“If you read through the four Gospels that tell of Christ’s life, you’ll find that Jesus says “Believe in me” about five times. But care to guess how many times Jesus said “Follow me”? About twenty times. Now I’m not saying that following is more important that believing. What I am saying is that the two are firmly connected. They are the heart and lungs of faith. One can’t live without the other. If you try and separate the message of follow from the message of believe, belief dies in the process. Our churches will continue to be full of fans until we break down the dichotomy between following and believing. Following is part of believing. To truly believe is to follow” (Kyle Idleman, Not a Fan: Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus, 32-33).

“For nothing is more frigid than a teacher who shows his philosophy only in words: this is to act the part not of a teacher, but of a hypocrite” (St. Chrysostom, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily I. NPNF1 11:4).

Frigid teaching is the worst, indeed. Yowsers!

“In marriage, it takes a lot of strength of character to be a helpmate as the Bible describes it and not bail on the marriage. But you’re not doing it alone or in your own strength. Never forget that the encouragement, correction, submission, honor, respect, and appreciation that you give your husband each day are lavishly supplied by the One who is also your helper!” (Carolyn McCulley, Radical Womanhood: Feminine Faith in a Feminist World, 90).

“Why . . . can Christians pray the Psalms? According to the ancient church, it is because it was always the Messiah at the head of his people who prayed them; in Augustine’s fine phrase, it was always “the total Christ,” the totus Christus, Christ as the head and his folk as the body, who gathered in the temple with these hymns and lamentations” (Robert W. Jenson, Canon and Creed, 23).

“Christ, the Scripture, your own hearts, and Satan’s devices, are the four prime things that should be first and most studied and searched” (Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies for Satan’s Devices, in The Works of Thomas Brooks, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (1861-1867; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2001), 1:3).

Regarding prayer, “God’s name is not to be a stop-gap to make up for our want of words” (C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 58).

“When the Bible uses the word helper, there is a divine context for it. When the word is first introduced in Genesis 2:18 — “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” — it is the same Hebrew word (‘ezer) that is used most often to refer to God throughout the Old Testament. If God, who is obviously and infinitely superior to us, unblushingly refers to Himself as our helper, we should be proud to use the same term” (Carolyn McCulley, Radical Womanhood: Feminine Faith in a Feminist World, 80).

From Carolyn McCulley’s Radical Womanhood (79).

Cohabitation by its definition is anticommitment. A prolonged “maybe” is not a commitment. It’s sad that this is seen as a better option to God’s gift of marriage. What Scripture portrays is a passionate, secure love between husband and wife, where commitment provides the freedom to celebrate one another and not hedge bets:

You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with once glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume than any spice! (Song of Songs 4:9-10 NIV) 

I recently read the following quote by C. H. Spurgeon:

Young men have flung away all hope of salvation in order that they might be thought to be men of culture; they have abjured faith in order to be esteemed “free-thinkers” by those whose opinions were not worth a pin’s head. I charge you, dear friend, if you are beginning at all to be a slave of other people, break these wretched and degrading bonds.

This thought by Spurgeon struck a chord within me.

I remember struggling through the “intellectual” questions raised during coursework at university. (I was a Religion and Philosophy major.) I remember struggling with how best to reconcile (on the one hand) “faith” and (on the other hand) “intellectual integrity” — e.g., the problem of Theodicy, inspiration of Scripture and the New Testament canon, etc. (I was afflicted with doubts regarding God’s goodness, his existence, the perspicuity and truth of Scripture, etc. Those were dark days, indeed.)

However, I vividly remember when a compelling idea – nay! – it was a conviction – surfaced in my head: it was sometime during my senior year, I realized that “intellectual integrity” for a Christian was a myth, in so far as it is constructed as something that must be reconciled with one’s faith. The fact of the matter is this: “intellectual integrity” for a Christian is part of the warp-and-woof of faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for; faith is the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is a Christian’s “intellectual integrity” – faith is a gift from God, and accepting, receiving, clinging to, persevering in that gifted-faith is “intellectual integrity” for a Christian.

So. Genuine-Gratitude is Intellectual Integrity.

However, in general, the Higher-Education/Peer-Reviewed/Tenure-Seeking/”Free-thinkers”/Men-of-Culture Christian-subculture (whose opinions, as C. H. Spurgeon said, are “not worth a pin’s head”) have chosen to disagree. If you have genuine-gratitude, then, as I’ve said before, prepare yourself to be called names. *Shrug*

But the trick is to count it all joy: look beyond the name-calling, look beyond being mislabeled (e.g., Fundamentalist, Anti-Intellectual, etc.), look beyond the complexity of providence, look beyond and lose sight of yourself, and look solely to God who is the author and provider of all.

And if you are looking to God, then you will be able to “respond to each providence in an appropriate way” (see John Flavel’s The Mystery of Providence).