UNTIL HE BRINGS ME HOME

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:24-26

to those going on retreats:

Especially to those who have experienced “retreat highs/valley lows,” who would rather not experience them again.

Something to think about, and hopefully encourage you:

All our knowledge of the truth—who God is, the gospel of what he accomplished through Christ at the cross, and how we are to respond—is derived from the bible, which is his divinely inspired word. All our understanding, affections, faith, and worship is fueled by it.

If that is true, then there is something we must desire more desperately and strive to do more consistently than all the great fellowship, pounding music, fervent prayer, and the rest. We’ve got to read, correctly interpret, and live out what it says in the bible. That is what retreats are for. To ground us all the more deeply upon the solid rock of God’s word, because that is what our lives need to be built on (by his grace and for the sake of his glory). Everything else is sinking sand.

You might think that emotions are the problem. You feel deeply on the mountain and then the feeling is gone when you return. But emotions are not, in and of themselves, bad things. However, you can only feel about God as much as you know about him—otherwise, what’s the basis for the feeling?

This isn’t failsafe. We’re sinful, and we’re inconsistent, and that means that you could be the most biblically well-versed (pun intended) person in the world, and you’ll still have sin. There will be times when we lack faith and lack affection. Who will deliver us from these bodies of death? Praise God for Christ!

You see, everything in the bible points to the person of Christ, and the gospel of his glory. Everything points to this: God is holy and thus hates sin (Isaiah 6), but we have fallen desperately short of the standard of perfection; we deserve wrath and hell for our rebellion and God-hating (Romans 3). But Jesus Christ, though without sin, was provided as a sacrifice as a substitute for those who place their full faith in him. This is of first importance (1 Corinthians 15)! He absorbed all the wrath that we deserve, and declared his victory over sin and death in his resurrection. Jesus saves us, so that we can be reconciled to him. Christ saves us.

So I beg you: don’t waste your mind, and don’t waste your emotion. Read and depend on God’s grace to gain correct views of him, whether you’re at retreat or not. This, and this only, fuels true worship (Romans 12:1-2).

Brothers and sisters: I will run, as Hebrews 12:1-2 exhorts, with you on the mountain. And I will run with you in the valley. And I will run with you at church, and at school, and at work, and wherever we are

because our emotions will wax and wane, our affections will flicker in the wind, but the word of God will stand forever.

And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. -1 Thessalonians 2:13

  1. changwinston posted this