Notes on the Collect for "Stir Up Sunday"

STIR up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This Sunday is the last of the Christian year. We begin next Sunday with a new Christian year, as we enter the Advent season. The Collect for this Sun. is a good one for us as the year ends. It reminds us of the same kind of thing that the famous Anglican, Robert E. Lee, was famous for: finishing well. As the various seasons of our lives come to their end, be it the end of the school year for the student, or the end of life for the aged, we should seek grace from God to finish well; to not say, “Oh well, it’s almost over now, time to just coast.” A Christian is never to coast. We are to be faithful servants. Like the watchman on guard in an army camp, he is to be looking out for the enemy through the whole watch; not just at the beginning of it. He is to be faithful the whole watch through. So we, as we face the end of this last Christian year, we are reminded to be faithful and finish this year well, as we are to finish all things well.

But it also reminds us that, as we are beginning a new year, we are to seek the Lord’s mercy to enter it with our hearts stirred by His grace for new faithfulness for the future. We know not the challenges we may face, but we do know that we need the inner stirring and strengthening of the Holy Spirit to remain true to our Lord in the months to come. We wish to serve Him, but we know that, sinful as we still are in this life, if He does not stir us up now and then, we will grow languid, or lazy, or forgetful and thus unfaithful. So we pray, feeling our native spiritual poverty, “Lord, stir up the wills of your faithful people.”

Now this prayer raises several issues regarding how one lives the Christian life, especially with regard to what we are to do, how we are to do good works. These issues are very important if we are to effectively walk in the Lord’s grace and so I want to take some time to be sure we understand them.

First of all: it is necessary for us to use our wills to live the Christian life. Mind and emotion do not lead to action; commands are to the will.

Thus, a Christain must fight a passive attitude. The “let go and let God” idea of how to live in the Spirit can be very bad for people. It has been used to address people who do not understand grace and seek to obey God with their own “will power”; their own resources of human determination and stamina. But otherwise, it is dangerous.

Passivity can also be guilty; a way of refusing to act; “I’m waiting for God to move me.”

Secondly, the will must act by God’s grace. Thus we pray for God to stir it up; we want His power at work in our lives. The prayer is thus a recognition of the natural tendency to sloth and dullness; drifting. We tend to react to life intead of live out the will of God in an aggressive fashion.

Drifting can be evident in our praying. For what do we pray? Protection? Provision for our desires? Comfort requirements? Or do we pray for provision for tasks we are undertaking, strength for action, opportunities for greater service, provision for what we need for good works?

Objection: then should we not wait for inspiration? If we must have God’s grace in our lives; if we need Him to stir us up, then should we not wait for that stirring? The answer is no. We should assume he is working and, trusting him, act. We do not live by feeling (“Am I inspired or not?”) but by faith.

Deism is wrong in the doctrine of creation and it is wrong in the doctrine of sanctification. He has not and does not leave us alone. Read I Thess. 5:24, Phil. 1:6; Phil. 2:12,13. Thus, instead of waiting for a sense of His striving, I am to act believing His grace will be behind my actions, bringing His will to pass.

For example: the need to ask someone for forgiveness. Don’t wait for inspiration; do it. Trust and obey.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me; He is already working because He is committed to my faithfulness. I need to be committed as well and act.

Thirdly, we are to stir ourselves up! We are to take responsibiliy for our growth and service. II Tim. 1:6: Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.

See again Phil. 2:12; See II Peter 1:1-11.

So, as we enter this new Christian year and the wonderful season of Advent, let us seek God’s working in our heart. He wants to do it; so let us trust Him to do so. And then, let us stir ourselves up; let us watch and pray that not only we not do things we shouldn’t do, that we not drift and be passive about our lives, but that we actively do all those good things we should do for the honour and glory and love of Him, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified on Calvary, risen and seated on the throne of David, until He comes and raises us unto life everlasting! Amen.

Thanksgiving, 2007 - Matthew 6:25f

Our Trinity Season for 2007 is about to come to an end. Next Sunday is the Sunday Before Advent; “Stir up Sunday”, the day when the Christmas pudding is first put together in the English tradition. Through these months, as we’ve reflected on passages from various books of the New Testament, we have again and again been reminded of those great qualities of spirit which are the hallmarks of the Christian faith and the Christian temper: faith, hope, love, and peace. These are the main things that our Good Shepherd would have dominant in our lives, for His own glory and for our own good and blessedness.

It is necessary for us to be reminded of these things, over and over through our lives, because there are elements of the world in which we live that militate against these spiritual qualities all day long, every day of our lives. Jesus, our great Captain, is mindful of our enemies and our weaknesses and so He instructs us in how to deal with one of these enemies in Matthew 6. That enemy is worldly care, otherwise known as worry. The lives of people all around us are filled with worry about earthly concerns: money, food, clothing, retirement, etc. Whole industries are based on cultivating worry among the consuming populace. Certain political movements are based on worry, constantly harping through the main stream media about this crisis and that crisis. The mustiness of worry is in the very air we breathe.

It is impossible for us as Christians to live lives of love, joy and peace if we allow ourselves to be captivated by the worry inherent in our culture. Thus, Jesus speaks to us these wonderful words about worry. Every bit of it is instructive, but this evening I break it up according to the three times that Jesus says the words “take no thought,” which means, “do not worry.”

There are three reasons why we as the children of God, the Church of God – those who have been called out from this world as His New Creation - should refuse to worry about the affairs of our lives on this earth. Each is a rational, logical argument against worry, and if we are armed with these arguments, our faith will have ground upon which to stand and to lead us through this life without that draining, distracting worry into which we frequently fall.

The first reason why we should never – and that word is not too strong – never worry, is based on what is true about us as Christians. We are God’s redeemed and adopted children, and this God, who has made Himself our Father, giving us a relation with Him unique in all the universe, is the God of the creation in which we live. Jesus points our minds to the birds and the flowers and bids us reflect upon the attention our Creator has given to them. He then instructs us to reason from the lesser to the greater. If God cares and adorns such lesser creatures, is it not irrational to think that He would do less for us, who are the very crown of His creative work and the very object of His Son’s dying love? Are we not much better than they? Are we not more important in God’s concerns?

It is true that, being made as we are and called as we are to labour for our needs, we are different from the creatures in the manner with which God provides for us. Jesus, by no means, wants us to equate freedom from worry with irresponsibility. The very humanity that exalts us above the other creatures carries with it an obligation to use our talents to provide for ourselves. Living in this fallen age, it is still true of us, as with all men, that we must eat our bread by the sweat of our brows. God told Noah, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest … shall not cease.” Our need to plow and sow and reap and gather into barns for our supply is both a practical necessity and a duty. But Jesus argues that we are to live as those confident that the Creator who cares for all his creatures will provide for us through our God-given means and we have no business worrying about whether we will have what we need. We labour, but we trust that God will give the increase.

Jesus ends this part of the chapter with the words, Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? He rebukes us, does He not, for not believing as we ought. To worry about such things is not to use the brains and the faith the Lord has given us. It is sad that, for many people, the only faith they have is for the things of this life. They look to God to provide for them, but they neglect their spiritual needs. But, for those of us who have flown to Christ for our eternal salvation, we can then neglect to trust Him for that which is of this earth. Is that not absurd? How can we think that the God who so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son for us will not provide us with our next meal? Indeed, the reason we worry is because we don’t think about such things. A little faith is an unthinking faith. Our faith grows in the exercise of our minds in reminding ourselves of what God tells us is true about us and about Him in His Word, such as He does here in Matthew 6. Jesus is here trying to encourage our faith by challenging us to get our thinking caps back on. Look at the birds! Look at the grass of the field! What do you see? And in the vernacular, we could go on to add, “Well, duh!” Where’s your faith? You worry because you do not think and you do not remember what is true about you in God’s sight.

But let us go on to the second reason Jesus tells us to take no thought for our lives. The first is what is true of us; the second is because of what is true about God. He says two things. One is a theological statement and the next is a promise. Our God, our Creator, is our heavenly and omniscient Father: “your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” We easily believe God knows all things. Well, let us go on to the logical conclusion: he therefore knows about our every need. Combine that, logically, with His loving Fatherly heart for us – the heart that nailed His own Son on the cross of Calvary for us – and what do you have? You have a situation in which it is impossible that we should have any reason to worry about our needs in this life. To worry is to deny God’s omniscience and to deny His loving care for us.

Now, it is true that there are times when we suffer in this life. In those times we are sorely tempted to doubt God’s loving care. It is very easy, being the weak and sinful creatures that we are, to be captivated by the cares of this life; to be bound up with the chains of fret and fear. But that is precisely the time for us to take ourselves in hand and do what Jesus is telling us to do here: to think, to remember. Faith has to have something to work with. It needs the truth of God, and we find that truth in His Word. We have to talk to ourselves and say the same kind of thing that David had to say to himself now and then: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God.” We have to remind ourselves of the goodness of our loving, heavenly Father.

But not only do we go to the Word to remind of us of God’s attributes and character, we go there for the explicit promises that the God-Who-Cannot-Lie makes to us. This is especially strengthening for our faith. Jesus tells us forthrightly: But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. And this is only one of a multitude of promises throughout the Scriptures of how God is determined to see to it that the needs of His people are met. This is one of the main things the Bible is all about! Is not the Bible primarily about Christ? And is He not the Good Shepherd who inspires His people to sing, “The LORD is my Shepherd; I shall not want! Goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever!” Here is a whole continent of divine oaths upon which our faith can easily stand all the days of our lives. Are we not ashamed that we ever worry in the least? I know I am.

And we are not yet finished. Beside the reasons of our identity as God’s children, beside the truth of who God Himself is, we have in conclusion one more, very practical, reason that Jesus gives us for not worrying. He says, Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Jesus reasons with us that we should not worry because it is a waste of time and energy. The Lord knows us, He knows what it is like to live in this world, He knows our weaknesses, and He knows our limitations. And in His wisdom, about human life and all His purposes for us, He tells us to live one day at a time. All our times are in His hands, and He has so made us and our world, that we only live one day at a time. That’s the way it is. He also tells us through St. Paul that He will not suffer us to be tempted above what we are able, and we are only able to deal with trouble one day at a time, because that’s the only time we are living. We do not live in the past. We do not live in the future. We live now. When else are we going to refuse to worry? When else are we going to trust God? When else are we going to do our duty? It is only in the present we live and it is only in the present that we can walk with God and know His love, and joy, and peace, and be encourged in our hope.

So much of our earthly worry is about something that does not exist today, and indeed, may never exist, because we may be gone from this earth by the time the morrow comes. We worry over the consequences of the past. We worry over the needs of the future. Why? What good does it do? Such worry only distracts us and tires us in what we have to do today. And that cannot be good for the future. It is certainly not good for the present. As Jesus, the One greater than Solomon, says, we have enough today. Be content with today’s troubles; why should you want any more; why be greedy for more troubles than you already have? Trust God for today. That’s all we need to do. If we will just do that, and do it day by day, we will find in the end that we have trusted God all our lives and we will know the fruit of having lived a life free from debilitating fear and worry.

The people of this world, outside of Christ, have good reason to worry. They are in the gravest of dangers; they face the judgment of God with no hope. As long as they refuse to receive God's gift of salvation to them, they should be worried. We, as Christians, however, by virtue of the grace of Christ and the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, have received that salvation and its gift of faith. And having that faith, we never have to worry because we never have to have little faith. We can strengthen our faith by listening to our Saviour’s words and using our heads about them. We can have the comfort of the joy and peace that comes from our faith by feeding our faith on the truth and promises of the Word of God, about ourselves, about God Himself, and just about what makes sense.

Brothers and sisters, let us pray for each other that we will not forget this. It is very hard work to not worry, sometimes. But it is good work. As we must gain our earthly bread by the sweat of our brow, we must also gain nourishment for our faith by the sweat of thinking and believing, of watching and praying. But though it take sweat, the bread is the blessing of God. It is His prospering in our lives. It is His faithfulness, His kindness, as He leads us and fits us for the home He is preparing for us. Our time in this worrisome world is short. Let us not be overcome by it, but let us instead, through our Captain, overcome the world, even by our faith. Amen.

Thoughts on the Spiritual Life - XXIX - H. C. G. Moule

Chapter viii

grace for grace.

Joh. i. 16. – Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
Psal. xxxvi. 11[sic]. – For with Thee is the fountain of life.

In the last chapter we have had much to say about the applications of sanctifying grace, and in the last but one something of its nature. Here is a Scripture which speaks of it again, and describes a delightful special aspect of our derivation of grace from its fountain.

On the first clause of the quotation from St John I say but little. Only observe that it points to Jesus Christ as the embodiment, the reservoir, the fountain, of all that grace means for us. And it speaks of the vital connexion of us, of His believing followers, with Him as a definite and accomplished fact. “We have received,” or, somewhat more literally, “we did receive.” Of himself and of all believers St John says this. They have come into receptive contact with Jesus Christ, with the divine fulness that is in Him. “The Spirit of faith” has come. The work of submissive trust has been wrought in the soul, the trust which looks not at itself but at the trusted One alone. Then the soul is not only in the hands of its blessed Rescuer; it has come into spiritual continuity with His exalted Life. “Virtue is gone out of Him”; His strength into their impotence, His peace into their nature’s war. Because He lives, they live also.

The last clause of the quotation speaks of a certain mode, or phase, of our reception of this fulness, this “grace of life” which once could not flow into us, but to which now our will, our being, thanks be to God, has opened wide the door. Let us examine it.

“Grace for grace.” On the word “grace” I have said a little already,* and will not repeat it. I assume the reader’s rememberance of the truth that sanctifying grace is no mere impersonal “substance,” but “God working in us”; the Lord in action in our very springs of thought and will. Now observe the phrase before us here; “grace for grace.” Quite literally – I know not how to render more exactly – the words run, “Grace instead of grace.”

What does it mean? Surely the thought, the image, is of a perpetual succession of supply; a displacement and replacement ever going on; ceaseless arrivals of all that is needed for the ceaseless changes of need and demand. The picture before us is as of a river. Stand on its banks, and contemplate the flow of waters. A minute passes, and another. Is it the same stream still? Yes, assuredly, the same Thames, or Wye, that ran ages ago in our forefathers’ sight. But is it the same water? No. The liquid mass that passed you a few seconds ago fills now another section of the channel; new water has displaced it, or if you please, replaced it; water instead of water. And so hour by hour, and year by year, and century by century, the process holds; one stream, other waters, living not stagnant, because always in the great identity there is perpetual change.

Even so in the Christian’s life, and in that derived fulness which is its secret of plenty and of peace. Hour comes instead of hour, joy instead of joy, snare instead of snare, trial and pain and loss instead of other like things of yesterday. But so also with the supply, the successions and exchanges of strength and blessing that come of the unchanging and unsuccessional presence in the believing man of Him whom he has received. Grace takes the place of grace; ever new, ever old, ever the same, ever fresh and young, for hour by hour, for year by year, through life.

*Ch. vii.

Mea Culpa on Gledhill Quote

You may have noticed that Ms. Gledhill commented on my previous post that she had not said those things and that was the reason I couldn't find them on her blog. I can only assume now that they are instead the words of Mr. Virtue and that I was misled due to his not providing quotation marks or some other device for the quote in question. I apologise to all parties involved. I would like to keep the quotation up, however, because I still think it a good one.
Many thanks to Ms. Gledhill for her correction and her ongoing work to keep us informed about Anglican issues.

Quote on Church Feminization

Please Note: at 5:30 p.m. EST, on the 16th of Nov., I altered the title of this post and the body of the text, removing Ms. Gledhill's name from it. See the comments below and the succeeding post for the explanation.

The following is a quote from ... in an article by David Virtue that I thought was spot on. I couldn't find the reference on her website, so I just copied from David below. The link for David's whole article is at the end.

...The feminization of the ministry is one of the most significant trends of this generation. Acceptance of women in the pastoral role reverses centuries of Christian conviction and practice. It also leads to a redefinition of the church and its ministry. Once women begin to fill and represent roles of pastoral leadership men withdraw. This is true, not only in the pulpit, but in the pews. The evacuation of male worshippers from liberal churches is a noticeable phenomenon.

Furthermore, the issues of women's ordination and the normalization of homosexuality are closely linked. It is no accident that those churches that most eagerly embraced the ordination of women now either embrace the ordination of homosexuals or are seriously considering such a move.

The reason for this is quite simple. The interpretive games one must play in order to get around the Bible's proscription of women in congregational preaching and teaching roles are precisely the games one must play in order to get around the Bible's clear condemnation of homosexuality.

Put another way, once one is satisfied to relativize the biblical texts limiting the congregational teaching office to men, one can (and almost surely will) be satisfied to employ those same strategies on texts condemning homosexuality. In both cases, the texts are relativized by postmodern ideologies.

Virtue's article.

New Look for our C. S. Lewis Society Website

I've created a BlogSpot page for our Society in hopes that it will serve everyone better. The link is the same: http://www.cslewischattanooga.org/. All e-mail posts to the Society will be entered here as well as other Lewis/Inklings related material. Let me know what you think.

England Tidal Wave Threat

Let's keep northeast England in our prayers as they face a tidal wave threat over the next several hours. See the news.

Thoughts on the Spiritual Life – XXVIII – H. C. G. Moule

Chapter vii, concluded.

iii. Now we turn from St Peter to St Paul, and hear him speak of what is manifold also; “the manifold wisdom of God.”

The words have a special reference, as will be seen, of special and beautiful significance. The Apostle speaks of his manifold wisdom, not in the abstract, but as illustrated and in action in the true Church, that is to say in “the blessed company of all faithful people”;* and in the view of very important spectators. “The principalities and powers,” the spirits of the heavenly world, “angels and archangels and the company of heaven,”* are seen in this wonderful verse studying the wisdom of God as shown in the believing company. To take the simplest aspects of this disclosure of God’s word; we have it indicated here that Christians, of every grade, and character, and situation, and age, and name, are capable of thus being viewed from above, to the glory of the wisdom of their God. The poorest, humblest, most forgotten and neglected saint of Christ in whose manifold trials manifold grace is doing its work, may at this moment be affording to our “elder brethren of the sky” discoveries of what the Lord is and what He can do, most precious to themselves. In us they see what they cannot see in their own bright ranks; the victory of grace over the infinitely complicated problem of the recovery, the acceptance, the sanctification, the glory, of beings fallen, rebellious, justly condemned, and under all the conditions of the flesh.

Very different are the specimens they study; the Christian martyr, the Christian leader and master of men, the Christian thinker and student, the missionary and evangelist, the Christian mother, the friend of the needy and the outcast, the little believing child, the lonely aged one, the dying one, sinking into what to us looks like “utter destruction.”** but what by them is seen as the triumphant issue of divine wisdom, turning death into the gate of life.

Are we part of the subject-matter of God’s lessons to these heavenly learners in the study of His manifold wisdom? Is there anything in our lives from which an angel might learn more of God? If there is an ambition lawful in the life of penitent sinners, can there be a purer aspiration than that we may be used as illustrations to the minds of the Blessed, not of what man can be but of what He whom we love can do?

* The Communion Service.
** See the noble passage, Wisdom iii. 1-4.