Regarding the imprecatory Psalms: “Yes, these kinds of [imprecatory] prayers are uncomfortable (they are supposed to be!), but they are there, given by God and led by Christ, for us to sing. Curses in the Psalms are not provided for us to sing with relish, but even these hard lines are there for our faith and worship” (Michael LeFebvre, Singing the Songs of Jesus: Revisiting the Psalms, 115).

“It is a mental exercise, when rightly performed, in which all the faculties of the spiritual man are called into devotional action. Reverent hearing the word [listening to sermons] exercises our humility, instructs our faith, irradiates us with joy, inflames us with love, inspires us with zeal, and lifts us up towards heaven” (C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures To My Students, 53).

“But we must come to grips with the fact that to be like Jesus we must pray” (Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, 66).

“There is not a brick nor a stone laid in the work of our sanctification till we go to Christ. Holiness is His special gift to His believing people. Holiness is the work He carries on in their hearts, by the Spirit whom He puts within them” (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, 50).

An anecdote I came across today. I laughed-out-loud, naturally.

In one of our Southwestern proverbially dry states a couple of strangers in town asked a man on the street where they could get a drink. “Well,” said the man, “in this town they only use whiskey for snake bite. There’s only one snake in town, and it’s getting kind of late. You’d better hurry down and git in line before it gits exhausted.”

Theology is controversial (you are making statements about God, anthropology, origin of the universe, morality and ethics, etc.), such that it is easy to be misunderstood. If you are going to speak-theology, then you need to put forth your best effort to do so with clarity, i.e., as the idiom goes,  you need to wax eloquent. However, if you’re going to listen to someone, you too have a duty to be fair and charitable and put forth an effort to understand them in the best light possible.

Theology is controversial and it is hard work (it requires diligence), e.g., one ought to be nuanced when discussing faith and obedience (works).

Needing to speak with clarity regarding faith and obedience can be illustrated in the writings of William Ames, Puritan born in England in the late 1500s. In his writings, Ames emphasized the “will” of the Christian. He was passionate about maintaining the kinship between Christian thought and action. Because of this emphasis on the “will” of Christians, some (i.e., Kuyper, Kendall) argued that Ames departed “from the mainstream of Reformed Theology” (Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology – Doctrine for Life, 54). This, however, is not an accurate portrayal, as Beeke and Jones contend, Ames was well within the mainstream of Reformed Theology, but to gather this you must consider the covenantal framework within which Ames emphasized the role of the “will” of Christians.

But Ames, as a faithful son of the Reformation, continued to emphasize that “the final dependence of faith, as it designates the act of believing, is on the operation and inner persuasion of the Holy Spirit” ([The Marrow of Theology] 1.3.12.). . . . The key to properly combining sovereign grace with freely given faith and responsible obedience was to be found in the context of God’s covenant. Under the covenant of grace, Ames expounded the harmony of faith and obedience, the gospel of Christ and the Ten Commandments, orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Rather than isolating Ames’s statements about the will and crying “voluntarism,” we must interpret each of his teachings in the light of his whole theology — a Reformed theology of heart religion and humble obedience” (54-55)

Theological statements never occur within a vacuum – they always occur within a context that also needs to be examined and accounted for in order to understand the theological statements. Understanding a person’s theology, like most things worth doing, takes effort and requires hard work. Like the philosopher Spinoza said, “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”

“Our relationship to God – that we can boldly come to God saying “Our Father” – is due to God’s choice of us, rather than our choice of God. God’s choice of us is a gift that we often speak of in the church as “grace” – amazing grace. It’s amazing particularly in a culture in which we are taught to believe that anything important is earned, achieved, worked for. Yet faith in Jesus as Lord can only come as a gift” (William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer and the Christian Life, 26).

“Would you be holy? Would you become a new creature? Then you must begin with Christ. You will do just nothing at all, and make no progress till you feel your sin and weakness, and flee to Him” (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, 49).

Beautiful, this. George Herbert on repentance and confession of sin, from The Temple – The Church (the 1st and 36th stanza):

Lord, I confess my sin is great;

… 

Fractures well cured make us more strong.