This is what you must do to enter.  (Make sure not to skip step 3 so I know to enter you into the drawing!):

1.  For a single entry subscribe to this blog via either:

• Email (click here)
• Your RSS Blog Reader (click here)

2.  For an additional entry (doubling your chances to win) share about this giveaway via blog, twitter, or facebook.

3.  To confirm your entry, email me at 2mitesGiveaway@gmail.com.  If you are eligible for the additional entry, make sure to mention it in the body of the message.

There will be four winners who will each win one of the following books:

• Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl, by N.D. Wilson – The best book I have read all year.  I see and feel different after reading this book.  It was so helpful for my heart that I plan to read it again this summer!  A truly refreshing, deep, beautiful, God-encountering read that will help you feel the ground beneath your feet.
• The Meaning of the Pentateuch, by John Sailhamer – I’m working my way through this book in the midst of a very rigorous school semester… on the side.  It’s that good!  An extremely helpful resource for anyone who longs to understand the first 5 books of the bible.  632 pages of Pentateuchal bliss!
• John Calvin: A Heart For Devotion, Doctrine & Doxology, edited by Burk Parsons – Here is a great compilation of approachable and insightful essays from gifted reformed authors and scholars on Calvin’s life and doctrine.
• Finally Alive, by John Piper – This is an eye opening devotional and theological read about what it means to “be born again.”

The winners will be announced on Saturday April 3rd, 2010 (the day before Easter).

Therefore say, Thus says the Lord GOD: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered and I will give you the land of Israel.’ And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations.  And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them.  I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them.  And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.  But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord GOD.

This passage shows both the conditional and the unconditional nature of biblical salvation.  We have a condition. God says that those who will be saved “walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them.” Likewise God says “those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads.” Yet this conditional salvation, based on a heart of obedience, is far from the end of the story.  Underneath the obedient or disobedient heart there is a determining factor that is far more decisive. For some sinners, God will unconditionally “remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh,” a heart that expresses a love for God in what they do.  For others, God will leave to their own detestable things, and they will receive due recompense for what they have done.

There are conditions which must be met in order for one to be saved.  We would be foolish, in light of litanies of biblical passages, to deny conditionality.  However, it is also clear that we are unable, in ourselves, to meet any of the necessary conditions.  The only way any conditions for salvation can be met, is if they are given to us unconditionally by the volition of God, through the work of Christ in the gospel.

The reason why almost all men, and those that seem to be very miserable, love life: because they cannot bear to lose the sight of such a beautiful and lovely world – the ideas, that every moment whilst we live have a beauty that we take not distinct notice of, but bring a pleasure that, when we come to the trial, we had rather live in much pain and misery than lose.

-Jonathan Edwards, Beauty of the World

every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit as well as the sun in the heavens-that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses.  The creeping of an aphis over the rosebud is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.  He that believes in a God must believe this truth.  There is no standing point between this and atheism.  There is no half way between a mighty God that worketh all things by the sovereign counsel of his will and no God at all.  A God that cannot do as he pleases-a God whose will is frustrated, is not a God, and cannot be a God.  I could not believe in a God like that.

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon, God’s Providence, Sermons, Vol. 54.

(HT: Vitamin Z)

The same power that made things to be, that first moment that ever they were, is now exercised to make them to be this moment and is continually exercised to make them to be every moment that they are.  God’s preservation of the world is nothing but a continued act of creation… Whenever a body moves or a spirit thinks or wills, it is the infinite power and wisdom that assists it.  God has established the laws of nature, and he maintains them by his continual influence… When we see the sun shine, we see God’s present operation and that which is the effect of his former operation but that is from his immediate influence every moment.  So when we see the heavenly bodies move, or when we see the sea ebb and flow and the rivers run and the trees grow and animals move and act and we ourselves live and breathe, we behold God’s present work.  Whenever there are any natural actions or motions in things with life or without life, then God is present by his operation… When we look at the sun, moon, and stars above, or look upon the earth and the things below, if we look so much as upon the stones under us, we see infinite power now in exercise thereof at that place.  So if we look upon ourselves and see our hands or feet and the members, these have an existence because God is there and by an act of infinite power upholds them.

-Jonathan Edwards, God is Everywhere Present

This globe of the earth, if we attempt to conceive of it, appears a thing of a mighty bulk. Some other of the heavenly hosts are immensely greater in bulk. The sun is a body in comparison of which the earth is but a little speck, but this is as nothing in comparison of the whole universe or only of the visible part of the universe, which far exceeds our comprehension. It is almost beyond the power of numbers to express according to the certain discoveries of learned men. It must needs be of an amazing extent, and how much farther it extends than has been yet discovered. How far beyond the remotest parts of it that can be seen by the naked eye or assisted by artificial helps we can’t tell. But this we know, that it can’t be infinite.

An infinite thing can’t be made up of finite things. However large it is, it doesn’t come at all the nearer to infinite for that. A pebble or a grain of sand is as near infinite as the world is, but God is infinite.

- Jonathan Edwards, God Is Everywhere Present

“Together with your parents who love you dearly and this people who care about the outcome of your faith, I dedicate you to God, surrendering together with them all worldly claim upon your life in the hope that you will belong wholly to the Lord, forever.”

May you come to celebrate the gospel of our God with all of your heart, and express it in all that you do.  May it color the way you see the world.  May God be your treasure and your delight, and may you settle for nothing less.  And when you do settle for something less, may you humbly return to your gracious Father who gave his Son to pay your debt and take you in as his own, and may it cause you to glory in the gospel all the more.

Since Jesus secured my pardon and absorbed the Father’s wrath on my behalf so that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” how does that impact my longing for approval, my tendency to be controlling, and my fear of the unknown?

In other words, how does the finished work of Christ satisfy my deepest daily needs so that I can experience the liberating power of the gospel every day and in every way?

If you’re a preacher, then God has called you to help others make the connection between Christ’s finished work and their daily life. To do this, we must unveil and unpack the truth of the gospel from every biblical text we preach in such a way that it exposes both the idols of our culture and the idols of our hearts.

(HT: Vitamin Z)