Faith Chang – Washington Presbyterian Church

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

5 Things You Should Know about Union with Christ

The older I get, the more essential I view the doctrine of union with Christ. Here is a quick overview at Ligonier.

The Bible speaks of disciples as people who are “in Christ.” This is the language of union with Jesus. By nature, we are all “in Adam,” which means spiritual death. By grace, God puts undeserving sinners “in Christ,” which is life everlasting (1 Cor. 15:22; Rom. 5:12–21). This is the reality that the Apostle Paul addresses in Ephesians 1, where the phrase “in Christ” appears repeatedly. To be without Christ is abject misery. To be in Christ is true salvation. To be like Christ is real holiness. To be with Christ is joy beyond compare. He is the root and source of every blessing. We need, therefore, to grasp certain sweet realities about the Christian’s union with Christ Jesus.

A Midlife Assessment

Faith Chang has written a thoughtful reflection on following Christ in middle age.

I’m in the thick of the woods now and though the path diverges every so often and the decisions I make at these crossroads still don’t come easy, I choose with a better sense of what the cost might be to walk the harder roads, how God has created me to walk, what load he has called me to bear, what pace is sustainable, and more confidence knowing his grace has proved sufficient thus far. I have a more realistic sense of my constraints, a greater contentment regarding roads not taken, a growing inkling of what a “convergence” (as one of my professors put it) of passions, gifting, and experience might look like for me vocationally. Still, I have some questions, ones that are less of the “Which mountain should I climb?” nature and more of the “We’ve been going the right way, right?” variety.

Quick

Our poem of the week: Quick, by Erica Reid. It’s another poem about autumn; I can’t help myself.

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here.

The Best Ten Minutes of My Week

Our ten-minute meal fuels us for the week ahead where we will fumble through our days attempting faithfulness. Our ten-minute meal gives us a taste of the abundant love we will need to remember if we are to cover over each other’s faults and foibles in the coming few days (1 Peter 4:8). Our ten-minute meal levels the classes and divisions that the world will use to categorize us as soon as we walk out the doors. It makes us siblings and peers at the table of our impartial heavenly Father.

Come, He Needs Nothing From You

Faith Chang makes a helpful distinction between what God requires of us and what he needs from us. She writes about the implications that God needs nothing from us.

The Scriptures are punctuated with this welcome: come to me, come to the waters, come eat, taste and see. There is more that I’ve been mulling over regarding God’s self-sufficiency, implications for what this means about his pleasure in what we do offer him, how graciously he receives from our hands what he doesn’t need. But for now, I want to sit on this, the way burnt out laborers, haggard moms and dads and sons and daughters, and all the weary and wary souls who come to him, will find that he gives and gives and gives, grace upon grace.

When Groaning Is Our Best Prayer

Here’s an interesting article anchored in Romans 8, focused on how we get from groaning to glory.

We groan when we encounter sin and brokenness. We groan when we face bodily sickness, weakness, and death. We groan when relationships are strained or broken, or when we see those we love struggling. We ache for an end to pain. We long to be made whole and set free. We’re groaning for the day we’ll see, share in, and shine with God’s glory as he intended.