Thomas Goodwin:

“It is a new conversion;
  it will make a man differ from himself
in what he was before in that manner
  almost as conversion doth before,
before he was converted.

There is a new addition of all a man’s graces.”

Short, very short.

Puritan thinker William Gurnall shares this insight:

“Joseph’s coat made him finder than his bretheren, but it caused all his trouble; so great gifts lift a saint up a litter higher in the eyes of men, but they occasion many trials, from which thou who are low are exempt.”

It sort or reminds me of Spiderman’s “With great power comes great responsibility”. Gurnall is right. There is an absolute correlation between the intensity of a person’s gifts and the trials they will face because of them. For example people with trucks are constantly asked to haul stuff around for those without them. Or people with huge amounts of money have to constantly consider the motives of those around them.

And in the spiritual economy it’s barely different. The man with an exceptional insight, or prophetic bent, will undoubtedly stir the pot and earn some resentment from those who oppose his opinions. Or the one gifted as an evangelist will eventually have to flee for his life for exercising that gift.

I remember, as a new Christian feeling envious of those that I felt had greater spiritual gifts. Gurnall’s sentiment goes a long way to remind us that our gifts are tailored to each of us. Everyone’s gift comes at a cost and God has been deliberate to give each of us gifts of which we are able to carry the cost.

Famed Puritan preacher and author shares this strange, but insightful sentiment:

“Did you never run for shelter in a storm, and find fruit which you expected not? Did you never got to God for safeguard, driven by outward storms , and there find unexpected fruit?”

Perhaps it’s the luxury we enjoy in this country at this time in history, but I myself have only ‘run for shelter from a storm’ perhaps once at the swimming pool when I was a kid. Though I didn’t find any fruit, per se. But the sentiment that Owen is expressing is the idea of ‘blessing in tragedy’, or a ‘blessing in disguise’.

So often the ‘storms’ that God brings into our lives are inconvenient, or difficult, but always produce something necessary for us. Perhaps by losing a loved one we discover something important we’ve been missing. Or maybe in a car accident we meet our future spouse. Or in a major fall-out between friends we discover our selfishness. You can probably fill in the blanks.

The point is that we can’t judge a ‘storm’ so soon. We’re told to ‘rejoice in everything’ and this only makes any real sense when we understand that the times when we least want to rejoice is when God is delivering ‘fruit’ of some kind that we have needed. It just might take some time to recognize it.

Two quotes:

It is the duty of all Christians to put off anger. It unfits for duty… A man cannot wrestle with God and wrangle with his neighbor at the same time. Short sins often cost us long and sad sorrows. –Philip Henry

and:

He that is inebriated with passion is unfit for action. –Thomas Adams

It’s not that anger itself is a sin. After all, we’re told “be angry, but do not sin”. Though the motives of it could be and in it’s proper place, is probably only produced because of sin.

Nonetheless, we should remember that though anger is a natural (and God-reflective) experience, it can unfit us for good decision making. Acting in anger also often means living in undesirable consequences. There’s something to be done, or said, or responded to, we should cool off first.

Thomas Watson, one of my favorite Puritans, writes this simple yet inspiring thought:

Read the scripture, not only as a history, but as a love-letter sent to you from God.

Some read the word solely as a means to understand and develop theology. Others, as a means to know what they should and shouldn’t do. Others, only to know what has happened in the past, according to Christian and Jewish tradition.

The intention of the Word isn’t less than these, but it is also a great deal more.

We should approach it, as Watson says, like a ‘love letter’. Not necessarily in the literal sense, but in spirit. What we read, was not only an intellectual work to be studied—a textbook. But it was intended for us so that we would be deeply affected and moved in the most sensitive regions of our soul. If we accept it as anything less than it really is, we miss more than we are gaining.

Puritan Henry Smith writes:

All are not saved by Christ’s death, but all which are saved are saved by Christ’s death; His death is sufficient to save all, as the sun is sufficient to lighten; but if any man wink, the sun will not give him light.

The sufficiency of Christ’s death is what is key, not necessarily the intention.

Like the sun’s illumination, Christ’s death bathes all mankind in the opportunity to see, and understand and believe and be saved. Even though there are a huge number of people who will walk though life with their eyes tightly shut, there are still many who will not.

Puritan writer and thinker Vavasor Powell writes about the act of death:

“Pray that thy last days, and last works may be the best; and that when thou comest to die, thou mayest have nothing else to do but die.”

Being that it is Good Friday, as I read this tonight from my Puritan Golden Treasury, I couldn’t help but think of how Christ was the most perfect example of this principle.

He came to earth to die, but before doing so, to preach the coming kingdom of the Lord and call all to repentance. When his time came on Good Friday to suffer at the hands of the people he longed for and loved, his mission was complete. All that was left for him to do was surrender himself to his Father’s will—suffer and die for his stubborn people.

Christ, not only in this, but in everything, showed us perfectly the way to walk, live and die. After God, for God, and having served God’s will completely.

Just my granule of thought-food for a good Good Friday.