Pensees: Pitfalls I have Fallen Into

Pitfalls I have Fallen Into

How would I have counseled Hezekiah upon finding out that he had been granted fifteen more years to live?

In my private Christian life I have noticed that in the course of my soul’s experience I have fallen into two pits. These miry pits have made my Christian life difficult and sometimes painful. On the one hand, when I was younger in the faith, a product of the Gothard/Hyles/Keswick/Arminian sub-culture, I zealously regimented my life to obey and serve God. For a period in my life I fasted twenty-four hours out of every week. I rigorously applied myself to reading, studying, witnessing, and Christian busyness. I loved God with earnestness and I still look back on those days with some heart-brokenness for the loss of passion and zeal that I once had. I could have written “A Passion for Thee.” I lived it.

But it was killing me. I had no understanding of the power of indwelling sin. “Ultimate victory” was the quest, a higher plain was my longed for goal. But I sinned. Evil desires, lusts, selfish emotions, and the persistent sluggishness of the inner me toward loving God seemed to be taunting reminders that “ultimate victory” would never be attained.

I almost gave up.

But I could not give up. As I would learn later, I had been given a persevering faith, a principle of life within that made me rush in a panic back into the ring to pick up the towel I had just thrown. I could not let go of what I yearned for. But little by little I was beginning to realize that my zeal was becoming a weight. And I yearned for rest.

Pit #1: I worked too hard.

It was sometime in that period of my life that God turned my eyes to the writings of the Puritans. I didn’t read out of curiosity. I read for my soul. Men of the faith that I was allowed to admire along with Charles Finney like Charles Spurgeon, George Whitefield, William Carey, and A.W. Tozer all seemed to admire the Puritans. They all, save Finney, seemed to strongly attest to the value of the Puritan writings. So I started reading.
That is when I realized that assurance of salvation is a quest, not a decision. Assurance became less of a personal experience and more of a pursuit of knowing God. I realized that if I had any hope for my soul’s sanctification, not just its justification, it would be entirely of God. I evolved from the Keswick/Deeper Life view of sanctification to the Calvinistic Reformed view or, as I prefer to think of it, the logical conclusion of the Doctrines of Grace.

I was freed.

There is a rational and logical reason why those who embrace the Doctrines of Grace are less legalistic. I always question the Calvinism of a person who pursues freedoms in lifestyle first and then ultimately becomes Calvinist. There are many that way. That is the Calvinism of academia and arrogance, I think. But there are others who found the Doctrines of Grace first and consequently began to be unshackled from bonds they never sought to be rid of. It just happened.

It is wonderfully liberating. I don’t do “devos” anymore. I just enjoy my Bible reading. The list goes on.

But I never realized the other pit until I was in it.

Pit #2: I quit working.

I lost all diligence comparatively speaking. I enjoyed pleasures. I enjoyed freedoms and did not voluntarily “buffet my body.” Rigor, discipline, and the hardening of my will became a thing of the past for way too long. Little by little I began to slip and I woke up one day suddenly realizing how the historic complaint that Calvinists have had to face is the charge of antinomianism.

But the best Calvinists were personally disciplined, rigorously committed to being disciples, and passionately committed to personal sacrifices. My flesh had betrayed me again.

What would you counsel Hezekiah to do? He had been promised by God that he would live another 15 years. If I had been Hezekiah when I was in the first pit, I would have said, “I know that God will give me fifteen years, but I need to watch my back, exercise ten hours a day, eat only vegetables and fruit, appoint guards to watch over me while I sleep, wash my hands fifteen times a day, and so forth. These fifteen years are going to be hard.”

If I had been Hezekiah while I was in the second pit, I would have said, “The Almighty God has decreed that I shall not die until fifteen years from now. Therefore, bring the candy, let me go into battle without armor, and I may even try jumping off a cliff!”

Both ways ruin the fifteen years. Both forget the character of the God that granted them. I think John Owen was right:

As well might we argue that it is unnecessary for us to breathe because God gives us breath, or that Hezekiah need no longer to eat and drink because God had promised he should live another fifteen years. . . Grace does not annul our responsibility but fits us to discharge it; it relieves from no duties, but equips for the performance of them.”