Fellowship of the Burning Heart, Part 8

by Thomas a Kempis

Every man naturally wants to know, but what is the good of knowledge without the fear of God? …He who knows himself well becomes cheap in his own eyes, and takes no pleasure in the praises of men.

And foolish indeed is he who gives his attention to other things than those which make for his salvation.

The greater and better your knowledge, so much the more severely will you be judged, unless you have lived a more holy life.

This is the highest knowledge and the most useful lesson – to have true understanding and small opinion of oneself. To hold no high opinion of oneself, and always to judge well and highly of others, is great wisdom and high perfection.

by John Calvin

Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. …In the first place, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he “lives and moves.”

Each of us must, then, be so stung by the consciousness of his own unhappiness as to attain at least some knowledge of God. Thus, from the feeling of our own ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, and – what is more – depravity and corruption, we recognize that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness, rest in the Lord alone.

To this extent we are prompted by our own ills to contemplate the good things of God; and we cannot seriously aspire to him before we begin to become displeased with ourselves.

Accordingly, the knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also as it were, leads us by the hand to find him.

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Fellowship of the Burning Heart, Part 7

from A.W. Tozer

There seems to be a great throng of professing Christians in our churches today whose total and amazing testimony sounds like this: “I am thankful for God’s plan of sending Christ to the cross to save me from hell. …Surely we know the Bible well enough to be able to answer that: God’s highest purpose in the redemption of sinful humanity was based in his hope that we would allow him to reproduce the likeness of Jesus Christ in our once-sinful lives!”

“I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored or turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.”

from Oswald Chambers

The answer to the question “How can a man be born when he is old?” is – When he is old enough to die – die right out of his “rag rights,” to his virtues, to his religion, to everything, and to receive into himself the life which never was there before. The new life manifests itself in conscious repentance and unconscious holiness.

Is my knowledge of Jesus born of internal spiritual perception, or is it only what I have learned by listening to others?

from John Wesley

The [new] Society [in Portarlington] now contained above one hundred members, full of zeal and good desires; and in one week the face of the whole town is changed: open wickedness is not seen; the fear of God is on every side; and rich and poor ask, “What must I do to be saved?” How long (I thought with myself) will this continue? In most only till the fowls of the air come, and devour the good seed. Many of the rest, when persecution or reproach begins, will immediately be offended. And in the small remainder, some will fall off, either through other desires, or the cares of the world, or the deceitfulness of riches.

from Ken Boa

Father, You have loved me and called me to be Your loyal follower, and to find my true pleasure in Your revealed will. You have given all humanity great personal worth and have called us to a high and holy life of other-centered love. As I pursue You, may I also pursue the best interests of the people You have sovereignly placed in my life, so that I will be an agent of reconciliation and of Your grace. You are the eternal wellspring of wisdom, and I want to drink from the water of Your Word and be satisfied. Keep me from being a stumbling block to others and empower me to treat people according to their true dignity in Your image rather than according to the world’s distorted view of status and worth. Let my love and service of others be an expression of my love and service to You.

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Fellowship of the Burning Heart, Part 6

George Whitefield

Joined with those at night, who set apart this day as a day of fasting and humiliation, to deprecate the judgements our national sins deserve. Lord, hear our prayers, and let our cry come unto Thee.

Happy the man who serves God in his health, and has nothing to do when sickness seizes him, but quietly to lie down and die.

Monroe Hatch (Monroe served our church as pastor, retired pastor, and pastor emeritus for many years)

Help us to give our hearts to you that we may so love you that we may seek nothing but to please you, and fear nothing but to fail to be your child. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Proverbs 4:25-27 
    Let your eyes look straight ahead,
        fix your gaze directly before you.
    [26] Make level paths for your feet
        and take only ways that are firm.
    [27] Do not swerve to the right or the left;
        keep your foot from evil.

Isaiah 65:17-19
    “Behold, I will create
        new heavens and a new earth.
    The former things will not be remembered,
        nor will they come to mind.
    [18] But be glad and rejoice forever
        in what I will create,
    for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
        and its people a joy.
    [19] I will rejoice over Jerusalem
        and take delight in my people;
    the sound of weeping and of crying
        will be heard in it no more.

Matthew 20:26-28 
    Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, [27] and whoever wants to be first must be your slave– [28] just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Acts 15:11 
    No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

C.S. Lewis

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself.

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A Life-Changing Message

Yesterday I mentioned a book by George Grant, that radically changed how I think, minister, etc. It’s called The Micah Mandate. Once again, I highly recommend it! Today I want to share how God used an audio-taped message (also by George Grant) about an obscure man from the pages of history whom most folks have never heard of, to bless my life and ministry in ways I could not even have imagined as I put the tape into the tape-player of my car. Here’s what I wrote seven years ago…

Earlier this year God poured his grace upon me as he placed in my hands an audiotaped lecture entitled, “Gerard Groote and the Brethren of the Common Life.” Providentially, this also was by George Grant. I can’t express how moved I was by what I heard in this message. In this lecture Grant basically revealed what a biblical worldview should look like in the  “everydayness” of a Christian’s life and ministry. He accomplished this by sharing God’s work and power through the life of a man named Gerard Groote. Groote lived in the 14^th century, and, as Grant says at the beginning of his address,

“It would be difficult to find a single page of modern history written about him. But it would be even more difficult to find a single page of modern history not affected by him.”

 Below are the notes I took from Grant’s message on Groote. I’m sure much won’t translate to this format. But I believe the ideas taught and lived out by Groote and expounded by Grant are more than worth passing on and meditating upon. Enjoy, Dale.

Notes on Gerard Groote: Brethren of the Common Life

Based on a lecture by George Grant

• Some men’s greatness may be seen in how largely they loom over the movements that they ultimately launched. But greater men are they whose movements loom large over them. Even to the point of obscuring them from view altogether.  Gerard was just such a man.
•  It would be difficult to find a single page of modern history written about him. But it would be even more difficult to find a single page of modern history not affected by him. 
• Groote was born with a great deal of money and privilege. He was also very bright. But his was a dissipated life. He chased after pleasure. But he desired something more – something more substantive. 
• So he began reading in the Augustinian tradition. But he didn’t take the church or the claims of the gospel seriously. (The church in his day was fraught with corruption, impiety, and schism.) In fact, the church was more worldly than the world. 
• And yet, there was something about the gospel and its claims (especially the doctrines of sovereign grace that he discovered in Augustine) that would not let him go.
   
• And so, in 1374, Groote was converted to the faith. Almost immediately afterwards, he began to use his ability to articulate truth to tell everyone he knew of the mercies that were available in the gospel of grace. It was not a message often heard in those days. He was received well by many, however. One person who received him was John Wycliffe. Together, he and Wycliffe discussed their ideas of…

1.  Translating the Bible into the vernacular of the people
2. Sending out lay-preachers into the community
3. Teaching ordinary people to read so that they could better understand the doctrines of grace.

•  Groote returned home and began his labors among common people. His desire to was to spread a vision for radical discipleship. He did. And his followers/disciples who gathered around him called themselves “the Brethren of the Common Life.”
   
• They described Groote’s vision as the Devotio Moderna (the modern way of serving God). . It was a vision of discipleship that had a number of distinctive elements. It was also unheard of in the 14^th century.

 The Devotio Moderna was to be a comprehensive lifestyle rooted in a biblical worldview. Let’s take a look at the distinctives of this “radical discipleship.”

1.)   The Devotio Moderna , first of all, emphasized holiness for every Christian – not just for a few. Groote wanted common piety for common folk – this was the heart of his message.

• He said the difference between the City of God and the City of Man is demonstrable. Christ’s followers should be imitators of Christ (by grace, through faith – not of themselves). This was the great aim of discipleship according to Groote. He wanted to instill in a while new generation, an appetite for those things that mattered most.
   
• Groote was a very controversial person because of all this. His vision was the gospel of Jesus Christ, but this vision pitted him against very powerful forces in the culture. But the worse his (and the Brethren’s) reputation became, the greater their following became.

 2.)   Secondly, the Devotio Moderna emphasized the importance of self-examination, as a way of cultivating humility.

• Groote was famous for saying, “I am tired of just being right.” Instead, he wanted to communicate truth to the world and minister to the needs of others.
   
• It’s a spirit of humility that affords us the best opportunities to grow, mature, and achieve in the life of the mind. It’s knowing how much we do not know that allows us to fully embark on a lifetime of learning – to recover to any degree, the beauty and goodness and truth of Christendom.
   
• Groote took seriously the high call of Scripture to walk humbly before God and man.

 3.)               Groote’s Devotio Moderna emphasized the importance of covenantal communities, as the real-life context for discipleship.

• The idea was for people to live out particular graces with one another. He wanted his disciples to go to the least likely places and gather the least likely students – and invest in those students. He wanted them to plant themselves in those communities, and then allow the gospel to flower whatever the Spirit would bring. This was to be “home.” He believed that it was at “home” that the beauty of Christian civilization was best comprehended.
   
• For Groote, the best Christian education would bring about such virtues as hospitality, care for the poor, for the sick, strength in families, reaching out to neighbors. It would root people at home.

 4.)               Groote’s Devotio Moderna emphasized the importance of a Confessional Standard (standards rooted in the biblical antithesis).

• It was for this reason that Groote believed that one of the first tasks of Christian education was to translate the great classics of Christendom into the vernacular language – to give students the tools of translation – to build up libraries, and to initiate literacy among the least and the last – not just the first and the foremost.  (Thomas Chalmers, of the 19^th century, relied on Groote for his own education reforms)
   
• Groote proclaimed that there is no neutrality in education. Facts are not neutral. History is not neutral. Math is not neutral. The world is sundered by a great antithesis – where the City of God and the City of Man never intermingle. We must teach truth – truth in terms of God’s Word – because the Bible is God’s own revelation of wisdom, knowledge, understanding and truth. It is not merely a marvelous collection of quaint sayings and inspiring stories. It’s God’s message to man – his instruction. It is God’s guideline, his plumb line, his bottom line.

 5.)               Therefore, Groote’s Devotio Moderna placed a high premium on teaching every man, woman, and child, the Bible.

• The Bible was not merely tacked on as one additional class to all the other classes. The Bible was not, for Groote, an appendage to all the other scholastic disciplines.
   
• Curriculum was not simply to be dipped in Bible passages in order to make it appear to be Christian. Education’s purpose was to facilitate the catechizing – the discipling process. The goal was not simply to make the students bright and successful students in society, but to make them sober, discerning, wise, and fruitful members of the Kingdom.

 Together, these distinctives: Holiness, Humility, Covenantal Community, Antithesis, and Catechizing – comprised what Groote called “Classical Christianity” or what we might call, “Biblical Orthodoxy.”

• Groote believed that the key to reforming the church in his day was to begin at the grassroots level, and reform education – by finding places of fruitful ministry at home – and then investing in the people found there.
   
• Groote’s vision was a multi-generational plan – a strategy that would stretch across the covenantal generations. He looked at his world and said that there was nothing he could do about the Babylonian Captivity of the church; nothing he could do about the universities; nothing he could do about the civil wars…FOR NOW.  But, if we lay foundations, enduring foundations – if our vision extends just beyond our own lifetimes – if our vision extends just to our children’s lifetimes – if we trust the gospel for the future – then real and substantive change is not only possible – it is promised!
   
• Groote had this great faith that the gospel is not only true for the here and now, but that the gospel could transform entire cultures and change civilizations. That foundations laid in righteousness would ultimately endure when all of the foolishness of the world collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.
   
• Groote never lived to see the day of how powerful and successful his vision was. He was forgotten because the movement he launched loomed so much larger than he did.
   
• And yet, because of his faithful labors; because of his vision of discipleship; because of the band of disciples that he gathered around him and invested in – within a single decade, the world was changed forever.
   
• I don’t just want to be right. I want something that endures for all the generations.
   
• Wouldn’t it be wonderful to look across all the covenantal generations and to know that one day, because of the penance we’ve invested, in these short hours, that in the future a Luther or a Calvin, or a Whitefield, or a Wesley, or a Wilberforce – or all of them combined – would come forth from faithful covenantal parents, and change the world.
   
• The great assurance of the gospel is that change is not just possible, it’s promised when God’s covenant people exercise covenant faithfulness.
   
• Is there a Groote in you? Are you willing to die in obscurity to lay foundations that will endure across the generations? Like Groote, we must yearn for that which will change, and change for all time.
   
• Groote taught that Satan would have us offer an alternative, any alternative to the truth, the one truth, the central truth of the gospel. He would have us affirm anything, anything at all, as long as it is not that Jesus is Lord – that he is the Lord over the totality of life, and that he has spoken authoritatively, definitively, and finally. Anything is acceptable to him, everything is acceptable to him – except the notion that the Lord has established his throne in the heavens and that his sovereignty rules over all. Anything is acceptable to Satan except the sufficiency of Scripture. Thus, even Satan underscores the inescapability of antithesis in his resistance to them.
   
• In our quest for the excellent; in our quest for the substantive; in our quest for the effective, let’s never lose sight of the fact that all of that is perfectly acceptable to the enemy. The one thing that sets us apart is our desire to move from mere knowledge to understanding, and from understanding to wisdom.

 Groote said,

“Lay foundations that will endure in the hearts of your children. For there are only two things that are eternal in all of the created order: the children under your care, and the Word of God.”

 Grant’s Prayer at the end of the message…

     O Father; Almighty Father, I confess to you that I am often diverted by pleasant alternatives. I am often tantalized by that which will bring success, effectiveness, suasion in the here and now. I pray that you would give me eyes to look beyond the horizon of just this moment. Enable me to invest for all eternity. Enable us to have a distinctive vision of discipleship – like that of Gerard Groote before us. Enable us to quest for holiness, humility, covenantal community, antithesis, catechizing – classical Christianity – in the hearts of our children – first and foremost.

     Lord God, I pray that we will produce not just successful businessmen, or men and women effective in their vocations. We yearn for REFORMATION. Change the world, O God! And use us in the process.

 We pray this in Jesus name. Amen and amen.

*****************

Here’s a short little introduction I just found on Groote that’s worth reading.

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Fellowship of the Burning Heart, Part 5

by John Stott

Jesus of Nazareth is the heaven-sent Savior we sinners need. We need to be forgiven and restored to fellowship with the all-holy God, from whom our sins have separated us. We need to be set free from our selfishness and given strength to live up to our ideals. We need to learn to love one another,, friend and foe alike. This is the meaning of “salvation.” This is what Christ came to win for us by his death and resurrection.

by Leonard Ravenhill

Unction cannot be learned, only earned – by prayer. Unction is God’s knighthood for the soldier-preacher who has wrestled in prayer and gained the victory.

by K.P. Yohannan

Each and every day, our walk with the Lord and our commitment to him must be fresh and new.

It is of utmost importance that the people who are called to fulfill God’s plan and purpose remain close to him and do not blindly rely on the past.

How is it possible for us to regain or maintain this fresh walk with the Lord…? I believe the answer starts with a conscious decision to daily “humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord (James 4:10) and begin or continue to “seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1). And this is possible only if we are willing to repent or forsake all that causes our heart to wander away from the Lord…

by Oswald Chambers

[God] wants to get us to the place where we will be his witnesses and proclaim who Jesus is.

Be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water.

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Fellowship of the Burning Heart, Part 4

by Thomas a’ Kempis

But it happens that many, from frequent hearing of the Gospel, are conscious of little longing for it, because they have not the spirit of Christ. But he who wishes fully and with relish to know the words of Christ, must be zealous to bring his whole life into conformity with him.

It is vanity to hope for long life and to take little thought fora good life. It is vanity only to attend only to the present life, and not look forward to thing things to come. It is vanity to love that which passes with all speed away, and not to be hastening thither where endless joy abides.

by J.C. Ryle

The plain truth is that a right knowledge of sin lies at the root of all saving Christianity.

If a man does not realize the dangerous nature of his soul’s disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false or imperfect remedies.

I say furthermore, that “a sin,” to speak more particularly, consists of doing, saying, thinking, or imagining, anything that is not in perfect conformity with the mind and law of God.

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Fellowship of the Burning Heart, Part 3

by William Law

It was this general intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent examples of devotion, that made the goodly fellowship of the saints, and that made all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you will stop here and ask yourself why you are not so devoted as the primitive Christians, your own heart will tel you that is neither through ignorance nor inability but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.

by Richard Baxter

Take God in Christ for your only rest, and fix your heart upon him above all. May the living God, who is the portion and rest of his saints, make our carnal minds so spiritual, and our earthly hearts so heavenly, that loving him and delighting in him may be the work of our lives; and that neither I nor you may ever be turned from this path of life… The saint’s rest is the most happy state of a Christian. It is the perfect endless enjoyment of God by the perfected saints…

by George Whitefield

Was pleased to hear a gentleman’s discourse for some time of the utter inability of anything to make us happy but God.

My subject was, the eternity of hell torments, and I was earnest in delivering it, being desirous that none of my dear hearers should experience them.

God grant that I may die daily!

O, who can serve a better Master than Jesus Christ?

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