Pigtails

We were at church the other weekend and a little girl was being baptized. I love baptisms, but this one was really making me think. 

"How can this little girl with pigtails have more confidence in the gospel than me?" I questioned in my mind.

"I can tell you why I disagree with J.I. Packer and why I do agree with John Piper. I can tell you why I think Driscoll & Spurgeon don't go far enough at some points. I can tell you why Dawkins is ultimately wrong. But I can't have the confidence this little girl has in the gospel?" My mind began to formulate the arguments against me.

For two weeks this has been bouncing around in my skull and I couldn't really get it out. But reading this has helped, 

"Beware, therefore, lest what is said in the Prophets should come about: Look you scoffers, be astonished and perish; for I am doing a work in your days, a work that you will not even believe, even if one tells it to you." Acts 13:40-41

Beware, O my mind, lest you miss what is going on before your waking eyes. Beware, O my mind, lest the preachers speak the truth of the ages to you and you do no believe. Beware, O my mind, lest the astonishment of your redemption is lost for want of knowledge.

I stand in no other place than that little girl with the pigtails stands. I know no more than the child in the water. The knowledge of the holy has not saved me - indeed it cannot. The coming of God in the flesh taking my sin, God's wrath and my shame has done it, finished it and won me.

Not so much that I believe this, or that I cling to this truth like a shipwrecked rat, but that this truth holds me - that it grips me tighter than my gradually loosening skin. I could want for more faith to believe the beauties of the realities of the gospel, but ultimately it is not something I hold, it holds me. It holds me. He holds me.

He holds me like a raft in the midst of the tempest of death. He holds me like the Shepherd holds the forlorn lamb. He holds me like the husband holds his weeping wife. He holds me.

You see, my knowledge or my faith could not convince me of my faith. They couldn't convince me because they're mine and the fallibility of me is astounding. But that faith is not mine, it's His. His faith in himself to save this sinners for his glory. This is my faith and confidence. The rope is tide tight roundabout my heartstrings and will not let me go, and I cannot let it go.

The 'Ahhh' Effect

“Our wisdom in so far as it ought to be deemed true and holy wisdom consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” John Calvin

This is an extremely applicable quote. It is typically taught to have a high view of self, to have a good “self-esteem.” Yet this idea of self-esteem would run contrary to the biblical idea of being known or knowing yourself.

For self-esteem is, in a sense the idolatry of self. By definition it means: “confidence in ones own worth or abilities.” But biblically speaking we, you and I, are not worthy. So to see a worth that is not there is to make something it is not, namely to place self on the pedestal of supremacy.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying go around being a Debby-Downer nor am I implying your need to have no confidence. Confidence is extremely important, but not confidence in whom we are, will be, or have been, but rather confidence in the person and work of Jesus.

This wisdom we are given of God, this Bible we have to read doesn’t only teach us about God, it teaches us about ourselves. It is an infallible inerrable living document (and by living I do not mean changing) and is continuously showing us ourselves as in comparison to God.

Therefore it is crucial to know who God is to better understand yourself. I would submit that you may have a good idea of who you are outside of the knowledge of God but you will never truly know yourself unless you are pitted against your Creator. For in this God given action of knowing God there is the deep and abiding realization of your need for a Savior, the passion to be joy filled, and the hope to endure all things.

So to know oneself is to better understand God; to know God is the root of knowing oneself. Their intertwining is deep and the root of the two must eventually become one for the believer, it is, at least, the groaning we feel somewhere near our heartstrings.