Oh to be set by God in an advancing direction, to be a predictable person. Would you like that to be said of you, by your husband, by your wife, by your children, by people around you? He or she is predictable. Whatever happens he or she will be facing the same direction, advancing towards the Lord. Something happens that might be expected to shatter you. Will it leave you all in a dither, not knowing where to go or what to do? Oh no, he is not like that, your wife will say. Or she is not like that, the husband will say. He, she will come through this for the glory of God, seeking what is right, facing the right direction.
There is a new evangelicalism, a new Calvinism. What is the great characterising feature of this new Calvinism? You have well-meaning teachers and they want to teach the right things on the whole, they want to teach the doctrines of grace, they want to teach the doctrines of the Scripture, but they do not want to be so careful with practice. They are very loose on behaviour, and what you do, and what kind of methods the church uses and so on. They want to allow all the worldliness to come in and the worldly forms of worship, the New Calvinism. They have separated the word and the work, the doctrine and the practice. They say proudly, I stick to the doctrine, but what about the practice? Both are equally important. Both are the traditions that the apostle mentions. So today, people say, I teach, I am a reformed teacher but I do not take the Lord’s day seriously. That is terrible. Practice does not matter, you see.