Underground Exiles

As I’ve read The Mortification of Sin, I’ve certainly been humbled.  While John Owen is ponderous and weighty as a theologian, his pastoral heart shines through this particular work.

And God has been especially gracious - I’ve been given grace to mortify a particular habitual sin three times in just one week!  This just proves to me that today’s grace is sufficient.

So now I go a little further on into Owen’s work, and find this:

“When God stirs your heart about the guilt of your sin, concerning either its root and indwelling, or its breaking out, be careful you do not speak peace to yourself before God speaks it.  Listen closely to what He says to your soul.”

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So as I continue reading The Mortification of Sin by John Owen, I find my self struck by this statement:

You cannoy mortify a specific sin that is troubling you, unless you are seeking to obey the Lord from the heart in all areas!

Let me be frank; that statement hurts.  When I first read it, it was like a hard punch to the stomach.

In reality all John Owen is doing is being plain about what is apparent all throughout the Gospels.  Jesus is absolutely ruthless about going after the heart, and anything less just isn’t on His radar.

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Here’s God’s providential timing for you:

Last night I posted about really needing an empowering work of grace in my life. I feel like my struggle with anger and arrogance is sin; there’s no other way to put it.

This evening when I got home from the job, I had a delivery waiting for me. Unbeknown to me, a buddy had ordered a copy of The Mortification of Sin by John Owen for me. At the moment I’m struggling, a friend that has no clue what I’m dealing with sends me a book about murdering my sin.

Then I’m trying to stay up to date on the other blogs I like by way of my feedreader, and I found this post, by Dr. John Piper.

I’m beginning to suspect that God is trying to get my attention.

I really would appreciate ya’ll praying about this, because I think it’s important.

It’s come to my attention, again, that my passion comes across as anger. I freely admit that for the majority of my life I’ve been a pretty angry guy. I’ve been described more than once as being emotionally closed off; personally, I’d disagree, not because it isn’t accurate, but because it doesn’t even scratch the surface.

There is one emotion, and just one, that I can tap at will. It’s anger. I freely confess that I’ve been an angry, angry guy for the majority of my life. It’s extraordinarily hard for me to contact any emotion other than pure, unadulterated rage. Because of this, I bleed anger, even when I’m not angry.

Five years in the US Army didn’t make any of it better, it just makes it worse. It added an arrogance to my personality that isn’t winsome or appealing at all. Now, what you get when you talk to me, despite a lot of work on my part, is angry arrogance.

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So the random hot post link on my dashboard strikes again. I stumbled across a blog called de-Conversion. While poking around the blog, I came across this post, which made me laugh, and made me want to strangle a few of my fellow Christian brothers and sisters.

So who is a SuperChristian? Do you party less than Jesus partied? Do you picket with more passion than Jesus picketed? Do you support causes that alleviate the immorality of the world so Jesus doesn’t have to hang out with the scum of the world the next time around? Do you pray louder than Jesus prayed? Do you annoy everyone around you more than Jesus did, just so you get your just desserts? If you answered yes – you are a SuperChristian.

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