Spiritual Coffee: A Beautiful Life Raising Kids with Special Needs - Feast of Theology with John Webster - Teaching Children Obedience Without Legalism

Here are three things worth feeding your mind. You can find prior roundups under Spiritual Coffee, and stay tuned for new installments later this week.

The Beautiful Trial of Raising Kids with Special Needs, Paul Martin reviews Andrew and Rachel Wilson's book The Life We Never Expected: Hopeful Reflections on the Challenges of Parenting Children with Special Needs. (TGC)
The Wilsons "are part of the leadership team at Kings Church in Eastbourne in the United Kingdom" and their parenting took a completely unexpected turn when "both their children (Zeke and Anna) showed signs of autism around age 3. It was regressive autism, meaning both had been meeting typical developmental milestones, but then started going in reverse." Most people flee from the idea of having a child with any developmental disabilities or special needs. The Wilsons seem to have done a remarkable job of both showing the beauty and hope involved in parenting these unique and precious children, while also being blunt and honest about the discouragement, difficulty, and demands. Consciously or unconsciously, most of us pin our happiness on having the life we expected. But there is a glorious and breathtaking part of experiencing God that can only be seen and felt by people who have surrendered and let God use them to humbly serve other lives. We usually fight tooth and nail against that surrender, and it is helpful to be shown the reward of what's on the other side by people like the Wilsons who have been taken there.

 "When you read The Life We Never Expected, you feel like you’ve been transported into the Wilsons’ living room to shoot straight with them about life and parenting—only with a twist. 

"God, in his great wisdom, saw fit to bless the Wilsons with two children with autism. It may be worth stopping here to say what autism is and isn’t. Some tend to think a few good spankings, more rigid discipline, and a parenting course or two will straighten things out, but you cannot discipline genetics. Autism is 'a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, and restricted and repetitive behavior.' Its cause is unknown, and it manifests in a variety of ways—Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified PDD-NOS, and childhood disintegrative disorder are all related disabilities on the Autism Spectrum." 

"Andrew isn’t ashamed to tell us how, when the second diagnosis came, he

was overwhelmed by the most sweeping, drowning sense of pain and anguish I had ever experienced, ran into the playroom, curled up on the floor, and wailed until I thought there was nothing left. It was, and still is, the lowest point of my entire life.

"That’s the kind of raw honesty that pervades The Life We Never Expected. And that’s what I loved most about it. There’s a kind of denial the Christian church tolerates when it comes to disability. We often ignore things that scare us or we don’t understand. The Wilsons, however, bravely invite us into their world to taste their anguish and joys.  

"This book is much more than a lament. It’s that, but it’s also a vivid description of God’s dependability amid the sorrow and chaos of disability."

Perfection & Presence: God With Us, According to the Christian Confession, John Webster (Carl F.H. Henry Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)
Webster, a massively influential theologian, passed away last month. At that time I posted some links to articles detailing his life and contributions to Christianity. Here is a great chance to absorb some of his work through six audio lectures. And yeah, this is probably much more than one coffee break, but consider it a chance to stock up and take these in little sections at a time in order to reflect on them.

"Professor John Webster delivers a rich reflection upon the perfections and presence of God. The question at the center of this lectures series is the nature of human fellowship with God. The Investigation of the nature of this fellowship entails for Webster, a comprehension of the divine perfections and their relation to the Trinitarian relations and missions. From the nature of God, the Trinitarian relations and the nature of Divine presence more generally, it can then be understood more clearly what scripture means when it speaks of the Word becoming flesh. Webster offers, therefore, an extensive reflection upon the human history of the divine Word and the nature of his presence in the flesh. Finally, Webster moves to discuss the nature of the resurrected and exalted Lord’s presence, a presence manifest in his Lordship over his creatures and in the practices and Sacraments of the holy church."

Is It Anti-Gospel to Teach Kids Self-Control Before Conversion? - Owen Strachan (For the Church)
Valuable reflections from a remarkable theologian, who is also the president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (in other words, a man who cares very deeply about families and children). If we really understand the Gospel, then we know that obedience to God does not earn us salvation. Instead, obedience is frequently described in Scripture as "fruit." Fruit only grows on a tree that is already alive. Unless we are made alive by the Spirit, we cannot bring forth the fruit of obedience and good works. These things come after saving faith in Christ, not before. And the last thing we want to do is confuse our children by making them think that they have to "be good" in order to get God's approval, because that is the deadly peril of legalism. Strachan has a very practical answer for parents. Read on:

"No true transformation can happen without miraculous grace.  There is surely truth to this argument.  Without the gospel, we are slaves to sin.  We cannot conquer sin or master it; as long as we are unconverted, sin is in fact our master.  We need God-given faith in Christ to know true and lasting transformation.

"But I am wondering if, in highlighting this ultimate truth, we might forget a penultimate (secondary) reality.  It is good and well to train children, pre-conversion, in obedience and self-control.  If you do this in a way that indicates that successfully resisting a given temptation equates with the highest form of pleasing God, then that’s problematic.  In other words, if you train kids that doing right actions saves them, that’s tragic.  But it’s also tragic to not raise children to discern right from wrong and to think that they have no ability whatsoever to follow commands.

"If, though, you train children in good habits while always holding out the need for repentance and faith, I think you’re being a wise and godly parent.  The father who speaks repeatedly to his son in Proverbs clearly directs him to steer clear of sin.  The father is forming habits in his son, and those habits are not opposed to saving faith.  They are creating channels through which the life-giving water of the gospel will flow."

Spiritual Coffee: Christians Defending Criminals - Why John Webster Matters - A Story of Why You Need Limits to Survive

There are quite a few thought-provoking observations in today's links. Click on Spiritual Coffee for prior roundups to sharpen and equip your Christian thinking and enlarge your heart.

I Advocate for Convicted Criminals, Cara Wieneke (TGC)
I rarely get to see Christians writing like this about the kind of work I do (I am a criminal defense attorney as well). Many Christians never get a view of what this is like, and Wieneke's story reflects my experiences too. The ugliness and brokenness we see through the criminal justice system is overwhelming. But there are amazing demonstrations of grace - especially the miraculous contrast between grace at work transforming people versus 'business as usual' - that we see as well. What keeps motivating my work is the fact that Jesus never gave us permission to give up on people, and so the Gospel is still a responsibility even toward those whose actions may repulse us. Perhaps especially toward those whose actions repulse us. Sin is horrific. We just aren't shocked by our own sins as much as we are shocked by those we see others committing, and that makes it easy to make excuses for avoiding some people. I thank God for each time He steers me away from avoidance and keeps me attentive to seeing His grace at work.

Wieneke used to wall herself off from feeling the pain of the people involved in her cases. "But after becoming a Christian, my view changed. I began seeing my clients as human beings, and I started feeling the pain and suffering their evil inflicted on others. For every case I reviewed, I felt a small part of the pain and suffering the victims endured. There were times the pain was so great that I considered changing careers. But God kept drawing me back."

She felt overwhelmed and discouraged, but an encounter with a converted man in prison changed that. "He didn’t try to place blame elsewhere for his actions. He didn’t complain about being incarcerated or contemplate ways to obtain his release."Instead, he seemed content with his life. He told me God was changing him, and he seemed almost thankful for his circumstances. He expressed sorrow for the pain he had caused and became emotional when telling me he didn’t feel he was worthy of God’s grace. But he accepted God’s grace and said prison would not be the end of his story. Finally, he told me to take all the time I needed to review his case since he knew he deserved to be sitting in prison.""As I left the prison and walked to my car, it was almost as if the weight had been lifted. No longer did I doubt God was there; no one but God could have been responsible for my client’s transformation."

John Webster: Tribute to a Leading Theologian, Steve Holmes (Christianity Today)
Update: Here's a collection of links to John Webster's life and works by Jake Meador (Mere Orthodoxy) [thanks to Matt Crutchmer for sharing]

The author points out that few Christians outside academic circles have heard of John Webster (who entered into his eternal reward this week) and yet demonstrates why we should all be thankful for him. 

"There is an idea around in the churches that studying theology is the surest way to destroy faith. Fifty years ago, that was uncomfortably close to being true. English-language academic theology too often began with an explanation of why traditional beliefs (the Creed, that sort of thing) could not possibly be true, and then constructed some pale imitation out of a passing intellectual fad. John was a leading member of a group of theologians who changed all that."

"If his writing was uncompromisingly intellectual, it was also uncompromisingly Christian. I just picked a book by John of the shelf, and opened it at random. The page begins: 'Christian theology is biblical reasoning. It is an activity of the created intellect, judged, reconciled, redeemed, and sanctified through the works of the Son and the Spirit.'"The authority of Scripture, God's act of creation, our need for atonement and sanctification—all assumed in two sentences."

Detached People Can Only Float, Bogumil Jarmulak (Theopolis Institute)

Compelling observations on the necessity of constraints and limits for life to survive, based off the film "Gravity." You may be surprised by how much there is to think about. Jarmulak is a Pastor in Poznan, Poland, and Presiding Minister of the Anselm Presbytery of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. He quotes significantly from an article by Bronislaw Wildstein in Do Rzeczy. [For the sake of humility, I admit I was not familiar with either of them before reading this. But the article is very good.]

"It turns out that the astronauts could enjoy weightlessness only as long as they were not exposed to it fully. Humans cannot survive in true zero-gravity. We cannot survive in the open space unless we have some artifacts which preserve our lives. The things and forces which limit us or even endanger our lives are the same things and forces which enable us to live and act."

"Precisely because it limits us, gravity puts barriers on our paths, hinders life, also conditions life. 'Human limitations and risks, burdens, and difficulties make up our world. Deprived of them we cannot survive, we fall apart, we perish,' concludes Wildstein.
"Weightlessness is fun, provided there is gravity. Liberty is good, provided we stand on the solid ground."

The Only Sure Way to Enjoy God Is by Embracing God's Will

This devotion from March 6 in Tim and Kathy Keller's The Songs of Jesus is a particularly clear summary of why the only way to happiness is to trust God to teach us how to live, rather than dreaming up a good life for ourselves.

One caution first: please, let us resolve to avoid any misunderstanding that would wrongly cause us to think that keeping moral standards or doing good works is what brings God's love to us or gives us our reward with Him. Those who love God do good because it enhances their enjoyment of the love God has already given them, and because it pleases Him. But it is certainly true that if you refuse to do good or live a life of integrity, you will spoil and trample your enjoyment of God. You can't enjoy a relationship with any other human being if you are constantly disappointing that person and treating him or her with contempt. Why should we think it is any different with God?

We are accepted by God completely freely, by believing and trusting in Christ's bearing of our sin and suffering judgment for us. We become fully and completely His children through this, before we ever do a single good work beyond believing. But even though you already have that relationship if you're a Christian, you can certainly deprive yourself of all the joy of it by living a life that disdains God's moral character and ignores His words. Therefore Keller is exactly right in saying that to "enjoy a good life... you must live a good life[.]" (emphasis added)

Psalm 34:11-16

¹¹ Come, my children, listen to me;
    I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
¹² Whoever of you loves life
    and desires to see many good days,
¹³ keep your tongue from evil
    and your lips from telling lies.
¹⁴ Turn from evil and do good;
    seek peace and pursue it.

¹⁵ The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

    and his ears are attentive to their cry;
¹⁶ but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil,
    to blot out their name from the earth.

THE LIE. To enjoy a good life (verse 12) you must live a good life (verses 13-14). This challenges the lie of the serpent in Eden that if we obey God fully we will be miserable, that rich living lies outside God's will, not within it.[29] This lie has passed deeply into every human heart: that we would be happier if we, rather than God, were free to choose how our lives should be lived. But the ultimate good is knowing God personally, and the ultimate punishment is just as personal--to lose the face of God (verse 16), the only source of joy and love, to be "left utterly and absolutely outside--repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored."[30]

Prayer: Father, if I want to love life, I have to love you--and loving you means doing your will with gladness. Shine your face on me--let me know your love--so I can love you for who you are. Remind me that the only loss that is unbearable is to lose you and your presence. Amen.

From The Songs of Jesus (March 6), p. 65.

29 Derek Kidner, Psalms 1-72, p.158. See also Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance: Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2016).

30 C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory."

[n.b. I edited Keller's footnotes to make the references to the books clear, instead of abbreviations and ibid.]

What You Make of God's Glory Is the Test of Whether You Really Worship Him

I've been reading through Tim Keller and Kathy Keller's devotional on the Psalms, The Songs of Jesus. This description of God's glory struck me:

"What is God's glory? It is his infinite weight, his supreme importance. To glorify God is to obey him unconditionally. To ever say, 'I'll obey if . . .' is to give something else more importance or glory than God." (The Songs of Jesus, p. 43).

The glory of God is our supreme value and treasure. It is what we recognize as representing God's infinite worth, His being deserving of our complete worship and devotion. If we make our worship or obedience to God conditional, meaning we will only give it if God meets our desire or expectation for something else, then we aren't really worshiping God or treasuring Him. We are using Him as a means to what we really want. Which means we value it more than God. That is how you know when you have made an idol or false god out of something: you want it so much that you aren't satisfied with God unless He also gives this other thing to you. Truly worshiping God above all means that you don't need anything else along with Him. He is your ultimate desire. He may give you other things to enjoy too, and He does, but they aren't nearly as important as Him. That is giving God His true glory.

The Kellers make another good observation about worship as well:

"But while glorifying God is never less than obedience, it is more. God's glory also means his inexpressible beauty and perfection. It does not glorify him, then, if we only ever obey God simply out of duty. We must give him not only our will but also our heart, as we adore and enjoy him, as we find him infinitely attractive. And there is no greater beauty than to see the Son of God laying aside his glory and dying for us (Philippians 2:5-11)." (The Songs of Jesus, p. 43).

Worship isn't just submitting to God and obeying Him because we have to. It is enjoying God. Even when you don't feel this (and it is often difficult for most of us - often there are other things we feel we want more than God), what you should pursue in worship and prayer is that very feeling. You can worship God even when you don't feel it if you pray for the right feelings of devotion and affection and ask God to make you desire what you should. Desire for God should be heartfelt and genuine, but it also honors Him to say you know you should desire Him - that He is worth that much - but you don't right now, and you need His help. Never hesitate to come to God in prayer just because you don't feel what you should. Asking Him to fix that honors Him too. 
 

What Drives You? Does Christianity Capture Your Head But Not Your Heart?

See if this feels familiar: you know what kind of person you want to be, and why you believe in it. But as you take stock of the past week, you are uncomfortably aware that many of the things you have actually done don't line up with who you want to be or what you believe is right. And let's not even mention the past year. Mostly little things, perhaps (so you tell yourself), but a person's reputation and the effect you have on other people is made up of little things. Someone once observed: "Nothing ever changes us except the things we do every day." We know intuitively that when our actions keep differing from our beliefs, something is not right.
 
This is one of those problems that is common to every man and woman. Even Paul the Apostle expressed how exasperating and discouraging it can be: "For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing." (Romans 7:18-19). Let me compare two powerful answers to this dilemma.
 
A Solid Worldview May Not Be Enough

One way that Christians have helped each other confront this problem is emphasizing a conscious worldview that considers how Christianity relates to everything we do, and what that means about how we should act. A worldview is something everyone has even without thinking about it; we all have basic beliefs about reality and what life is about that drive our decisions and our priorities even when we don't think about why we're doing them (here's a more thorough definition). Your worldview generally determines how you will respond to new information or choices. For instance, if you believe at a fundamental level that a meaningful life can only be achieved by making enough money to be able to influence politics and social change, then even when you aren't thinking through those assumptions, you will typically make decisions that prioritize earning money and advancing your influence and power. Sometimes you may not even connect those decisions with the ultimate goal of influencing government and society; but because you had settled in your mind early on the idea that this is what makes for a successful life, it's second nature for you to see any option that increases your money and power as the naturally desirable choice. Those goals have become synonymous in your mind with "value" or "good." Your worldview has shaped the choices you make even when you aren't thinking about why you make them.
 
Emphasizing a Christian worldview (or biblical worldview) typically means challenging people to examine their underlying beliefs and assumptions about what is good and what life is about, and then training Christians to be conscious about centering their priorities on the things that God has taught us to value. It means lining your beliefs and priorities up with what Scripture reveals about God's priorities and how He wants us to act, and it also means recognizing that God's purpose for your life encompasses everything you ever do. A genuine Christian should be taking the lead from God's word in every area, not simply areas that seem "religious." Worldview is a comprehensive answer to all the questions of life, not a set of rules that apply only in certain circles or subjects. The goal is to make sure that a Christian will recognize decisions and patterns of behavior that are inconsistent with God's character and His commandments, so that we can avoid those actions and choose ones that honor God.

Are You Ruled By Worldview or Desire?

There is a lot of value to worldview theory and teaching. I listed some great examples of how to teach and study a biblical worldview at the end of this post. But even knowing the right thing to do is often not enough. So you should get to know one of the most helpful and insightful critics of worldview approaches: James K.A. Smith, a professor at Calvin College. Smith has observed that what drives our decisions is more often desire than worldview. He has illustrated that even when people hold firmly to a biblical worldview, they often act against that worldview because of their desires.

This is extremely valuable, because it reveals that changing what you believe about life isn't enough to clean up your behavior. You also have to transform and reform what you love. The best place to dig deeper into this is Smith's fascinating new book, "You Are What You Love." Another of Smith's insights is that even Christians with a biblical worldview may have cultural practices and habits that essentially fuel and serve their contrary desires. We may not simply be acting against what we believe; our habits may also be feeding and nurturing even more powerful resistance to doing what is good. Christian bookseller extraordinaire Byron Borger summarizes Smith's reasoning:

"Christian formation that only teaches data -- Bible truths or worldviewish principles or theological doctrine, no matter how right or profound or astute --  but doesn't really shape our deepest desires, loves, priorities and such isn't going to be truly transformative. And in fact, our Christian worship practices may be "thin" and less influential, while our secular cultural liturgies may be "thicker" and truly impact how we see and feel about the world." (Borger, BookNotes column (scroll down a page)). In other words, we may be practicing a way of life that actually promotes and feeds our worship of things other than God.

You may have heard similar thoughts before, but part of the goldmine in Smith's work is his labor to identify and uncover these "cultural liturgies" and to help us discover patterns of genuine worship that need to be woven into our lives. The concept may sound simple, but the heavy lifting is in the application. Borger commends Smith's books for "deep and wise visions of spiritual imagination and how worship, among other things, effects our human flourishing and the tone of our discipleship." And Borger's crowning point is that Smith's work, so far embodied in two large and widely-acclaimed volumes, is distilled down in this upcoming book You Are What You Love so that Christians who don't have the time to read an academic textbook can glean all the best parts. (As a bonus, Borger's BookNotes column is one you should save for regular reading if you care about feeding your mind - he really knows his Christian authors and books.)

So sharpen your worldview so that you can recognize if your choices are out of step with the character and wisdom of God, but dig deep into James Smith and similar authors who help shape your heart so that you will not only know the good you ought to do, but you will have the desire to do it too.

Worldview Training:
Worldview Academy and PDF of Concepts in Curriculum on Christian Worldview
(Re)Thinking Worldview: An Interview with Mark Bertrand
The Colson Center for Christian Worldview and Christian Worldview Journal
Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? 

To Know You Are Loved By God Is Essential for Performance

The "performance trap" I described last time is what happens when we go off the road halfway through the Gospel and start thinking that Christ saved us from our sins (and thus punishment), but now we need to achieve the kind of personal holiness that will give us confidence to stand before God. We can easily develop a perception that our prayers to God must be made when we are flourishing in holy living and excelling in sanctified behavior if we want to be heard. In other words, our faulty idea of progression of faith looks like this:

     faith >> salvation >> obedience and sanctification >> increasing acceptance by God (justification)

What I want to emphasize here is that it is essential to our productivity and obedience for us to believe we are accepted apart from our productivity and obedience. Believing we must labor and purify ourselves with all our might in order to gain favor with God doesn't make us more faithful and productive. It makes us legalistic, and eventually leads many Christians to a sort of hopelessness and apathy as they realize they can never meet the standards they've aimed at. The Scriptures tell us the having assurance of our acceptance actually keeps us fruitful: "And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises." (Hebrews 6:11-12).

In the last post I unpacked Jerry Bridges and The Discipline of Grace to show that salvation and justification (acceptance by God) are inseparably linked. They both occur immediately when faith is placed in Our Savior Jesus Christ and God's promise of life and salvation to all who believe in Him. Every ounce of performance, every good work of obedience, all come after we are justified by faith.

The progression of Christian faith actually looks like this:
     faith >> salvation and complete acceptance by God (justification) >> obedience and sanctification

Here's a good summary: "The connection between the sinner and the Savior is trust, not improvement of behavior. That comes later. It’s this order that gives hope. "For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law" (Romans 3:28). The basis of this wild and wonderful hope (the ungodly justified) is "Christ for righteousness to everyone who believes" (Romans 10:4, literal translation). Through faith alone God counts the ungodly as righteous because of Christ. "For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Let all who are paralyzed by the weight of sin and the powerlessness to change turn in here." John Piper, Justification By Faith: The Remedy for Paralyzed Sinners

Basically, performance happens because we have been given a new heart and spirit upon believing by faith. But God, having enabled us now to do good works and love righteousness, doesn't wait for us to get a proven track record before fully accepting us. He does it immediately. The joyful and liberating truth that our acceptance actually comes before our performance is scattered throughout the Bible, such as Titus 3:4-8, where Paul grounds the reason that people should devote themselves to good works in the fact that they have already been saved apart from works and justified by grace. Or Ephesians 2:8-10, where Paul declares we were saved by grace, not as a result of any works, but as a free gift - so that we could then do the good works God created us to do. The good news of acceptance is so essential to our being motivated to do good works that we are assured in numerous places of our acceptance by God before being urged to go on and do good works. So get as confident as you can that God loves you and accepts you completely in Christ.  It's good for you.

Performance vs. Grace: Is Your Best Good Enough?

The cure of all shame and insecurity is believing God fully accepts you in the Gospel - just as you are right now - and realizing He will never change His mind.

I mean to deal more broadly and deeply here with the problem I raised in the previous post. Let me start by making it clear that I do not believe obedience/works of faith are actually at odds with grace in Christian theology. What I mean by "performance vs. grace" is that this is how many Christians sometimes see their experience of faith. Sometimes they feel that they can never measure up to a standard of holiness and perfection, and therefore get depressed and discouraged by shame, or they feel that all the teachings of grace and forgiveness don't fit with the commands to do good works and to be holy. This leads to a creeping insecurity that we really aren't fully accepted by God unless we 'complete' our faith by getting really good at obedience. That's what Jerry Bridges calls "the performance trap." 

I know of no better or more encouraging antidote to this trap than The Discipline of Grace, which Bridges wrote to help Christians who want to accept the free grace of God, but feel burdened by their inability to meet our expectations of Christian behavior and holiness. If you've been weighed down by this burden as I have, I hope a very short unpacking of his solution will convince you to get this book and savor it. It is endlessly encouraging.

First, Bridges identifies the problem with the performance trap: Christians accept that we are saved and forgiven only by faith in Christ, and "readily acknowledge that we can never through our own obedience attain a righteousness that is sufficient for salvation. But then as believers we act as if we can live lives acceptable to God." In short, "we know God's blessings come to us through Christ, but we also have this vague but very real notion that they are also conditioned on our behavior." The trap is that we have separated 'salvation in Christ' from 'acceptance by God.' We have fallen into a misguided feeling that, although Christ fully and finally saved us from our sins and purchased our eternal life, we aren't completely acceptable to God or approved by God unless we perform well.

We have all felt this. Bridges proves it brilliantly by posing two scenarios that he calls the 'good day' and the 'bad day.' On the good day, you really keep the commandments visibly and you make a lot of time for the spiritual disciplines, and you feel good about your performance as a Christian. On the bad day, you neglect the spiritual disciplines, you don't do good things you think you should have done, and you feel inadequate as a Christian. Then a situation comes up where you need to rely on God's favor and help. Do you feel more confident that God will help you when you've had a good day? And on the bad day, are you hesitant and doubtful about whether God will help you?

Most Christians have to admit that, in daily life, their honest answers are yes and yes. Bridges found after asking this to numerous audiences that: "Invariably, about 80 percent indicate that they ... would be less confident of God's blessing ... at the end of a bad day than they would after a good one."

That is not how the Gospel works. The Gospel proclaims that we are not only saved from sin and death by the sacrifice Christ made, but we are also fully and absolutely accepted and loved by God through being clothed with the perfect righteousness of Christ. That's what the term 'justification' means. Salvation refers to our deliverance from sin and judgment, but justification refers to our receiving the acceptance before God that Christ Himself enjoys. "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand[.]" (Romans 5:1-2). What we receive by faith is not just the removal of the negative consequences of sin, but the gift of the positive benefits of full acceptance by God. When you see "justification" in Scripture, that's the glorious and joyful news it should bring to mind.

This is the reason that the author of Hebrews exhorts us in Hebrews 4:14-16 and 10:19-22 to draw near to God's throne with complete confidence. We have nothing to be ashamed of in His presence, because He accepts us not on the basis of our own performance or 'goodness' but on the basis of Christ's holiness and perfection. Our problem is not whether we have favor or acceptance with God; the problem is in our perception of how God feels about us. Bridges declares: "This standing in Christ's righteousness is never affected to any degree by our good-day or bad-day performance. ... however, our perception of our standing before God will vary" based on how we feel about our own performance. But it shouldn't.

Bridges counters this perception by daily reminders of the Gospel. The Gospel is not just how we come to faith in Christ, but it is how we are sustained and kept in Christ (and in God's favor) each and every day. Bridges explains that many Christians stop thinking about the Gospel once they become believers, and start getting caught up with spiritual disciplines (which are essential) and the error that these disciplines improve our acceptance by God. But they don't. They improve our enjoyment of God, and they improve our fruitfulness for God in doing good, but our acceptance is never for one second dependent on how we perform or obey. In fact, Paul spells this out firmly to the Galatian church that had begun to believe their works made them more complete as Christians: "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" No. Even miracles, Paul says, are works of the Spirit brought on by faith, not by performance. (Gal. 3:1-6).

The cure of all shame and insecurity is believing God fully accepts you in the Gospel - just as you are right now - and realizing He will never change His mind. The Discipline of Grace is one way to learn to believe this and to apply it every day. Don't approach your spiritual growth with uncertainty about how your Father feels about you. Pursue godliness with the security and assurance that your Father loves you completely and accepts you no matter how each day works out.