Toddlers

So today I went to visit my mom & sister in law.  I haven't been to my mom's house in quite a while.  I was pretty excited to go.  And Lil J has been well behaved lately, for the most part.  I think on some level you just get used to toddler misbehavior & it starts to seem fairly well behaved even though to an outsider it doesn't look well behaved AT ALL.  But he hasn't done anything extremely bad for quite a while now.  So I was hopeful that all would go well.

Sigh........

It's not that he did anything horrible, but he was pretty roudy.  When we first got there he was being a shy guy & wanted me right by his side, but soon enough he was ready to be Mr. Roudy.  Why is it that he can play nicely here at home, but when I go to someone else's house he gets all crazy & roudy & has to be touching everything & grabbing everything & trying to play with everything.

It's so exhausting. 

On a positive note I guess all that roudiness wore him out cuz he fell asleep on the drive home.  So now I at least get a little break.  I honestly can't recall the last time he actually took a nap.

I would love to know if other toddlers do the same thing.

Unthankfulness

Far too many of us are guilty of the sin of unthankfulness.

God, in His great mercy & love, reached out to us & gave us spiritual life (Eph 2:1-5).  He forgave us our sins through the death of His Son & covered us with the spotless righteousness of Jesus Himself.

Yet how often do we give thanks for our slavaton?  And if you have given thanks, was it in a mere nomimal way, much like some people give thanks at a meal, or was it an expression of heartfelt gratitude for what God has done for you in Christ?

The truth is, our whole lives should be lives of continual thanksgiving.  Every breath we draw is a gift from God.  Everything we are & everything we have is a gift from Him.

Beware lest you say in your heart, "My power & the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth".  You shall remeber the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth.

Do you ever physcially or mentally go through your house, look at your furnishings & various items of home decoration, & say to God, "Everything in the house & the food in the cupboard & the car (or cars) in the driveway are gifts from You.  Thank You for Your gracious & generous provision"?

When you give thanks at mealtime, is it routine & perfunctory, or is it a heartfelt expression of your gratitude to God for His continual provision of all your physical needs?

Taking for granted all the temporal provisions & spiritual blessings that God has so richly bestowed on us, & so failing to continually give Him thanks, is one of our "acceptable" sins. 

Giving thanks to God is not just a nice thing to do--it is the moral will of God.  And if, as Jesus so clearly stated, loving God with all our heart, soul, & mind is the great & first commandment, then failure to give thanks to God as a habit of life is a violation of the greatest commandment.

In Romans 1:18-32 Paul writes, "Although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, & their foolish hearts were darkened". 

So their ever-increasing wickedness actually began with their ungodliness (failure to honor God as God).  Unthankfulness is a serious matter.

We may be more guility because as believers we should know better.  Part of our obedience is giving thanks to God always & for everything.

So we should give thanks always & for everything.  We should espeically give thanks when we have experienced an unusual provision from God or deliverance from some difficult circumstance. 

Life is full of events that delay us, inconvencience us, or obstruct or block some plan or ours.  In the midst of these events, we should fight against anxiety & frustration.  But when God does bring relief, or when we see Him deliver us from the possibility of such an event, we should make it a special point to give Him thanks. 

So the question is, "Are we to give God thanks when the circumstances do not turn out as we had hoped?"  The answer is YES, but for a different reason.  In 1 Thes 5:1 Paul writes "Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you".

Paul is exhorting us to develp a habit of continual thanksgiving for all the blessings God so graciously pours out on us.

Is Paul asking us to give thanks through gritted teeth by sheer willpower when in our heart of hearts we are truly disappointed?  The answer to the question lies in the promises of God found in Rom 8:28-29 & 38-39.

God directs the outcome of those circumstances for our good.  God intends all our circumstances, both good & bad, especially the bad, to be instruments of sanctification, of growing us more & more into the likeness of Jesus. 

We are to give God thanks that He will use the situation in some way to develop our Christian character.  Nothing, including the situation we are in, can separte us from the love of God.  First, by faith we believe God is using or will use the particular difficulty to conform us more to Jesus.  Second, we have the assurance that even in the midst of the difficulty we are enveloped in God's love.

The giving of thanks in a disappointing or difficult situaton is always to be done by faith in the promises of God.  It is not a matter of doing it by sheer willpower.  If we do that, we are giving thanks with our lips but not with our hears.

We should seek to develop the habit of continually giving thanks to God.  Thank Him for our salvation & for the opportunities we have for spiritual growth & ministry.  Thank Him frequently for the abundance of material blessings He has provided.  By faith thank Him for what He is doing in the circumstances to transform us more & more into the likeness of His Son.

Memorize Eph 5:20 & 1 Thes 5:18

To help us honestly confront the subtle sins we tolerate in our own lives so that we will tend to walk more humbly before God & with respect to the unbelievers tward whom we may be so judgmental.  Prayerfully examine our hearts & lives before God, asking Him to show us our own subtle sins.

God does want to work in you & with you to deal with your sins, but He does so as your Father, not your Judge.





These are excerpts from "Respectable Sins" by Jerry Bridges

Ungodliness

Ungodliness is at the root of all other sins. 

Ungodliness & wickedness are not the same.  In the Bible Paul distinguishes ungodliness from unrighteousness.  Ungodliness describes an attitude toward God, while unrighteousness refers to sinful actions in thought, word, or deed.

Someone can lead a respectable life & still be ungodly in the sense that God is essentially irrelevant in his or her life.  They may even attend church for an hour or so each week but then live the remainder of the week as if God doesn't exist.  They are not wicked people, but they are ungodly.

Now, the sad fact is that many of us who are believers tend to live our daily lives with little or not thought of God.  We may even read our Bibles & pray for a few minutes at the beginning of each day, but then we go out into the day's activities & basically live as though God doesn't exist.  We seldom think of our dependence on God or our responsibility to Him.  We might go for hours with no thought of God at all.  In that sense, we are hardly different from our nice, decent, but unbelieving neighbor. 

James (James 4:13-15) condemns their planning that does not acknowledgte their dependence on God.  We, too, make our plans without recongizing our utter dependence on God to carry them out.

Expressions of ungodliness:
*we make our plans without reognizing our utter dependence on God to carry them out
*we seldom think about the will of God &, for the most part, are content to avoid obvious sins

Do our prayers reflect a concern for God's will & God's glory & a desire that our lives will be pleasing to God?

We are not only to eat to the glory of God, we are to drive to the glory of God, we are to shop to the glory of God, & we are to engage in our social relationships to the glory of God.  Everything we do is to be done to the glory of God.  That is the mark of a godly person.

To do all to the glory of God is a twofold goal.  First, desire that all you do is pleasing to God.  So pray prospectively over the day, asking that the Holy Spirit will so direct thoughts, words, & actions that they will be pleasing to God.  Secondly, desire that all activities of an ordinary day will honor God before other people.  If everone you interact with in the course of an ordinary day knows that you trust in Christ as Savior & Lord, would your words & actions glorify God before them?  Or would you prehaps be like the father of whom one of his children said, "If God is like my father, I want nothing to do with God"?



Do we consciously & prayerfully seek His glory in all we say & do in our most ordinary activites of the day?  Or do we actually go about those activities with little or not thought of God?

Is our meager desire to develop an intimate relationship with God?

A person may be moral & upright, or even busy in Christian service, yet have little or no desire to develop an intimate relationship with God.  This is a mark of ungodliness.

God is the center & focal point of the godly person's life.  A God-centeredness can be developed only in the context of an ever-growing intimate relationship with God. 

No Christian is totally godly.  But how ungodly are we?  How much of our life do we live without any regard for God?  How much of our daily activites do we go through without any reference to God?

It's not that we consciously or deliberately put God out of our minds.  We just ignore Him.  He is seldom in our thoughts.

Think how it would curb our life, for example, if we consciously lived every day in the awareness that all we are, all we have, & all we accomplish is by the grace of God.  "there but for the grace of God go we"  Self-righteous pride, one of the more common of our acceptable sins, is a direct product of our ungodly thinking.

Sins of the tongue, such as gossip, sarcasm, & other unkind words to or about another person, cannot thrive in an awareness that God hears every word we speak.

I believe that all our other acceptable sins can ultimately be traced to this root sin of ungoliness.  To use a tree as an illustration, we can think of all our sins, big & small, growing out of the trunk of pride.  But that which sustains the life of the tree is the root system, in this case the root of ungodliness. 

"Train yourself for godliness" (I Timothy 4:7)  The word "train" comes from the athletic culture of that day & refers to the pracitive athletes went through daily to prepare themselves to compete in their athletic contests.  It implies, among other things, commitment, consistency, & discipline in training.

Prayerfully consider the message of this chapter & honestly ask yourself how much of your life is lived with little or not thought of God.

Identify specific areas of life where you tend to live without regard to God.  Work? Hobbies? Playing or watching sports?  Driving? 

Scriptures to ponder: I Tim 4:7-8, I Cor 10:31, Col 1:9-10 & 3:23, Pslm 42: 1-2; 63:1; 27:4

Above all, pray that God will make you more conscious of the fact that you live every moment of very day under His all-seeing eye.




These are excerpts from "Respectable Sins" by Jerry Bridges

50 things about me

50 Things About Me.


A friend of mine shared this on her blog & I thought it was fun. If you decide to fill them out too, leave a comment here for me so I can check it out.  :)



1# Where were you 3 hours ago? - Cleaning floors & bathrooms



2# Who are you in love with? - My husband. My kids.



3# Have you ever eaten a crayon? - Can't say that I have



4# Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you? - My pink Hummer tshirt I'm wearing



5# When is the last time you went to the mall? - Yesterday.  Funny, I VERY RARELY go there, but we did go yesterday to the Apple store for hubby's phone



6# Are you wearing socks right now? - Yep, it's chilly



7# Do you have a car worth over $2000? - Although I can't tell you it's exact value (hubby sure could, off the top of his head at that) I am quite positive that my Hummer is worth more than that, even with the gas prices the way they are



8# When was the last time you drove out of town? - A week ago Saturday, we took Lil J to the San Diego Zoo for the first time (it's about 2 hours South of us for those who don't know my area)





9# Have you been to the movies in the last 5 days? - Nope. The last movie I saw in the theater was the Book of Eli, whenever that was out.  I remember my stepdaughter saw it & she wanted me & hubby to see it so she babysat Lil J so we could go see it.  Aside from that we haven't been to the movies since way before Lil J was born.  Probably somewhere in 2007 I'd guess.





10# Are you hot? - It's low 70s here today, quite a perfect temperature actually



11# What was the last thing you had to drink? - Water & protein shake



12# What are you wearing right now? - Jeans & a pink Hummer tshirt



13# Do you wash your car or let the car wash do it? - I used to always do it myself, but then I had a baby (takes waaaaay too long to do while keeping baby entertained!), so these days usually my hubby does it, though occasionally we take it to a car wash; it's definitely due for a good detail job though





14# Last food you ate? - my home made nachos



15# Where were you last week at this time? - I think I was out running errands


16# Have you bought any clothing items in the last week? - not for myself, but did buy undershirts & socks for my stepson



17# When was the last time you ran? - this morning, on the treadmill



18# What's the last sporting event you watched? - hubby & stepson are constantly watching boxing so I guess that would be it, although I'm really not a boxing fan



19# What's your fave animal? - whales



20# Your dream vacation? - to return to Sequoia, a place we visited often when I was a kid; I also dream of flying to either Maine or Florida & renting a motorhome & travelling the whole eastern coast.



21# Last person's house you were in? - my own



22# Worst injury you've ever had? - wow, I've had quite a few, but I guess my neck injury from one of my many times I've been rear ended has been the worst because I have to live with the pain every single day for the rest of my life



23# Have you been in love - Yep yep



24# Do you miss anyone right now? - my hubby cuz he's at work



25# Last play you saw? - back in the mid-90s, it's been a while, that's for sure





26# What is your secret weapon to lure the opposite sex? - I've always vowed to not play games & never have played games.  However, my non-commital hubby sure got interested fast when I started to see someone else, though I surely didn't plan it that way



27# What are you plans for tonight? - nothing aside from the usual family dinner



28# Who is the last person you sent a myspace message or comment to? - I haven't been on MySpace in YEARS



29# Next trip you are going to take? - No clue, I want to take one to Sequoia & I want to take one to Wisconsin, but nothing in the works as of yet



30# Ever go to camp? - Nope, never.



31# Were you an honor roll student in school? - In college I could've been, but I never filled out the application for it, I was only out to impress myself (& God), so why bother



32# What do you want to know about the future? - I don't think I want to know anything about the future, it would just be one more thing to worry about



33# Are you wearing any perfume now? - Nope.



34# Are you due sometime this year for a doctor visit? - I am, yes. But the doc I've been seeing left the practive to be a SAHM & homeschool her kids.  So I'm waiting for them to replace her & then I'll schedule my physical



35# Where is your best friend? - At work



36# How is your best friend? - limping a little, but aside from that doing very well



37# Do you have a tan? - nope, it only leads to wrinkles & possible skin cancer





38# What are you listening to right now? - Lil J playing with his toys



39# Do you collect anything? - I like to collect whale figurines.  When we go somewhere travelling we usually get a magnet &/or coffee mug



40# Who is the biggest gossiper you know? - no clue..........



41# Last time you got stopped by a cop or pulled over? - Fall 2003 I believe



42# Have you ever drank soda from a straw? - I most certainly have



43# What does your last text message say? - sent: "He sure does!" received: "I'm glad to hear that!  You are very welcome!"



44# Do you like hot sauce? - sometimes, depends on what I'm eating & depends on how my bladder is feeling



45# Last time you took a shower? - this morning after I got off the treadmill



46# Do you need to do laundry? - I'm washing the throw rugs right now.  Tuesday & Wednesday are my usual laundry days these days.  And on Thursday this week I have to do our bedding & stepson's bedding



47# What is your heritage? - My father was German.  To my knowledge my mother is Irish, Dutch, & Native American, but I'm pretty sure there's more in there than that for my mom



48# Are you someone's best friend? - I am.



49# Are you rich? - I pray that I am acquiring wealth in Heaven, that's the only one that matters in the end





50# What were you doing at 12 am last night? - Sound asleep

Directions for Dealing With Sins

To honestly face our subtle sins a quite humbling manner.

While there may be particular helps for certain sins, there are general directions that apply to all our subtle sins.

Steps for dealing with our sins:

1) always address our sin in teh context of the gospel
2) we must learn to rely on the enabling power of the Holy Spirit
3) while depending on the Holy Spirit, we must at the same time recognize our responsibility to diligently pursue all practical steps for dealing with our sin
4) we must identify specific areas of acceptable sins
5) we should bring to bear specific applicable scriptures to each of our subtle sins
6) we should cultivate the practice of prayer over the sins we tolerate
7) we should involve one or more other believers with us in our struggles against our subtle sins

Remember that your heart is a battleground between the flesh & the Spirit.  The flesh will sometimes get the upper hand.  Your situation may get worse before it gets better.  The Holy Spirit will use these times of disobedience & defeat to help you see how deeply rooted your subtle sins are & how totally dependent you are on His power to help you.

Parental observation

It seems that everywhere I go parents don't want to watch their children.  I've been observing this since before Lil J was even mobile.  I kept wondering about it.  When I ask hubby (who has 2 grown kids already, so he has plenty of experience) he would agree with me & say that he felt it was wrong.

I can remember being at someone's house & no one watching the kids & one of the kids was sharing their desert with the dog!!  (eeecccckkkkk!!!)  It was one bite for the kid & one bite for the dog (yes, the same spoon!) & on & on it went. 

I've been to houses where kids are pushing other kids around (both where it's been done with bad intentions & where it's been done just because the smaller & slower child is in the way, no bad intentions, but still not nice).

Yesterday was Friday.  Every Friday I go to Bible study in the morning at my church & then I take Lil J to a park.  So far I go to a different park each time, seeing what each park has to offer.  So yesterday we went to a park.  There were 2 couples there & 4 kids.  The kids were around 4-7 years old I'd say.  Much bigger than Lil J.  Now ok, maybe they know their own kids & feel comfortable with not watching, just chatting away.  But when someone new shows up I would think they would want to pay more attention.  But no, they just keep on chatting & ignoring their kids.  Now mind you the one kid had a bag of chocolate bunny crackers.  He was offering them to Lil J.  I had to ask him several times to not do that before the father told him to stop.  I explained politely that my son has a lot of food allergies.  However, this kid was burying the crackers in the sand at the park & THEN eating them.  I suppose maybe the parents are ok with this, but I kinda doubt it.  They just aren't paying attention.  After being there an hour I was truly exhausted.  I didn't go there to watch FIVE kids, I went their to watch my kid.  And so I left.

I told Lil J that if the playground at our community club house wasn't crowded we could go & play there for a little while.  When we got there there was no one there.  Later on a woman came with a 6 year old son.  She was the same as me, very attentive to what her son was doing.  Her son was very well behaved & was very considerate of Lil J, being that he's so much younger.  He even played ball with Lil J for a little while.  Thn he moved to the basketball courts with his mom & me & Lil J were alone again for a while & then we headed home.

But I keep wondering why people don't want to watch their kids.  While watching Lil J I am teaching him manners & good behavior & what's right & wrong, especially with other kids.  These are really important things in my opinion.  I'm not at all saying I'm right & others are wrong, but I am wondering WHY they choose to not pay attention to what their kids are doing.

I would love to hear other's thoughts on this.  Comment away folk, please.

The power of the holy spirit

Augustus Toplady's hymn speaks of the "double cure".  That is, cleansing from both sin's guilt & power.  It is important that we grasp this wonderful truth of the gospel because we can face our "respectable" sins only when we know they are forgiven. 

We need to see the cleansing from sin's power in two stages.  The first is deliverance from the dominion or reigning power of sin that is decisive &complete for all believers.  The second is freedom from the remaining presence & activity of sin that is progressive & continues throughout our lives on earth.

We have died not only to sin's guilt but also to its reigning power in our lives.   This is accomplished at the time of our salvation when God delivers us from the domain of darkness & transfers us to the kingdom of His Son.

How can sin possibly reign if we have died to it?  Paul is referring to the continued presence & ceaseless acitivty of sin that, though it is "dethroned" as the reigning power over our lives, still seeks to exert a controlling influence in our daily walk. 

To walk by the Spirit is to live under the controlling influence of the Spirit & in dependence upon Him.

Practically speaking, we live under the controlling influence of the Spirit as we continually expose our minds to & seek to obey the Spirit's moral will for us as revealed in Scripture.  We live in dependence on Him through prayer as we continually cry out to Him for His power to enable us to obey His will.

We are responsible before God to obey His Word, to put to death the sins in our lives, both the so-called acceptable sins & the obviously not acceptable ones.  At the same time, we do not have the ability within ourselves to carry out this responsibility.  We are in fact totally dependent upon the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.  In this sense, we are both responsible & dependent.

We will never reach perfection in this life, but we will see progress--incremental progress.

All three members of the divine Trinity are involved in our spiritual transformation, but the Father & the Son work through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.  When I speak of the power of the Holy Spirit, I am speaking of the power of the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit that is communicated to us & worked out in us by the Holy Spirit.  

We need to believe that as we seek to deal with our subtle sins, we are not alone.  He is at work in us, & we will see progress as we walk by the Spirit. 

One way is conviction of sin.

Another way is to enable & empower us to deal with our sin. 

We can deal with our pride, our impatience, our critical & judgmental spirit as we depend on the Holy Spirit to empower & enable us.  Thus, we should never give up. 

Still another way in which the Holy Spirit works for our transformation is by bringing into our lives circumstances that are designed to cause us to grow spiritually.  Just as our physical muscles will not grow in strength without exercise, so our spiritual life will not grow apart from circumstances that challenge us.

God does not tempt us to sin, but He does bring or allow circumstances to come into our lives that give us opportunity to put to death the particular subtle sins that are characteristic of our individual lives. 

God is in control of every circumstance & every event of our lives, & He uses them, often in some mysterious way, to change us more into the likeness of Christ.

The Holy Spirit is at work in us through our circumstances to make us more like Christ.

The Holy Spirit works in us to convict us & make us aware of our subtle sins.  He then works in us to enable us to put to death those sins.  Then He works in us in ways of which we are not conscious.  And then He uses the circumstances of our lives to exercise us in the activity of dealing with our sins. 

We cannot simply lay this responsibility on God & sit back & watch Him work.

We are to pray that the Holy Spirit will enable us to see the hidden, subtle sins in our lives. 



These are excerpts & highlights from "Respectable Sins" by Jerry Bridges

Stepping outside our comfort zone

When I first became serious about transitioning to vegan eating from vegetarian eating I went looking for a cookbook.  I happen to love cookbooks & felt I could use some good & new ideas.  Most often I don't follow recipes in cookbooks exactly as they are written.  I often use them for a method, idea, & end up changing a lot of things & making it my own.  Occasionally I do follow them exactly as written though, especially when baking or if it's something I've never tried before. 

I can remember the day, I was at Mother's Market looking at the book rack.  I had picked out all the groceries needed & stopped at the book rack.  Lil J was being fussy & so I was trying to rush.  A lot of the books went on & on about WHY you should go vegan.  I didn't want or need that, I just wanted RECIPES.  In my rush I found one.  It's called "Viva Vegan" by Terry Hope Romero.  And as I flip through the pages I just see tons & tons of recipes.  Exactly what I'm looking for!!

When I got home & got all the groceries put away (I had also stopped at Costco that day, so I had A LOT to put away) I pulled out the cookbook.  It was only then that I realized it was a cookbook entirely devoted to latin foods.  How awesome is that???  Vegan latin food??  YUM!!  As I read the introduction I was thrilled to see that these recipes were about cooking REAL food, mostly from scratch, not requiring expensive processed foods.  Totally my style!! 

At some point I discovered that Terry Hope Romero had co-authored several other cookbooks with another gal.  Gradually over time I have acquired those books as well.  Their desert ones are ridiculously fabulous!!  I mean, honestly, there are a lot of cookbooks out there, but a lot of times, especially with healthy cuisines & ESPECIALLY with vegan foods, they just plain taste nasty.  I have always been loyal to cookbook authors & I am definitely loyal to these gals.  I know they won't steer me wrong. 

Of course in this day & age you can find these authors on Facebook & so I friended them & liked their pages.  A while back Terry Hope Romero was asking for volunteers to be recipe testers for an upcoming cookbook.  I volunteered but didn't hear anything & after a while I assumed she had enough.  Then sometime last month I received an email with all the details.  She says she is taking on way more testers than she ever has before, so I don't feel too flattered, LOL, but I am still thrilled at the opportunity.

So far I've tested 10 recipes.  I'm not sure what the title of the cookbook will be as of yet, or what exactly the theme is.  The recipes are of a wide variety of ethnicities.  I am allowed to discuss the project & can say what I'm making, etc, but I am not allowed to divulge the actual recipe. 

My family has been quite supportive, eating & enjoying most of the recipes.  It's usually my entree & their side dish.  A lot of the Asian recipes call for ingredients that I don't know where to find & I'm not familiar with.  So most of those are out.  But I am doing the Columbian ones & the middle eastern ones.  But this project has definitely taught me to step out of the box.  I am being forced out of my comfort zone in the kitchen.  And, surprisingly, I like it.  I don't think I've disliked a single recipe so far.  I mean, I know she's a great chef (is that the correct title??), but it doesn't mean that our tastes & food likes & dislikes are always gonna be the same.

But I'm now finding myself feeling more adventurous in the kitchen.  I've acquired a few new spices in the process.  I am thumbing through the cookbooks I already have by her.  But I also feel like right now I need to focus on the test recipes.  Once I'm done with this project then I will definitely make more from the cookbooks I have. 

Honestly I was a tad hesitant about taking on this project, but in the end, I am really really glad that I have.  I really feel like I needed to learn to be more adventurous in the kitchen.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm a good cook.  And I do make a wide variety of foods, but still there is a certain comfort zone within your kitchen, though it may be a large & wide one, that you just don't step out of.  I feel like I'm on a grand adventure & I don't want it to end.  :)

The remedy for sin

John Newton, who penned the famous hymn "Amazing Grace" wrote near the end of his life "my memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, & that Christ is a great Savior".

Both John Newton & the apostle Paul said they were great sinners, but with a great Savior.

Though the author of this book has not committed any of the big, scandalous sins, he admits he has gossiped, spoken critically of others, harbored resentment, become impatient, acted selfishly, failed to trust God in difficult issues of life, succumbed to materialism, & let his favorite football team become an idol.

That is all sin.

Both John Newton & the apostle Paul spoke of themselves as sinners in the present tense.

The growth process involves becoming more aware of & sensitive to the sinful expressions of the flesh still dwelling within.

Christ, in His work for us & in us, saces us not only from the penalty of sin, but also from its dominion or reigning power in our lives.

The gospel is only for sinners.

The first use of the gospel is to drive a dagger into our self-righteous heart.

The second use of the gospel is to acknowledge our sin. We feel guilty because we are guilty. We cannot begin to deal with a particular manifestation of sin until we first openly acknowledge its presence & activity in our lives. But in order to make such an admission, I first need the assurance that my selfishness is forgiven-that God no longer holds it against me. The gospel gives us that assurance.

The third use of the gospel is dealing with the guilt. It energizes & motivates me to deal with my sin. To "put it to death" (rom 8:13, col 3:5) The only sin that can be successfully fought against is forgiven sin. We must first deal with the guilt.


The fourth use of the gospel is grattitude. God is no longer my judge. He is now my Heavenly Father who loves me with a self-generated, infinite love, even in the face of my sin.

The fufth use of the gospel is to put sin to death. We are COMMANDED to put sin to death.

The sixth use of the gospel is to give ourselves a daily gospel lesson. This is important part of dealing with sin in our lives. Preach the gospel to yourself every day. We need to personalize it.

There is never a day in our lives when we are so good that we dont need the gospel.





These are excerpts from "Respectable Sins" by Jerry Bridges

The malignancy of sin

Sin is a spiritual & moral malignancy. Left unchecked, it can spread throughout our entire inner being & contaminare every area of our lives. It can also metastasize from us to other believers around us. None of us live on a spiritual or social island. Our attitudes, words, & actions, & oftentimes even our private unspoken thoughts, tend to have an effect on those around us.

If I comlain about the difficult circumstances of my life, I impugn the sovereignty & goodbess of God & tempt my listener to do the sane. In this way, my sin mestastasizes into the heart of another person.

Sin is a principle or moral force in our heart, our inner being. Our sinful actions, words, & thoughts are simply expressions of the principle of sin residing withon ys, even in those of us whose hearts have been renewed.

The way cancer operates is a good analogy of the way sin, especially so-called acceptable or refined sin, operates in our lives.
Sins such as impatience, pride, resentment, frustration, & self-pity. Seemingly small sind can lead to more serious ones.

When we sin, when we violate the law of God in any way, be it ever so small in our eyes, we rebel against rhe sovereign authority & transcendant majesty of God.

Sin is a despising of the law of God. To despise God's law is to despise Him. So its not only despising God's law but, at the same time, despising God Himself.

When we see our sin as grieving the Holy Spirit-that is, as grieving God-we are viewing God as our redeemer & Father. Our sin grieves our heavenly Father. Whether we are unknd to someone else or unforgiving when someone is unkind to us, we grieve the Father's heart.

We also presume on His grace when we sin. Sin, in its subtle deceitfulness, will suggest to us that our unkind words & resentful thoughts dont matter because God has forgiven them. Forgiveness, however,does not mean overlooking or tolerating our sin. God ALWAYS judges sin. Shall we presume on God's grace by tolerating in ourselves the very sin that nailed Christ to the cross?

God knows our every thought. Hehears our words before we even speak them & sees our every deed.

Whether it is large or small in our eyes, it is heinous in the sight of Gid. God forgives our sin because of the shed blood of Christ, but He diesnt tolerate it. Christ suffered because of our sind.



These are excerpts from "Respectable Sins" by Jerry Bridges