Paradox

“I am a walking contradiction; partly truth, partly fiction.”

But praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who knows me and yet has chosen to change me into the image of His Son for His glory. Soli Deo Gloria!! He will complete the work and (PRAISE Him) He has already been shredding layers of me away from myself. PRAISE Him for allowing me to be refined. PRAISE Him for not giving me over to my rebellious and selfish heart. PRAISE Him for His faithfulness to all generations. He is good, patient, faithful, steadfast in His love, slow to anger, and abounding in patience. All eyes look to Him for from Him come all things needed for our life. PRAISE Him for life and breath. PRAISE Him for the opportunity to know Him who is true and be IN Him who is true. PRAISE Him for the revelation of the mystery – God revealed bodily – made manifest and testified to the world. May we continue that process in earnest and until the day He returns, knowing that it hastens His coming.

Paradox – taken from “The Valley of Vision”

O Changless God,

Under the conviction of thy Spirit I learn that the more I do, the worse I am, the more I know, the less I know, the more holiness I have, the more sinful I am, the more I love, the more there is to love. O wretched man that I am!

O Lord, I have a wild heart, and cannot stand before thee; I am like a bird before a man. How little I love they truth and ways!

I neglect prayer, by thinking I have prayed enough and earnestly, by knowing thou hast saved my soul.

Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be an evangelical hypocrite, who sins more safely because grace abounds, who tells his lusts that Christ’s blood cleanseth them, who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell, for he is saved, who loves evangelical preaching, churches, Christians, but lives unholily.

My mind is a bucket without a bottom, with no spiritual understanding, no desire for the Lord’s Day, ever learning, but never reaching truth, always at the gospel-well but never holding water. My conscience is without conviction or contrition, with nothing to repent of.

My will is without power or decision or resolution. My heart is without affection, and full of leaks. My memory has no retention, so I forget easily the lessons learned, and thy truths seep away.

Give me a broken heart that yet carries home the water of grace.