. There are abominations which, like nests of vipers, lie so quietly within our hearts, that we hardly suspect they are there--until the rod of affliction rouses them! Then they hiss and spit their venom! This discovery is indeed very distressing--yet, until it is made, we are prone to think ourselves much less vile than we really are, and cannot so heartily abhor ourselves and repent in dust and ashes.

I must write a sermon rather than a letter--if I would enumerate all the good fruits which, by the power of sanctifying grace, are produced from this bitter tree of affliction!

While we have such a depraved nature, and live in such a polluted world; while the roots of pride, vanity, self-dependence and self-seeking, are so strong within us--we need a variety of sharp afflictions to keep us from cleaving to the dust!

"Before I was afflicted I went astray--but now I obey Your Word." Psalm 119:67

Victory in Christ!

So I gotta share something. Tonight my wife and I were fighting in the car. It was stupid, as most of them are, but my back really hurt tonight (a chronic problem for a while now), but it was on fire tonight ... like an ice pick in my back. Well, I was getting pretty frustrated because of this combination of things, and we were stuck in traffic, going somewhere I didn't really want to go. Well, I tried suppressing it. And it just got stronger. And the harder I resisted, the harder it became to control. I started snapping at my wife, then raising my voice in anger ... then we were both arguing pretty fiercely. Suffice it to say that I didn't act as a husband should.
Then I remembered some of the lyrics from the song "The Temptation" from Timothy Brindle's Killing Sin album (get it!). He was battling temptation and he used prayer and the Word. Well, duh.

But it motivated me to fight against this, even though my pride had arrived to the point of not caring anymore (anyone who's ever struggled with anger knows what this is). But I prayed and read the Word of God ... specifically Romans 6, which that song also referenced. And something changed .. I received the Word into my life this time. I read it as if GOD (not Paul) were speaking to ME (not "the church") and I believed it!

Romans 6.4-7
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.

I focused on the newness of life we have received. The unity we have with Christ because of His death and resurrection. My SIN WAS CRUCIFIED which means it is ALREADY defeated! I believe I am not a slave to sin because since I died with Christ, I've been set free from that sin. What wonderful news! How liberating this was!

Then down further:

Romans 6.13-14
Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

We're told to DO something with this knowledge. Not only are we to NOT present our members to sin to be used for unrighteousness, but we are TO present them to God to be used for righteousness. I focused on the FACT that sin does not dominate me because of Christ and His death, so it did not dominate me! I presented myself to God for HIM to use me for righteousness. I went into the house and humbly apologized to her, prayed with her, and we went on to have a pretty good night with some friends and a couple people I'd never met before.

Praise God for our victory over sin in Christ! I learned something new tonight. I pray this may be an encouragement to someone else too. Read the word and personalize it. Let everything be about Christ. Listen to this song and then realize what God actually did to save us:



Amen

John Owen on the Mortification of Sin

This is what John Owen suggests as a practical application to mortify sin in one's life. It stopped me in my tracks. Especially the second paragraph.

(1.) Charge thy conscience with the guilt which appears in it from the rectitude and holiness of the law. Bring the holy law of God into thy conscience, lay thy corruption to it, pray that thou mayst be affected with it. Consider the holiness, spirituality, fiery severity, inwardness, absoluteness of the law, and see how thou canst stand before it. Be much, I say, in affecting thy conscience with the terror of the Lord in the law, and how righteous it is that every one of thy transgressions should receive a recompense of reward. Perhaps thy conscience will invent shifts and evasions to keep off the power of this consideration; -- as, that the condemning power of the law doth not belong to thee, thou are set free from it, and the like; and so, though thou be not conformable to it, yet thou needest not to be so much troubled at it. But, --

[1.] Tell thy conscience that it cannot manage any evidence to the purpose that thou art free from the condemning power of sin, whilst thy unmortified lust lies in thy heart; so that, perhaps, the law may make good its plea against thee for a full dominion, and then thou art a lost creature. Wherefore it is best to ponder to the utmost what it hath to say.

Assuredly, he that pleads in the most secret reserve of his heart that he is freed from the condemning power of the law, thereby secretly to countenance himself in giving the least allowance unto any sin or lust, is not able, on gospel grounds, to manage any evidence, unto any tolerable spiritual security, that indeed he is in a due manner freed from what he so pretends himself to be delivered.

-The Mortification of Sin; Ch XI Sec. 1