The New Attitude Letters, Part 1

Dear Reader,

As I previously wrote to you, I have recently attended the New Attitude conference in Louisville, Kentucky. I am so grateful for any prayers you may have offered to God over the course of the weekend. He was faithful to work powerfully in many lives, even in bringing many souls to Himself for the first time. I praise God for His work not only in my life this weekend, but in the lives of every person who attended the conference.

I find myself overwhelmed by the prospect of adequately summarizing the content of each of the messages which were so expertly delivered by men such as C.J. Mahaney, Joshua Harris, Eric Simmons, Mike Bullmore, Jeff Purswell, and Mark Dever. So daunting does this task appear to me that I feel I must decline the attempt and rather direct you to a far more reliable source. I first recommend the very messages themselves, as they are available already for download at the Sovereign Grace Store. If you prefer to read for now, summaries are available of the conference and of the messages at the New Attitude Blog along with pictures, of which I myself have scarce few. I pray that you would benefit greatly from each and every one of these messages as I certainly did.

This does not, however, mean that I will not be writing about my experience at New Attitude. Indeed that is the very reason I am writing you now. However, I will be writing about the conference from a more personal viewpoint. Rather than simply summarizing messages, which I may do in part, I will be sharing specifics from the messages that struck me as particularly meaningful, or as interestingly profound. I warn you now that as I write this series of letters, I will likely find myself on tangents only distantly related to things actually spoken of at New Attitude, though I will do my best to stay on topic.

I believe the best way for me to begin is to provide a glimpse of where I was coming from as I made the journey to Kentucky. My goal from this point onward is to share at least one thing from each session of New Attitude, but some messages may spread themselves over the course of several letters.

As I sat in the hotel room before the first main session, I wrote these words in my journal:

“I’m weary. It’s the beginning of New Attitude and I am already exhausted both physically and mentally. I come in need of You most, though, Father God. I place myself before You willing and expectant to what You would speak… I ask You to work beyond what I think I need and certainly beyond what I want… So I now profess that I do not come to this conference with my desires in mind, but with Yours…”

Though I had prayed in faith for God to speak and move powerfully, and I sincerely expected Him to do so, nothing could have prepared me for the waterfall of divine wisdom which soon began to flow into my life. I look forward to sharing the first drops with you as quickly as I may.

Until then,
Brian Whalen

Oops - off to New Attitude

Okay, so I have many pages in my notebook marked "BLOG!" that I still haven't gotten around to, and I'm off to New Attitude in Louisville, KY tomorrow morning. I promise to return with much to write about! Please be praying for the conference and everybody attending. I am confident that God is going to work mightily!

A Matter of Life and Death

It is impossible to read through a book written by C.J. Mahaney without having the cross of Jesus Christ stick right out in the middle of every single page. As I was re-reading Humility: True Greatness this afternoon I was made keenly aware of this fact. As I read of how James and John, disciples of Christ, went from being prideful individuals, asking Christ to recognize them for their greatness (Mark 10:37), to being humble servants of Christ, suffering for the sake of the Gospel, I was reminded of the transforming power of that Gospel. The same John who pridefully asked to be seated at Christ’s side later wrote of true humility and servanthood, “By this we know love, that Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16). These are the words of a man who had been transformed.

The same is true of every single one of Christ’s disciples. In Mark 9 we read of how the twelve were actually arguing who among them was the greatest. Jesus responds to this argument by instructing them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (v. 35). The disciples at this point were following Christ, but they weren’t living transformed lives. If the power of the Gospel is truly transforming, how could this be? The answer is because Christ had not yet died, and the entire Gospel had not yet come to pass. You say: obviously. And yes, it is obvious, but the implications are huge.

You see, it is not the life of Christ but the death of Christ that transforms us. Or more accurately, we are transformed by the death of Christ to the life of Christ. This is important because when we see this, we begin to understand more fully our sanctification. If we try to make Christ’s life the means of our pursuit of godliness, we are only trying by our own power to emulate His example. Rather, Christ’s life must be the goal of our pursuit, and Christ’s death must be, and can only be, the means by which we pursue that goal.

To understand more clearly this goal and the means by which we pursue it, let us quickly look at the life and death of Jesus Christ on this earth. Jesus, fully God and fully man, lived a perfect life. He was completely sinless, all the way up until the cross. I say until the cross because Jesus Christ was anything but sinless when He died. 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that Christ actually “became sin on our behalf.” R.C. Sproul writes that “God would have been more than unjust, He would have been diabolical to punish Jesus if Jesus had not first willingly taken on Himself the sins of the world. Once Christ had done that, once He volunteered to be the Lamb of God, laden with our sin, then He became the most grotesque and vile thing on this planet.” So Christ was not only not sinless at His death, He was the very essence of sin... our sin.

Does this then invalidate His previously perfect life? Certainly not! That He chose to be our sacrifice and take on the sins of the entire world does not in any way suggest that He Himself was ever less than perfect. He took our sins upon Himself; not one of the sins He was punished for was His own. So, with the perfect life of Christ as our goal, let us press on to be “conformed to the image of [Christ]” (Rom. 8:29), but let us never lose sight of His sacrifice, the means by which we are transformed.

It is in light of this truth that we can understand the concept of salvation by grace alone and not by works. We refer back to the example of the disciples. They had seen Christ’s life. They saw His example of what a godly life was to look like. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until Christ had died on the cross that they began to experience transformation. Before the cross, all their attempts to imitate Christ’s life were inadequate. After the cross, their reliance on its transforming power and grace was evident.

All Things Prayer

Issue #4 of Regenerate Our Culture is out today and the theme is prayer. With the National Day of Prayer coming up on Thursday, May 4, check out articles like David Ketter's "Lord, Teach Us To Pray" and Jennifer Duff's "Prayer in Schools." My article, "The Purpose of Nationwide Prayer," talks about one specific way all Christians can use this National Day of Prayer.

Sorry for the lack of posting over the past several, okay many, days. Finals are almost over, so I'll be back on a more regular basis soon.