Consecrated wholly. but by grace?

1) "Sometimes you gotta stop reflecting on God's character and just go serve!"
2) "I know God left the Bible here as a guide for us, but I tell you the Son is THE FINAL WORD on matters. And doesn't Jesus live in us? Stop looking at the Bible and look at fellow saints here and now."
.........blahhhhh

Past 12 hours --> discussions with two Arminians. My electrical engineering curriculum gets perpetually less exciting with each theological challenge.

God has a wonderful plan for Arminians, and specifically, He puts them in my life so that the doctrine of total depravity becomes that much realer. I can make all the hints I want about irresistable grace and Christ sufficiency, but in the end there might be something to be said when the other guys are evangelizing hard while I keep waiting for instead of seeking opportunities (though let's not get into the issue of ratio between true-to-false converts).

Indeed how, like them, my sinful flesh suppresses the magnificence of fellowship in, with, and through Christ, supressing the potential of my becoming a kingdom tool. Arminians can be unwitting workers of fleshly confidence, and so why am I letting them work harder than someone supposedly driven by the Gospel?

Repenting time, system reboot.
Philippians 3:3

What? YAM is evolving.

This past summer, as the dialogue on faith between me and my parents grew into normalcy, my mom gave an observation that particularly stung: "You've been to church for like 2 years but you're still the same person."

Granted, my mom probably meant I wasn't growing in a way that she would prefer, that is, into a less lazy son that worked with godlier ethic. But an observation is an observation. I could make all the excuses I wanted: I didn't want to act righteous so I wouldn't alienate my family, which would leave my mom antagonistic towards the Jesus figure that essentially took away her son. Being the same idiot around the house would be my way of witnessing, to say that being a Christian wouldn't entail some fake holier-than-thou lifestyle.

Thank God for my mom's honesty. Outside the home I would be a holy creature, but my parents would be left bereft of God's glory. And doesn't that speak volumes? If my true creature is revealed at home, the evidence points to --> I'm actually not being sanctified. "Shoot, am I saved?"

Good! This was the best [CHALLENGE] I've had since attempting to stop cussing after my baptism (aha gg). I knew the Lord's prayer...but I didn't know the Lord in the prayer; "hallowed be thy name" means granting God to fulfill in us a life - thoughts, words, and actions - that does not blaspheme His name. I knew justification by Christ...but I didn't know justification through Christ; being justified means my essence no longer sins, but that me sinning is me acting out of character (2 Corinthians 5:17).

What's different now?

Ignored consequences of sin --> grieving over sin (1 John 3:6-9).

Mock gospel and spirituality --> hope is in gospel and spirit (Romans 1:16).

Salvation can wait --> no greater hate than not sharing the Gospel.

Defeat by world's standards --> still struggling with this one, to be continued!

Colossians 3:1

Flesh worshipper

When I share my testimony, it's usually about the BYG Christmas service during my senior year. An event where I felt like I met God. Truth is, I probably wasn't saved until last semester - or at least when I was assured I was saved.

The year after my first church experience was a rollercoaster. Being identified as a Christian was something I could get behind because all my cool friends were also Christian. I took it seriously sometimes too; coming into Penn freshman year I had a 95 theses ready to combat the evils of evolutionary Inner Fishes. Pretty sure that stigmatized me as the preppy churchboy. In the mean time, my life was marked with constant fights with my family in addition to leaving two embittered pseudo-girlfriends in my wake. Is this the picture of 1 Thessalonians 5:24?

The question is: Did I love Christ? I really liked the worship songs that declared God faithful and loving and awesome, but all the songs and messages about Jesus' sacrifice I came to find... dull and offensive. Used to elegant theorems dictating universal truths, I could glean some faith in a powerful Creator that devised the Big Bang and brought forth the millions of solar masses and quasars chewing through each other for survival. But to make the story ugly and unclean by something as local as the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was cringe-worthy. So unfulfilling, so undramatic, so anticlimactic.

I could have literally attended a synagogue or mosque those couple of years and my worship would not have been different. What was actually happening? I thought I was worshipping the LORD. but lo! I was bearing no fruit and living in sin. I was learning a bucketload of material on God's commands but I did not feel God's presence, and when I did it was His anger at my continual disobedience. My heart would be continually ridden with guilt and discouragement.

Fast-forward to Fall 2010 and you see a Willis that is, well, different. He knows Christ and obeys Him. He's not afraid to die for Christ, break up with his girlfriend for Christ, or drop out of school for Christ. What changed? The Spirit pointed me to things I once overlooked (John 16:13). My knowledge of the law no longer became a stumbling block, but rather was redeemed in coming to know grace in a fuller sense. Writing my "testimony" in preparation for baptism led me to reevaluate the origins of what caused my soul to stir that one BYG service: Ephesians 3:19 talks about whose love? Christ's. Christ is the lover of my soul!

Thank God Jesus acted so locally, so personally! Theocentricity without Christcentricity is judgement. Worshipping the LORD without praising Christ is worshipping one's own flesh, merely worshipping the potential happiness that this LORD could provide. Worship like this will lead to "dryness," and Christians should never be dry. If one is to worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24), they are to know the law, know the punishment for breaking the law, then be secure in the law fulfiller. May preaching be dispensed with 90% law and 10% grace, so that people may be first terrified of their disease and recklessly seize the cure without argument.

"Blinded men are ever prone to imagine that they have religious feelings because they have sensuous animal feelings in accidental juxtaposition with religious places, words or sights. This is the pernicious mistake which has sealed up millions of self-deceived souls for hell." - W. Robert Godfrey

"No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching.
...
And I mean by Christ not merely his example and the ethical precepts of his teaching, but his atoning blood, his wondrous satisfaction made for human sin, and the grand doctrine of ‘believe and live.’" - C.H. Spurgeon

"Terror accomplishes no real obedience. Suspense brings forth no fruit unto holiness. No gloomy uncertainty as to God’s favour can subdue one lust, or correct our crookedness of will. But the free pardon of the cross uproots sin, and withers all its branches. Only the certainty of love, forgiving love, can do this." - Horatius Bonar

For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! (1 Corinthians 9:16)

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. (Philippians 1:18)

Guys, do not seek an experience but seek Christ.

2 Peter 3:18, Titus 3:4-8

God fills up tents...

I don't think I cried as much as I did this past service. or these past couple weeks.

Today's sermon - Exodus 40, God filling the tabernacle to be with His people and how Jesus is now our tabernacle. I can really relate to Spurgeon when he once cried out for God to CHILL OUT in making His presence known to him because he was going to die of joy. The God whose heart it is to recklessly be with his people through their sin and disobedience - this is true love! I cried during this description, knowing this is the type of love that will eventually mark a Christ-indwelling body.

John 1:14, Revelation 21:1-4