#halfironmantraining2017

[thetonycross]

Just a quick lunch swim at one awesome pool. This thing seems to go on forever. Hello friend. #pool #50m #laneswim #lunchswim #halfironmantraining2017 #halfmarathontraining #im703gulfcoast #teamdefendthefatherless #trilife #tridadio #training #triathlon

[thetonycross]

In this life of sin and pain, joy is embattled. Just like faith. And Paul says to Timothy, “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). So it is with joy. We must work for it and fight for it. Paul said to the Corinthians, “We work with you for your joy” (2 Corinthians 1:24). How then shall we fight for joy? Here are 15 pointers. Realize that authentic joy in God is a gift. Realize that joy must be fought for relentlessly. And don’t be put off by the paradox of these first two pointers! Resolve to attack all known sin in your life, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Learn the secret of gutsy guilt — how to fight like a justified sinner. Realize that the battle is primarily a fight to see — to see God for who he is. Meditate on the Word of God day and night. Pray earnestly and continually for open heart-eyes and an inclination for God. Learn to preach to yourself rather than listen to yourself. Spend time with God-saturated people who help you see God and fight the fight. Be patient in the night of God’s seeming absence. Get the rest, exercise, and proper diet that your body was designed by God to have. Make a proper use of God’s revelation in nature — take a walk in the woods. Read great books about God and biographies of great saints. Do the hard and loving thing for the sake of others (your verbal witness and deeds of mercy). Get a global vision for the cause of Christ, and pour yourself out for the unreached. Every one of those has Bible verses to support it. If you want to see them, they are in the book, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. From “How Shall We Fight for Joy?” Copied from #solidjoys by #desiringgod #joy #victory #findingjoy #joyinchrist #christ #jesuspaiditall #onlyjesus #byhisstripes #fightingsin #godswill #godsplan #godsword #godspeace #tridadio #trilife #halfironmantraining2017 #ironmangulfcoast #running #spiritualfitness

[thetonycross]

We need righteousness to be acceptable to God. But we don’t have it. What we have is sin. So, God has what we need and don’t deserve — righteousness; and we have what God hates and rejects — sin. What is God’s answer to this situation? His answer is Jesus Christ, the Son of God who died in our place and bore our condemnation. “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he [God] condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). Whose flesh bore the condemnation? His. Whose sins were being condemned? Ours. This is the great exchange. Here it is again in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” God lays our sins on Christ and punishes them in him. And in Christ’s obedient death, God fulfills and vindicates his righteousness and imputes (credits) it to us. Our sin on Christ; his righteousness on us. We can hardly stress too much that Christ is God’s answer to our greatest problem. It is all owing to Christ. You can’t love Christ too much. You can’t think about him too much, or thank him too much, or depend upon him too much. All our forgiveness, all our justification, all our righteousness is in Christ. This is the gospel — the good news that our sins are laid on Christ and his righteousness is laid on us, and that this great exchange becomes ours not by works but by faith alone. “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). Here is the good news that lifts burdens and gives joy and makes strong. From “When the Lord Does Not Take Account of Sin” copied from #solidjoys by #desiringgod #sin #seperation #onlyjesus #grace #mercy #byhisstripes #attonment #faith #faithalone #trilife #triathlon #tridadio #bethechange #dadlife #instarunners #halfirontraining #halfironmantraining2017 #ironmangulfcoast

[thetonycross]

What that means is that the new covenant, promised most explicitly in Jeremiah 31 and 32, was secured and sealed by the blood of Jesus. The new covenant comes true because Jesus died to establish it. And what does the new covenant secure for all who belong to Christ? Perseverance in faith to the end. Listen to Jeremiah 32:40, “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.” The everlasting covenant — the new covenant — includes the unbreakable promise: “I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.” They may not. They will not. Christ sealed this covenant with his blood. He purchased your perseverance. If you are persevering in faith today, you owe it to the blood of Jesus. The Holy Spirit, who is working in you to preserve your faith, honors the purchase of Jesus. God the Spirit works in us what God the Son obtained for us. The Father planned it. Jesus bought it. The Spirit applies it — all of them infallibly. God is totally committed to the eternal security of his blood-bought children. From “Eternal Security Is a Community Project” copied from #solidjoys by #desiringgod #gospel #resurrectionsunday #restinchrist #godsplan #godswill #godsword #jesuspaiditall #instatriathlete #instarunners #tridadio #trilife #ironmangulfcoast #halfironmantraining2017

[thetonycross]

The problem with the church today is not that there are too many people who are passionately in love with heaven. The problem is not that professing Christians are retreating from the world, spending half their days reading Scripture and the other half singing about their pleasures in God all the while indifferent to the needs of the world. The problem is that professing Christians are spending ten minutes reading Scripture and then half their day making money and the other half enjoying and repairing what they spend it on. It is not heavenly-mindedness that hinders love. It is worldly-mindedness that hinders love, even when it is disguised by a religious routine on the weekend. Where is the person whose heart is so passionately in love with the promised glory of heaven that he feels like an exile and a sojourner on the earth? Where is the person who has so tasted the beauty of the age to come that the diamonds of the world look like marbles, and the entertainment of the world is empty, and the moral causes of the world are too small because they have no view to eternity? Where is this person? He is not in bondage to the Internet or eating or sleeping or drinking or partying or fishing or sailing or putzing around. He is a free man in a foreign land. And his one question is this: How can I maximize my enjoyment of God for all eternity while I am an exile on this earth? And his answer is always the same: by doing the labors of love. Only one thing satisfies the heart whose treasure is in heaven: doing the works of heaven. And heaven is a world of love! It is not the cords of heaven that bind the hands of love. It is the love of money and leisure and comfort and praise — these are the cords that bind the hands of love. And the power to sever these cords is Christian hope. I say it again with all the conviction that lies within me: it is not heavenly-mindedness that hinders love on this earth. It is worldly-mindedness. And therefore the great fountain of love is the powerful, freeing confidence of Christian hope. From “The Fruit of Hope: Love”. via #solidjoys #desiringgod #prayer #hope #notofthisworld #halfironmantraining2017 #trilife #christalone

[thetonycross]

Never reduce Christianity to a matter of demands and resolutions and willpower. It is a matter of what we love, what we delight in, what tastes good to us. When Jesus came into the world, humanity was split according to what they loved. “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light” (John 3:19). The righteous and the wicked are separated by what they delight in — the revelation of God or the way of the world. But someone may ask: How can I come to delight in the word of God? My answer would be twofold: 1) pray for new tastebuds on the tongue of your heart; 2) meditate on the staggering promises of God to his people. The same psalmist who said, “How sweet are your words to my taste” (Psalm 119:103), said earlier, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). He prayed, because to have holy tastebuds on the tongue of the heart is a gift of God. No man naturally hungers for and delights in God’s wisdom. But when you have prayed, indeed while you pray, meditate on the benefits God promises to his people and on the joy of having almighty God as your helper now and eternal hope. Who would not delight to read a book, the reading of which would change one from chaff to a cedar of Lebanon, from a Texas dust bowl to a Hawaiian orchard? Nobody deep down wants to be chaff — rootless, weightless, useless. All of us want to draw strength from some deep river of reality and become fruitful, useful people. That river of reality is the word of God, and all the great saints have been made great by it. From “Delighting in the Law of God” copied & shared via #solidjoys by #desiringgod #godsword #meditateongodsword #delightinginthelord #wordifgod #bible #infalliblewordofgod #treasureGodsword #readthebible #compass #halfmarathontraining #halfironmantraining2017 #tridadio #cycling #triathlon #instarunners #running

[thetonycross]

A great obstacle to serving the Lord, especially among the young, is the fear of rejection and opposition. All kinds of thoughts enter the mind about how some people might not like the way I do it. People might disagree or be offended. I might make a mistake and get criticized. The fear of man is a great hindrance to ministry. So God says, Don’t fear, because I will be with you and I will deliver you. God’s presence and approval is more valuable than all the accolades of men. And God says that in and through all your troubles, I will deliver you. You will triumph in the end. You will be more than a conqueror. And the same thing is promised to all of us in Christ Jesus today: “[God] has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?’” (Hebrews 13:5–6) “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31) So God said to Jeremiah, and God says to younger people today whom he is calling to serve him, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’” (Jeremiah 1:7). Why? Because your life is rooted in the unshakable, sovereign purposes of God. You have been chosen and consecrated and formed and appointed for a great purpose. Because God’s authority, not your own, is behind your going and your speaking. And because God himself will be with you to deliver you in all your trials. From Do Not Say, “I Am Only a Youth” copied and borrowed from the devotional #solidjoys by #desiringgod #youth #donotfear #fearofman #snare #truth #godgoesahead #godsplan #godsword #training #tridadio #trilife #ironmangulfcoast #halfironmantraining2017 #instarunners #running

[thetonycross]

When the alarm went off at 4:59 this morning, I had a split-second thought of the utter realness of dying and standing before an utterly holy God with nothing to commend me but my own life. The horror of it was only surpassed by the flash of reality: Jesus Christ died for this moment. Then it was gone. My immediate sense was: This is the essence of what happens whenever someone is converted. This is how Jesus Christ is discovered to be real. This is how a person comes to cherish the love of Christ. Suddenly, for the first time, they see and feel with the eyes of their heart the undeniable reality of having to meet God with a guilty conscience. The impact of that vision is devastating. It causes them to know that their only hope is a Mediator. Standing alone, with nothing to commend them but their own sinful life, they are utterly lost. If there is any hope for eternity in the presence of this God, we will need a Redeemer, a Substitute, a Savior. At this point of terrible crisis, nothing shines forth but the gospel of Jesus Christ, “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). In the split second before he was there, I was granted to see the all-engulfing darkness and horror of the judgment — not a theological inference, not a merely rational conclusion, not a mere thought, but a glimpse with the inward eye full of knowing and feeling and certainty. Our God is a consuming fire. He will not look upon evil. We are utterly lost. My guilt was so huge, so real, so unquestioned in that split second that there is not even the remotest possibility of making excuses. It was sudden and all-enveloping and infinitely hopeless. In this instant Jesus is all that matters. O Christ! O Christ! Can my heart contain the wave of gratitude?! O Gift of God, my desperate and only Need! From “From a Pastor’s Journal” #solidjoys by #desiringgod #gospel #jesussaves #trustingod #byhisstripes #grace #mercy #trilife #tridadio #triathlon #halfironmantraining2017 #ironmangulfcoast #running #training #spiritualfitness #godissovereign