Ride Your Pony

“Before Eve noticed that the fruit was good, she had already, sinfully, begun to distrust God’s goodness.” —Peter Leithart, Heroes, pg. 58

“Your walk talks and your talk talks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks,” or so the old saying goes. “When we think,” says E.F. Schumacher, “we do not just think: we think with ideas” (Sire, How to Read Slowly, pg.14). And as we have seen, “ideas have consequences.”

It is a proven fact that Matthew was right when he said, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (12:34). We mull over things before we say them. We hold councils, debate imaginary people, or argue with those who have done us wrong all before opening our mouths. Ideas, beliefs, prejudices will manifest themselves in some way unless the heart is dealt with first. We will never be able to truly repent until we can see that surface sins have roots. It’s that one vulnerable moment when we allow ourselves to believe that God’s not moving quickly enough or in the right direction so we must be commissioned to take charge. We run headfirst into the twin sins of pride and unbelief. Taking such a plunge in no way diminishes the sovereignty or deity of God as eternal truth, but the acknowledgment within our own hearts manifests our disbelief in His authority by the consequences of such an idea.

What we say and what we do may be two different things. But it is the maturation and correlation of practice and principle that is the spiritual journey towards a right understanding of God’s sovereignty.