Starting Over

My dearest friends, and all who have crossed my path in this fleeting sojourn, a great gulf of silence hath separated us since the ink was last spilled upon the digital page. It was in the distant year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Eleven, that my final humble missive departed from that erstwhile, if fleetingly 'celebrated,' collection of musings known as "Onewayride." This chronicle, as some of you shall recall, documented my "notorious" career upon the iron steed—a career, I confess, sometimes marked more by youthful zeal than by sober piety.

Verily, since that time, a great and profound transformation hath swept over my personal life. The year Two Thousand and Fourteen stands as a clear and crucial marker upon the chart of my pilgrimage, for it was then that the hand of Providence seemed to direct the very course of my soul. I shall endeavor, as the Spirit permits, to lay bare those moments of reflection and experience, drawn from the private record of my personal phone diary, and to share them with a candid heart.

Should the peculiar title of this new venture puzzle your mind, let me offer a word of context. Its origin is a fount that has washed over my soul with indelible impact: a most stirring volume penned by the devoted servant, Jock Purves, a man counted among the closest companions of the sainted Leonard Ravenhill. This work doth faithfully set forth the trials, the steadfastness, and the shining lives of the Scottish Covenanters. It is a book that I commend to your earnest study, as one that pierces the heart and strengthens the resolve.

And now, for the benefit of those esteemed colleagues with whom I have labored, and for acquaintances who know my office but not my heart, permit me this brief and candid update of the vessel and the journey of the soul that is currently entrusted to the care of your humble servant:

My origin, I confess, was found within a childhood defined by the observances of the Roman Catholic faith. Yet, alas, though baptized unto a renewed faith, I did swiftly depart into the way of the world. For the first four and twenty years of my brief earthly pilgrimage, I lived not as one awaiting a heavenly crown, but as a very bondservant to darkness. My path was one of folly, my deeds a chronicle of the flesh, and my soul was nigh unto the pit. It pleased the Almighty, however, in His unbounded mercy, to call me out of death. But grieve not merely for my past depravity, but for the hypocrisy that followed! For the next nineteen years, though professing the name of Christ—yes, even bearing the sacred title of "Christian"—I did but wear a mask of piety. I was a wretched, self-deceived man, a spiritual chameleon, holding to the form of godliness while denying its power. I was a stumbling block to the simple, a vessel whose inner life was a secret den of idols, and my witness was but a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

But blessed be the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ! For He, the Great Shepherd, did at last seek and find the straying sheep. I praise His sovereign grace that He broke through the thick veil of my self-righteousness! My heart was violently convicted of its deceit; I saw my sin in the fierce light of His holiness, and I was utterly undone.

“But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His wrath.” (Psalm 78:38)

In that blessed hour, I was truly saved—my old self, that wicked man of flesh and deceit, was mercifully crucified and died to self! The glorious work of regeneration and renewal was wrought by the Holy Spirit. I was washed and purified in the all-availing blood of the Lamb! A wondrous transaction: I have been transported from the land of the shadow of death unto the true Life that is in Christ Jesus!

And now, I stand as a work in progress. Though the great work of my glorification—my final, full acquittal before the Throne—is yet to come, the sanctifying fire of God is even now at work within my soul. It is a daily, often painful, but ever-glorious process of being conformed into the image of my Savior. 

All that once occupied the public space of my worldly journal—my shallow personal interests, my fleeting accomplishments, the pride of my labours, and all my vain whims and fancies—hath been utterly erased! I have swept away the dust of the natural man to make room for the saving truth of the Gospel of the God who hath saved me.

This, then, is the sole, sacred Gospel purpose of these renewed pages: It is a solemn warning and a clarion call to rouse the vast legion of sleeping Christians—those very believers of whom I was once a prominent, lamentable member. I speak of those souls who, in their great spiritual cowardice, have chosen to bury their heads in the shifting sands of worldly comfort and spiritual safety.

Let it be made plainly understood that the object of our preaching is not, and hath never been, to tickle the ears of selfish sinners with tales of their own ease and glory! We do not peddle the cheap promise of a "wonderful plan" catered to their carnal desires. Such a message is a dreadful betrayal of the Cross, and a soothing balm applied to a soul that requires a wounding conviction! Nay! Our solemn duty is to proclaim, with unblinking candor, the terrible and righteous wrath of God! That holy vengeance, which the eternal Word hath irrevocably promised against the very sons of disobedience! We do not invite the lost to approach the Throne of Grace with the expectation of earthly blessings or the hope of gain extracted from the Almighty. The purpose is not that they might "get something out of Him," for such a quest is still rooted in the deadly soil of self-love.

The true summons: come to God for mercy, and nothing less, because of the severe and heinous crimes you have committed against His sacred majesty! Let us name the sin for what it is! Man is an Idolater of Self! He hath, in his rebellious folly, dared to remove the living, Sovereign God from the rightful seat of his heart and hath, with audacious presumption, placed Himself—the poor, fallen creature—upon that vacated throne! This, then, is the substance of our lament and our warning: Unless a man flees from the terrible precipice of his own self-worship and casts himself upon the sovereign mercy freely offered through the atoning sacrifice of Christ, he shall surely drink deeply of the cup of divine indignation.

The Method of Conviction: Law, Fallow Ground, and the Cross

Understand, therefore, the method of our ministry, which is no new device but the ancient, proven path of the Spirit. Our pulpit doth resound not with soothing lullabies, but with much law proclaimed against the unrepentant sinner! This we continue, not out of cruelty, but out of a deep and holy love, until the law hath finally done its good and terrifying work! The law must act as a sword, separating soul and spirit, exposing the deceitful heart, and convicting the man of his awful sin and his treasonous rebellion against God! We labor thus until the Holy Spirit, that Divine Husbandman, hath truly broken up the fallow ground of the hardened, unresponsive heart. Only then, when the soul is terrified of its own ruin, is it deemed fit to receive the Good News of pardon and peace!

Our work is not finished until that self-idolater, thoroughly convinced of his offences and terrified of his pending sentence, doth cast himself down and cries out to God in true repentance! And only when this cry is genuine does the Father, in His boundless mercy, grant the great and full forgiveness. Then, and only then, does the Lord Jesus Christ become to that soul not merely a convenience, but the only Salvation, the only Hope, and the only Life!

The True Expectation of the Faithful Heralds

And what, pray tell, is our expectation in this fearless proclamation of both judgment and mercy? It is a sure, immovable certainty: That in fulfilling this arduous commission, we shall be made partakers of the suffering of the Cross of Christ! We expect no worldly reward, no easy path, and no popular acclaim. We anticipate scorn, rejection, and trial, knowing that the Master Himself was a man of sorrows. To endure the reproach of the world is but the natural badge of those who stand for an uncompromised Gospel.

The Chief End of All Preaching: Christ’s Supreme Glory

Let all human ambition be utterly consumed, and let the truth be sounded forth without apology! The chief and holy end of our preaching is not that the poor sinner should merely be saved—though that is a wondrous mercy! Neither is the end of our toil that we, the humble messengers, might be elevated in the eyes of men, nor that we ourselves might receive any fleeting, earthly blessing. None of these things is our final cause! The single, magnificent, sole end of all our utterance, our striving, and our very existence in this sacred work, is THIS:

That the Lord Jesus Christ Might Be Glorified Above All!

He alone deserves the sinner for whom he died.

He alone deserves the life of the person he has redeemed.

He alone deserves the reward for his suffering.

He alone will judge the living and the dead.

Therefore, let the entire purpose of our renewed lives be concentrated upon this single point of light: The exaltation of Christ! Let us speak, live, and suffer only that He may be great!