Essay
I Never Doubted You, Lord
David argues that once a believer has decided to follow Jesus, doubt does no good: trust is the honour a child shows a parent, and doubting salvation is different from discerning right teaching.
The Christian Life
Desire, fruit, doubt, anxiety, contentment and walking with God day to day.
Essay
Look to Please Your Father
David argues that guilt cannot fit in a mind set on pleasing God, that fatherhood gives a felt shadow of how the Father loves his children and accepts their efforts, and that believers should run to him like the prodigal.
Reading notes
Notes on Deeper
Notes on Dane Ortlund's Deeper and How Does God Change Us?: growth rooted in God's love, justification outside in and sanctification inside out, defeating sin by looking to Christ, C.S. Lewis on muddy children, and identity in union with Christ.
Reading notes
Notes on The Enemy Within
Six notes from Kris Lundgaard's The Enemy Within on the sin that remains in believers: the deceitful heart, Paul's cry in Romans 7:24, how the flesh resists prayer, the broken harmony of mind, affections and will, and whether God gives enough time.
Reading notes
Notes on The Shadow of Calvary
Notes on Hugh Martin's The Shadow of Calvary: praying for salvation, Christ as intercessor, obedience as a labour of love, dwelling at the cross and praying side by side with Christ, with David's reflections on prayer and on Christ's life given for ours.
Poem
Sanctification
A poem tracing a believer's walk from leaving a life of hate, through trials and distress on the path to heaven's gate, to a fearful confession before the Lord, who answers, “Did you not see I wanted you to run?”
Essay
Gambling
David argues that gambling addiction is better understood as overwhelming sin, namely greed, pride and the love of worldly pleasure, than as an addiction, and that even casual gambling is a gateway to temptation that Christians should guard against.
Essay
What Is Perfection?
David argues that perfection is freedom from sin, that it belongs to intent rather than to objects, achievements or outward actions, and that real change comes from the disposition of the heart: searching it, praying for help and fixing our gaze on Christ.
Sayings on the christian life
In the collectionLearning to pray doesn't offer you a less busy life. It offers you a less busy heart.
Cultivate a quiet heart.
Anxiety is born of selfishness.
To each is given a bag of tools
An hour glass and book of rules
And each must build till work has grown
A stumbling block, or stepping stone.
Be serious. God is serious in observing us. Jesus in interceding for us. The spirit in striving with us. God's law is serious. Our spiritual enemies are serious. Lost sinners are seriously in hell. Why then should I not be serious also?
To grow in Christ is not to add Christ to your life but to collapse into Christ as your life.
CULTIVATE: Contentment - Love - Self Control - Uprightness - Godliness - Trust - Courage
ELIMINATE: Pride - Boasting - Ego
You must decide wholeheartedly to believe the words of the bible then let its truth consistently amaze you. By doing this you take power from fear and give focus to God. When we doubt God we feed Anxiety.
Depression, for many, is a life with distractions that don't work anymore.
A desire plays the part of a need when it is put ahead of Christ.
Health is not contagious but disease is. It is far easier to catch a chill than to impart a warm glow. Easier to dwindle each other's Faith than to grow in it.
Feeling distant from God often means you are not content. Come to God in simple confession. It will help you remember that you need Jesus. In turn the spirit will draw nearer.
Find the lamb, don't poke the snake.
God wants us to bear fruit. The whole bible is saturated with direct quotes and symbolism regarding fruitfulness.
God gives us hardship to increase our endurance and remind us of our need for him. We then fall into trust in God instead of ourselves. Why then do we get any good things? Just as marriage is a crutch God gives us to ease the burdens of our sin so too are all good things a gift to release burden but the good we gain from striving after Christ is to show here on earth the fruit of living for Christ so that we might not have to trust fully on the reward for earthly endurance we receive in heaven.
A life that hides or lies will be an anxious life.
We grow in Christ no further than we enjoy his embrace of us.
If we first lived in heaven then came to earth. We would spend every moment trying to get our true identity in Christ back. As it stands we cling to our identity in sin and this world.
We need to inhale truth and exhale Love.
One and possibly the only reason that Jesus actively felt anxious when going to the cross is because he knew he would be distant from God. If God is with us (which for his elect he promises to be) then we have no reason to be anxious. The only legitimate reason to fear is to not have God with you. The only reason to be anxious is to know God will leave you in the future.
Leave the court room.
An evangelical desire to Love everyone can sometimes help you love no one in particular. Especially when they are unattractive to you.
God made you so that he could Love you.
Never ask God why? To Will what God wills brings peace.
He is no fool to give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
Nothing - a basic knowledge of theology - an understanding of the incomprehensibility of God - an embrace of Christ and his love - an outpouring of service in Love.
Praise God when you see your dirt for the fact that you see it means he is with you.
We are not saved by a profession of faith but a procession of faith.
Satan is fine with you going to church as long as you don't bear fruit.
Stop playing church. Stop doing what you want in God's name.
The deepest destiny of your life is to descend ever deeper, with quiet yet ever increasing intensity, into the endless love of God. We grow spiritually here on earth only through the embrace of this endless love until it is experienced fully in the life to come.
We don't need the spirit to be moral
That is we don't need the spirit to be different on the outside
We do need the spirit to be different on the inside.
Don't think more of yourself
Don't think less of yourself
Think of yourself less
Truth and Love. Law and Faith. Important pairs of the Christian faith. Law is needed because we lack faith. Truth is needed because we lack love (Love for God).
It is only in union to Christ that you can grow into who God made you to be.
Never be satisfied with the friendship of anyone who will not be useful to your soul.
What makes you different?
What do you have that you did not receive?
Why then boast as if you did not receive?