Holly’s Blog

When the “Want To” and the “Ought To” Don’t Match
by John Piper

If your “want to” does not conform to God’s “ought to,” what can you do to have peace? I see at least five possible strategies.

1. You can avoid thinking about the “ought to.” This is the most common strategy in the world. Most people simply do not devote energy to pondering what they should be doing that they are not doing. It’s easier to just keep the radio on.
2. You can reinterpret the “ought to” so that it sounds just like your “want to.” This is a little more sophisticated and so not as common. It usually takes a college education to do this with credibility, and a seminary degree to do it with finesse.
3. You can muster the willpower to do a form of the “ought to” even though you don’t have the heart of the “want to.” This generally looks pretty good, and is often mistaken as virtue, even by those who do it. In fact, there is a whole worldview that says doing “ought to’s” without “want to” is the essence of virtue. The problem with this is that Paul said, “God loves a cheerful giver,” which puts the merely “ought-to givers” in a precarious position.
4. You can feel proper remorse that the “want to” is very small and weak - like a mustard seed - and then, if it lies within you, do the “ought to” by the exertion of will, while repenting that the “want to” is weak, and praying that the “want to” will soon be restored. Perhaps it will even be restored in doing the “ought to.” This is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy hides one of the two contradictory impulses. Virtue confesses them both in the hope of grace.
5. You can seek, by the means of grace, to have God give the “want to” so that when the time comes to do the “ought to,” you will “want to.” Ultimately, the “want to” is a gift of God. “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God . . . it is not able to submit to the law of God” (Romans 8:7). “The natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God . . . because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Corinthians 2:14). “Perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:25). 

The Biblical doctrine of original sin boils down to this (to borrow from St. Augustine): We are free to do what we like, but we are not free to like what we ought to like. “Through the one man’s disobedience [Adam] the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19). This is who we are. And yet we know from our own soul and from the Bible that we are accountable for the corruption of our bad “want to’s.” Indeed, the better you become, the more you feel ashamed of being bad and not just doing bad. As N.P. Williams said, “The ordinary man may feel ashamed of doing wrong: but the saint, endowed with a superior refinement of moral sensibility, and keener powers of introspection, is ashamed of being the kind of man who is liable to do wrong” (First Things, #87, Nov. 1998, p. 24).

God’s free and sovereign heart-changing work is our only hope. Therefore we must pray for a new heart. We must pray for the “want to” - “Incline my heart to Your testimonies” (Psalm 119:36). He has promised to do it: “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes” (Ezekiel 36:27). This is the new covenant bought by the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 8:8-13; 9:15).

This was one of the stores in the Cherry Creek Mall in Denver. It’s good I don’t live there, I might get discontent! I’m not a shopaholic, but I was truly enthralled by this store. Not only awesome (retro and truly unique clothing, but also bedding, furniture, and kitchen) Everything was breathtaking. The way the store was simply designed, decorated, and stocked was the most awesome thing. If I could decorate like that… Wow! Anthropologie.com Just don’t get too attached. :D You can’t afford Anything!

They have one of the best/easiest to view hard-copy-made-online catalogs I’ve ever viewed also.

So, I was working and only heard the yells from various patients and their families (as well as a few nurses and doctors) as the game progressed. I know the Colts won, but I still want the see the game. Didn’t ANYBODY record it?!? Bummer. 

Sometimes I wonder. I wonder whether I just know ABOUT God more than I KNOW Him.  I look at my life and think… if I really know God so well and am really seeking so hard after Him, then shouldn’t my life look different? Shouldn’t my life reflect more of what I SAY my goal and aim is? To know and glorify God in this earth? or is it to know and glorify me in the earth? Hmm… just some things to ponder.

I was browsing through some of John Piper’s articles last night, this is one of them…

“The most agonizing problem about the assurance of salvation is not the problem of whether the objective facts of Christianity are true (God exists, Christ is God, Christ died for sinners, Christ rose from the dead, Christ saves forever all who believe, etc.). Those facts are the utterly crucial bedrock of our faith. But the really agonizing problem of assurance is whether I personally am saved by those facts.

This boils down to whether I have saving faith. What makes this agonizing - for many in the history of the church and today - is that there are people who think they have saving faith but don’t. For example, in Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.’”

So the agonizing question for some is: do I really have saving faith? Is my faith real? Am I self-deceived? Some well-intentioned people try to lessen the problem by making faith a mere decision to affirm certain truths, like the truth: Jesus is God, and he died for my sins. Some also try to assist assurance by denying that any kind of life-change is really necessary to demonstrate the reality of faith. So they find a way to make James 2:17 mean something other than what is seems to mean: “Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead.” But these strategies to help assurance backfire. They deny some Scripture; and even the minimal faith they preserve can be agonized over and doubted by the tormented soul. They don’t solve the problem, and they lose truth. And, perhaps worst of all, they sometimes give assurance to people who should not have it.

Instead of minimizing the miraculous, deep, transforming nature of faith, and instead of denying that there are necessary life-changes that show the reality of faith, we should tackle the problem of assurance another way. We should begin by realizing that there is an objective warrant for resting in God’s forgiveness of my sins, and there is a subjective warrant for God’s forgiveness of my sins. The objective warrant is the finished work of Christ on the cross that “has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). The subjective warrant is our faith which is expressed in “being sanctified.”

Next we should realize that saving faith has two parts. First, faith is a spiritual sight of glory (or beauty) in the Christ of the gospel. In other words, when you hear or read what God has done for sinners in the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, this appears to your heart as a great and glorious thing in and of itself even before you are sure you are saved by it. I get this idea from 2 Corinthians 4:4, where Paul says that what Satan hinders in the minds of unbelievers is the “seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” For faith to be real there must be a supernatural “light” that God shines into the heart to show us that Christ is glorious and wonderful (2 Corinthians 4:6). This happens as a work of the Spirit of God through the preaching of the gospel.

Second, faith is a warranted resting in this glorious gospel for our own salvation. I say “warranted resting” because there is an “unwarranted resting” - people who think they are saved who are not, because they have never come to see the glory of Christ as compellingly glorious. These people only believe on the basis of wanting rescue from harm, not because they see Christ as more beautiful and desirable than all else. But for those who “see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” their resting is warranted.

What this means practically is that we should continually look to the cross and the work of God in Christ, because this is where God makes the light of the gospel shine. Secondly, we should continually pray for God to “enlighten the eyes of our hearts” (Ephesians 1:18). Thirdly, we should love each other; because, as John said, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.” In the end, assurance is a precious gift of God. Let us pray for each other that it will abound among us.”

I know all the objective facts. Just because I know that other people may not be truly saved doesn’t make me saved. (does that make any sense?) May I truly be Crosseyed, supernaturally enlightened, and love the brethren.

I clock in at work at about 0635 (AM) everyday

Tue night I left at 1130 PM (that was a loooong, CRAZY day, long story) (They let me come in at 1100am the next morning) (ah,,, blissful sleep!!!)

Wed at 8:30 PM

Last night at 8:30 PM (5 patients) and yeah, no lunch. I realized when I got home at 9 that the only thing I had had (since the evening before) was 1 can of coke. nice isn’t it? Who needs dieting? I’ve got the perfect solution, work like crazy all day and don’t eat

And tonight at 9:00 PM (6 patients most of the day)

So much for a 12 hour shift!

I think I would very much DISlike nursing if I didn’t have such a fondness for checking off a list and completing tasks. Odd isn’t it? The very thing that disturbs me is running late for stuff… I’m TRYING to learn to flow with it and be flexible, since it is the only way not to die from stress :D, but I’m not saying it’s easy! All my patients end up clean, well, and happy with all their meds at the end of the day… but then there is charting… daa, daa, daa, DUMM! …still figuring out how to fit that INTO the course of the day… not after :D. Ah, well… I’m getting there. I had 6 patients today (worked on the oncology side today), giving blood to two of them (both of which were still losing it at a rate that they will need transfusions again… maybe tomorrow or the next day)… pain meds to 4 of them all day and hanging a kagillion piggybacks for most of them. All in all leaving at 8:30 wasn’t too bad. Discharged one in the early afternoon and I let my preceptor take the new admit later on in the afternoon. What a relief… it could have been the ’straw’ :D. SO… anybody ELSE want to go to nursing school? Our church body has turned into a nursing cult. Or maybe just the Allen’s group :D. Mrs. Marianne came over Friday for some nursing school help. I’m tell you… It’s not easy :D!

Here is a link to the Breckenridge site for the snow sculpture championship. You can see the progress as well as the final products. (BTW, I didn’t see myself in any of the pics :D)

http://www.gobreck.com/page.php?pname=events/ISSC

http://www.themoens.com/Photos/Events/snowSculpture/overview.htm

This is another link, showing previous years and all kinds of other stuff.

The Ice sculptures, even though they were just advertisements, were also fabulous… you can do So much and Such detail with ice!

March 21st: PMAC

Tickets are $28 each: Lower, Middle, or Floor

One of the new RandomShirts:

I still have a soft spot for Pluto.

I just doubled the number of links I have so everyone on there now :D. Breigh, I think my goal is to post about once a week. That’s about it.

I have some more pictures to post, but what’s the use? There are hundreds… go to my Dad’s page for pics :D. I need to get Breigh to help me out one day to scrapbook some of my stuff. I’ve got a big stack of stuff  to put together since Rho Zeta, pinning, graduation, Christmas, and now… my ski trip!

Okay, so the fateful of testing is February 28th. It’ll be great when Feb is over!