Honesty

"Exposed by the Cross, Part II.

The Cross also exposes me before the eyes of other people, informing them of the depth of my depravity. If I wanted others to think highly of me, I would conceal the fact that a shameful slaughter of the perfect Son of God was required that I might be saved. But when I stand at the foot of the Cross and am seen by others under the light of that Cross, I am left comfortably exposed before their eyes. Indeed, the most humiliating gossip that could ever be whispered about me is blared from Golgotha's hill; and my self-righteous reputation is left in ruins in the wake of its revelations. With the worst facts about me thus exposed to the view of others, I find myself feeling that I truly have nothing left to hide.

Thankfully, the more exposed I see that I am by the Cross, the more I find myself opening up to others about ongoing issues of sin in my life. (Why would anyone be shocked to hear of my struggles with past and present sin when the Cross already told them I am a desperately sinful person?) And the more open I am in confessing my sins to fellow-Christians, the more I enjoy the healing of the Lord in response to their grace-filled counsel and prayers. Experiencing richer levels of Christ's love in companionship with such saints, I give thanks for the gospel's role in forcing my hand toward self-disclosure and the freedom that follows."

Milton Vincent, The Gospel Primer

Honesty

"In relationships the impulse of the legalist is to leave rather than love, separate rather than serve, condemn rather than care."

Parenting Confessions

“The key to the family functioning as a redemptive community, where the Gospel is the glue that holds the family together, is parents who so trust Christ that they are ready and willing to confess their faults to their children…[P]arents who admit their sin will position themselves to model the Gospel for their children daily."

- Paul Tripp, Age of Opportunity, 67

“Remember, it is not your weakness that will get in the way of God’s working through you, but your delusions of strength.”

- Paul Tripp, Age of Opportunity, 189

Wrath of God/Love of God

“Some find a difficulty in that they see wrath as incompatible with the fact that ‘God is love’. They are so sure of the love of God that they say that there can be no such thing as the wrath of God. But this is faulty reasoning. The opposite of love is not wrath. It is hate. We can say that, if God is a God of love, he will not hate those that he has made, but we cannot say that he will never be angry with them. Indeed, the opposite may well be the case. The more he loves the more he will be angry with everything that mars the perfection of the beloved, that is with every sin. God’s wrath is identical with God’s love. God’s wrath is God’s love blazing out in fiery indignation against every evil in the beloved.”

- Leon Morris, The Atonement (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1983), 174.

Prayer

"Prayer is not made so that God can find out what we need, because Jesus tells us, "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him" (Matt 6:8). God wants us to pray because prayer expresses our trust in God and is a means whereby our trust in him can increase. In fact, perhaps the primary emphasis of the Bible's teaching on prayer is that we are to pray with faith, which means trust or dependence on God. God as our Creator delights in being trusted by us as his creatures, for an attitude of dependence is most appropriate to the Creator/Creature relationship. Praying in humble dependence also indicates that we are genuinely convinced of God's wisdom, love, goodness, and power--indeed of all of the attributes that make up his excellent character. When we truly pray, we as persons, in the wholeness of our character, are relating to God as a person, in the wholeness of his character. Thus, all that we think or feel about God comes to expression in our prayer. It is only natural that God would delight in such activity and place much emphasis on it in his relationship with us." --Wayne Grudem.