Thursday, April 3, 2014

If the Fathers of the Church Were Alive Today, 2: Augustine

Judy and Dr. Augustine with their children, Adeodatus and Tiffany
Hard to believe that I have been blogging at Confessions.blogspot.com for thirteen years now. If you put together all those blogposts, they add up to the equivalent of thirteen books! That’s one whole book per year! Every one of them a best-seller, just as I said a few years back, “This is what I wish to do through confession in my heart before thee, and in my writings before many witnesses.” 
Just the other day, my wife Judy pointed out that I even before our ministry was so unfairly attacked by Pastor Pelagius, I had already said in my blog, again and again, “Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt.” One of my brother pastors told me that he was sitting next to Pelagius at a church growth conference in Houston when that post went up, and poor old Pelagius got so upset he threw his Ipad to the floor and jumped up and down on it!
Now what, indeed, does God command, first and foremost, except that we believe in him? This faith, therefore, he himself gives; so that it is well said to him, “Give what thou commandest.” Moreover, in those same blog posts, concerning my account of my conversion when God turned me to that faith I was laying waste through drinking alcoholically, the narration shows that I was given as a gift to the faithful and daily tears of Judy, who had been promised that I should not perish.
I certainly declared there that God by his grace turns men’s wills to the true faith when they are not only averse to it, but actually adverse. As for the other ways in which I sought God’s aid in my growth in perseverance, you either know or can review them as you wish by going to confessions.blogspot.com #prevenient grace

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