God's Word Revitalizes

I began reading my selected scriptures today with, to be honest, zero interest. I only had a slight desire to even find interest in it today. There's no special reason other than my wicked flesh, and perhaps my cat's attitudinal fight with me over my reading space. The point being, I wasn't even halfway through my reading, when my heart just softened, and I was drawn into what I was reading!

In Numbers 35-36, I saw the genius of the Old Testament legal system, and inheritance system. In Proverbs 12, I was reminded about the very basic principle building upon foundations for life, and their consequences. And in Mark 15 I was moved again by the depiction of Jesus Christ suffering mockery and excruciating death for my sake. Just a few minutes worth of my day, but I'm reminded of and refreshed by the wisdom and kindness of God towards such a worm as myself. I recommend gty.org for their daily Bible reading list. Personal opinion: I noticed that Mark mentions that the veil separating the holy of holies in the temple from the outer courts was torn "from top to bottom"; this immediately made me think of God being the one who works redemption in His people; from Him to us, not the other way around.

Still wrestling with those previously mentioned issues as a result of reading Scougal's book: The Life Of God In The Soul Of Man. Some help in this area has come from another book I'm going though called Precious Remedies from Satan's Devices, by Thomas Brooks, which I hope to write a (shoddy) review of in the next few days. Song recommendation for the fellow-wrestlers out there: "Refugee" by West Coast Revival

Book Review: The Life of God in the Soul of Man, by Henry Scougal

The Life of God in the Soul of Man

by: Henry Scougal

Book Length: 121 pages, not counting introduction by J.I. Packer, and the handbook at the end of the book, Rules and Instructions for a Holy Life, by Robert Leighton

Who is this book for?:

Mind you, this is according to my own insights and opinions: Are you a Christian, who wants to be a real Christian? Do you find that though your spiritual life, while compared to others may be above average, it still seems a bit muted? What I mean by that is, do you have even a dull, nagging sense that while you pass the bar in others eyes of what a spiritual person ought to look like, there is more to be had of God? If that's so, this book is for you. If you've been feeling that way, I think that's a very good thing. After all, we are the called-out ones, but it seems that Christians of our day often are called-out only in the sense that they go to church, don't necessarily cuss, and believe that Jesus alone is Savior.

General Thrust of the book:

There is another kind of life or as the Puritans often phrased it "experimental life" with God, that is available not only to pastors, missionaries etc, but to all who have the Spirit of God through faith in Christ and repentance from sin. Scougal spells out this "sweet felicity of soul" in good detail, and then goes about giving you a basic game plan for experiencing it in your own life. His basic argument is that like Switchfoot says, we were meant to live for so much more; namely for God's glory, through finding our joy in Him. God has wired man with capacities of experience and satisfaction, that can only be met by His infinitely satisfying Person. Scougal basically says that is why all other pursuits inevitably come up short in truly satisfying the soul of man, leaving him with that ever-present restlessness in his heart, that can masquerade as boredom or loneliness.

It could be my personality, but I am the kind of guy who likes lists. I don't mean some kind of pharisaical legalism in order to please God by works, but I really appreciate it when someone kind of spells out how to generally achieve whatever picture they paint about the victorious Christian life. Scougal does a nice job in giving plain advice in how to attain the picture he does so well to paint for us, in providing a kind of list for what to do, and what not to do, and I like that. The humbling kicker about this book is the age of the author. I probably missed where it said his age when penning this letter/book, but it was no later than his mid-twenties. It used to only depress me when I would find a person who is more mature or advanced in study than I am in the Christian life, but by God's grace, it more-so humbles me than anything else, and drives me to want to make up for lost time and seek the same results, according to the grace that God gives me that is.

Be warned though: this book will present to you that higher standard you wished to see before opening it. Scougal will help you to really look at your life, your heart, and identify those darling idols that it turns out you were already generally aware of, and perhaps knowingly guarding. As someone who's just finished the book, I can say right now, that it will cause you, if you really do want to live how God intends, to begin to wrestle with some big lifestyle questions.

A sample of the questions I am currently planning to get in the ring with:

-is it necessary, or am I willing to say goodbye to video games, most movies, most tv, and and some web-surfing?

-how much prayer time ought I really be spending daily?

-am I willing to not keep company that will only encourage vain living?

-am I willing to pay the price of my friends looking on me as even more of a "legalist" or "judgmental" guy?

-how does this understanding affect my interactions with those I consider my brothers and sisters in Christ? How much to I hold them to this new standard? Or in other words, if what Scougal wrote is biblical and true, do I not have a responsibility to make others aware of it, or is God who is first and foremost Holy, okay if only some professing Christians are concerned with living how He wants them to? In my experience, Christians often tell me to let God change them etc, and basically mind my own business. While it is true that God does indeed need to do the work in a person, He primarily does that work through His own people, who share rightly-interpreted scripture with one another in love-iron sharpening iron.

Quotes from the book:

I literally killed my highlighter when going through this book, but here are some choice-cuts from The Life of God in the Soul of Man:

"The love of God is a delightful and affectionate sense of the Divine perfections, which makes the soul resign and sacrifice itself wholly unto Him, desiring above all things to please Him, and delighting in nothing so much as fellowship and communion with Him, and being ready to do or suffer any thing for His sake, or at His pleasure. Though this affection may have its first rise from the favours and mercies of God toward ourselves, yet doth it, in its growth and progress, transcend such particular considerations, and ground itself on his infinite goodness, manifested in all the works of creation and providence."

(referring to Jesus) "He had none of those sins and imperfections which may justly humble the best of men; but He was so entirely swallowed up with a deep sense of the infinite perfections of God, that He appeared as nothing in His own eyes; I mean, so far as He was a creature."

"He who, with a generous and holy ambition, hath raised his eyes toward that uncreated beauty and goodness, and fixed his affection there, is quite of another spirit, of a more excellent and heroic temper than the rest of the world, and cannot but infinitely disdain all mean and unworthy things; will not entertain any low or base thoughts which might disparage his high and noble pretensions."

"Perfect love is a kind of self-dereliction, a wandering out of ourselves; it is a kind of voluntary death, wherein the lover dies to himself, and all his own interests, not thinking of them, nor caring for them any more, and minding nothing but how he may please and gratify the party whom he loves: thus, he is quite undone, unless he meets with reciprocal affection; he neglects himself, and the other hat no regard to him; but if he be beloved, he is revived, as it were, and liveth in the soul and care of the person whom he loves; and now he begins to mind his own concernments, not so much because they are his, as because the beloved is pleased to own an interest in them: he becomes dear unto himself, because he is so unto the other."

"There is no slavery so base as that whereby a man becomes a drudge to his own lusts, or any victory so glorious as that which is obtained over them. Never can that person be capable of any thing that is noble and worthy, who is sunk in the gross and feculent pleasures of sense, or bewitched with the light and airy gratifications of fancy; but the religious soul is of a more sublime and divine temper; it knows it was made for higher things, and scorns to step aside one foot out of the ways of holiness for the obtaining of any of these."

"And this purity is accompanied with a great deal of pleasure: whatsoever defiles the soul disturbs it too: all impure delights have a sting in them, and leave smart and trouble behind them. Excess and intemperance, and all inordinate lusts, are so much enemies to the health of the body, and the interests of this present life, that a little consideration might oblige any rational man to forbear them on that very score..."