First, Daily, and Last Word

I finished Ray Ortlund’s The Death of Porn the other day. The appendix is a short article titled “A Man’s Identity”, by David Powlison. The whole thing is great, as is the rest of Ortlund’s book, but this quote in particular grabbed my attention:

Your true identity is who God says you are. You will never discover who you are by looking inside yourself or listening to what others say. The Lord gets the first word because he made you. He gets the daily word because you live before his face. He gets the last word because he will administer your “comprehensive life review.”

David Powlison, “A Man’s Identity” (the appendix of The Death of Porn: Men of Integrity Building a World of Nobility)

While I roll my eyes a little at the phrase “comprehensive life review”, the quote rings true. God the Father truly is the one who defines who we are and who we are meant to be. Christ has purchased no less then our salvation, sanctification, and glorification. And the Holy Spirit is where we need him most, engaged in bringing God’s word to life and light, to good effect in the body of Christ. May we all remind ourselves that moment by moment we are his. And with our dying breath we can enter his presence with words of praise on our lips for his abundant mercy and grace.

This month our residents are going through a book on counseling, Pierre and Reju’s The Pastor and Counseling, while our men are reading Nate Brooks’s Identifying Heart Transformation. Lots of reinforcement here of what is foundational, the centrality of the heart, a proper focus on who God is and who he has made us to be, and the necessity of both following Christ as a disciple when it is hard and loving the body of Christ as shepherds engaged in well-timed, deliberate, biblically-sound counsel.