Leaving Beyond – Grounded In Scripture

Written by: April J. Buchanan

Some of our greatest sorrows and deepest troubles are not external, though we are often quick to ascribe them as such, but are self-inflicted. Many are eager to blame circumstances, other people, or providence itself, while seldom stopping to look rightly at their own hearts. And if a man continually determines that his troubles are always the fault of something outside himself, never learning to examine himself truthfully before God, he will continue in the very patterns that bring misery upon his own life, and his heart shall grow hardened all the more.

There are many doctrines that teach a man to obsess over external enemies by means not taught in Scripture. If a man can be made busy seeing a demon behind every bush, believing all his troubles to be caused by some external force, or imagining himself constantly opposed because of something supposedly wonderful within him, then such a man may become puffed up in his perception of himself while never becoming acquainted with the grace of God in true sanctification. He may never behold the beauty of God rightly, for he thinks himself so important that threats must surely surround him because of who he is.

Men naturally gravitate toward doctrines that are pleasing to the wicked and deceived heart. Broken and wounded men often seek refuge among those who know not true humility nor grace wrought deeply within, but rather among those who take the broken and leave them worse than they were before.

If God’s Word be not central and set plainly and rightly before the hearts of men, they shall never be wounded rightly nor healed truly. Instead, the wounds they bring, making themselves victims, are treated with a poison disguised as medicine. Slowly they die from it, yet become so intoxicated with its pleasures, promises, and praises that they no longer see themselves rightly and despise the very words that warn them.

It is impossible to grow in godliness, holiness, and that which is truly good and ordered if we first do not have Christ, and if we then do not continue looking into His perfect Word so as to see ourselves rightly. We must be humbled by the truth, repent of our sins, and be conformed more and more into the image of Christ as we desire to be like Him.

Oftentimes many professing Christians wish to be free from sin and its consequences, yet do not wish to reckon with the man who sows so much of the pain, sorrow, trouble, and disorder within his own life. But if we see ourselves rightly, we shall find enough corruption of our own to mourn over, a man needing to die daily, and a Savior all the more gracious and wonderful.

Dear saint, while there are indeed external threats, false teachers, wolves, temptations, and spiritual dangers of which Scripture warns and which must be dealt with biblically, our greatest danger remains within our own hearts. We must therefore attend daily to those gracious means God has appointed to keep us seeing Him rightly and ourselves rightly.

Providence is not against us. It is the beautiful outworking of God’s sovereign will in all things. Often our troubles are not external. They are our own doing, for which we must take responsibility, repent, and walk in truth.

“The heart knows its own bitterness” (Proverbs 14:10). And if sin, pride, self-will, and bitterness are not daily crucified, so that the exceeding beauty and truth of God’s Word may have its proper work within a tender and humbled heart, then that man shall continue in misery until he is humbled beneath the weight of his own waywardness. Either he shall be brought low and taught to forsake himself, or it shall be revealed that he was never born again at all, but merely clothed in the language and outward appearance of a faith he never truly possessed within.