ix-nay the ’self-salvation project’

how about church yesterday?

seriously.
a special day.

in prep for a mom’s grp soiree tonight
(a fancy way to think about what’s really a ‘meeting’, right?),
i’m thinking about the
implications of the gospel
of grace on community life.

the gospel of grace says
we are simultaneously

1. desperately wicked + unable to save ourselves
(in need of God’s transforming grace)

and

2. utterly accepted in Christ,
(we rest in Christ’s salvation as offered to us in the gospel)

it’s imperative that our community life
reflects both aspects.

giving and receiving.
helping and asking for help.
forgiving and repenting+confessing.

i find it much easier to serve,
to offer help, to forgive
than to
receive help,
to ask for help,
to confess and repent.

but the gospel calls us
to live as a family
not as polite strangers.

oy.
and
i love it.

ps -
in sept, tim said it this way:

‘the gospel has to be constantly applied
and re-applied
to our hearts,

or the default mode of the human heart
will return to its self-salvation project.

nothing is more important than this.’

pps -
‘i ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
no sudden rending of the veil of clay,
no angel visitant, no op’ning skies;

but
take
the
dimness
of
my
soul
a-way.’

‘spirit of God, descend upon my heart’
verse 2, frederick c. atkinson, 1870.

very important FairyPrincessBallerina talk
in the hallway.

ppps -
‘font nerdiness’ (aka. typography) in the times.