The Most Helpful Spiritual Insights I’ve Found

I HEARD A PREACHER, when I was still high-school age, tell the story of another preacher of a time long past, who said, “When I was a young preacher, I organized all the Bible truth I knew into 300 doctrines. By the time I was in my middle age, I had narrowed that list down to just 30. But now I’m an old man—and now I have only two doctrines left: “I am a great sinner—and Christ is a great Savior.”

Now, I’m not sure that this story is genuine—that it actually happened. But there’s much truth in it, nonetheless. And the final words—”I am a great sinner—and Christ is a great Savior,” are definitely genuine. They were spoken by John Newton to his friend William Wilburforce, near the end of Newton’s life. I described the circumstances surrounding this statement back in June, in a post on my other blog—Right End of the Telescope.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on what the most important spiritual lessons are that I’ve learned through the years I’ve been here on Planet Earth. What ideas or insights have helped me most?

So for a while now here on this blog, I want to begin putting down in writing those key “big” ideas that have most benefited me in my own walk with God.

The first will be the twin concepts of “You in Christ” and “Christ in you.” The former is my only hope of salvation. The latter is my only hope of becoming more like Jesus. The theologians might call the first, justification—and the second, sanctification…but I’m not overly fond of those big ten-dollar terms. I need something practical, not just theoretical—something personal, not academic.

The Apostle Paul has some amazing, absolutely stunning things to say about those twin themes. So in my next post here soon, I’ll take a look at what I’ve learned from Paul—and also from some preachers and writers who have helped me see Paul’s writing more clearly—and focus on the first theme: “You in Christ.”

This exercise is primarily for my own benefit—to put on paper (or in this case, on a monitor!) where my thinking is at this moment in time. But you are certainly free to read over my shoulder…and if you wish, to weigh in with your own thoughts.

An Aroma From the Oven

SO FAR IN MY LIFE, NO ONE has ever said to me, “I just can’t stand the smell of home-made bread baking.”

Of the many aromas we human beings encounter in life, this one rates right up there. Each of us has his or her personal list of most-pleasant aromas or scents, of course.

Mine would include lilac and lavender, jasmine and honeysuckle, fresh-cut sawdust and new-mown hay, cinnamon rolls, freesia and fresh mint, sandalwood incense, the salty ocean breeze, roses, maple syrup, the air after a quick rain on dusty ground, the smell of rubber in a tire store (probably a guy thing), a smoky campfire, an evergreen forest, and apple-spice—for starters.

But the aroma of home-made bread, for sure, is one that most everybody has on their list of favorites.

Home-made bread. The “staff of life.” Wholesome, natural, filled with good stuff. And when you’re hungry—nothing better.

Beggars—and bread. Let’s be clear from the outset what the bread is.

It’s not morality or theology or ecclesiology or psychology or any other “ology” (though all of these can be related to what bread really is.

Bread is what you find in John 6:

And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. . . . I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” Verses 35, 51, NKJV.

I’d like to suggest that God put an inborn hunger for this Bread into each of us. We can ignore that hunger, of course. Or we can try to satisfy it with something else. But it’s there, that hunger.

When you eat store-bought bread—filled with all those nutritious additives and preservatives and dough conditioners and who knows what—it’s just not the same as the real thing: fresh home-made bread.

And nothing can take the place of the real Bread of life: Jesus. Nothing else can satisfy that inborn spiritual hunger as He does.

What you find of the Bread, please share. I’ll do the same.

One Beggar to Another

FIRST POST…NEW BLOG. To see my reasons for launching it, see the page above: “About Beggars and Bread.” More posts to come…

I also invite you to peruse the left-hand column for other blogs, websites, and resources I’ve found spiritually helpful.