This was humbling to read today while I was at seminary.

Today hardly one in a hundred considers how difficult and arduous it is faithfully to discharge the office of pastor. Hence many are led into it as something trivial and not serious; and afterwards experience teaches them, too late, how foolishly they aspired to the unknown. Others think themselves endowed with great skill and intelligence and promise themselves great things from their talent, learning, and judgment; but afterwards they experience too late how limited their equipment is, for their powers fail them at the outset. Others, while knowing there will be many serious battles, have no fear, as though they were born for contention, and put on an iron front. Still others who want to be ministers are mercenaries. We know indeed that all God’s servants are wretched in the eyes of the world and common sense, for they must make war on the passions of all and thus displease men in order to please God.

—William J. Bouwsma’s John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Biography, p. 220

HT: My Mac Hero

In reading John Owen’s Overcoming Sin and Temptation, I came across this sweet quotation. Owen is arguing with someone who says he combats his lusts with a reminder that God’s law will condemn him at the end of his life. To that person he says,

“Yea, know that this reserve will not long hold out. If your lust has driven you from stronger gospel forts, it will speedily prevail against this also. Do not suppose that such considerations will deliver you, when you have voluntarily given up to your enemy those helps and means of preservation which have a thousand times their strengt*. Rest assuredly in this, that unless you recover yourself with speed from this condition, the thing that you fear will come upon you. What gospel principles do not, legal motives cannot do.”

I love the way Owen describes the truths of the gospel as gospel forts. I want to live in these forts. I need to stay in these forts everyday. It is only in these forts that I can stay protected against the temptation of my flesh, the allure of the world, comparison of others, the discouragement from failure, and the guilt of sin.

May God keep our souls in His gospel forts.

If you don’t already, you should find some way to connect with the Of First Importance blog everyday. Its mission is to “provide a helpful quote to help you remember what’s “of first importance”: the gospel of Jesus Christ. The phrase “of first importance” comes from 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul tells the church in Corinth he delivered what was of first first importance, namely the gospel.

All that to say I found the quotation yesterday very insightful.

“By becoming a Christian, I belong to God and I belong to my brothers and sisters. It is not that I belong to God and then make a decision to join a local church. My being in Christ means being in Christ with those others who are in Christ. This is my identity. This is our identity. . . . If the church is the body of Christ, then we should not live as disembodied Christians.”

• Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church (Wheaton, Ill, Crossway Books, 2008), 41.

When tragedies occur, such as some one dying from a heart attack or a serious injury from a car crash or we hear of a huge weather phenomenon that wipes out thousands of people, we often turn our attention to death. We think about eternity and what will happen when we die. We are reminded of the fragility of human life and thus are thankful that we are still alive. Many deep feelings and thoughts that we do not often have, overtake us. I even recently have such thoughts when a dear 17-year-old friend went into cardiac arrest.

Calvin speaks of these type of thoughts. He says that God has made things on this earth to teach us that “human life is nothing but a vapor or shadow.” But then he says:

“But there is scarcely anything which we more carelessly consider or sooner banish from our memory; for we go about everything as if we want to make ourselves immortal.

If we watch a funeral or walk among the graves (or see a friend laying lifeless in a hospital bed), and thus clearly see the image of death before our eyes, we philosophize, I confess, about the vanity of life.

And even that does not happen every day, for often we are not moved at all.

But when we are, our philosophy is only short-lived; it vanishes as soon as we go away and does not leave the smallest trace behind.

It passes out of existence like the applause for an entertaining program.

We not only forget death, but the fact that we are mortals, as if no word concerning this has ever reached us, and we continue our foolish dream that we are to live forever.

If any man in the meantime reminds us of the proverb that man is only a creature of the day, we are willing to acknowledge this truth, but with such lack of attention that the idea of perpetual life keeps on lingering in our minds.

Who, then, can deny that we need to be warned not only by words, but that we should be convinced by every possible evidence that the present life is full of miseries!

For even if after we have become convinced of this, we hardly know how to stop our perverse and foolish admiration of it, as if life were nothing but one great accumulation of blessings.

But if it is necessary for us to be taught by God, it certainly is also our duty to listen to him when he speaks and arouses us from our sluggishness, that we may turn our backs upon this world and and try to meditate with all our heart on the life to come.

Calvin’s comments are incredibly insightful. He is basically saying that we may think about the brevity of life during certain situations, but as a whole we live as if we will live forever. I daily need to be reminded and taught about the empty, passing world that I live in because I am far too fascinated with it. May God continue to pull His bride’s affections heavenward.

I just read a tract by J.C. Ryle called “Do you pray?” Wow. I am only now barely pulling myself out of the pit of conviction. It is a great read and you can find it here, which is on a great site you check out: Evangelical Tracts. Here is an excerpt from the Ryle tract on prayer:

“It is essential to your soul’s health to make praying a part of the business of every 24 hours in your life. Just as you allot time to eating, sleeping, and business, so also allot time to prayer. Choose your own hours and seasons. At the very least, speak with God in the morning, before you speak with the world; and speak with God at night, after you have done with the world. But settle it down in your minds, that prayer is one of the great things of every day. Do not drive it into a corner. Do not give it the scraps and leavings and parings of your day. Whatever else you make a business of, make a business of prayer.”

I’m beginning to see a theme.