Our Hearts. We are a people who are proud of our soundness of thought. We soundly argue that sound thoughts ought to lead to sound lives. But we, like the rest of the church, despite having portions of our minds transformed, are conformed to the patterns of this world. We are haughty, proud, and such, we know leads to falls. In our rightful pursuit of the crown rights of King Jesus, in seeking after His kingdom, we have neglected to pursue His righteousness, or worse, we have defined righteousness as the ability to quote obscure theologians from centuries past.
Until more of us can even name the fruit of the Spirit than can name the five points of Calvinism, we will continue to affirm the Confession, while confessing that we live like our neighbors. Until we stop sneering at piety, until we are more interested in dying to self than we are in ascending to power, we will remain impotent. Until we learn that more important than a well-ordered worldview is a view of the world unhindered by the logs in our eyes, we will remain the blind leading the blind. Reformation begins within each of us, as we pick up our cross and follow Him. It extends from there to the family, as we wash our lives with the water of the Word, as we raise His children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. From there it reaches the church, where we together are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people. Only when we behave as sojourners and pilgrims will we then reach the world, that when they speak against us as evildoers, they may, by our good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation. All His enemies will never be made a footstool, until we who are His friends first put to death our own flesh. That's why what needs to be Reformed is us...
