Urban Reformation

We had a good sermon Sunday by Don Whitney which essentially covered the topic of faith, and unanswered prayer.  Paul was leading worship this Sunday and made the comment during the service about meekness, and then followed up by sending this out.

Meekness toward God is that disposition of spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting.  In the OT, the meek are those wholly relying on God rather than their own strength to defend against injustice.  Thus, meekness toward evil people means knowing God is permitting the injuries they inflict, that He is using them to purify His elect, and that He will deliver His elect in His time (Isa 41:17, Luk 18:1-8). Gentleness or meekness is the opposite to self-assertiveness and self-interest.  It stems from trust in God’s goodness and control over the situation. The gentle person is not occupied with self at all.  This is a work of the Holy Spirit, not of the human will (Gal 5:23). BLB-Lexicon

Interestingly enough either in our prayer to God for things, or our attempts at faithful and obedient living, we are often ambushed by the circumstances of life. Three months ago we before school was out although we were greatly under the stress of everyday life there seemed to be direction in our lives, and a confidence of our path.

Our lives filled with purpose and yet when hit with affliction God graciously allowed for us to bounce back. Hit again, and by God’s grace bounce back once again, though stunned the second time God has met us with the ever abundant bounty of Grace for each moment. Yet hit a third and yet a fourth time over the summer in various trials in various ways, we find ourselves empty. No real other way to put it but empty. Trusting God but with no clarity as to what next….

This being a good place perhaps but it seems so opposite to what was taking place just a few months prior, yet if what Paul Mallory sent me is true ( Which it is ) we can rest in the fact that all of these trials, or pruning’s, or things we go through on this side of eternity are for our good. The branch will come back stronger. It’s just that sometimes it feels like the pruning is more than I would have taken off, but it is God’s sovereign choice not mine.

The Christian life isn’t so much being able to look back, seeing God’s hand, but it is living ‘in the moment trusting God’s word, and not just trusting God’s word but seeing the demonstration of faith in our reacting God’s way in the moment.  Often present blog author included, I begin to lean on one side or other of the pit. On the one side the abyss of self-pity looking inward, and to the other side the pit of self- righteousness demonstrated by self-assertiveness and self-confidence.

Lloyd Jones elaborates on this some and I could barely stop reading although I’m beyond this part in the book each part of the book is well worth some heavy mediation on the subject.

Page 53 Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

Anyone who thinks he can live the Christian life himself is proclaiming that he is not a Christian. When we realize truly what we have to be, and what we have to do, we become inevitably ‘poor in spirit.’ That in turn leads to that second state in which, realizing our own sinfulness and our own true nature, realizing that we are so helpless because of the indwelling of sin within us, and seeing the sin in our best actions, thoughts and desires, we mourn and we cry out with the great apostle, ‘O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ But here, I say, is something which is still more searching —-‘ Blessed are the meek.’

Now why this? Because here we are reaching a point at which we begin to be concerned about other people. Let me put it like this. I can see my own utter nothingness, and helplessness face to face with the demands of the gospel and the law of God. I am aware, when I am honest with myself, of the sin and the evil that are within me, and that drag me down. And I am ready to face both these things. But how much more difficult it is to allow other people to say things like that about me! I instinctively resent it. We all of us prefer to condemn ourselves than to allow somebody else to condemn us. I say of myself that I am a sinner, but instinctively I do not like anybody else to say I am a sinner. That is the principle that is introduced at this point. So far, I myself have been looking at myself.  Now other people are looking at me, and I am in a relationship to them, and they are doing certain things to me. How do I react to that? That is the matter which is dealt with at this point. I think you will agree this is more humbling and more humiliating than everything that has gone before. It is to allow other people to put the searchlight upon me instead of my doing it myself.

I remember there was a time when I took what is called a 360 evaluation at my place of employment many years back. I was surprised to find out at the time that my peers evaluation of me wasn’t as ‘good’ as I thought my own evaluation of how I was doing within the company. It wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t where I had thought it would be. I was personally devastated; I mean these were all supposed to be my friends yet what they had to say was hurtful in some ways. This was well before I understood Reformed Doctrine and had a clue about my own depravity yet there was something in me that took this evaluation and at first wanted to jump off the cliff into self-pity. It wasn’t even my work they had comments about but they were things which from my perspective, I couldn’t see clearly about myself.

This was the first clue I had in my saved life that I was blind to my own pride. I often tell my wife she is my other eye now so that she is able to see me and tell me where I am sinning or where I am off the mark.

My second reaction to this was a ‘knee Jerk’ reaction, and I tried to take care of these issues in my own strength. I became concerned daily about making sure I protected my work and overly confident in certain areas of my work to try to compensate so that my next evaluation would be better than this one.

What I slowly began to notice was the fact that on either side I was thinking again too highly of myself. There is a biblical balance in the tightrope walk of humility with two completely different manifestations of pride on either side of the abyss.
Lloyd Jones continued to talk about it and it’s remedy in our Christ likeness through the virtue or the beatitude of ‘Meekness’ that we see in Jesus.

More Lloyd Jones Page 56. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

What, then, is meekeness? I think we can sum it up in this way. Meekness is essentially a true view of oneself, expressing itself in an attitude and conduct with respect to others. It is therefore two things. It is my attitude and conduct towards myself; and it is an expression of that in my relationship to others. You see how inevitably it follows being ‘poor in spirit’ and ‘mourning’. A man can never be meek unless he is poor in spirit. A man can never be meek unless he has seen himself as a vile sinner. These other things must come first. But when I have that true view of myself in terms of poverty of spirit, and mourning because of my sinfulness, I am led on to see there must be an absence of pride. The meek man is not proud of himself; he does not in any sense glory in himself. He feels that there is nothing in himself of which he can boast. It also means that he does not assert himself. You see, it is a negation of the popular psychology of the day which says ‘assert yourself’, ‘express your personality.’ The man who is meek does not want to do so; he is so ashamed of it. The meek man likewise does not demand anything for himself. He does not take all his rights as claims. He does not make demands for his position, his privileges, his possessions, his status in life. No, he is like the man depicted by Paul in Philippians 2. ‘ Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’ Christ did not assert that right to equality with God; He deliberately did not. And that is the point to which you and I have to come.

Then let me go further; the man who is meek is not even sensitive about himself. He is not always watching himself and his own interests. He is not always on the defensive. We all know about this, do we not? Is it not one of the greatest curses in life as a result of the fall — this sensitivity about self? We spend the whole of our lives watching ourselves. But when a man becomes meek he has finished with all that; he no longer worries about himself and what other people say. To be truly meek means we no longer protect ourselves, because we see there is nothing worth defending. So we are not defensive; all is gone.

By God’s grace he’s allowed the opposite to happen in the past few years where I have received more positive evaluation than I deserve, but there are still tons of layers of pride.  Looking back at that first 360 evaluation it was the secular form of reproof and rebuke and it was the start of what I thought was a healthy way to be able to see my blindspots of sin.

This evaluation had more than just the impact on me for the year but would echo in the back of my mind for the rest of my life giving me a grounded view of self.  Then once someone showed me my sinfulness and depravity, it would later become a memory of my life which changed so many things.  It was used as a place to always remember when I was confident about anything apart from God’s word. – 1 Corinthians 10:12

God is good to keep us neither wollowing in self-pity thinking too highly of self, nor in self-righteousness thinking too highly of self, but thinking right of self in light of God with Christ as our hope, our mediator, our adovcate.  Whether prayer is answered, or unanswered, whether circumstances make sense, whether people hurt us,  we can rest in the fact that what Don Whitney preached Sunday, God by the testimony of His word, establishes His truth, and we can trust Him.

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