Jane Austen Is In My Bible

                                                Provocative blog title?  Let me explain. 😎

This year I am using my new 'favorite' Bible - the ESV Prayer Bible published by Crossway. Among the many features that aid the reader's ability to pray through the Scriptures, there are almost "400 prayers written by Christian writers, theologians, and other figures of note across church history, such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, Augustine, Saint Patrick, Charles Spurgeon, Jane Austen, John Wesley, and more."  Yes, you did indeed read "Jane Austen" in the midst of such an esteemed and revered list of heroes of our faith! I have studied the three prayers she has written and am amazed. Such eloquence, such holy rhetoric, and such obvious and familiar communion with her Lord. Who knew?!?

Here are two of her entries, and for my local friends I will read the third one before our prayer time at our Bible Study groups tomorrow.

Psalm 121: 3-4  "He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber."

Jane Austen:  "To your goodness we commend ourselves this night, asking your protection of us through its darkness and dangers. We are helpless and dependent; graciously preserve us. For all whom we love and value, for every friend and connection, we equally pray; however divided and far asunder, we know that we are alike before you, and under your eye. May we be equally united in faith and fear, in fervent devotion toward you, and in your merciful protection this night. Pardon, O Lord, the imperfections of these our prayers, and accept them through the mediation of our blessed Savior.

James 1:17   "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change."

Jane Austen:  "We thank you with all our hearts for every gracious dispensation, for all the blessings that have attended our lives, for every hour of safety, health, and peace, of domestic comfort and innocent enjoyment. We feel that we have been blessed far beyond anything that we have deserved; and though we cannot but pray for a continuance of all these mercies, we acknowledge our unworthiness of them and implore you to pardon the presumption of our desires."

Sinning "Just A Bit"

"But Lot's wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt."  Genesis 19:26

James Montgomery Boice's thoughts: "I wonder if anyone is thinking that the sins of Lot seem small. If you are thinking this way, I fear for you. Can't you see that one of the reasons why you can't sin just a little bit is precisely that you can sin that bit? There would be no danger if God always stepped in to stop you from doing it. But God does not stop you. There are limits to what God will permit but, nevertheless, God will let you sin. He will let the Jews construct their golden calf. He will permit David to commit adultery with Bathsheba and then murder her husband. He will allow Gomer to run off with other lovers. He will not interfere when the prodigal leaves home to squander his inheritance in a foreign country. In the final analysis, God will allow you to do what you are committed to doing - and you will have to bear the consequences of your actions.

Consider the consequences of Lot's sins on his wife. Lot may have argued at this stage of his life, as some do, that his "little sins" were hurting no one but himself. But although it may have seemed that way for a time, this was not true, and others most certainly were hurt by his actions. His daughters were hurt; the proof is in their decadent morality. But the chief example is Lot's wife, who could not seem to tear herself away from the city. Presumably she lingered behind, looked back, and was overtaken in the destruction.

If you are a Lot, I wish I could adequately press that home to you. Fathers, your sins of family neglect or drinking or sexual escapades will hurt your family. They will hurt your wife and your children. Mothers, your socializing will hurt your children, who need your love and care. Young people, the sins of your youth - your drugs, drinking, and promiscuity - will hurt everyone with whom you have contact. They will hurt your parents, who want better things for you. They will hurt your peers, for you will be part of the pattern of life that destroys them and their potential, In the future, you will be less prepared for the work you have to do. Ministers, your sin of neglect of Bible study and sermon preparation will hurt your parishioners. Employers, your sins will hurt your employees. Workmen, your halfhearted work and wasted time will hurt your company and other workers. Politicians, your sins will injure the people you are elected or appointed to represent.

Sin always has consequences, both for the individual who sins and for others. So abandon it, however small it may seem to you. Whatever it is, it is not small in God's sight, and its effects are incalculable."

Candy's thoughts: This devotional was originally published in 1973 (which explains some of the antiquated language) and is certainly an equal opportunity offender.  All types of sinful people are mentioned, and it still is not an exhaustive list of examples. Boice's main point is a good one - that lack of wisdom in identifying and eradicating the "little sins" in our lives generally leads to much bigger offenses and consequences for ourselves and others.

Many years ago one of the books that I taught at Women's Bible Study at EPC was Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate by Jerry Bridges. (I highly recommend this title if anyone is interested in further exploring this topic). It was an eye-opening study on deceiving ourselves. We decide that we are not as bad as others, so we let sin go unchecked. The Greek word for "deceiving" can also be translated as "defrauding," meaning that by doing so we defraud ourselves of the blessings of obedience. It turns out that we are lying and stealing, against God, others, AND ourselves. We don't need an outside enemy to destroy us. All we need to do is convince ourselves that our little sins don't really matter.

Quotables #3

Modern technology is simply amazing. Even though I have had a 'smartphone' for several years (thanks to my kids!), I still marvel at all the bells and whistles and amazing things that are contained within this 5.94" by 2.98" device. Case in point: I took out my ruler and tried to measure the phone and then remembered that I could just use the phone to 'google' the dimension of it - and literally within 9 seconds I had the exact numbers!

So it is with the ease of taking pictures and videos and screenshots which are then put into storage for future enjoyment. My phone now has 6,562 pictures on it (of which 6,559 are probably of just Max and Henry 😁) and 1,232 videos (of which 1,232 are probably of just Max and Henry - why would I take movies of anyone else?  😎). I also have 267 screenshots, many of which are of wonderful quotes, some of which I've shared with you in the past. In an effort to bring that number down to 257, here are the next 10 sayings which I think are so worthy of our consideration.

My favorites are #1, #5, #7, and #9.  Which are yours? I'd love to hear from you in the comments section below this post, or by email if that's easier.


1.  "Just because you can't see or imagine a good reason why God would allow something bad to happen doesn't mean there can't be one." 
     Tim Keller

2.  "There are three great truths. 1st: There is a God. 2nd: He has spoken to us in the Bible. 3rd: He means what He says." 
     Hudson Taylor

3.  "It's not natural for us to offer our hearts to Someone we can't see, hear, or touch. To believe upward requires grace flowing downward." 
     Paul Tripp

4. "God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools... and He has not been disappointed. If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world."
     Antonin Scalia

5.  "When I look at myself, I don't see how I can be saved. But when I look at Christ, I don't see how I can be lost."
      Martin Luther

6.  "The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived - not always looked forward to as though the 'real' living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow."
     Elisabeth Elliot

7. "Satan loves to fish in the troubled waters of a discontented heart." 
     Thomas Watson

8.  "Fear not because your prayer is stammering, your words feeble, and your language poor. Jesus can understand you." 
     J.C. Ryle

9.  "When asked, 'What is more important: praying or reading the Bible?' I ask, 'What is more important, breathing in or breathing out?'"
     Charles Spurgeon 

10. "The wonderful thing about praying is that you leave a world of not being able to do something, and enter God's realm where everything is possible. Nothing is too great for His almighty power. Nothing is too small for His love."  Corrie Ten Boom

The Five Women in Matthew's Genealogy of Jesus

During the last two weeks of not writing any blog posts I was still thinking of topics that I

wanted to write for today. I even came up with one in particular that I had settled on and woke up this morning with the goal of doing just that. But as is often the case with my odd brain, I am instead writing on something totally different. 😉

A few hours ago I was reading the genealogy that is found in Matthew 1. I was struck particularly with verse 6b: 

                          "And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah..."

I began wondering what David would have thought if he had known that his great sins of adultery and murder would be recorded forever in the Word of God. I certainly wouldn't want the world to be reminded of my worst sins every time they chose to read Matthew's Gospel.

So this led me to investigate why these details were inserted into the genealogy, and I found some fascinating interpretations as to the inclusion of the 5 women referenced in the list. Here are 3 streams of thought about these women:

From the Spirit of the Reformation Study Bible:

Women are not usually named in Near Eastern genealogies, but they were intrinsic to God's purpose in bringing forth the Christ. The five explicitly named all remind us that God often does the unexpected and chooses the unlikely. Tamar reminds us of Judah's failures (Gen. 38: 6-30); Rahab was a Gentile prostitute (Joshua 2); Ruth was a Moabitess and thus under a special curse (Deut. 23:3-5); Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, was David's downfall (2 Sam 11), Mary, the virgin, not only fulfilled Isaiah 7:14, but also the even more important promise of Genesis 3:15.

From the ESV Study Bible:

The inclusion of five women in Jesus' geneaology -- Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary -- is unusual since descent was usually traced through men as the head of the family. Rahab and Ruth were Gentiles, and Tamar, Rahab, and Bathsheba were women of questionable character. The lineage is comprised of men, women, adulterers, prostitutes, heroes, and Gentiles -- and Jesus will be Savior of all.

From Matthew Henry's Commentary on Matthew:

There are four women named in this genealogy (not including Mary the mother of Jesus); two of them were originally strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, Rahab a Canaanitess, and a harlot besides, and Ruth the Moabitess; for in Jesus Christ there is neither Greek, nor Jew; those that are strangers and foreigners are welcome, in Christ, to the citizenship of the saints. The other two were adulteresses, Tamar and Bathsheba; which was a further mark of humiliation put upon our Lord Jesus, that not only he descended from such, but that his descent from them is particularly remarked in his genealogy, and no veil drawn over it. He took upon him the likeness of sinful flesh and takes even great sinners, upon their repentance, into the nearest relation to himself. Note, We ought not to upbraid people with the scandals of their ancestors; it is what they cannot help, and has been the lot of the best, even of our Master himself. David’s begetting Solomon of her that had been the wife of Uriah is taken notice of to show that the crime of David, being repented to, was so far from hindering the promise made to him, that it pleased God by this very woman to fulfill it. 

Candy's thoughts: Wow. So many wonderful words are in these three references. There is much hope for men and women from every background of guilt and shame. No people group will be excluded, and no sad story from our past will be used to deny us entrance into God's family. If He has become our Father through faith in Jesus his Son, then nothing can separate us from his love. 💞

The Ball and The Box

I found this pictorial description of the journey of grief on Twitter last night. It is an unusual but very accurate illustration of anguish after the death of a loved one. Initially I planned on sharing this just with my present group of GriefShare participants, but then I thought it might help CandyceLand readers to understand why intense sorrow hurts so much and lasts so long for their family members, friends, co-workers, and neighbors after the loss of someone very dear to them. Most importantly, though, if any of you have ever experienced a traumatic grief yourself, this might explain why years later the intense pain can unexpectedly resurface.

(Credit goes to Lauren Herschel who posted this analogy given to her by her doctor.)

So grief is like this:

There’s a box with a ball in it. And a pain button.

In the beginning, the ball is huge. You can’t move the box without the ball hitting the pain button. It rattles around on its own in there and hits the button over and over. You can’t control it - it just keeps hurting. Sometimes it seems unrelenting.

Over time, the ball gets smaller. It hits the button less and less but when it does, it hurts just as much. It’s better because you can function day to day more easily. But the downside is that the ball randomly hits that button when you least expect it.

For most people, the ball never really goes away. It might hit less and less and you have more time between hits, unlike when the ball was still giant. I thought this was the best description grief I've heard in a long time.

The Work of Christmas

This past Friday night Steve and I had the pleasure of traveling to Wilton, CT to hear Steve's sister Annbeth and niece Megan sing in The Wilton Singers, a community choral society. One of the songs, entitled The Work Of Christmas, was very moving and has been permanently planted in my mind because of both the tune and the lyrics. 

Click here to listen to the song:

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among brothers,

To make music from the heart.

Perhaps this struck a chord within me because for years now I've considered Christmas to be a "Sufferer's Holiday," an idea I borrowed from the GriefShare series, Surviving the Holidays. The birth of Christ inaugurated the beginning of the end of suffering for the world. Genesis 3 unleashed sin and misery and death and pain on mankind, and the newborn baby Jesus in Bethlehem began to remedy the problem that man created in the Garden. Our Messiah would live a perfect, sinless life, die on the cross, and be resurrected so that Heaven would be open to our arrival.

But what to do between now and this future time? There is good work to be done in the form of finding, healing, feeding, releasing, rebuilding, bringing, and singing together. While all of this comes from God, He has decided to work through people like us as He makes His kingdom visible to a watching world. What a privilege it is for reclaimed sinners to be part of the work of Christmas!

Part 1 of Paul Tripp on James 1:2-4

Paul Tripp's thoughts: "The comfort in James 1:2-4 confronts us with what we truly want out of life. There are only two types of motivating hopes. You either hook your hope to a physical, situational life of comfort, success, strength, and pleasure or to a life of rich spiritual awakening, growth, and Godward glory. The Bible presents the second option as not only infinitely more satisfying in the long run but also that for which we were made. Because we were made for it, it does a much better job of satisfying the longing that's in all our hearts. Suffering in the hands of God is a powerful tool of personal growth and transformation. Here's what God does in us through the tool of hardship:

Count it all joy, my brothers, 

when you meet trials of various kinds, 

for you know that the testing of your faith 

produces steadfastness. 

And let steadfastness have its full effect, 

that you may be perfect and complete, 

lacking in nothing.

"That is a remarkable passage because it calls and alerts us to something counterintuitive. We don't typically experience joy in suffering; in fact, many of us lose our joy even in the face of the smallest obstacles. Now, don't misunderstand what James is calling you to here. He's not saying you should rejoice because of pain and loss. This is not a call to joyful Christian stoicism. Rather, James is saying that you have reason to rejoice in the middle of your travail because of how God is using your suffering to produce in you what you could never produce in yourself. Suffering in the hands of God is used to fill you up, to grow you up, and to complete God's work in you."

Candy's thoughts: If you've been a CandyceLand reader for any length of time you will know by now that my two favorite modern-day theologians are Nancy Guthrie and Paul David Tripp. Most of you also know that our EPC Women's Bible Study classes this year (maybe 2 or 3 years? 😉) are examining in great detail the book of James. This past weekend, then, there was a melding together of Tripp and James when I resumed reading Tripp's book on suffering. This is an excellent read, one in which Tripp explores the world of pain through the lens of his own terrible physical affliction.

Steve and I were reflecting recently on the personal events of this past year, and we have dubbed 2019 as the year of "sickness and septics."  Local folks know that I have struggled with respiratory issues ever since my hospitalization in March; at the same time our house was hit hard by septic issues that required 2 of the very same kind of renovations. While I am just now starting to feel better, and the 2nd home repairs are 90% completed, I can honestly confess that I did not consider either of these challenges as "joyful." I do, however, agree with Tripp that God's goal in our trials is to grow us, transform us, and ultimately complete His work in us. 

While I see no evidence yet that #sicknessandseptics have had a positive effect on me (my fault not God's), I hope that in time I will be able to look back and 'count it joy' that God cared enough to move me along toward the goal of 'producing in me what I could have never produced in myself.'