I Delight in Steak

I love meat. I'm okay with chicken, and some good pizza - I heartily dislike rice cakes - but I love a good steak. When I was competing, after a long day of riding I would crave The Keg. And it is so good to be getting some spiritual meat again, even if it is in truncated form via John Piper's The Legacy of Sovereign Joy where he discusses Augustine, Luther, and Calvin.

I just finished the chapter on Augustine, and aside from being amazed at the impact Augustine had on the world (including being the first to write about the 'sub-conscious,' take that Freud!), his take on Free Will was especially fascinating. Augustine fought against a British Monk named Pelagius - if you would like a glorified and nauseating version of his teachings, watch King Arthur with Clive Owen - anyway, Pelagius believed man was inherently good and, thus, capable not only of choosing God, but self-perfection. Augustine agreed we have free will, but I just love the way Piper defines his stance:

So saving grace, converting grace, in Augustine's view, is God's giving us a sovereign joy in God that triumphs over all other joys and therefore sways the will. The will is free to move toward whatever delights it most fully, but that is not within the power of our will to determine...

A sinner will thus always choose sin because it delights him most fully. However, Christians are freed to choose the greatest happiness - God is our joy, for as Augustine also says, "Happiness is to rejoice in you and for you and because of you. This is true happiness and there is no other." It is here we also stumble, because we believe the sin we choose will give us greater delight than God and His commands.

It has been good to marinate in God's sovereign joy - that He answers our prayers so that our joy may be complete - and that His story revolves around His glory - that He chose to write and enact the greatest plot with the best climax and resolution, and somehow in all of that He included us!

I'm excited to begin teaching part-time again because everyone loves a good story. I believe we long to be part of a story - to know we are useful for a great good. That's part of why so many love epic stories, like the Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings, regardless of worldview. We want to fight the good fight, and we want to know our small role mattered somehow. It's only through God and starting at the beginning we can know there IS a bigger story and we DO have the privilege of fighting for the greatest good. Please pray, as the school year begins, I will fight on the front of EvCC with strength, grace, and joy.