a covert in thy wounds

been listening to and singing this song over and over in the last couple days as i'm in one of those coming to the end of myself waves...i love the chorus...oh Blessed Jesus, may we find a covert in thy wounds...


A Prayer For The Broken Hearted
Words by Chelsey Scott (based on a prayer from “The Valley Of Vision”) Music by Chelsey Scott © 2006
Petit Bateau Music (ASCAP)

1. No day in my life has past,
That hasn't proved me guilty
Prayers are uttered too fast
From a heart that’s cold and empty.

Oh Blessed Jesus,
May we find a covert in thy wounds
Though our sins, they rise to meet us,
How they fall next to the merits of you
2. Oh, all in me calls for this
It calls for my rejection
This heavy unrighteousness,
Oh is there no protection?

My best services are rags, my best deeds are filthy.

Oh Blessed Jesus,
May we find a covert in thy wounds
Though our sins, they rise to meet us,
How they fall next to the merits of you
3. Grant me hear thy shoring voice,
That in thy wounds is pardon
Grant me see thy willing choice
To make my hard heart softened

Keep the broken-hearted sure,
Clinging to thy cross, our cure.

Oh Blessed Jesus,
May we find a covert in thy wounds
Though our sins, they rise to meet us,
How they fall next to the merits of you

you can hear the whole encouraging album here

a praying life

i have been wanting to read something on prayer for a while as this is an area of my life that i want to do well and in which there is always room for improvement. my sister-in-law recommended this one so i borrowed it from my dad and found it to be such an encouragement. it is an honestly written book with rich insights and practical ideas (like making 3x5 cards for all the people you pray for and adding verses and requests over time) all woven with stories about miller's family--his six kids and especially his autistic daughter. it was a refreshing read and one i will come back to. i was particularly convicted by the sections on cynicism...not realizing how much of our culture i allow to seep into my thinking...

"Cynicism begins, oddly enough, with too much of the wrong kind of faith, with naive optimism or foolish confidence. At first glance, genuine faith and naive optimism appear identical since both foster confidence and hope. But the similarity is only surface deep. Genuine faith comes from knowing my heavenly Father loves, enjoys, and cares for me. Naive optimism is groundless. It is childlike trust without the loving Father...Optimism rooted in the goodness of people collapses when it confronts the dark side of life...Our personal struggles with cynicism and defeated weariness are reinforced by an increasing tendency toward perfectionism in American culture. Believing you have to have the perfect relationship, the perfect children, or a perfect body sets you up for a critical spirit, the breeding ground for cynicism. In the absence of perfection, we resort to spin--trying to make ourselves look good, unwittingly dividing ourselves into a public and private self. We cease to be real and become the subject of cynicism...Cynicism is the air we breathe, and it is suffocating our hearts. Unless we become disciples of Jesus, this present evil age will first deaden and then destroy our prayer lives, not to mention our souls. Our only hope is to follow Jesus as he leads us out of cynicism...Instead of naive optimism, Jesus calls us to be wary, yet confident in our heavenly Father. We are to combine a robust trust in the Good Shepherd with a vigilance about the presence of evil in our own hearts and in the hearts of others. The feel of a praying life is cautious optimism---caution because of the Fall, optimism because of redemption. Cautious optimism allows Jesus to boldly send his disciples into an evil world."

this is good music

my brother sent me this link a while back and i finally downloaded it yesterday. it is so good and there are several tracks that make me want to cry (not altogether unusual, but still). his music is so original and poetic and filled with truth. enjoy.

"Farther Along" - Josh Garrels from Josh Garrels on Vimeo.

on "reformed"

“And we need to rediscover Augustine’s peculiar slant—a very biblical slant—on grace as the free gift of sovereign joy in God that frees us from the bondage of sin. We need to rethink our Reformed doctrine of salvation so that every limb and every branch in the tree is coursing with the sap of Augustinian delight. We need to make plain that total depravity is not just badness, but blindness to beauty and deadness to joy; and unconditional election means that the completeness of our joy in Jesus was planned for us before we ever existed; and that limited atonement is the assurance that indestructible joy in God is infallibly secured for us by the blood of the covenant; and irresistible grace is the commitment and power of God’s love to make sure we don’t hold on to suicidal pleasures, and to set us free by the sovereign power of superior delights; and that the perseverance of the saints is the almighty work of God to keep us, through all affliction and suffering, for an inheritance of pleasures at God’s right hand forever…” john piper

thanks char for sharing this with me

i have kind of struggled over how to blog about this. my blog is not intended to stir up controversy, to preach to anyone (though i hope the Gospel is evident in our lives), but simply to take note of life as it quickly passes by and to also note God's faithfulness in small and big ways. i will include the email we sent out when we decided to baptize our small children. if you are totally opposed to infant baptism, please don't be quick to judge that we think our kids are safely going to heaven now or anything, but more importantly as our pastor eloquently put it "they are being baptized into discipleship," which is so much of parenting. we would love to more thoroughly explain ourselves to you if you think we have fallen of the deep end or something...we invite in-person discussion. my family falls on both sides of this discussion, but many of them came to support us and there were no major fits, squeals, or meltdowns that distracted from the sweetness of the day.

from the email we sent out:
we finally decided to have marit and graham baptized! we have been off and on stewing over this decision since ellen was pregnant with marit 3 years ago...read a lot of Piper, Grudem, Keller, Driscoll, and other people mixed in. basically we feel like there is scriptural support for both believers and infant baptism, but the thing is that we are raising our kids to know about Jesus and pleading with the Lord daily to give each of them a love for Him that they might not ever remember not knowing Him. Of course, it is our hope that they will one day make the Christian faith their own, but it may not be a specific moment in time that they can point to because we are raising them Christianly. The baptism is simply a symbol of that commitment to teach them about Jesus and to try to get to their little hearts and the sin that is there and their desperate need for the Gospel in every area of life. We do not believe it "saves" them, and we will not teach them that they are going to heaven because they are baptized...rather it is a symbol of our covenant with God to raise them in the faith and of His faithfulness to call people to Himself that they might come to depend on Jesus for their salvation. we like the case that this guys makes for it.


in addition, after the funeral of the 4yr old daughter of our dear friends, things began to click a little clearer for us in this area (covenant theology speaking). and because we go to a pca church that baptizes both believers/converts and infants and children, we feel like this is an important step in our submission to the church leadership. we feel like there is a lot of mystery surrounding the sacrament of baptism and so feel that there is much room for grace. we hope if you disagree with our decision, that you can offer us that grace