Revelation 21:5-7 He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son."

The gig is up! What confidence we can have... The end of the story is disclosed. The book of Revelation is such an encouraging book! God's kingdom is permanantly established and everything is made new (all creation has been corrupted by sin and requires God to create it anew - from us being new creations in Christ to the earth being renewed or remade). How much suspense is there in watching a football game on video tape when you've seen the final score on the internet? Not a lot. In the same way, there is no suspense as to who will win and who will lose in the final conflict. This gives us great confidence in life. Evil and wrong will NOT ulitimately prevail - although this is easy to forget. We have here the definitive good ending to the supreme story.

What makes me happy? I found myself this morning (on the way to work, of course!) thinking about a weekend gone and another work week starting and found myself slipping into subtle depression. God in his goodness reminded me of the necessity of finding my joy in God. The conversation went something like this...

"So, your job is not your dream job. Very few people's jobs are. Where do you find your joy?"

"Well, I guess I am supposed to find it in You."

"If you're unhappy now, where would you find joy in the middle of a trial?"

Whether this was a Biblically informed subconscious conversation with myself or God's spirit talking with me, I don't know. I do know that the idea that was impressed on me was that wherever I am in my life, I can and must find my joy in Christ. That means if I am walking through trial, I can be joyful. If I am experiencing abundance, my joy must still be found in Christ. Then, if all the things I am blessed with disappear, I have lost nothing. If (for me) I struggle with my day to day job, I must find my joy in Christ. The thought that another job might bring me joy is simply a wrong and sinful thought. If Christ is not my joy now, he will not be my joy even if my job were to become that elusive "dream job." Not profound thoughts, but a necessary rediretion for my soul.

1 Peter 1:5-9 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
The process of growing to become more like Jesus Christ includes adding all the above attributes into our lives. From the moment of salvation we are a new person that is being changed to be more like our Saviour. The last verse really jumped out at me. If anyone doesn't have these attributes, are they Christians? Yes, but they have forgotten thing that should be motivating their transformation into Christ's image. Namely, the gospel. So we find that the gospel is more than the gospel of salvation, it works transformation. If we don't have the above works of the Spirit in our lives we may be saved from hell, but we rob ourselves of the privilege of having and effective and productive life on earth.

I John 3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
One of the attributes of God is holiness. God the Father is Holy, Jesus the Son is Holy, and the Spirit is Holy (hence "Holy Spirit"). The holiness of God is not excusive to the Father and the Spirit, but Jesus is just as Holy. In the mystery of the Incarnation this Holy Son made himself into a man.
The love of God is similar. Although shown by Jesus through of life as a human and death on the cross; it is also shown by the Father as he sent his son and poured out his wrath on Jesus. Stop and think about that! Here we have this triune God pouring out wrath on another member of the trinity. A person who throughout eternity past was in inconceivably close relationship with him. This is completely uncomprehensible. No wonder John says, "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us..." The Holy Spirit displays his love for us through his active presence in our lives today. The mystery of the trinity and love of God are united. To think of the love of Jesus and not to think about the love of the Father and the love of the Spirit is to sell short the concept of God's love. God's love must be developed within the framework of the Trinity. In worship and prayer remember that the death of our Saviour was a trinune display of love! Thanks be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen!

Hebrews 10:26-29, 12:3-4 If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? ...Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

My sin was so great that the majestic, holy, awesome Creator and King sacrificed His life in payment for them. Jesus' death for sin shows how seriously God views sin. How serious am I about my sin? I am to put on the same attitude that God has about my sin. When I treat sin (however small) lightly by ignoring or justifying it, I am spurning His death. A scary place to be!

In our fight against sin, we are to imitate the Savior who fought to the point of shedding his blood. I must fight against sin with all my might; but not by my own strength, rather, it is through His gracious power. How different would my life be if I passionately pursued holiness? Considering the magnitude of the death of Christ for sin gives me power to fight against sin in my daily life. It pushes me forward when I want to coast and just allow for a little bit of "me" time. This attitude is not optional from a biblical perspective. Jesus' faithful endurance in the fight against sin is a source of encouragement in my fight against sin. I, too, am to fight to the death against my sin.

Hebrews 6:19-20 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Often life can be like the sea. As I look at my life now, it appears to be fairly calm. Of course there are the occasional ups and downs of daily life, but no major turmoil. At past times in my life I have experienced some storms that really rocked me. In those times, the anchor of my soul has held me fast. A boat doesn't just rely on its anchor during a storm, though, even in times of calm we can drift. Because of Jesus Christ who stands in the most holy place in our behalf, we have an anchor for our souls. When the stormyness of life seems to overwhelm or I find myself drifting in the calm, I must always look beyond the immediate circumstances. During rough times or calm times I need to be reminded of who my anchor is. How good it is to be steadfastly anchored in the sea of life unafraid of the storms that may hit me, because I know that my soul is anchored by Jesus Christ.

2 Cor. 10:5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
In meditating on this passage today, I realized that I have misunderstood what is being said in this verse. I have thought of this capturing of the thoughts as being a sort of filter. That our thoughts should be captivated by Christ BEFORE they enter our minds. While I don't want to downplay the importance of being transformed in our thoughts to think with the mind of Christ (as Paul puts it - 1 Cor. 2:16), we also live with something that Jesus never did - namely a sin nature. It is impossible for us to be completely transformed in our thought life before being completely free of the sin nature. This will come someday, but for now we must learn what it means to live out the battle between the Spirit and the flesh.
Instead, this verse demands that we capture every thought and "make it obedient to Christ." In order for something to be made captive, it must first be free. How those thoughts get into our mind is somewhat irrelevant. Whether it was the world, the flesh, or the devil caused that thought to be there is not important. All three are warring for supremecy in our minds. But we have a King who has purchased us. It is not our perrogative to allow those thoughts to be running loose. Therefore we are to take them captive. This practically means that we must become disciplined in our minds. To allow thoughts to run loose without examining them is to disobey this passage.
Ok, so much for the theory - now, what does this look like? For me and I think most people, we think about a lot of different things on any given day. Many of them good and God glorifying and many of them sinful, some of them are somewhat neutral (i.e. "Should I wear a green, red, or blue shirt", etc.). All three of these categories need to be examined.

• In the thoughts that I think are God glorifying, am I tainting those thoughts with my sin nature (am I thinking wrongly of who God is as revealed by His Word)?
• In the thoughts that are sinful, they must be captured, but it doesn't end there. C.S. Lewis said, "What springs from myself and not from God is evil: It is a perversion of something of God's." All sinful thoughts should first be killed. Next, identifying how we are wrongly thinking and seeing God's thoughts on the matter allows us to "redeem" these thoughts. Making these evil thoughts obedient to Christ often includes correcting the wrong orientation of our fleshly minds. Example: Suppose I find myself coveting a nicer car. Clearly I am stepping out of the boundries defined by Scripture by coveting. My thoughts are sinful. Instead of allowing these thoughts to run, they must be taken captive and made obedient to Christ. In this particular case, I might remind myself from God's Word what true blessings are. God has given me so much to be grateful for!
• In the thoughts that we think are neutral, make sure they are! As I looked back on my example of the red, green, and blue shirt - I realized that even there, in my drawer, I have the potential of this neutral decision becoming not so neutral! My green shirt has a Guiness logo on it, so obviously, I must allow wisdom and love be my guides in when to wear this shirt and when to not. The blue and red shirts are both unoffensive so I would conclude that the decision is primarily neutral (I think). In this example I find that even the "neutral" decisions I can make often are not completely neutral and must be examined to see if I have allowed room for sin.

1 Thessalonians 2:8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.
In the day that mankind rallies our utmost challenge to God's supremacy, we get his response. Whether this response is yet in the future or past history makes little difference. God's responds to man's challenge of his sovereignty by destroying and overthrowing the wicked, not by a mighty act of power, but simply with the breath of his mouth. How great is our God!

Spurgeon on sanctification

Thus I have reminded you that the prayer for sanctification is offered to the divine Father, and this leads us to look out of ourselves and wholly, to our God. Do not set about the work of sanctification yourselves, as if you could perform it alone. Do not imagine that holiness will necessarily follow because you listen to an earnest preacher, or unite in sacred worship. My brethren, God himself must work within you; the Holy Ghost must inhabit you; and this can only come to you by faith in the Lord Jesus. Believe in him for your sanctification, even as you have believed for your pardon and justification. He alone can bestow sanctification upon you; for this is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Philippians 3:12b ...but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
One sign of Christian maturity is balance. This verse in a few words gives me hope that one day I will live out this balance. On the one hand, the life of the Christian is founded completely on the finished and perfect work of our Saviour. We are accepted before our God on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, not any work that we do. Yet the life we live NOW is compared to a race, we are to press on toward the goal, work out our salvation, to live in our experience as closely as possible to the reality of our position in Christ. I find myself often drifting between the two, yet a balanced approach to sanctification finds God's good grace at work in our works. It finds that he who began the good work is the one that is completing it. Even though I am the one who has to swing my feet out of the bed in the morning, behind it all is God at work. All is done through His power.