"Lord, make my life a miracle."

I really like this excerpt from the diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge (Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge):

Walking around St. James' Park I thought intensely of the difference between Tolstoy and St. Augustine. Tolstoy tried to achieve virtue, and particularly continence, through the exercise of his will; St. Augustine saw that, for man, there is no virtue without a miracle. Thus St. Augustine's asceticism brought him serenity, and Tolstoy's anguish, conflict, and the final collapse of his life into tragic buffoonery."

"No virtue without a miracle." That's worth repeating. No virtue without a miracle.

I found the Muggeridge quotation at Ray Ortlund's blog. I'm repeating Ray's thoughts here because they simply cannot be improved upon by the likes of me. Ray wrote:

Authentic Christianity is more than a mechanism for intensified will-power over our temptations. Authentic Christianity is miracle through-and-through.

And he wrote:

Every one of us is so massively ordinary. Still more, we are sinners who break out in a rash at the approach of God our only true Friend. But the good news is that that Friend works miracles of love in ordinary, evil people who don't even want him around, people who continually oscillate between self-hating moral failure and self-exalting moral success. The miraculous virtue he creates comes through a Spirit-imparted bright new awareness and embrace of Jesus Christ crucified for sinners.

And he wrote:

The questions I never stop asking are, Is that miracle my experience today, right now? If not, how can I get back into that zone? Is that miracle our corporate experience at church? If not, how must we adjust to stay in that zone where God, God, God is at work with his unmistakable power?

I just don't want anything else. Only having correct doctrine, important as that is, and biblical structures and attractive programs, etc. -- reducing Christianity to the humanly manageable is unendurable to me. The miracle is too desirable. Lord, make my life a miracle. Make my church a miracle.

Please excuse the extensive quoting of another blogger, but these are very special words, special insights. I wish I could shout this from the rooftops! But at least I can put it on my blog.