"On My Heart Imprint Thine Image"

Reading John Owen, I encountered these heart-pricking words:

Many love the world too well and have their minds too much filled with the things of it to entertain desires of speeding through it to a state wherein they may behold the glory of Christ. They are at home and are unwilling to be absent from the body, though to be present with the Lord. They hope, it may be, that such a season will come at one time or another, and then it will be the best they can look for when they can be here no more. But they have but a little sight of the glory of Christ in this world by faith, if any at all, who so little, so faintly desire to have the immediate sight of it above...Goods, lands, possessions, relations, trades, with secular interests in them, are the things whose image is drawn on their minds and whose characters are written on their foreheads, as the titles whereby they may be known. As believers, beholding the glory of Christ in the blessed glass of the gospel, are changed into the same image and likeness by the Spirit of the Lord (II Cor. 3:18); so these persons, beholding the beauty of the world and the things that are in it in the cursed glass of self-love, are in their minds changed into the same image. Hence perplexing fears, vain hopes, empty embraces of perishing things, fruitless desires, earthly, carnal designs, cursed, self-pleasing imaginations, feeding on, and being fed by, the love of the world and self, abide and prevail in them. But we have not so learned Christ Jesus.

I fear that I saw a dreadful amount of myself in these lines. Oh how prone I am to idolatry and to wandering from Jesus' bosom. God remove this cursed inclination from my soul and give me more love for Christ!

to keep humble

"When we measure ourselves by the life of our Lord who humbled himself even to death on a cross, we cannot but be overwhelmed by the tawdriness and shabbiness, and even the vileness of our hearts." - J. Oswald Sanders

Here is another reason to be reading the gospels - to keep humble. Have I forgotten how grand He is - my Jesus - and how poor I am?

I must be looking unto Jesus - indeed to persevere in laying hold of Him and to joy in His sufficiency and to love His loveliness, but also - that I may realize His greatness, and be humbled.

"Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession," - Hebrews 3:1 ESV

I Would Be Here

While reading a book for homework I came upon this prayer taken from the Valley of Vision - a collection of puritan devotions. I remembered reading it before, but it encouraged my heart afresh amidst weariness:

...Lord, it is my chief design to bring my heart back to thee.
Convince me that I cannot be my own God,
or make myself happy,
nor my own Christ to restore my joy,
nor my own Spirit to teach, guide, rule me.
Help me to see that grace does this by providential affliction,
for when my credit is good thou dost cast me lower,
when riches are my idol thou dost wing them away,
when pleasure is my all thou dost turn it into bitterness.
Take away my roving eye, curious ear, greedy appetite, lustful heart;
show me that none of these things can heal a wounded conscience,
or support a tottering frame,
or uphold a departing spirit.
Then take me to the cross
and leave me there.

Christ has died for me and I have died with Him; Christ is raised, and Christ will soon come to gather me to Himself. Christ crucified and raised is mine. This is reality; this is all that must satisfy my soul.

"Then take me to the cross and leave me there."