Wowed by the Word

In Sunday school, we have been learning about various world views/religions. Our teacher has been covering fundamental aspects of each belief, one of which is "What is its epistemology or source of truth?" Since we've been comparing these world views with Christianity, we've been reminded each week that God is the source of all truth. He has revealed Himself through the Bible, and that ultimate revelation was in Jesus Christ. (Luke 24:27, Heb. 1:1-5)

This may seem like kindergarten material, but think about it. Let it sink in and let it wow you.

The Triune God who is complete in Himself, who has need of nothing, the source of all that is true, good, and holy has condescended to reveal Himself to creatures who rebelled against Him. Truth was personified when the Word became flesh, and truth is now available to us in the pages of a Book authored by God, the Holy Spirit. (John 1:1-4, 2 Tim. 3:16-17)

This is very basic, but sometimes it's good to get a remedial lesson. More often than I would like, I take the Bible for granted. Reading it can be more of a duty than a joy or just a means to get answers to life's questions. I'm the last person to down-play studying the Bible or learning doctrine, but our knowledge of God was never meant to stop at the abstract. Its value lies in the fact that truth objective brings us to love and worship truth personified -  Jesus Christ.

May this wow us every time we crack open the Bible.

Review and Giveaway! Picture Perfect: When Life Doesn't Line Up

Perfectionism. It's a loaded word. We largely think of it as a positive thing. Who doesn't want to do all things well? But perfectionism has a dark side. It can become a self-imposed prison where we don't feel like we ever live up to our own expectations. Sometimes, we worry that our imperfections make us unloveable to God.

Even if we know that God loves us, imperfect as we may be, some verses in the Bible can be troubling. 1 Peter 1:16 says "You shall be holy, for I am holy." And also Matthew 5:48 "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect." How should we read those verses in light of biblical truth that we are all sinners (Romans 3:10, Romans 3:23)? Amy Baker wanted to tackle this apparent disconnect in her book Picture Perfect: When Life Doesn't Line Up.

The book is divided into three sections. In the first part, Baker tells the stories of several perfectionists. Since most of us associate perfectionism with people who alphabetize their pantries and straighten the fringes of their throw rugs with a ruler, it's important to see that perfectionism can manifest itself in many different ways. Perfectionism causes some to procrastinate. Others are downright paralyzed from any action. Or they may be angry and controlling. Most readers will find something they can identify with in at least one of these stories. Even if you've never made a bed with hospital corners, you probably have one area where you strive for success at all costs.

The second section reminds us that because of Christ, it is finished. Yes, Jesus death and resurrection is our only hope of escaping God's wrath, but it also saves of from finding our worth in earthly things. We must "preach the gospel to ourselves every day." If we're really doing this, every area of our lives will be changed. That doesn't mean our lives will be easy, but we can rest from striving to justify ourselves by what we do.

Baker does this by focusing on the Sermon on the Mount, specifically Jesus words to "be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect." I enjoyed this focus on Christ's perfection—his finished work that frees us. Perfection is, at its root "a heart that fears suffering"(page 70). But when we trust in Christ, we have nothing to fear.

We begin to see perfection both as a gift that Christ has purchased for us and as a process of growing in Christlikeness. Once a source of stress or despair, perfection becomes a wonderful goal. Because of the gift we've received, we want to live a life of love (Ephesians 5:2) because that's what our Savior did (page 68).

The third section focuses on application. Baker zeroes in on things perfectionists tend to struggle with, such as fear, pride, shame, and busyness.

This is an important subject, and I believe it's something we need to be addressing more often. Sometimes, though, we go too far. In our effort to communicate the sin of perfectionism, we might inadvertently leave people with the message to quit trying. This is not, of course, the purpose of God's grace (Romans 6:1). It's a fine line to walk, but Baker does it well. We should still work as if to God (Colossians 3:32), but not as a way to secure what Christ has already secured for us.

I appreciate this book. I recommend it to anyone who struggles with perfectionism. And even if you don't think you struggle with perfectionism, this book will probably reveal to you ways that you do.

Thanks to the generosity of New Growth Press, I have an extra copy to give away. Please enter your name and email in the form below. I promise your email will remain private and we won't spam you. The winner will be drawn on Thursday, July 17, and the winner will be notified by email.



I received a review copy of this book from the publisher. This review reflects my honest opinion.

God Saves

His own purpose . . . before the ages began.

It's been more than a month since the last post in this series on truths every Christian woman should know, and you've probably forgotten where we were. We Are All Sinners, our previous post, told the story of the fall of humankind. Adam sinned, and the whole human race inherited his guilt, along with an inner corruption that causes us to sin, too. So we are all guilty before God—both for Adam's sin and our own—and alienated from him. It wasn't a happy place to end things.

But thankfully, it was only the end of a post, and not the end of the story. The story continues with a flashback to eternity past. Way back, before the fall of Adam, before the creation of the universe, God had a plan. His goal for history of the universe was to show his glory, and all the events in history, including the fall, are his means to accomplish this goal. The bad news that we are guilty and alienated is the backdrop for the good news, the centerpiece of God's plan for history: his plan to save sinful people "to the praise of his glory" (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14).

The Plan to Save

J. I. Packer calls this plan God's "redemptive project."¹ The blueprint for this project is laid out in Ephesians 1.

Before creation, the Father chose people from Adam's guilty and alienated descendants to eventually stand before him as blameless adopted sons and daughters.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 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 . . . . (Ephesians 1:3-5 ESV)

Christ's role in the redemption project is to make God's chosen people blameless, for it's through his death that their sins are forgiven.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses . . . . (Ephesians 1:7 ESV)

And it's the Spirit who applies Christ's redemption to those God has chosen, and who protects his forgiven sons and daughter until they receive their final inheritance.

. . . you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:13-14 ESV)

This plan requires a Triune God; each member of the Trinity has a role. In eternity past, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit agreed to a "division of labor"² in their work to reconcile sinners. This eternal agreement is sometimes called the covenant of redemption.

In later posts, there will be more on the roles of the Trinity in salvation, particularly the work of the Son and the Holy Spirit. But for now, we can bring in the biblical teaching from other texts and  summarize the agreement for the division of labor in salvation like this: The Father chooses and sends and adopts; the Son comes and redeems and intercedes; the Spirit applies and creates and keeps. In other words, the Father gave the Son a people to redeem, and the Holy Spirit applies the benefits of Christ's redemption to his people.

And the best news is that what God plans, he accomplishes for certain. In the end, God's people will be saved and his glory will be praised.

Learn More

Here are a few ways to learn more about God's plan to save sinners.

1. Study Ephesians 1:1-14, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, and 2 Timothy 1:9-10.
2. Read up on the covenant of redemption in your favorite systematic theology. It's in chapter 25 of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Here's the section from Louis Berkhof's Systematic Theology.
3. Listen to The Covenant of Redemption by J. Ligon Duncan.

[1] Concise Theology by J. I. Packer, page 38.

[2] Systematic Theology by  Louis Berkhoff, page 266.

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This post is the latest in a series of posts on truths every Christian woman should know. Here are the previous posts:

1. God Has Spoken (posted at the True Woman Blog)
2. God Is Three and God Is One
3. God Is Who He Is
4. God Had a Plan
5. God Created the Universe
6. We Are Made in God's Image
7. We Are All Sinners

Bring us the Book!

The theme for this year's Gospel Coalition Women's Conference (TGCW) was "God's Word Our Story: Hearing from Nehemiah." Each of the plenary speakers addressed a passage from that book of the Bible, all thirteen chapters covered in order in the plenary sessions.

Nancy Guthrie taught Nehemiah 7 and 8, that beautiful passage of Scripture where Ezra teaches the book of the law to the people and all who hear understand. Nancy called our attention to Nehemiah 8:1 where Nehemiah reports that the people "told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel."

"Bring us the book!" Nancy imagined the people crying out and as she did so throughout the auditorium various women echoed the cry. "Bring us the book!" Nancy called out again and again the cry reverberated throughout.

It was obviously arranged beforehand yet striking just the same. As we called out for the Book, Nancy replied with the obvious application: O, that God would raise up women hungrier for the Book! Women invested in a right understanding of the Word of God, convinced of its sufficiency, committed to its authority--this, Nancy asserted, is what we need most.

Yes and amen. It's why I teach Bible study. It's why we do what we do here at Out of the Ordinary. We long for women to hunger for the Word of God, that hunger fueling a desire for knowledge, that knowledge prompting a greater love for the God of the Word, that love in turn creating a greater hunger, and not just a hunger for our personal knowledge of Him but for others to know Him too.

While at the conference I picked up a copy of Jen Wilkin's book Women of the Word. Reading the first chapter was like reading my own mail. It was surreal and a little eerie to see there on printed page my own thoughts and motivations for Bible study, thoughts and motivations that I offer as passionately and as emphatically as I can at the start of any study I teach. And by eerie I mean exciting. How I hope many women will devote themselves to pursuing the knowledge of God through His Word!

Wilkin writes...

Never has the phrase "to know him is to love him" been more true. As we grow in the knowledge of God's character through the study of his Word, we cannot help but grow into an exponentially deeper love for him. This explains why Romans 12:2 says we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. we come to understand who God is, and we are changed--our affections detach from lesser things and attach to him. If we want to feel a deeper love for God, we must learn to see him more clearly for who is. If we want to feel deeply about about God, we learn to think deeply about God.

More,

The heart cannot love what the mind does not know. Yes, it is sinful to acquire knowledge for knowledge's sake, but acquiring knowledge about One we love, for the sake of loving him more deeply, will always be for our transformation.

Yes, Lord. Bring us the Book!

Midlife Celebration

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honor and glory and blessing!”

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying,

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”

And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped. Revelation 5:11-14

Stop for a moment and scan your midlife disappointments, regrets, and fears. Ask yourself what you have been hoping in. What is really worth celebrating? What is really worth mourning? Force yourself to use the values of eternity as your measuring tool for the here and now. Let eternity argue with the values of the surrounding culture, which says life is all about youth, appearance, success, material ease, power, and control…

If you listen to eternity, you can stand in the middle of midlife regret and celebrate. Yes, you did many things that you should not have done. And, yes, you failed to do many good things that you should have done. But in the midst of it all God was still working. He was freeing you all along from the one dark, horrible thing that was your biggest problem all along: your sin. He was delivering something to you that was far better than anything you could have ever conceived for yourself: a place in his eternal kingdom. All of our most crushing disappointments are but blips on the map when viewed from the perspective of the never-ending glory of eternity. With the loud songs of eternity in your ears, stand in the middle of the loss of your youth and your fears of aging and celebrate…

God lets you look into then, so that as you face the trials of now you will have hope that is stronger than your disappointment, encouragement that overwhelms your regret, and a dream to motivate you that is better than any dream you could have conjured up for yourself.

Lost in the Middle: Midlife and the Grace of God, Paul David Tripp, Shepherd Press, 2004, pp. 308, 315