A Proper Pursuit of Holiness

Psalm 141 is a bold prayer of David’s. He cries to the Lord for help to resist temptation and pursue holiness. This psalm is a great picture of a humble, worshipful pursuit of God.

1. Worship

First, his prayer is placed in the context of worship: “I call upon you…let my prayer be counted as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!”

Before we can learn to, hope to, try to resist sin and put it to death, we must first pursue worship and the fear of the Lord. For resisting sin is either worship or sin in itself, for Romans 14:23 reminds us that whatever is done apart from faith is sin. Thus, if we try to kill sin apart from both a desire to please God and a trust in the promises of the gospel that ultimately motivate my pursuit of holiness, then my pursuit is sinful. This rules out a religious mindset that seeks to accomplish our own righteousness apart from an awareness of our great need of Christ.

But here, David’s orientation is “I cry to YOU;” he is not hoping in himself. Rather, he is actively turning from himself and to God. This is the heart disposition the Proverb means where it says, “in all your ways acknowledge him,” and then one can hope that the Lord will keep straight and direct his path.

Here, then, we have a practical application picture of that. David acknowledges the Lord in worship, then proceeds to his request in which he hopes the Lord will graciously direct him.

2. Guard My Mouth

“Set a guard over my mouth…watch over my lips!”

David knows that one of the most dangerous parts of our bodies for sin is the mouth. James builds out this idea in James 3:6-8, “the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life…no human being can tame the tongue.”

If this is all true—that our tongue is so easily taken up by our flesh for sin and that we, on our own, cannot reign it in—then we must not try. Rather, like David, we must acknowledge the reality of our weakness to control our words and throw ourselves at the mercy of God to forgive us where we have sinned with our lips and to set a guard over our mouths that our evil might be restrained and put to death by the Holy Spirit working within us.

3. Guard My Heart

“Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds.”

Here again, the key is to begin by acknowledging my own iniquity—the evil bent of my heart that inevitably leans me toward doing wicked deeds. David’s saying, “Lord, I know my heart will want to go here or there and do evil! Please don’t let me. Keep me close and don’t let me wander and believe lies and worship created things rather than you, Creator God!”

Paul speaks here as well regarding what we busy ourselves with saying, “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not things are on earth.” (Col 3:2) When you recognize that your tendency is to busy yourself with wicked, you have to also, like David, acknowledge that such deeds spring out of where your heart is and thus where your mind is. So killing sin begins with being “raised with Christ.” If you have become a Christian, you’ve been given a new heart and have the Holy Spirit and no longer have to set your mind on things that are on earth. You no longer have to busy your mind and heart with earthly things, earthly pleasures, earthly preoccupations. By the Spirit, you can set your mind on matters of the Kingdom, of righteousness, of salvation for yourself and others. You can busy yourself with good deeds (Eph. 2:10).

4. Embrace Rebuke

“Let a righteous man strike me – it is a kindness; let him rebuke me – it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it.”

The most loving thing our fellow worshipers can do for us sometimes is to call us out in our sin, to not hold back what might be offensive or hurt—it is a kindness—it is real love. David adds, it is an anointing thing, a blessing, a consecrating thing to be loved so well by a friend that they will not let you continue unquestioned, unrebuked, in your sin.

So again, the prayer is: “I know that I need to be rebuked: 1) Please send someone to call me out and 2) please give me a heart of humility that realizes what a gift it is to be loved like this that someone else would desire my holiness and a healthy relationship with God for me.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we have to like rebuke or that it feels good. But what is comfortable and feels good is rarely what is actually good for us. Yes, it’s painful. But, yes, it’s also good for you.

5. Gaze & Refuge

“My eyes are toward you…in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless.”

Only the man whose eyes are fixed on God, whose refuge is God, can request that he not be left defenseless. Yet when God is his refuge, he has chosen the strongest defense there is.

Our gaze must continually be turned to Christ. There are innumerable things that will attempt to steal your gaze and cause you to hope in them for satisfaction, identity, joy, peace, fulfillment, and all of them but Christ will lie. Our hearts will even affix themselves to good things like family, work, friendships, success and security, but these things cannot keep their promises if we hear from them that they will satisfy, keep, protect and save us. When our gaze drifts from Christ alone for these things, idolatry is close at hand.

There is a close connection between where our gaze lies and what we count as our refuge. What you think about, dwell on, long for and enjoy most is where you will run for security when trouble, frustration, fear, stress and weakness arise. If your gaze isn’t upon Christ, then he will not be your refuge and you will be defenseless.

Now we’re back where we started, for truly gazing upon Christ and taking refuge in him is Christo-centric, God-honoring worship.

God’s Sovereignty and God’s Love: For You And for His Own Glory (Part 1)

People often talk about “The Problem of Evil and Suffering” and many try to use it to disprove the existence of God. While I don’t think that the existence of evil disproves the existence of a sovereign, loving, Creator-God, I think that it does prove the fact that every person has a sense that something is not right with the world. Our world seems broken. The strong consume the weak. The whole worldview of Naturalistic Evolution is built around the principle of the “Survival of the Fittest.”

If you read the news, watch TV or even just look around at all, all the pain, destruction, and oppression of the weak in our world, both from natural and human causes, is hard to miss, and it’s distressing. Our world is broken. The Bible attributes the pain, destruction and breakdown of human relationships we deal with each day to a result of sin entering the world; and sin is defined as anything that humans do in rejection of God and God’s authority over our lives. We reject God and exalt ourselves instead. He has designed the world to work in a certain way and when we as the human race rejected that way (beginning with Adam), all our relationships – with God, with each other, and with the created world itself – broke down.

In Psalm 73, Asaph observes these truths and is heartbroken over it. He begins by acknowledging God’s character and faithfulness to his people (1), but quickly admits his difficulty with what he sees in the world. From his perspective, people bent on greed, selfishness, malice and cruelty are prosperous and have little difficulties in life; while those who reject their old, sinful patterns in pursuit of God’s way suffer and are beaten down, poor and afflicted. Asaph “nearly stumbled”, when he observed that the ungodly increase in wealth, become fat with fine eating, and are ever-increasing in their pride, arrogance, violence, boasting, and rejection and cursing of the heavens (3-9). He also mourns the fact that Israel, God’s people, are sympathetic to them as they “turn back to them, and find no fault in them.” (10) Asaph admits, upon seeing that this is the way the world seems to be going, that he feels his godly efforts have been in vain—that he is wasting his time and effort: “All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.” (13-14)

Next time, we’ll look at how Asaph responds once he gets alone with God and considers the reality of their prosperity and how God is really treating them.

A History of Faithfulness and Its Result.

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.” (ESV)

Such beautiful words of worship! I want to pursue a heart like David’s here, “earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for you.”  He is just engulfed in desire for God’s presence and overwhelmed with with an awareness of his need for it.

“as in a dry and weary land, where there is no water”: He compares his need for (and present lack of) God’s presence to dying of thirst in the desert. God’s presence is essential to his soul like water is to the body. But moreso, his spiritual need transfers also to a physical need, “my flesh faints.”

His praise of God is rooted in a history of God’s faithfulness.

“because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you”

The only way he could say that is if he experienced that love in the past, and it gives way to future worship; “my lips will praise you.”

“So,” — Therefore — on the basis of that confession of God’s steadfast love, he resolves to do something. Lifelong worship ensues. And not just quiet, inner, contemplative, unexpressed thankfulness, but public, body-involved, hand-raising, loud worship – “in your name I will lift up my hands”!

“My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips”: This is my favorite verse here. He declares with such certainty the outcome of his disposition toward God, of his faith in and love for God:  To paraphrase,“my soul will be satisfied, as with the best food in the universe, and  it will bubble up out of me into praise!” Oh how I want to be that kind of worshiper! To be so consumed with Jesus, with gratitude for my salvation and awe at his glory that I can confidently proclaim that my soul is satisfied in him alone and finds rest and assurance nowhere else! Isn’t that the big problem with us as humans. We constantly scrape and yearn and desire something to satisfy our souls. We relentlessly, tirelessly set the hope of our souls on things that do not satisfy. They make us happy for weeks or months at best (but sometimes only minutes), but ultimately fail, fade and break—disappointing us at best and devastating us at worst. Isn’t God the only one who can satisfy? Wouldn’t we do well to seek having our hearts stirred up and our hopes and dreams met in Him?  Yet, this isn’t something you can simply set your mind to do. You can’t demand that your soul be satisfied in and treasure God. It has to be rooted in something, some awareness of who He is for you, some certainty that he will be something for you.

That’s what we find in the gospel. God became a man—the God-Man, Jesus. He lived a perfect life and died a sacrificial death in our place and for our sin, and only belief in that history of his love, faithfulness, and devotion to you can save you. And this isn’t just some cognitive affirmation of historical facts, but a vigorous dependence on those historical facts, and a vigorous trust and hope that the same God who worked that in history will work it for your future.

David’s sentence didn’t stop with “my soul will be satisfied…” The structure of the whole sentence is this:

“My soul will be satisfied…and my mouth will praise you…when I remember you…FOR you have been my help“

And there is the ground for all this worship. It’s rooted in a history of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness in the past. John Piper calls this kind of future-affecting, faith-producing reflection on God’s faithfulness and goodness toward you in the past “Faith in Future Grace.” I think he’s on to something. This seems to be David’s way of stirring his affections up for the Lord, and I feel it must also be mine.

Cross-browser Support Woes: :last-child Pseudo Class in IE

So the world of CSS design continues to change rapidly and the arrival of CSS3 has brought us many new CSS pseudo classes, including :last-child, which selects the last element that is the last child of it’s parent element. This is useful when, for example, you’re creating a horizontal navigation list and want to add in a separator between them, such as a right border or graphical separator. You don’t want an extra border hanging out on the end, so with this you can just tell the last one to have no border.

So you might do something like this, which sets your border on the left of every ul li a and removes it off of the last a in your list.


ul li a { display:block; padding: 0 10px; border-right: 1px solid #fff;}
ul > li:last-child a { border-right:none; }


Anyway, all is well until you check your other browsers and realize that, you guessed it, Internet Explorer (the bane of every front-end web developer), even the beloved IE8, does not support many of the new CSS3 specs and pseudo classes, including :last-child.

However, thankfully, this one is not too hard to work around. Most applications of :last-child can also be done with :first-child, which is supported by IE8. You basically just have to swap sides – so that border we originally added to the right, we add to the left, and then set :first-child to border-left: none;.


ul li a { display:block; padding: 0 10px; border-left: 1px solid #fff; }
ul > li:first-child a { border-left: none; }


The Pursuit of God

It occurred to me this morning as I finished reading my four chapters of Scripture for January 20 in D.A. Carson’s For the Love of God, Vol. 1 and began reading chapter one of A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God for the second time that it was this book that began for me a journey in August of 2007 that changed the way I live. I had just transferred to UNC Wilmington to finish a bachelor’s degree, in Film Studies, with hopes of moving to northern California and working for Pixar or getting some experience on set and making feature films in Hollywood. Either way, I considered myself a Christian, and a good one, too.

However, something had been changing for me recently. I had only months before discovered the lively, gruff, and direct, but very clear and gracious preaching of Mark Driscoll, and his presentation of the gospel was not like anything else I had heard before. As I continued listening to sermon after sermon, I became very convicted that I was one of the ‘religious people’ he kept yelling about, insisting that being religious and keeping all the rules doesn’t make you Christian.

That’s the backdrop of my Christian life prior to picking up The Pursuit of God off of my parents’ bookshelf before leaving home to go to Wilmington for the Fall semester. I remember reading chapter one and realizing in the quiet of my dorm room the reality that though I was a believer for sure, there was such a lack of affection for God in my heart. I read my Bible daily, but there was no vigor in it. I was rarely driven to deep, heartfelt prayer, yearning for the presence of the Holy Spirit. About the only time I really prayed hard like that was when I found myself in the midst of besetting patterns of sin with which I struggled, longing to walk in freedom and to be as clean on the inside as I appeared to be on the inside.

Tozer’s point in the chapter I was reading is that American Christianity has become so nicely packaged that we act as if there is no real work required to have a relationship with Jesus. We have so programmed our churches and our Christians that it’s commonplace for Christians to think that if they attend church, sing in the choir, show up for church workday and help mow the grass, do all the good things and avoid doing all the bad things and share their faith every so often, that they will have a healthy, vibrant relationship with God. Tozer commiserates the way that the pure and simple gospel and beloved, life-giving, refreshing doctrines of the faith have been replaced with pithy sayings (like ‘once saved, always saved’), and Christian versions of quasi-optimistic self-help books, saying:

The doctrine of justification by faith—a biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort—has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such a manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God…Christ may be “recieved” without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is “saved,” but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and is encouraged to be content with little…[and later on he says] We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him.

One cannot read that sort of thing, if he is serious about being a committed believer in and follower of Christ, and not be affected to the core of his being. Every pronoun Tozer wrote in those paragraphs, I was replacing with ‘you’ in my mind, feeling convicted that my own heart continuously fails to seek God with a great deal of fervor. Then I remember getting to the end of the chapter, having agreed with everything Tozer was saying about the lack of seriousness with which Christians approach God, and he included this prayer, which so expressed my heart at that moment, and did so again this morning upon reading it for the second time:

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

So my encouragement to you is to read this book. My hope in sharing my story with you is to create in you a holy discontentment, a desire to desire more of God. That is what God is doing in me through this book and through his Word (and you need both).

Buy The Pursuit of God

Life Goal: Memorize the New Testament

I normally am not this ambitious, but I decided that I want to memorize the whole New Testament before I die. My reasons why:

• Nothing is more worthy of my time and effort.
• Nothing is more excellent to have in my thoughts.
• Nothing is more helpful to others than to be able to speak truth into darkness, fear or pain at any time.
• Nothing else kills pride like the testimony of Scripture of my great need for a gracious and merciful Savior like Jesus.

I did a little research to see what I’m up against. In the RSV, there are 7,958 verses. I’m sure I have more memorized than this in various verses scattered about, but in terms of whole passages, so far I definitely have:

• Colossians: 95 verses.
• 1 Peter 1:1–2:10 : 35 verses.
• Matthew 6:25–34 : 10 verses.
• Ephesians 2:1–10 :  10 verses.

TOTAL: 150 verses.
% Complete: 1.9%

The Power of God

“For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” – 1 Corinthians 1:17

Glorifying Human Speech

Why would preaching the gospel “with words of eloquent wisdom” empty the cross of its power?

Paul seems to believe that there is a way to preach the gospel that minimizes, drains, undervalues, underestimates, or as he says “empties” it of the power that it has to save. Perhaps what he is observing about words of eloquent wisdom is that there is a tendency in the human mind to glorify human speech. Indeed in their culture, Greek philosophy and rhetoric were highly prized and those who mastered the oratory arts were often regarded and praised for their ability. Paul sees seeking to employ methods and tools that are idolized by the culture as a threat to the power of the gospel to save. We should note that Paul seems to make a deliberate decision to not speak with such eloquence, possibly even as part of his God-given task to preach the gospel: “…but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom…” We may infer that Paul is telling us not that he is simply incapable of employing such eloquence, but that Christ had given him what his task was (to preach the gospel), but also charged him with how he should preach it (not with words of wisdom), and he then tells us why this is so (lest the cross be emptied of its power).

The Power of God

Therefore, Paul will present the gospel in plain speech and rely on the power of the cross itself, communicated to the heart of the hearer by the Holy Spirit, lest someone accept the gospel on the basis of anything other than “the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).  Verse 18 is most helpful in this analysis.

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” – 1 Corinthians 1:18

So Paul’s ground for saying that he must not and will not rely on eloquence and wordly wisdom is that his message is foolishness to those who do not and will not believe; “those who are perishing.” However, “[those] who are being saved,” those who will believe, do not need elaborate arguments and clever words, they need only hear the message, clear and free of anything man might try to add. Why? Because for those who will believe, God’s elect, the message itself is the power of God.

For the Proclaimer

The reality of the simple gospel message is that it is the 100% truth about God and Paul is convinced that it is all that is needed for a person to believe and be reconciled to God. Further, Paul seems convinced that salvation is God’s sovereign work through the clear presentation of the glorious message of the perfect incarnation and life, sacrificial and substitutionary death, burial, resurrection, exaltation, rule and reign of Jesus Christ. Thus, how we preach this gospel does matter. We must remember that as the human agents of God’s reconciliation, our task and sole priority is to be clear and rely on the Holy Spirit, trusting that the gospel alone and itself is “the power of God unto salvation for those who will believe.” (Romans 1:16) As Christians who want to point our friends, family and neighbors, baristas and co-workers to Christ, this should be extremely comforting and encouraging. We should rejoice that God has employed us in his mission AND left the responsibility of convincing and converting unbelievers to himself, requiring us to simply be faithful and trust that his message of grace is his power flowing through us to the hearer. Thus, we need not fear failing when we share the gospel, simply as we may do it. It is the power of God!

The Interests of Others – Part 1

If we’re honest, we are all proud people. If you deny this, you’re proving my point. God has been working in my heart recently through reading a small, short book by C.J. Mahaney titled Humility. By God’s grace, I’m learning to see what a proud, arrogant man I am – often in areas and ways I would normally have denied. So I’ve sought to supplement all the help I’ve received there with looking into what Scripture has to say about humility, in an effort to pursue humility and kill pride by God’s grace. I’ve found Philippians 2 is a great place to start in seeking to understand humility, because here Paul is encouraging the Philippian Christians to look at Jesus’ perfect example of humility (and true greatness) as their ground for pursuing humble attitudes and actions toward one another. Part 1 will address our attitude toward others, and Part 2 will look specifically at Christ’s awesome example of humility.

Paul’s choice of words in this text is interesting. He does not simply say, “Don’t be proud, be humble.” Rather, he pictures for us what he means as he exhorts us toward humility. He says, not this picture of what it looks like to live proudly, but this picture of what it looks like to live humbly. Don’t do anything from a motive of either thinking yourself better than others (conceit) or from a motive of competing and trying to show how you are better than others (rivalry), but rather lift others up, put others first, “count [or "consider"] others more significant than yourselves.”

We should note as well that in pointing the Philippians (and us) toward a life of pursuing humility and pursuing the good of others before our own good, he is not encouraging self-debasement. He does not tell us to tear ourselves down and belittle our accomplishments and good qualities in order to lift others up. He does not tell us to deny altogether our own needs, which would be more like asceticism than humble love for and service to others. We know this because he says in verse 4: “let each of you look not only for his own interests…” So humility is not simply self-neglect, but a shift of primary concern. God would have us shift our primary concern from that of our own needs (for which Scripture tells us to trust that God is our Provider) to that of the needs and interests of others. I’ve learned to ask myself a few questions to help cultivate a lifestyle of looking to the interests of others, and killing sinful self-interest:

1. Why do I want to say this/do this?
2. Do I want to say or do this because it will make me look good to those I want to impress?
3. If I say this, is it mostly to make me feel good about myself, or will it be helpful and encouraging to others?
4. Am I speaking and acting in a way that makes others feel comfortable and accepted?
5. Does this action primarily serve me and my ego or someone else?
6. Will saying/doing this make Jesus look attractive and satisfying, or does it make me look attractive, smart, funny, cool, etc?

It’s a short list, but I’m convinced all of these questions flow out of a desire to kill the root of self-exaltation, self-centeredness and pride, and replace those feelings and desires with Christ-exaltation, Christ-centeredness, and a growing (though far from perfect) sense of humility, by God’s grace. I’m thankful for men like C.J. Mahaney who do reflect a humble heart of service to God and others, whom God has used to inspire this grace-driven effort pursuit of humility in my life.

I have yet to master the short blog post…

…so here I will practice. I have a lot of respect for bloggers who get their point across in a couple of paragraphs and don’t go on long enough to make their scrollbar become tiny. In a screenwriting class I took in college, we had a rule called “Get In & Get Out.” The idea is to introduce your subject, make your point, and wrap it up concisely.

Therefore, I hereby repent of extremely long blog posts. May they be used wisely.

Help Us Serve Fox Road Elementary

I’m a member of The Summit Church in Raleigh, NC and attend the North Raleigh Campus. One of the ways we glorify God at the Summit is to love and serve our community, and that includes our public schools.

An Opportunity to Serve

So we have an opportunity from today until September 30 to vote for Fox Road Elementary School on Pepsi’s Refresh Project. Here is what Fox Road Elementary has to say about their need:

Fox Road Elementary School has educated students for over 20 years. During these two decades, many of the books in our bookroom have become outdated, gotten lost, or become damaged. As we endeavor to “Rebuild Our Bookroom”, we hope to update our bookroom so it reflects the interests and diversity of our school population. We want to purchase a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction books for students to use for guided reading instruction. We also need bookcases and book bins to store the books in the bookroom. The books in our bookroom are used by teachers in all grades (K-5) to provide our 850 students with texts they need learn to think both critically and creatively. As we rebuild our bookroom, we also build successful and confident readers.

Sweet! How do I help?

1. VOTE: Visit http://www.refresheverything.com/foxroad and vote for this refresh idea!
2. TWEET IT: http://pep.si/aTUYIP
3. TEXT IT: Text 102179 to 73774
4. DO IT EVERY DAY: Until September 30!