Ficking through the pages of The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges recently, I was reminded how it’s been a long time since I heard people talk about the Christian life as a ‘pursuit’. The word has elements of striving and straining, being focused and diligent, which I haven’t heard recently.
They have been saying that daily bible reading among Christians has been dropping off – or completely gone – for years. Bridges highlights how when King David asks in the psalms how he can keep himself pure, the answer is ‘By living according to your word.’
AKA Reading the Bible.
We need the input from the word or else we’ll be liable to stumble.
Bridges also identifies that Satan is likely to attack us through whatever we most desire. Therefore it’s critical that we are always watching our behaviour in these areas and applying the word of God to them.
If we’re not reading the bible regularly then we’ll hardly be equipped for the task.
And we have to ask ourselves, if we’re not reading the bible, what are we taking in instead? What words are we having spoken into our souls from the movies we see, television we stream and songs we hear?
If we’re not careful, we’re liable to be swept away by our desires from the latest orator, whether they be an actor, influencer or pop icon.
I know it to be true for myself. That’s one of the reasons why I only have social media on my laptop and not on my phone. I’m that person.
That’s because I know how weak I am. I can doomscroll with the best of them.
But I don’t want to do something that sounds so very deathly. Rather I aim to be ‘dead to sin and alive to God’. Yet I know I need his help to do this.
If I am alive to God it is because he has made me so in the first place and I’m in connection with Him. Through this connection I can find strength. Bridges explains how this works by quoting Martyn Lloyd-Jones:
It works in this way: I lose my sense of hopelessness because I can say to myself that not only am I no longer under the dominion of sin, but I am under the dominion of another power that nothing can frustrate. However weak I may be, it is the power of God that is working in me.
What great confidence we can have in God. Nothing can frustrate His power.
We can pursue holiness knowing that He’s got our back.
Yours monitoring the input,
Alison
