Fully Alive in Christ!

Becoming Fully Alive

2011-07-03T21:09:00.005-05:00

God deeply desires your happiness. It is important to Him. It is so important that He is willing to do the work needed to give it to you. Jesus talked repeatedly about wanting us to experience joy to the fullest in John 15:11, John 16:24, and John 17:13. I previously posted a list of Scriptures that show that Jesus Christ came to fill us up and give us abundant life. It was part of His mission. And the number of times that the disciples of Jesus and the writers of the New Testament talked about pursuing their joy and the joy of all believers is amazing. See the lists here and here. Joy is a central part of what Christianity is about.

I know many people struggle to find this joy. I certainly did. For a long time, even as a Christian, I thought that believing in Christ and following Him were something we did because it was the right thing to do and because only those who believe will be saved. I understood I needed salvation; I had done many things I was ashamed of, and I got the message that I was a sinner in need of forgiveness. That made perfect sense. But I hadn't received the message that God wanted me to come to Him not just to escape the consequences of sin, but to find deep, lasting joy as well. During that time, I found my joy in other things instead: dating, friends, books, movies, games, music, etc.

Eventually we all find that the pleasures of these things still leave us wanting more. We're never filled for long. When the things in life that are good don't keep us satisfied, we end up looking for satisfaction in places that aren't good. As C.S. Lewis has pointed out (see second to last paragraph here), most sin is just our effort to find pleasure in places and ways that go against what God intended for us. We are always trying to satisfy the hunger in our hearts with something.

After making plenty of mistakes and trying many different ways to find satisfaction, I finally discovered a book called Desiring God, by John Piper (free PDF). The claim that Piper made seemed too good to be true: that God wanted us to be fully satisfied and experience deep pleasure. I also could not understand how I could be satisfied completely by God alone. I thought that anyone who could be completely satisfied just by "religious" experience must be an unusual person without the typical human appetites. But I gave the book a try, and more importantly, I tried doing what Piper advised: I tried putting my trust in God not just to save my soul, but to be my satisfaction as well. And I found that it worked. I also found that the good pleasures in life weren't things I had to give up; instead, I could enjoy them more fully and freely because I was already satisfied inside. I didn't have to cling to them. In the next posts I'll share what happened in my life as I tried seeking satisfaction in God.

Why Is God So Hard to Find? (Part 2)

2011-06-26T04:31:00.003-05:00

Continuing what I started in the last post, here are two more possible reasons God may seem distant or absent when He really is trying to help us:

3. It may be that we've started taking God for granted. Perhaps we've stopped putting the highest priority on seeking Him. We aren't rebelling against Him or living a double life, but we've just begun to be a bit casual about our spiritual life. We don't really feel like we need to read the Bible as often, or we let other things get in the way of church or fellowship much more than we used to. What can God do but remind us how much we need Him? If we've started to take the ability to draw water from the well for granted, then not being able to get it when we want it will restore our appreciation for how important it is in a hurry. If you have to dig down deep and toil to get the water flowing again, you will not soon take it for granted.

As a severe example of this, I have been struck by how often this theme was demonstrated in the Old Testament. God warned Israel over and over that when things started going well for them and they were prospering, they would begin to forget Him. And that's just what happened. As long as Israel was comfortable, they would often grow careless in their relationship with God. But if they were in danger and suffering, they quickly remembered Him and called upon Him. The same is true for us. We have to remember that we always need to be in close intimacy with God, just as the branches depend completely upon the vine for life. (John 15:1-9.)

4. One more possible explanation is that we just haven't taken sin seriously enough or fully appreciated God's call to holiness. We may have turned our backs on some serious sins because of our faith, and we may be actively resisting temptation, but perhaps there are areas in our hearts that we haven't confronted completely. For example, we may have worked hard against greed or lust, but failed to address the underlying problem of self-pity. As we seek God and struggle to find that deep communion with Him again, He may reveal to us areas where we aren't taking His call to holiness as seriously as we should. Holiness is a lifelong pursuit, but the fact that we will not complete it until we leave this life behind should not discourage us from pursuing it diligently.

The Scripture reminds us that we need to take this seriously every day: "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." (Hebrews 3:13.) Paul says: "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God." (2 Corinthians 7:1.) And although we find it difficult now, a deep struggle for our relationship with God is often necessary to cause us to take the life of faith seriously: "Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God." (1 Peter 4:1-2.) At the end, that's what we want: to live for and be satisfied with God. And God will graciously spur us on in order to get us there.

Why Is God So Hard to Find? (Part 1)

2011-06-26T03:32:00.009-05:00

In the last post I explained why we need to keep on seeking God and not give up, even when we feel we're coming up empty. This post and the next one are meant to consider some of the reasons why God can seem so distant or absent. I compared this feeling in the last post with a well that is no longer giving water. But why would God stop refreshing us when we come to Him in need?

It would be one thing if you were stubbornly sinning, and trying to have a deep relationship with God without confessing that sin and turning away from it. That's an obvious problem. But I am assuming here that you've already searched your heart and there isn't any stubborn refusal to confess sin. You simply can't find a reason for why God suddenly seems distant or absent. You know you're not perfect, but you've been seeking Him and trying sincerely to follow Him. So what happened?

Here's some of what my experience and the Scriptures have taught me:

1. Perhaps, without knowing it, you've only been skimming the shallowness of the water, and there are deep wells below that which will refresh you beyond anything you've ever experienced. God may be saying: "I love you completely, and I will never give up on you. But this living at 75% of your fullness must stop. Dig deep and experience me fully so that you will live your life with freedom and boldness!" God knows you won't dig down and find the deep satisfaction waiting for you unless He leaves you no choice. As long as the shallow water is enough to get by on, we're likely to just skim it off and try to make it through the day. One way I've realized this in my life is in reading the Bible much more deeply and intensely than ever before. Where I might have read a passage four or five times, and thought I grasped it well enough, deep concentration and prayer have often revealed truth and wisdom in the words that I never saw before.

If reading the Bible or praying aren't fulfilling your need for God's spirit like they used to, and you double your efforts to press in and experience God, you often find self-awareness or knowledge of God you never had before. Some of the Scriptures that have impressed themselves on me during times like this have become the most precious words in the Bible to me. They encourage me more than just about anything else, and they often encourage me when nothing else will. Imagine if God stopped up your well and left you parched with thirst, so you would dig feverishly down and down, because He knew there was a magnificent ruby buried down there. When you find something as precious and valuable as those Scriptures have become to me, all the dryness and pain seem well worth it. Suddenly you find that God has so much more to give you to sustain you and bring you joy than you ever realized.

2. Another possibility is that God is preparing you for something much more important and more significant than you've ever experienced before. Instead of your relationship with God being off track, it may be that what you've been doing in your relationship with God has been precisely right, and thus you've matured and grown in your faith. Now you're prepared to handle something greater than you ever imagined. God doesn't call us to lounge about in His courts. He calls us to take up the battle against darkness and bring light to those still enslaved to sin. In order to meet the challenge, He knows you need to have access to a much greater store of faith and confidence than you ever had before. As Hebrews 12:7-11 describes, God is treating you as an heir and training you to stand firm in righteousness.

If You're Dry, Don't Give Up Digging

2011-06-25T15:36:00.016-05:00

What do you do when your spiritual life is dry and parched? When you go to the Bible, or you go to prayer, and for some reason you're just not getting anything from it? What do you do when the source of your comfort and hope seems to have dried up just when you desperately need it?

Let's say you lived in a place where all your water came from an old-fashioned well with a bucket and pulley. Every time you needed water, you would go to the well and let down the bucket, and take it back up full of fresh water. But one day you go to the well and let down the bucket, and when it comes back up there's nothing in it. It's empty. You try again and again, jerking the rope and making sure the bucket is really going all the way to the bottom, but still nothing.

At this point, do you give up and go start digging another well? Probably not. Why? Because it took a lot of work to dig this well down deep, and you've been drawing good water from it for years. It makes a lot more sense to get down there to the source that you've always drawn from and to find out what the problem is. It may be that something got into the well and blocked it up, or it may be that you need to dig down deeper to restore a good flow of water.

This is the same problem we have sometimes in our faith. Where we used to find comfort and encouragement after 10 or 15 minutes of reading the Scriptures or prayer, all of a sudden we find that even pressing on for a half-hour doesn't seem to make a difference in how we feel. We still come away dry and disappointed. But the source of life is still there. The refreshing hope and encouragement you felt in the past came from God, and God is still waiting behind His Word and is still waiting to be found in prayer. He has promised that we will find Him when we seek Him with all our heart. (Jeremiah 29:12-14.) He has promised to never leave you or forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5-6.) He never lies or changes His mind. And Jesus told us to keep on seeking God, for He will not delay long in answering our cries.

So keep on digging. Even when you're feeling dry, put your trust in the promises He made to us and keep on seeking Him. If a half-hour doesn't help, then find a way to make it an hour. If you don't find comfort on one day, keep on seeking Him the next day. Dry spells happen, and God always has a good reason for them (I'll talk about that in the next posts). Even so, they don't last if you keep on digging and seeking God to satisfy your thirst. God always intends every dry spell to lead to a closer, better relationship with Him:

For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

(2 Corinthians 1:8-10.)

They Took Offense at Scripture

2010-11-04T02:07:00.005-05:00

As I pondered the title that came to me for the last post, I realized the passage of Scripture it comes from is a good illustration of people rejecting the truth from Jesus because it was foreign to what they already "knew" about spirituality and reality. If you read John 6:35-69, you see Jesus providing a radical teaching to people that caused many of them to be offended. Jesus said to them: "Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?" (John 6:61-62). In other words, if you react that way to this level of truth, how will you handle it if some of the glory of heaven itself is opened to you?

Scripture tells us that many of the disciples of Jesus turned back after this and no longer walked with Him. But the twelve remained, because as Peter said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." (John 6:68-69). By God's grace, they had the humility and dependence to recognize that only Jesus could help them understand real truth. If they rejected what He said because it alarmed them, they had nowhere else to turn for essential knowledge. And because they stayed and did not give up on His words, presumably they had the chance to get beyond the initial reaction and learn more fully what He meant. John even went on to write the very Gospel in which these teachings are recorded, and it stands as one of the deepest theological writings in the New Testament.

Do You Take Offense At This?

2010-11-04T01:56:00.003-05:00

Can you feel it? The defensive attitude that creeps up in our hearts and minds as soon as the suggestion is raised that our understanding is very limited and flawed? It responds promptly with all sorts of objections, attempting to protect the belief that we are pretty good at figuring things out. It just can't be true that all the things we have taken the time to learn are that limited. We can't really be as ignorant of the world as children are! What a terrifying thought! Their knowledge leaves them so helpless and dependent, and so easy to take advantage of. We've matured far beyond that. We know much more about how the world works now. We've put a lot of thought into our beliefs and convictions and tested them many times.

Yes, and no. It's obviously true that we know more than children do. We find it very easy to correct them and we find their innocent efforts to understand things to be cute and even amusing. But we seem to have got hold of the idea that we are very far advanced in understanding now, and that there is not a lot of distance between us and very mature knowledge compared to the distance between us and what a child knows. That's our crucial mistake. We think that when we approach the Bible or learn to know God, we are adults. But when you consider how far above us in every way the Lord of all creation must be, then when you compare our relationship to children with what He knows, it makes us much more like the six-year-old explaining to his baby brother how he thinks the toilet works.

All our knowledge is valuable, and the time we took to gain it was well spent, but there is a great deal that still needs to be corrected and added to. The complexity of what we haven't learned yet is amazing. We have also gained a number of flawed ideas along the way just as we've gained true ideas. We may not like the realization that we are children in our understanding of reality, but it's true. There is so much that we don't know about the spiritual life that we depend heavily on someone to protect us and to provide for our needs just as children depend on others. If we don't approach God with the same attitude of dependence and trust that a child has for the parent that provides the child with the right food and warns the child that the stove is hot, we are not going to learn very much and we will get burned a lot.

Part of the reason we resist this is a lack of trust in God. Recognizing our own limitations forces us to depend on God, which is what the life of faith is all about. But we tend to feel threatened by the idea that we need to be dependent on anyone or anything - self-reliance and individuality are modern idols. That is why, in embracing our relationship with God, we have to learn to trust Him with everything instead of thinking we have life under control. We need to let go of the illusion that our knowledge is enough, and put our hope in God that He will take care of everything if we just listen to Him. It's Matthew 6:31-33 in action - seek first the kingdom of God, and He will provide everything you need.

We Must Think Like Children in Order to Learn from God

2010-11-04T01:32:00.006-05:00

How does receiving the kingdom of heaven like little children change our thinking? Instead of starting with the assumption that what we already think we know is correct and reliable, we ought to start with putting our trust in God to teach us. A child has to be carefully guided by a parent in many ways every day in order to correct childlike misunderstandings and ideas that come from limited knowledge. Many things are simply beyond the child's understanding until the child grows older. So the child has to trust that the parent really knows what he or she is talking about. The child has to depend on the parent's knowledge as true and superior to what the child thinks.

If we honored God with this same sort of trust, then we would start with the conviction that what God tells us is correct and reliable. We would start by taking it as certain that what is written in the Bible is really true and accurate. If we really trust God as our Father and believe He tells us the truth, then we should be open to having our previous beliefs and convictions changed and refined by the more accurate and mature information in Scripture, instead of expecting Scripture to just fit in with what we already "know."

This is the way the fathers of the Church thought of it. Consider the way Paul talked to some of those he led: "But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh." (1 Corinthians 3:1-3). [That is, you are still thinking with a mind set on the flesh instead of a renewed mind.] And the author of Hebrews said: "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil." (Hebrews 5:12-14). We are genuinely children in our relationship to God, and it is vanity for us to think of ourselves as anything else.

The Difference in Having a Christian Mind

2010-11-04T00:38:00.005-05:00

Here's an example of the difference in having a mind renewed by Christ. One of the major breakthroughs I've experienced in studying the Bible and living life in Christ is the realization that people generally start with the wrong attitude toward understanding God. We tend to approach what's in the Bible with an attitude of confidence in what we already think we know about the world, and when any verse of the Bible or any doctrine seems to be in tension with what we think we already know, we look at it suspiciously and mumble, "Wait, now how can that be true?" In fairness, many of us try hard to examine these things and sort them out instead of just giving up. But often the problem is not with what the Scripture seems to say, but with the assumptions we are already holding on to.

If we are going to try to encounter and learn to understand an infinite God, who exceeds the universe and existed before time, common sense should tell us that He is going to blow away our expectations and be very different from what we suppose. It would be silly for us to think that when we learned anything about God, it would be just like things we already knew and we wouldn't have to correct any of our prior ideas. If we are to know the Lord at all, we are going to have to prepare ourselves for the fact that much of what we think we know will be shown to be very incomplete and flawed.

I wonder if this is what Jesus meant when He said that unless we receive the kingdom of God like little children, we will never enter it. (Matthew 18:1-4; Mark 10:14-15; Luke 18:16-17). Some interpreters conclude this means we have to receive the kingdom of God with the same helpless dependence with which children depend on parents for food and protection – we must do it relying entirely on God by trust, instead of thinking we can manage it somewhat on our own. I believe that's true, and I think that also implies that we must receive the kingdom of God with a childlike trust that acknowledges how little we really understand. We need to rely instead on the wisdom and judgment of God as a child relies on the guidance of a parent.

This is surely the right attitude to have toward God: instead of thinking we could understand all His reasons and commands if He just explained them, we ought to realize that the mind of the Lord is deeper and vaster than our mind can possibly take in. We shouldn't be surprised if some of the truths God reveals about reality are strange, confusing, or even shocking. Nor should it surprise us that some things are hard to understand and we can't figure them all out right away. We should look to our Father with trust, believing that He knows all of these things and understands them, and that He loves us and will lead us safely through them.

Why We Need to Think

2010-10-27T20:56:00.009-05:00

I've been working my way through messages from this year's Desiring God Conference, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God. One of the sanctified uses of an Mp3 player is filling your mind with edifying and wise thoughts while in the car, or when you're exercising, or when you're walking from point A to point B - time when you would otherwise just be daydreaming or obsessing about all the things you need to do. I've learned that my attitude in life is far more healthy if I redeem some time in this way each week. The craziness of the average day is not likely to produce much encouragement in my heart, so I need to deliberately feed myself with something encouraging that lifts my spirit or helps teach me more about how to fight the daily battle effectively.

To that end, part of what I love about this year's DG Conference is that it is not aimed directly at intellectuals or students. It is intended, like John Piper's book of the same name, to encourage all Christians to think and to use our minds to the glory of God. We aren't all called to be scholars, but every one of us does need to make use of our minds in living the life of faith.

As I was listening to Al Mohler's message, he made this point: "We as Christians must recognize that there is a crucial distinction between the regenerate mind and the unregenerate mind. ... [T]here once was a way we thought that we can no longer think." (See Romans 1:21)

In other words, we as Christians have learned something earthshaking that changes everything about life. We can't afford to act as if things haven't changed. We are aware now of a whole new dimension to life - the spiritual dimension - that changes why we live, how we treat people, and where we find strength and hope. If we don't consciously change the way we think so that we plan and decide and act based on this new understanding, then for all our spiritual rebirth we will be ineffective and frustrated. We will fail to embrace the tools God has given us to flourish in our Christian life, and we will continue to pursue a mindset that invites temptation and leaves us vulnerable to the life-destroying effects of sin. Christians must consciously think like Christians in order to thrive. I highly recommend Mohler's message and Piper's book as good ways to encourage that in ourselves.

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Romans 12:2

How to Confront and Avoid Anxiety

2010-10-10T03:50:00.007-05:00

As the last post explained, Battling Unbelief taught me to start focusing on God's promises and to put my trust in Him to keep them. If you want to overcome anxiety, you can't start by trying to ignore problems or by exerting "self-control" to stop being anxious. You have to find your peace by knowing the problem is being taken care of. You will always have problems and uncertainties to deal with in life, but anxiety comes from thinking we have to deal with them ourselves. God has promised us we don't have to. Jesus specifically said we shouldn't be anxious about tomorrow or about our needs, because our Father in heaven will take care of it all. (Matthew 6:25-33).

The first step is to believe God means what He says, and reject any feelings to the contrary. If you had a friend you deeply trusted, you would believe his or her word over the word of someone less reliable. Faith means showing God the same trust. We need to remember that our feelings and the circumstances around us are not in any way as reliable as the God who created us and who upholds the universe. I gradually began to respond to situations that made me anxious by resisting the anxiety and directing my thoughts to God's promises instead. I would focus on God's words instead of my thoughts and feelings, and on remembering that the fulfillment of these promises depends on God, not on me. Instead of driving faster or sitting up at night worrying over the next day's work, I needed to trust that things were in God's hands and He would take care of them.

I struggled with applying this because it seemed too easy - it seemed like I was just being lazy and putting off my own responsibilities onto God. Part of the deception of anxiety is the idea that everything really depends on what we do. But that is not a life of faith. The life of faith acknowledges that we are dependent on God, and that we can't succeed without Him. Jesus told His disciples: "...apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5). Paul tells us that our very salvation "depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy." (Romans 9:16). And he told the Galatian church that if they received the Holy Spirit by faith, it was foolish for them to think that having begun by faith, they were now being perfected by their own work. (Galatians 3:1-7). The Christian life is a practice of depending on God by faith from beginning to end. We trust Him, and He shows His glory and faithfulness by always giving us what we need.

The more I practiced this, the more I discovered that I wasn't slipping in my responsibilities just because I was depending on God instead of my own anxious efforts. On the contrary, I began to be more faithful and more productive, and God proved His words true time and again by causing things to turn out well even when the circumstances looked anxious. My faith was strengthened by trusting God to keep His word, and I had a lot of freedom from the stress and tension I had carried around before. It wasn't a one-time cure; I still had to remember to practice this the next time a new anxiety came up. But living by faith has made me more productive and given me more peace of mind than ever before.

Anxiety Is Dangerous - And Avoidable

2010-10-10T02:24:00.006-05:00

After somehow managing to successfully not post during the whole month of September, I want to jump back in by following up on the last post on how Martin Luther addressed anxiety. Since anxiety saps the joy out of many Christians, I want to share two realizations that have changed my life and explain how they helped: 1) anxiety comes from wrong thinking about God; and 2) anxiety is optional - it isn't a normal and necessary part of human life.

Regarding the first, I used to beat myself up when I was running late or when I didn't think I had put enough effort into something. I would pummel myself with thoughts about what was going to happen if I didn't pull out all the stops and somehow redeem the situation. This tended to put me in a high-stress, anxious state of mind that bordered on panic. Mercifully, a couple of years ago I began to realize that this practice of anxious self-reproach was accomplishing nothing. It wasn't helping me change my behavior. All it was doing was making me stressed and tense. I didn't know how to break out of the pattern, though, because it seemed irresponsible and apathetic to not be anxious and worked up when I was in a bad situation.

Part of the problem was that I had been unconsciously trying to use anxiety as a motivator - if I worked up enough stress and worry over something, hopefully it would push me into giving everything I had. By God's grace, I started to realize this and how useless it was. It was more than useless, too, because it left me stressed and irritable. In fact, Jesus warned that the cares of this world can choke out the Word of God and keep us from being fruitful. (Matthew 13:22-23). Anxiety is actually counterproductive. So instead, I started working on applying some things I learned from reading Battling Unbelief, a book by John Piper (you can also read the sermons he preached on this).

Piper introduced me to the surprising concept that anxiety was not just bothersome, but actually a form of distrust in God. Anxiety comes from not believing that God will faithfully watch over us and provide for us. It comes from believing that we have to take care of things ourselves or they won't get taken care of. So Piper calls anxiety a form of unbelief, a lack of faith in God's character. The cure for unbelief is faith - putting your trust in God to do what He has promised. This brought me to the second revelation: anxiety is unnatural for a Christian. It's a weakness of faith, and if we focus on building our faith, anxiety can be dispelled. Here's what happened when I tried applying this.

Sunday Salt: Martin Luther Takes Aim at Anxiety

2010-08-29T15:54:00.008-05:00

Just about everyone knows something about Martin Luther, but there are so many common ideas about him that they sometimes distort or obscure his real work and his real character. A good introduction to his life can be found here, and a short overview (albeit with typos) is available here. Many of his works can be read for free online, thanks to resources like Project Wittenberg.

One of Luther's great gifts - and great stumbling blocks - was his passion and boldness. The following quote from a letter he wrote to Philip Melanchthon in 1530 shows how he pulled no punches and cut straight through all the anxieties and cares that were preoccupying Melanchthon. Luther reminds him that the best way to defeat anxiety (instead of being defeated by it) is to take our eyes off our cares and fix them on God Himself (see Matthew 6:33).

"What good do you expect to accomplish by these vain worries of yours? What can the devil do more than slay us? What? I beg you, who are so pugnacious in everything else, fight against yourself, your own worst enemy, for you furnish Satan with too many weapons against yourself. Christ died once for our sins. He will not die again for truth and justice, but will live and reign. If this be true, and if He reigns, why should you be afraid for the truth? Perhaps you are afraid that it will be destroyed by God's wrath. Even if we should ourselves be destroyed, let it not be by our own hands. He who is Our Father will also be the Father of our children. I pray for you very earnestly, and I am deeply pained that you keep sucking up cares like a leech and thus rendering my prayers vain. Christ knows whether it comes from stupidity or the Spirit, but I for my part am not very much troubled about our cause. Indeed, I am more hopeful than I expected to be. God who is able to raise the dead is also able to uphold His cause when it is falling or to raise it up again when it has fallen or to move it forward when it is standing. If we are not worthy instruments to accomplish His purpose, He will find others. If we are not strengthened by His promises, where in all the world are the people to whom these promises apply?"

I came across this quote in a message from Dr. Al Mohler on courage in Christian ministry, and I recommend the three-part series as a good way to check whether we have true courage based on faith in the God who can do all things, or whether we are lowering our expectations and being too timid because we aren't trusting deeply enough in God's ability to overcome ever obstacle. Dr. Mohler recommended Luther's Letters of Spiritual Counsel as a great place to find encouragement from Luther's words. Many of the pages are available online at Google books.

Sunday Salt: C.S. Lewis Exposes Our Legalistic Thinking

2010-08-15T10:02:00.011-05:00

After this week's discussion of legalism, this quote from C.S. Lewis seems appropriate. Lewis hardly needs an introduction to many, but his life and his conversion are fascinating and well worth examining. A brief overview can be found here. Also, John Piper delivered this winter a thought-provoking and insightful analysis of the tremendous value of Lewis's thought as well as some important cautions about how we allow it to influence us. Piper's tribute to Lewis and his observations on some of the weak points in the way Lewis went about his work struck me as incredibly brilliant in the way they summed up the works of Lewis I have cherished over the past 14 years. The message will make you love Lewis more but also think more clearly about him.

Now, Lewis himself on how people go astray over setting up rules of behavior that go beyond the actual commandments about sin (although it is good for us to make personal decisions to stay away from some things if they tend to undermine our faith - see this earlier Sunday Salt):

"One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons - marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning."
- Mere Christianity, p. 76 (Touchstone edition; 1996).

Romans 14:1-6:
"As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God."

Our Hope Is Not In Who We Are, But In Who God Is

2010-08-10T12:11:00.007-05:00

Here is the antidote to the problem of legalism I described in the last post: Our identity does not come from our being good people. It comes from God being so gracious and full of love that He accepts us and forgives us, cleaning us off and making us able to stand before Him. And He did that by allowing Jesus to suffer in our place and take every ounce of our punishment - past, present, and future - for every wrong, hurtful, selfish, prideful, insensitive, or otherwise sinful thing we ever did or ever will do. It's done. And part of the implicit promise in Christ's death and resurrection is that God will make us like Christ one day - without sin. It doesn't depend on us; it depends only on Him and His faithfulness to keep the promises He has made to us. It's part of the package when you believe in Christ through faith.

This is where Scripture tells us to focus our hope for purity and obedience:

"Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it." 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:6

"Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen." Jude 24-25

"Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." Philippians 2:12-13

"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." 1 Corinthians 15:10

"...that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?" 1 Corinthians 4:6-7

One of the key reasons that people act like legalists is that they are holding on tightly to a self-image that is based in thinking that, deep down, they really are good people. And in order to believe that you really are good, you have to believe you're capable of doing good things naturally and all on your own initiative. People cling to that because they fear the idea that they aren't really good inside. They think they can never have any hope or joy if that is true. But denying that you have a dishonest heart that desires sin and stubbornly trying to fight temptation on your own is only going to lead to the despair and hopelessness I described in the last post. You will end up with a bad self-image anyway, because you will feel that you must be a very lousy and wretched sort of person if you can't succeed in keeping God's commands.

The joy and freedom of Christianity is found in the realization that God knows you are sinful inside, and He still loves you anyway and still surrendered Christ to death on the cross to spare you any punishment. He loves you so much that He has taken upon Himself not only the punishment for your sin, but also the responsibility for keeping you from sin and teaching you to walk in the way of righteousness and life. Freedom is knowing that you don't have to strive and push yourself and shame yourself anymore to try to be good - you can just put your trust and hope entirely in God's power to work inside of you the right desires and the right actions.

This Message That I'm Not Good Is Discouraging

2010-08-10T11:34:00.011-05:00

I described in a recent post our desire to think of ourselves as good and our resistance to accepting that we really aren't good. I summed it up this way: "One of the most subtle deceptions that keep us trapped in a pattern of sin is the idea that our hearts and minds are basically good and capable of doing the right thing if we just try hard enough. Too many people cling to this idea as a self-image, not wanting to accept that they are not good by nature." The result of this mindset is that we are ineffective in resisting sin. We try to do it with our will, and we end up stumbling over and over again.

Many people resist the idea that they are incapable of doing the right thing on their own, because it makes them feel discouraged and devalued. We don't like being told we're not "good." But I've found that what really fuels discouragement in me is not the knowledge that I have a deceitful heart that can't be trusted (Jeremiah 17:9), but instead the repeated failures of trying to be a "good person" by following rules. When you fall short - which you always will - you feel depressed and shameful. This is what Christians call legalism. It is one of the chief enemies of joy in the life of a believer.

You may think you already know about legalism, but it is much more subtle and hard to detect than many people realize. People often describe legalism as trying to "earn your salvation" - essentially, thinking that "if I obey well enough, God will accept me." And because of this definition, people can easily think they aren't being affected by legalism because they are putting their faith in Christ alone to save them. "I know I can't earn my salvation," they may think, "and I am trusting in Christ's death on the cross as the payment for my sins. So I'm safe from legalism."

But it is very possible - and surprisingly common - for those who have put their faith in Christ to end up acting like legalists afterwards. Paul had to address this in the Galatian church. After they believed in Christ by faith, he still had to correct them: "Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (See Galatians 3:2-3.) What often happens to Christians is that they believe in Christ as their sole Savior and the sole source of their forgiveness, but then they think that now that they have faith and are filled with the Holy Spirit, it is their job to work hard to obey God's commandments and to keep themselves pure. And so they start with faith, but end up trying to finish sanctification (the process of shedding old sinful ways and learning to walk in obedience to God) on their own strength through sheer willpower. This is something every Christian has to vigilantly watch out for, because it is a trap you can slip into even when you think you're very mature in your faith and thinking. In the next post I'll describe the antidote.

Sunday Salt: Charles Simeon's Comfort in Suffering

2010-08-08T09:26:00.007-05:00

Charles Simeon was the pastor of Trinity Church in Cambridge, England for 54 years (from 1782 until his death in 1836). John Piper has a very good biographical message about him that you can read, listen to, or download the audio for here. This quote is taken from Piper's message. It made a large impact on me when I read it, and the impact grew the more I learned about the kind of suffering and opposition Simeon faced during his 54 years of preaching and ministry. These words would not have nearly the same weight if they came from someone who had not experienced great struggle and suffering and difficulty. The encouragement in these words is that they come from a man who faced challenges and discouragements at least as difficult as anything most of us ever will, and he could still be content in the knowledge that His soul was secure in Christ. Piper's message has many more examples of how Simeon's faith and practices of devotion to God's Word and prayer kept him encouraged, and I commend it as very worthwhile reading.

A friend had asked Simeon how he had endured the opposition and strife in all his years of ministry. Simeon's reply:

"My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ's sake. When I am getting through a hedge, if my head and shoulders are safely through, I can bear the pricking of my legs. Let us rejoice in the remembrance that our holy Head has surmounted all His suffering and triumphed over death. Let us follow Him patiently; we shall soon be partakers of His victory" (H.C.G. Moule, Charles Simeon, London: InterVarsity, 1948, 155f.).

Scriptures that come to mind: 2 Corinthians 4:16-18; Romans 8:16-18.

Sunday Salt: What John Wesley's Mother Taught Him

2010-08-02T10:41:00.004-05:00

Sin likes to hide. That's one reason I believe it is so important to examine ourselves in order to discover where sin is lurking in our hearts. One of the chief enemies of our joy and our faith is the subtle desire for sin that our hearts hold on to and try to sneak around with. Our hearts disguise it with all sorts of seemingly innocent justifications, which is why it takes some self-examination and some scrutiny to root it out.

This is one of my favorite quotes on that process of identifying hidden sin and spotting habits that lead us away from God. Although I will likely post something from John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, in the future, today's quote is from his mother Susanna:

"Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."
-- Susanna Wesley (Letter, June 8, 1725)

Wesley himself also has a very interesting story of conversion that fits with what I am going to post about this week, so I'll link to it here: on the main page, click the Testimony tab right under the title "John Wesley". Wesley practiced fasting, prayer, and many works of charity in an ascetic or self-depriving way, preached, traveled to America to evangelize the Indians, and established many of his spiritual ideas about Christian life all before he experienced what was probably his true conversion. It was not until 1738 that he experienced real faith in Christ alone to forgive his sins, and he confesses it was only then that he knew the peace of being assured he was cleansed and forgiven. Wesley's testimony is a good example of how long we can be led astray and deceived in thinking we are living the life of faith when we are only trying to follow rules and be "religious." This is why it is so important to listen to the Gospel and apply it.

For this reason, I am also careful to examine and test the ideas that Wesley promoted. I find many valuable things in what Wesley taught, but the way he developed his ideas and the rigid discipline he approached religion with before he really experienced the freedom of the Gospel mean that some of his thoughts and teachings are unreliable. It's always a good idea to test anything a person says against Scripture, no matter how respected and beloved he may be.

Why You Have to Fight Sin by Trusting in God

2010-07-21T12:22:00.009-05:00

I said here and here that in order to overcome sin and temptation, you have to let go of trusting in your own willpower and turn instead to putting all your hope and trust in God to provide the strength to resist. Here are some examples of how the Bible emphasizes this truth:

"Thus says the LORD:
'Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.

'Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.'"
Jeremiah 17:5-8

Paul said of his ministry: "Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God... ." 2 Corinthians 3:5

Paul also confessed: "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." Romans 7:18-25

Paul recognized that he did not have the ability himself to obey what is right. He saw that his physical body was captive to the desire for sin, even when he wanted with his mind to obey God. And in verses 24-25 he emphasizes that he needs someone else to deliver him from this state, and then gives praise to God through Jesus Christ - the one who delivers him.

One of the most subtle deceptions that keep us trapped in a pattern of sin is the idea that our hearts and minds are basically good and capable of doing the right thing if we just try hard enough. Too many people cling to this idea as a self-image, not wanting to accept that they are not good by nature. Our hope of freedom is not found in being able to think of ourselves as good people. It is found in recognizing that God has shown inexhaustible and profound grace to us by loving, forgiving, restoring, and accepting us even though we were not good. Until we accept that we really are sinful and unable to obey God ourselves, we will not appreciate the relationship of salvation. It is, and must be, a total dependence on God alone for mercy and freedom. And that is the same way we have to continue to live, trusting God moment to moment to keep us from turning away from Him to seek after the deception of sin. I'll address this more deeply here and here.

Sunday Salt: John Bunyan - When Sin Causes Us to Lose Heart

2010-07-11T02:38:00.004-05:00

John Bunyan began writing The Pilgrim's Progress while in prison in 1675. A lay preacher with only a basic lower-class education, Bunyan wrote a book that became perhaps the first great English novel and one of the most popular Christian books ever. Charles Spurgeon claimed to have read it over 100 times, saying: "Next to the Bible, the book that I value most is John Bunyan’s, 'Pilgrim’s Progress,' and I imagine I may have read that through perhaps a hundred times. It is a book of which I never seem to tire, but then the secret of that is, that John Bunyan’s, 'Pilgrim’s Progress,' is the Bible in another shape. It is the same heavenly water taken out of this same well of the Gospel... ." (1901, Sermon #2724).

Bunyan's tale is an allegory of the journey of a Christian from the City of Destruction (the world of man) to the Celestial City. The struggles of faith are portrayed as obstacles and dangers, and the people's names reveal their nature. Early on in his journey, Christian and a companion called Pliable become stuck in the murky bog called the Slough of Despond:

"At that Pliable began to be offended, and angrily said to his fellow, Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect betwixt this and our journey's end? May I get out again with my life, you shall possess the brave country alone for me."

Pliable does make his way out and turn back, and another character explains what the Slough is: "it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore it is called the Slough of Despond; for still, as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place." (text of the book online)

Pliable's reaction seems common. When we first begin to realize our guilt and how awful sin is, we can be overwhelmed by shame. It is tempting to reject the awareness of our sin rather than admit that our own sins are really so terrible and shameful. Or we may be discouraged by fear that God can never accept us after all these sins. But the reason we have so much trouble with conviction of sin is that we are not focusing our gaze wider to see the awesome extent of the grace that is flowing to us in Christ. If we think about how great and deep God's love is and how completely the mercy of God wipes away our sin through the cross, then the shame of our sin should not overwhelm us. We should be able to bear the unpleasant realizations about ourselves because our consolation and encouragement is that what Christ is giving us will completely eclipse all of that. The joy of knowing God is so great it will blot out the shame of sin.

As another character says of Pliable later on: "Alas, poor man, is the celestial glory of so small esteem with him, that he counteth it not worth running the hazards of a few difficulties to obtain it?"

Openness and Sincerity About Suffering Encourages Others

2010-07-11T01:15:00.009-05:00

There are other reasons besides fear and insecurity that can lead us to conceal our struggles. Sometimes I am tempted to keep silent about my struggles for fear that I will discourage other Christians. The concern creeps over me that if I share the doubts that are plaguing me or confess how hard a time I'm having with suffering, it will make them doubt too. I think this hesitation misses three crucial benefits of opening up to each other: A) the encouragement and joy others get from helping bear your burdens; B) the encouragement that others get from finding that they are not alone in their struggles and that you wrestle with the same things; and C) combining forces and spurring one another on.

There may be some instances where you are around a person who just really is not ready to hear your doubts or the depth of your suffering, but those situations are usually obvious. When a person is already feeling overwhelmed, you should find someone else to open up to. But most people are not going to go through a crisis just because you tell them honestly that you're having a difficult time, and by concealing how you feel you are preventing the kind of mutual encouragement that helps the church flourish. It is part of our calling as Christians to love and encourage one another and to bear one another's burdens. When you share your struggles with others, you give them the chance to bless you and to experience the joy and satisfaction of helping someone else. If you always keep silent and stay closed up around others, you send a message that they don't have anything helpful to give you. That brings discouragement, but being allowed to help does the opposite.

I also believe that when you open up about your struggles and how you are trying to work through them, you are far more likely to encourage people than discourage them. It is liberating and reassuring to know that other people have the same doubts, fears, disappointments, and pain. The pastors that have blessed me most in dealing with suffering and doubt have been the ones who have freely confessed from the pulpit how they struggle with these things themselves. If this person has struggles like this even after many years of faithful ministry, it reassures me that I'm not a hopeless case just because I am struggling. That openness gives me much-needed hope that I can make valuable contributions even despite my weaknesses. If those pastors had kept silent, the church would be left with the impression that they are just above all those doubts and struggles and that those of us who do struggle are very weak and immature.

Finally, opening up to each other allows us to realize what struggles we have in common and compare notes on how to fight through them. "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. " (Proverbs 27:17). We are supposed to spur one another on in life, and we can do this best if we each know where the other needs encouragement and accountability. Opening up to each other allows us to get doubts and suffering out in the open and attack them together. We are nearly always more confident when we have an ally on our side. When one person is discouraged, the other can be positive and reassure him. (See Eccl. 4:9-10). Christ uses the members of His church body to strengthen one another, so let's not be slow to participate!

Don't Just Put on a Happy Face

2010-07-10T23:53:00.008-05:00

I said recently that your most painful or troubling times may be your best testimony to the power of the Gospel and the treasure of knowing Christ. When we suffer but remain hopeful, continuing to affirm that God is good and faithful, we show that our trust in God is real and not just the result of a fortunately happy life.

The next thought that followed in my mind, however, was that we must avoid the pressure to just "put on a happy face" and pretend everything is fine. There can be a strong temptation in Christian company to want to act positive and cheerful all the time so that people won't think you're a negative or immature Christian. In my experience, this is destructive. Genuine Christians ought to be able to be open with each other and to bear one another's burdens. (Galatians 6:2). Paul tells us to mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15), clearly implying it's right for people to know you're mourning.

We have to avoid creating an environment where people feel uncomfortable admitting they are struggling or doubting because they think they'll be judged. No church and no group of Christians should be like that. People need to be free to talk about how they really feel, or else they can't be helped and encouraged by their fellow believers. We are to show mercy to those who doubt (Jude 22), and we are supposed to comfort one another (2 Cor. 13:11; 2 Cor. 1:3-7) just as God comforts us. That can't happen if people don't feel embraced and supported when they admit their struggles. It is a mark of immaturity for a Christian to look down on any other person for struggling or doubting. Instead, we should be moved with compassion and seek to encourage each other.

The first step in creating the kind of Christian community described above is for you to commit to being supportive of people when they struggle. The second step is to be willing to defy the temptation to keep your own struggles hidden. Our fears that people will lose respect for us if we confess to doubts or discouragement are often imagined. Sometimes the whole group is keeping silent with the same imagined fear. When you open up to others, it sends the message that it's okay to talk about this. That makes it easy for them to do the same.

Your Worst Times May Be Your Best Testimony to the Gospel

2010-06-26T14:57:00.007-05:00

The best chance you have to show the Gospel to people may be when you least feel like you have anything to give. When you are in the midst of distress and suffering, there will usually be people who are aware of your situation who don't believe in Christ. It is one thing for them to hear you talk about the hope of the Gospel and the freedom of trusting in Christ when things seem to be going well for you. Any person might be content with his or her beliefs and way of life when all is well. But when your world seems to be falling apart and you are clearly under stress, the way you react shows much more truth about what you believe. If you praise God and affirm that he is faithful and wonderful even in the midst of your own suffering, you show that the Gospel really is a consolation to you and that knowing God really does bring comfort.

People will often expect you to be miserable when circumstances are difficult or painful. Most people won't even criticize or judge you for it - they know they would react the same way. It's usually accepted that we will be unhappy and discouraged when life is hard. But at the same time, if you do react that way, then people see you're no different from them and your comforts are no different. But when you react to suffering with hope and encouragement instead, and when you maintain your trust in God and your enjoyment of Him, people take notice. This is something they have a hard time explaining away. You can testify to a person for years that you believe in Christ and that He is the Way to life, but when that person sees that you really do take your own comfort from trusting in this - and that the hope you have in the Gospel is so strong that it brings you encouragement and peace even in painful suffering - you have just proven your sincerity in a way that can't easily be questioned or doubted.

On one occasion where Paul and Silas were thrown into prison, Acts 16:25 says: "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them... ." No doubt! You would be paying attention too if you saw men in a first-century prison singing while sitting in the stocks. Paul and Silas were soon released from prison, but the point is that they were singing before they received relief. Praising God and seeking Him in the midst of suffering shows that you trust Him to deliver you from it. And that captures people's attention. As David said in Psalm 40 about God having delivered him from trouble: "Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord." (Psalm 40:3).

Sunday Salt: Spurgeon on How the Cross Takes Away Fear

2010-06-13T23:58:00.011-05:00

I normally intend to draw from as diverse a group of people as possible for Sunday Salt meditations, but this quote from the "Prince of Preachers" was so encouraging that I wanted to share it even though we visited with Spurgeon only a couple of weeks ago.

"The most earnest Christian man must sometimes have his doubts as to whether all is right with him. The more sincere a man is, the more does he tremble lest he should deceive himself. You may have your personal anxieties; certainly I have mine. But when I turn my eyes to Jesus upon the cross and view the thorn crown and the sacred head and the eyes that were red with weeping and the hands nailed fast to the wood and the feet dripping with blood, and when I remember that this shameful death was endured for love of me, I am so quiet and so happy in my spirit that I cannot tell how peacefully my life-floods flow. God must forgive my grievous fault, for my Redeemer has so grievously answered for it. When I see Jesus die, I perceive that henceforth divine justice is on the sinner's side. How can the Lord God punish the same offense twice--first the Substitute and then the men for whom that Substitute has bled? Christ has bled as substitute for every man who believes in Him--therefore is every believer safe."
--"The Marvelous Magnet" from The Power of the Cross of Christ, ed. Lance Wubbels (Christian Living Classics, published by Emerald House; 1995), p. 20.

"But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." Hebrews 10:12-14

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed." 1 Peter 2:24

"And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross." Colossians 2:13-14

Sunday Salt: Augustine's Gratitude for How God Kept Him From Sin

2010-06-06T16:34:00.017-05:00

Augustine of Hippo was one of the greatest writers of the Early Church. Living from the fourth century to the first third of the fifth century, he was schooled in the classical philosophy and rhetoric of the Roman centers of learning, but also lived to see the fall of Rome. He didn't embrace Christ until age 32, first pursuing various philosophies and even having a mistress through whom he fathered a child. After converting, he ended up producing some of the most important works ever written in the Church. In the Confessions (free online editions and links), Augustine describes the process of his early life and his slow transition to Christianity, and examines the struggle with sin and the ways the human mind and body are tested and tempted.

The following passage left a deep impression on me when I first read it, and taught me that we have much more to be grateful for from God than just forgiveness for the sins we did commit:
"What shall I render unto the Lord for the fact that while my memory recalls these things my soul no longer fears them? I will love thee, O Lord, and thank thee, and confess to thy name, because thou hast put away from me such wicked and evil deeds. To thy grace I attribute it and to thy mercy, that thou hast melted away my sin as if it were ice. To thy grace also I attribute whatsoever of evil I did not commit--for what might I not have done, loving sin as I did, just for the sake of sinning? Yea, all the sins that I confess now to have been forgiven me, both those which I committed willfully and those which, by thy providence, I did not commit. What man is there who, when reflecting upon his own infirmity, dares to ascribe his chastity and innocence to his own powers, so that he should love thee less--as if he were in less need of thy mercy in which thou forgivest the transgressions of those that return to thee? As for that man who, when called by thee, obeyed thy voice and shunned those things which he here reads of me as I recall and confess them of myself, let him not despise me--for I, who was sick, have been healed by the same Physician by whose aid it was that he did not fall sick, or rather was less sick than I. And for this let him love thee just as much--indeed, all the more--since he sees me restored from such a great weakness of sin by the selfsame Saviour by whom he sees himself preserved from such a weakness."
Confessions [free online text], translated by Albert C. Outler (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), Book II, Ch. VII, 15.

The realization that God has not only forgiven us for every selfish and hurtful thing we have done, but also that it is God's mercy that kept us from doing even more terrible things than we did, taught me to appreciate more deeply how closely God protects us and how much we depend on Him to overcome sin. Left on our own, we would not resist sin. A good example of God's mercy in restraining sin can be found in Genesis 20:3-7, where God tells Abimelech that He was the one who kept Abimelech from sinning and incurring guilt when Abimelech unwittingly took Abraham's wife for a bride.

Five Crucial Aspects of a Healthy Marriage

2010-06-04T12:33:00.005-05:00

In preparation for a friend's bridal shower, my wife asked me the other day what my top three tips for a good marriage were. This is what our discussion produced, and after ten years of marriage I feel strongly that these have been some of the most important factors in the strength or our marriage. Sadly, you won't hear most of these in the average pre-marital counseling session. Let's change that by spreading good advice far and wide.

As a preface, it will be clear that these practices are all based on following Christ and believing in the Living God. That's because I know I couldn't have the marriage I have today without focusing on God and pursuing my relationship with Him. Much of the pain, struggling, and broken dreams we experience in life comes from trying to do things our way, on our own, without giving ourselves up to God and following His wisdom. (A good example of Matthew 7:24-27 in action.)

1. Make sure you both are in some sort of small group or Bible study that meets regularly, in which you each have people you can confide in and pray with. There should be at least one person of the same sex in your life and one in your spouse's life who you can each tell anything and everything to and who you don't hold anything back from. You each need someone you can confess your struggles and your sins to who will keep you accountable and who will pray for you.

2. Pray together with your spouse and read the Bible together. Talk about what you are reading together. If you just pray and read and grow in your knowledge of God separately, you are not building your marriage on a common relationship with God and a mutual dependence on God. It is amazing how many problems in marriage are reduced or solved by talking to God together and confessing your weaknesses and struggles together. You learn to trust Him together and to encourage each other in faith, and you learn to deal with disagreements and problems by talking about Scripture and by praying together instead of just hashing it out.

3. Resolve to forgive each other for anything and everything, just as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32). Be committed to loving each other no matter what, the same way God is committed to loving you. Marriage is not designed to make you happy or fulfill all your expectations. Marriage is designed to help you know Christ more and experience God more deeply, because knowing Him is where you will find happiness and fulfillment. Marriage will reveal to you your own pride, weaknesses, sins, and destructive attitudes more deeply than just about anything else. Resolve to accept that this is God's gift to you to help you overcome your own faults and the things that keep you from experiencing satisfaction in Him. Love each other as you are and encourage each other in growing and changing. When you do, you will experience more joy and satisfaction in your marriage and appreciate how it brings you closer to God.

4. Closely related to #3, never, ever doubt that people can change and that all things are possible with God. No matter how difficult your disagreements may be or how you may disappoint each other, don't give up. Remember what Paul said about the power of God: He raises the dead. We can depend on Him to rescue the living from any despair. God expressly says that He has the power to change a person's heart. Even if it seems like you reach a point where you can't work together on something or one of you won't budge, put your faith and hope in God and trust that He can change feelings, expectations, or attitudes for either of you. I have experienced it firsthand in a number of "hopeless" situations, and I have seen it in other marriages too. "[W]ith God all things are possible." This is not a promise that you'll get everything you want; it's bigger than that. Sometimes the work of God is to show you that what you want or think you need really isn't as important as you thought it was, and that your happiness will come without it.

5. Be open and honest with each other about what you hope for and what hurts you in your marriage. A friend of ours recently said that a lot of pain in marriage comes from expectations that are not communicated to each other, and which therefore go unfulfilled. Don't keep your feelings and your needs private. Talk to each other about how you feel and trust each other with your dreams and hopes. Don't hold back because you don't think anything will change. Remember #4.

What are your thoughts? Please share your advice too in the comments.

Sunday Salt: Spurgeon - Are You Friendly With Sin?

2010-05-30T18:44:00.005-05:00

This Sunday's meditation is from Charles Spurgeon, one of the most gifted preachers of all time. It is often uncomfortable to be confronted with our own sinful choices, but it is necessary to recognize how hateful sin is:

"Do you roll sin under your tongue as a sweet morsel and then come to God's house on Sunday morning and think to worship Him? [Said with disbelief:] Worship Him! Worship Him, with sin indulged in your life! If I had a dear brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I valued the knife that had been crimsoned with his blood? ...Sin murdered Christ; will you be a friend to it? Sin pierced the heart of the Incarnate God; can you love it? Oh, that there was an abyss as deep as Christ's misery, that I might at once hurl this dagger of sin into its depths, whence it might never be brought to light again! Begone, O sin! You are banished from the heart where Jesus reigns!" -quoted in the introduction to The Power of the Cross of Christ, ed. Lance Wubbels (Christian Living Classics, published by Emerald House; 1995).

For those who are confronting their own sin with shame or regret, let the Apostle John remind you of this comfort: "I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2:1b-2). You can turn your back on sin and turn your life over to the One who already bore the punishment of sin.

Why Does Life Often Seem to Get Harder?

2010-05-25T05:43:00.006-05:00

John Piper began his eight-month leave of absence on May 1st. He and the other pastors and elders have been encouraging us to pray faithfully for the church during this time. One of the things that has been on my heart to pray for has been deep and lasting application. We have been blessed with extraordinary teaching and preaching over the years. But listening is one thing, and applying the teaching is another, as James points out: "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like." (James 1:22-24.) Or in other words, he forgets the teaching and does nothing with it.

It seems that it is all too easy to just enjoy the experience of hearing great teaching and to end up taking a lot of the instruction for granted. So I have been praying that this season for our church would be one of application, where we take what we've heard and learned and experienced and concentrate on practicing it. At the same time, I have found that the past month has been one of the hardest I've ever experienced, and I am seeing a lot of suffering and struggling around me in my church. As I was wrestling with this today, the thought was laid on me that this may be exactly what the answer to my prayer looks like. If we pray for application, we should expect circumstances to come up that will challenge us and require us to apply what we've learned. God doesn't strengthen us for no purpose. He strengthens us to bear one another's burdens. Application has a goal, and the goal is to be more Christlike - and thus more generous in serving others.

If we want to grow, then we need to be willing to take on bigger responsibilities with the growth God gives us. This quote captures it beautifully: "Pray not for a lighter load but for stronger shoulders." (from Margie Miguel). When the trials seem greater, we should take it as evidence that God is making us stronger, and we should rejoice that He is entrusting us with more grace and more faith that will enable us to more deeply love and strengthen those around us.

I am taking comfort that this striving is not in vain, but is a labor that will produce greater blessing in the lives of those around us. "But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing." (James 1:25.)

How to Fight Sin by Faith

2010-05-19T09:16:00.007-05:00

I said here that the way to defeat sin is to fight by faith - you must admit you can't overcome sin on your own and put your trust in God instead to do it. Here's how it works in practice: when you are tempted by any sin, don't think to yourself "I'm strong enough to beat this. I can hold out. I won't give in." That thinking is focused entirely on trusting yourself to be faithful and to be good. The problem with that is that we aren't good. No matter how much we try to do what is right, sooner or later we stray. Scripture makes it clear what our situation is: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus[.]" (Romans 3:23-24). We can't hope in our own ability to avoid sin; we have to accept instead that if we stand, we stand by the grace of God that comes through Christ.

This is the strength God wants us to draw on. "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might." says Paul in Ephesians 6:10. Instead of relying on our own strength or willpower, we need to rely on God's strength. So when temptation comes, turn to God in prayer and confess that you know you cannot do this on your own. Admit you need Him and are dependent on His power, and ask Him to strengthen you and to give you the grace to resist temptation. As Jesus said to His disciples: "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." (Matthew 26:41). He did not say, "Strengthen your resolve and resist temptation." He told them to pray that they would not give in, asking God to keep them from sin.

The next step is crucial: you have to trust God that He will deliver you and grant you grace to resist. "In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one[.]" (Ephesians 6:16). It is faith in God that deflects and defeats the temptations hurled at us. One of the biggest reasons I found that sin was defeating me was because I had failed so many times before that I was just convinced it was hopeless to hold out forever. I was convinced that sooner or later I would fail anyway. But God tells us not to trust in our own limited strength, and to trust in His infinite, almighty power instead. The change here is huge. When you realize you're relying on God's power, you know that victory is possible! Jesus spent His whole life without ever sinning. If that's the power of God at work, then you can resist and overcome too. The confirmation of this is that God has promised us He will make us able to escape sin: "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it." (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Fighting by faith means you take things one step at a time, trusting God to sustain you and give you strength to resist each temptation. You keep turning away from the temptation because you know that God is giving you the strength to succeed every time. And the reason this is different than trying to resist in your own strength is that you have asked God to deliver you and you have placed your faith in Him to do it. God responds to that trust and puts His power to work in your life to overcome sin. His power is inexhaustible and able to defeat anything.

Sunday Salt: G.K. Chesterton on the Tension of Virtues

2010-05-09T14:01:00.010-05:00

This week's Sunday Salt seemed to be an appropriate follow-up to last week (C.S. Lewis on how each emotion is right at some time and wrong at another). Today's passage is from G.K. Chesterton, from his amazing and brilliant book Orthodoxy. It is the story of how Chesterton discovered through his own ponderings about life, and his own experiments in searching for truth, beauty, and reason, the great story of Christianity and how it made sense of everything in life. Chesterton was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century, and this is one of his greatest works. I'll share more about it in the future.

"Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. ...

And now I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. Everywhere the creed made a moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions. Take, for instance, the matter of modesty, of the balance between mere pride and mere prostration. The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would see that he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not necessarily with his nose in the air. This is a manly and rational position, but it is open to the objection... [that being] a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full strength or contributes its full colour. This proper pride does not lift the heart like the tongue of trumpets; you cannot go glad in crimson and gold for this. On the other hand, this mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of the grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels; for Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland. Thus it loses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble. Christianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both of them."

Orthodoxy, pp. 99-100 (Ignatius Press edition; 1995).

The tension of two powerful and often conflicting emotions or virtues, and the way Christianity seeks to keep them both powerful and yet both in proper balance, explains some fascinating things about Christian doctrine. To see where Chesterton is going with this, tune in Tuesday.

What I Mean By "Beating Sin"

2010-05-08T00:37:00.008-05:00

I said here that I would explain in these posts how I went about beating sin, and in the last post I said I have been experiencing freedom from certain sins for years. I want to be absolutely clear about what I mean by that:

I do not mean that I am sin-free, so don't write this off as me saying something ridiculous. I sin in lots of ways, just like everybody else. There are only two kinds of people in this world - sinners who don't believe in Christ and sinners who do. No human except for Jesus has ever reached a point where he doesn't sin. But you can find freedom from habits of sin - sins you keep committing over and over and over (often called "besetting sins").
I do not mean that I don't have to fight hard against temptation. I often do. Temptation doesn't go away. However, I have found that temptations are often weaker.
I do not mean that I have "conquered" a particular sin and don't need to worry about it anymore. That would be a very dangerous idea. Sin is always a deadly enemy that you have to watch for vigilantly. You can't make peace with it. "Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned?" (Proverbs 6:27).

Here's what I mean: By applying what I talked about in the last post, I experienced a decisive change in my life where I was able to regularly resist temptations that I used to give in to. I also found that the temptations became less frequent, the fight was often much easier, and I have been given the grace to have a long season of victory over some particular sins. That doesn't mean I might not stumble again someday. "Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall." (1 Cor. 10:12). But the difference is night and day. That's what I call freedom - the freedom to establish new patterns of behavior and the freedom of successfully resisting over and over the temptations that you used to regularly give in to.

Fighting Sin Requires Admitting You Can't Win

2010-05-08T00:15:00.004-05:00

When I was finally at the point with sin that I desperately wanted to change, I was trying everything I could to resist temptation and avoid sin. I was proud of myself for some really long periods (months) of staying away from certain sins. But I kept giving in to sin again and again. It seemed that no matter what my motivation was, no matter how much I hated sin or was ashamed of it, no matter what tactics I tried, I just kept returning to it. Then I read Joshua Harris's book Not Even a Hint (now retitled as Sex Is Not the Problem: Lust Is). Harris boldly stated in the first chapter something that stunned me. He said this fight is impossible and we can't win it.

At first, I was wondering where he was going with that. Then he explained that as long as we are trying to "work harder" at beating sin (this goes for any sin), we are just trying to do in our own strength something that is impossible on our own. The only way to victory is to recognize and admit to God that we can't do this. We will fail. I thought this sounded like giving up, but Harris made me see that God's specific plan for overcoming sin is that we trust Him to supply the power to do it. When we admit to Him we can't do it and that we have to depend entirely on Him, we are being honest about who we are and who God is. That's what God wants us to see. He wants us to recognize that He is God, and it is His power that is going to change our lives. When we ask Him to free us and we put our trust entirely in Him to overcome sin, He accomplishes far more than we ever can.

I know Harris is right, because I've examined his ideas against Scripture, and that's exactly what the Bible teaches. But I also know he's right because I changed my tactics and started doing it the way he explained, putting all my trust and hope in God to keep me from sin, and now instead of those occasional months of freedom I've been free for years. God's plan works. Here's how it looks in practice.

The Roadblock to Spiritual Health

2010-05-07T23:31:00.011-05:00

I had finally reached a point in my life where I had caused enough pain to myself and others through sin that I was sick of giving in to it. If you're not there yet, I recommend that you spend serious time in prayer asking God to show you how your sins are affecting others and to show you just how bad they are. Make no mistake: your sins are making you and other people unhappy and are frustrating your hopes and dreams. It's just a question of seeing how. As long as you take sin lightly, you won't care much about changing.

Reading the Bible will help you see sin clearly. Read Proverbs and you'll get a clear sense of the real consequences of sin and how self-destructive it is. James and Romans are also good books to read. Read Matthew 5. Scripture will show you how poisonous sin is and how widespread its destruction can be. Scripture is clear that the end of sin is death (Romans 6:20-23; James 1:14-15), but that seems to sink in for us more when we see illustrations of what sin does to us.

Perhaps the most convicting thought for me is that the desires for sin are directly opposed to spiritual life. "For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do." (Galatians 5:17). In other words, you will not grow in the Christian life unless you reckon with your sin. It is standing in the way of your spiritual fulfillment, and every time you make progress sin is sneaking in and working against you. Recognize that sin is your enemy.

Stage 2: Fighting Sin by Faith

2010-05-03T07:48:00.006-05:00

I have said a lot about the importance of reading your Bible because I want to emphasize that equipping your mind with God's promises and instructions is a crucial tool you need to find joy and satisfaction. I am going to move now to talking about how I dealt with the sins and attitudes that were keeping me from joy. I listed this second in the outline I gave of the most significant things that were part of my transformation from being disappointed and unfulfilled to becoming free, joyful, and satisfied in my daily relationship with Christ. Simply put, I had reached a point in my life where I knew I wasn't measuring up to what I wanted to be and what my family needed me to be, and I was also giving in to sin over and over again in ways that left me feeling totally defeated.

We all know that sin is bad. We've heard the message over and over that sin is wrong and that it will lead to punishment in hell. We need to get that straight in our heads, because if we are going to find joy in God, we have to care about obeying God. You can't love the Lord and be close to Him and kick sand in His face at the same time. But I think a large part of the reason we don't obey God in this area is that we don't trust Him enough when He promises that we will be fulfilled by following His instruction. Sin comes along and tempts us with some immediate pleasure, and we give in because we don't think we'll be as fulfilled by resisting. So one thing I needed to realize before I hated sin enough to want to change is that sin makes you miserable. Sin may give some pleasure, but it always takes more in exchange.

Every sin makes you sacrifice something you need for a healthy, complete, fulfilled life in order to pursue it. Adultery comes at the expense of your marriage, your family, your friendships, and the peace of your home. Gluttony comes at the expense of health. Pride comes at the expense of hurting and pushing down others. Greed comes at the expense of peace of mind and contentment (you can never be satisfied when your happiness is wrapped up in getting - there's always more you don't have). Sin isn't just wrong - it's self-defeating. It is a traitor and a liar. Sin never makes a straight bargain, but always cheats you in the end.

In my life, I finally reached a point where I had screwed up enough to realize I was always going to be miserable unless I beat the sins I was giving in to. In the next posts I will lay out how I went about it.

New Weekly Series: Sunday Salt

2010-05-02T16:31:00.002-05:00

Today I am beginning a weekly series I am calling "Sunday Salt". My goal is to draw from the great history of Christian wisdom and to share something valuable each Sunday (Lord willing) from teachers, leaders, missionaries, and writers who have already entered their reward. As C.S. Lewis has said, every generation has its own blind spots. The only way to guard against the particular misleading ideas you were brought up with in your culture and generation is to read outside of both - "in an abundance of counselors there is safety." (Proverbs 11:14). So my prayer is that this weekly devotion will be a way of holding up a mirror to our thinking to reveal areas that are skewed, as well as providing some encouragement and wisdom.

Appropriately enough, I am starting with Lewis himself:

"It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses—say mother love or patriotism—are good, and others, like sex or the fighting instinct, are bad. All we mean is that the occasions on which the fighting instinct or the sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent than those for restraining mother love or patriotism. But there are situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual impulse and of a soldier to encourage the fighting instinct. There are also occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or a man's love for his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people's children or countries. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the 'right' notes and the 'wrong' ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.

By the way, this point is of great practical consequence. The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity', and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man."

Mere Christianity, pp. 23-24 (Touchstone edition; 1996).

Husbands, Love Your Wives

2010-03-29T14:26:00.003-05:00

I just posted here on Pastor John Piper's announcement that he is taking an eight-month leave of absence from all public ministry to focus on his wife and family. My wife and I had been going over a study Pastor Piper wrote some years ago on Spiritual Leadership, and one of the essential qualities of leadership he identified was loving your wife. This seems a very appropriate time to share what he wrote back then:

"Here I am speaking directly to men who are husbands and leaders. Paul said in Ephesians 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives!" Love her! Love her! What does it profit a man if he gains a great following and loses his wife? What have we led people to if they see that it leads us to divorce? What we need today are leaders who are great lovers. Husbands who write poems for their wives and sign songs to their wives and buy flowers for their wives for no reason at all except that they love them. We need leaders who know that they should take a day alone with their wives every now and then; leaders who do not fall into the habit of deriding and puffing their wives down, especially with careless little asides in public; leaders who speak well of their wives in public and compliment them spontaneously when they are alone; leaders who touch her tenderly at other times besides when they are in bed. ... Look her in the eye when you talk to her. Put down the paper and turn off the television. Open the door for her. Help her with the dishes. Throw her a party. LOVE HER! LOVE HER! If you don't, all your success as a leader will very likely explode in failure at home."

Thank God that He has moved Pastor Piper to focus on this, even years later, and to take the radical and humble step of telling his fellow brothers and sisters that he needs to take a break to tend to his family.

John Piper Steps Back From Public Ministry

2010-03-29T12:37:00.004-05:00

Pastor John Piper announced to our church on Saturday and Sunday that he has asked for an eight month leave of absence from our elder board. He explained the reason for this extended leave in this way: "I see several species of pride in my soul that, while they may not rise to the level of disqualifying me for ministry, grieve me, and have taken a toll on my relationship with Noël and others who are dear to me. ...the precious garden of my home needs tending. I want to say to Noël that she is precious to me in a way that, at this point in our 41-year pilgrimage, can be said best by stepping back for a season from virtually all public commitments."

Adrian Warnock hit on just about everything important I wanted to say in his post on this. I will add that I am grateful again for the remarkable transparency Pastor Piper has shown to his congregation. He has been very open about his own weaknesses and what he needs to work on and wrestle with. One blessing in this is that it doesn't leave his church with a lot of unanswered questions about why he's doing this and what it may mean for us. I think the more important blessing, though, is that it gives us the opportunity to learn from his struggles and to take a good look at ourselves to see if we're ignoring pride and character flaws. When someone like Pastor Piper takes a dramatic step like this, it should cause us to ask ourselves if we're taking our sins seriously enough and doing enough to identify them and put them to death.

Will we miss our pastor during these eight months? Yes. A lot. But it is a great gift to have a leader who sets an example like this. There are probably many people in the congregation who need to take a step back in their own lives and examine how they are loving their families. If the author of "Don't Waste Your Life" can say 'my family is more important right now than my public ministry' then the rest of us can feel reassured that it's okay to take the time to care for our families too.

The Encouragement of the Old Testament - Genesis

2010-03-19T18:29:00.000-05:00

Reading through Genesis has shown me a lot about God's power and faithfulness, which has greatly strengthened my faith that God can and will help us in our struggles. Seeing how God fulfills His promises despite impossible circumstances is a strong reminder that no challenge in front of us is too difficult for God.

God promised Abraham that he would be the father of a nation whose people would be like the sand on the seashore. God made this promise to a man who was well-advanced in age, and whose wife Sarah had never been able to have children. (Genesis 17:17; 18:11-13; 16:1.) In other words, God chose two people who no one would expect to have children to be the parents of an entire nation, His chosen people. (Gen. 21:5-7.) Most people know that God nevertheless gave them a child: Isaac.

What some of us may not have noticed is that Isaac, the heir of Abraham and the next in line to father the nation, also took a wife who couldn't have children! (Gen. 25:21.) And their son Jacob, who became the next heir of the Promise, also had two wives who both could not conceive. (Gen. 29:31.) God began His promise to create a great nation with three generations who could not naturally conceive any offspring. Yet he gave each of them children. Jacob's name was later changed to Israel, and he fathered the twelve tribes of Israel.

This has been a reminder to me of what the Lord said to Abraham: "Is anything too difficult for the Lord?" (Gen. 18:14.) God often chooses difficult or impossible circumstances in order to teach us to depend on Him and in order to make it clear that it is God's power that brings success, not ours. Reading these Scriptures reminds me not to be discouraged by what seems overwhelming, but instead to trust in God's faithfulness and power.

The Encouragement of the Old Testament - Psalms Part 2

2010-03-11T14:22:00.002-06:00

Another way that the Psalms and Lamentations have encouraged me is how they express confidence in God's faithfulness and His goodness. When you read the words of people who were in deepest despair - people like David, whose father-in-law the King of Israel was hunting him down to try to kill him - you can find tremendous encouragement from the fact that these writers still trusted God and turned to Him for relief. Even in their darkest struggles, they had faith in God. If they can trust Him through such trials, then we can too.

Part of the comfort I have taken in books like the Psalms is the fact that they do not belittle or demean the pain of suffering. They don't try to trivialize it or suggest we're overreacting to it. On the contrary, it is clear from the Psalms that the writers experienced agonizing suffering. But their faith still held throughout their trials, and they still affirmed God's goodness. So whatever we're struggling through, we can be comforted that God was faithful to them and will be faithful to us. Great suffering is not evidence that God has abandoned us. If we put our trust in Him and hold fast to His promises, as the Psalmists did, we will find hope and comfort.

Four of my favorite Psalms for comfort: Psalm 34, Psalm 37, Psalm 56, and Psalm 73.

The Encouragement of the Old Testament - Psalms

2010-03-11T13:59:00.003-06:00

I used to think the Old Testament was not as important as the New Testament. I have to confess I saw it more as historical background, and therefore not as relevant or useful in everyday Christian life. What changed my mind was reading through it regularly in my daily Bible reading. I am amazed by what I was neglecting. As my faith and my relationship with God have developed, I have grown tremendously in my appreciation for the importance of the Old Testament writings in my daily life.

Example #1: I have found great encouragement in struggling with pain and suffering (both physical and emotional) through books like the Psalms and Lamentations. These books express cries of pain, anguish, grief, despair, and doubt very powerfully. I used to dismiss them because they were poetic. Now I cherish them, because they show that real children of God do struggle and that it is right to cry out to God in your struggles. David wrote a huge number of the Psalms. He was a man after God's own heart, yet he had these thoughts and made these anguished cries. So it's okay to admit you feel this way and to tell God about it. If David could express his heartache and fear and still be a man after God's own heart, then you can too (man or woman).

Some of us think that we have to suppress our struggles and pretend we aren't feeling doubt or fear, because we would somehow be accusing God or showing a lack of faith if we admitted to feeling this way. That is dangerous and unhealthy. We can't bear these burdens on our own. We need God to overcome these struggles. David honored God by crying out to Him in his suffering, because David showed that he trusted God as both the One who was powerful enough to rescue him and the One who was gracious and compassionate enough to do it.

Your feelings and thoughts aren't hidden from God (Psalm 139:1-4). He already knows how you're feeling inside, so there's no reason to avoid sharing it with Him in prayer. But when you express these things to Him in prayer and ask for His aid, you honor Him the same way David did. And you can take comfort knowing that God responds to these prayers:

When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears
and delivers them out of all their troubles.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:17-18

Don't Waste Your Bible - Any of It

2010-03-09T22:01:00.003-06:00

One foundational truth of reading Scripture is that you need the whole Bible. I mentioned here that you shouldn't discourage yourself by getting too ambitious when you first start committing to reading your Bible each day. However, once you get started, make it your goal to eventually get through every single book of the Bible. If you just stick to the New Testament or if you avoid some books, you will leave yourself with an unbalanced and fragmented appreciation of God. You will also miss out on some of the best ammunition for fighting sin and finding encouragement. I'll give examples in the next couple of posts.

Paul exhorted Christians to appreciate the value of reading the Old Testament:

"For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." Romans 15:4

"Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come." 1 Corinthians 10:11

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:16-17

God gave us the Bible as the best explanation of who He is and what He created us for. Unlike some books, there is nothing in the Bible that is there by accident. It is all important. We can't expect to have a full and abundant Christian life if we only listen to half of God's message.

Where I'm Going Next With This Blog

2010-03-09T19:57:00.008-06:00

I have been generally focusing on the things I identified here as turning points in my life and faith, while interspersing other thoughts that seem worthwhile. After sharing a few more thoughts on the tremendous importance of reading Scripture, I am going to shift the focus to talking about feeling powerless to deal with our sins and learning to depend on God alone to give us victory (which is exactly how I have found strength to resist and overcome sin).

If You Struggle With Joy, You're Not Alone

2010-03-09T10:16:00.003-06:00

A central purpose in my writing this blog has been to encourage Christians who aren't experiencing satisfaction in their relationship with God and to share what has helped me. One of the greatest gifts I've received has been the ministry of John Piper, and one of the chief reasons that he has been a gift is the fact that he is open and humble about his own deep struggles with fighting for joy and satisfaction in God. John Piper is probably best known for writing Desiring God, which makes a compelling case from Scripture that God intends for Christians to be joyful and happy, and that this happiness and joy comes from enjoying God Himself as our treasure. But he has also written this, and for anyone who feels discouraged in trying to find joy or satisfaction, this book is a great kindness. (and you can read both books online for free)

John Piper is absolutely right that our greatest satisfaction and joy comes from God, but there are many difficulties and challenges in life that make it hard for us to enjoy God the way we ought to be able to. I thank God that Piper has also been blessed with the humility to talk transparently about how these struggles affect him, and how he fights through them. If you're not experiencing joy right now, don't lose heart. Seek the Lord and trust His promise that He will be found by those who seek Him, and take encouragement from other believers who share how they face their own battles.

[W]hoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Hebrews 11:6

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord!
May your hearts live forever!
Psalm 22:26

Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart... .
Psalm 119:2

Some People I Treasure

2010-03-03T07:11:00.004-06:00

Our church seems to be blessed with people who blog and have really insightful things to say. I get a lot of encouragement out of reading their thoughts. One of our brothers has been kind enough to collect the links to many of these blogs together in one place. I hope you find it to be a blessing and come across some people that speak to your heart. Here's the link: http://jamsco.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/bethlehem-blogs/

The person who provided this list is Scott Jamison, who has a couple of nice blogs himself. I think you'll enjoy his wit and wisdom on fatherhood here and on Christian faith here.

What It Means to Live By Faith in Christ

2010-02-22T08:16:00.002-06:00

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20

The last four posts emphasized that satisfaction in God requires fighting our old ways of thinking and learning to find our pleasure in God. How we do that is summed up very well in this explanation from John Piper on how we live a new life by faith in God. Our hope of overcoming the old ways of living which led us to disappointment is grounded in the fact that Christian life is not just trying to make ourselves live with different habits and new rules – it is a change of heart that God works within us, creating a new person and putting to death the old one.

The aim of the death of Christ was to take our "old self" with him into the grave and put an end to it. "We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing" (Romans 6:6). If we trust Christ, we are united to him, and God counts our old self as dying with Christ. The purpose was the raising of a new self.

So who is the new self? What's different about these two selves? Am I still me? The verse at the beginning of this chapter [Galatians 2:20, above] describes the new self in two ways: One way is almost unimaginable; the other is plain. First, it says that the new self is Christ living in me: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." I take this to mean that the new self is defined by Christ's presence and help at all times. He is always imparting life to me. He is always strengthening me for what he calls me to do. That's why the Bible says, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13). "I toil . . . with all his energy that he powerfully works within me" (Colossians 1:29). So when all is said and done the new self says, "I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me" (Romans 15:18).

That's the first way Galatians 2:20 speaks of the new self: a Christ-inhabited, Christ-sustained, Christ-strengthened me. That's what Christ died to bring about. That's what a Christian is. The other way it speaks of the new self is this: It lives by trusting Christ moment by moment. "The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Without this second description of the new self, we might wonder what our part is in experiencing Christ's daily help. Now we have the answer: faith. From the divine side, Christ is living in us and enabling us to live the way he teaches us to live. It's his work. But from our side, it's experienced by trusting him moment by moment to be with us and to help us. The proof that he will be with us and will help us do this is the fact that he suffered and died to make it happen.

(The Passion of Jesus Christ, John Piper, pp. 86-87 (Crossway, 2004) (also titled Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die)) - available free online as a PDF here.

So take heart and be encouraged! Christ dwells within us, and He Himself is supplying the grace, strength, and endurance we need to live our lives as Christians. Our part is to believe in Him and in the promises God has made to us. When pain or doubt overwhelm us, or when we are so tempted to sin that we just want to give in, we don't look to ourselves for strength to deal with it. We put our hope in Christ and pray for Him to overcome it by His strength. Living by faith means that we put our trust in Christ to do what we can't do ourselves.

How Do Christians Live the Life of Faith?

2010-02-15T15:09:00.006-06:00

What inspired me to put my previous thoughts on the blog today about whether the Christian life is hard or easy was a great post by Adrian Warnock, an excellent blogger to follow, that is full of insight on this. Adrian quotes D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and adds some good thoughts of his own on why the Christian life isn't "automatic". We really do need to practice certain things and focus our attention on knowing God in order to get somewhere. Becoming a Christian doesn't mean that everything good in the Christian life necessarily follows without any attention on our part.

Those who experience Christianity but don't learn to practice spiritual disciplines like reading the Word and prayer will most likely be disappointed. They may think they found that Christianity was lacking, but in truth they never really lived it.

As I said in the last post, the hard part is overcoming our tendency to keep doing things the old way instead of doing them in the Spirit of God. We have every reason to be encouraged in this, though, because it isn't something we have to overcome by ourselves. Our stubborn tendency to live life by our old habits - what Paul calls the life of "the flesh" - is something God will conquer in us if we trust Him to do it. Jesus talked about the difficulty of leaving the ways of worldly life behind: "With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God." (Mark 10:27b). And John promises: "For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith." (1 John 5:4).

To sum it up: "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace." (Romans 8:5-6). So set your mind on Jesus Christ and study Him, seek Him, read His word, and meet Him in prayer. That is how to live the life of faith and bear His easy yoke.

Is Christian Life Hard or Easy?

2010-02-15T14:04:00.004-06:00

I was thinking about Jesus' words the other day that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matt. 11:28-30), and comparing that with the thoughts I've been sharing about what transformed my spiritual life. It seems like work, doesn't it? Reading your Bible every day, learning to place God above your other desires and enthusiasms, fighting temptations that try to lure you to sin... that sounds hard to just about all of us. We may be inclined to think that doesn't sound like an easy yoke at all. Then the thought struck me that the Christian life is not difficult to live. What is difficult is making the change from living the old life - focused on the physical, the material, the immediate - to living a new life in Christ that is reliant on the Spirit and focused on the joy of heaven.

In all my experience, some of the easiest times in my life have been when I felt filled up with peace from reading the Word of God and from prayer. In those times, I was not burdened with anxiety, troubles seemed to be smaller, hope was strong, and I saw how small most of our problems really are in comparison with the greatness of the things God does in our lives. Instead of being frustrated and discouraged by difficulties, I could look back with gratitude on all the good things that had been worked out through God's grace, and look forward with encouragement to all the things He was working out now.

But we don't stay there unless we are persistent in the disciplines of Christian life. If I let my Bible reading slip for a few days, if I don't spend time humbly experiencing God in prayer, if I neglect the other means of grace He puts in my life, then I am right back to living my life the old way. I'm back to getting frustrated when things don't go the way I expect, to being anxious over all the things I have to do and uncertainties about the future, to feeling discouraged, or to being tempted to think that I would be more satisfied with sin than with being close to God. Those are the things that make life hard. The less we practice Christian living, the harder it is for us to get back into that peaceful frame of mind where we rest in the Spirit of God. It's like trying to start a bicycle again after having stopped. It's always easier to pedal if you are already moving.

When we actually concentrate on Christ and live our daily life by trusting Him for all we need, then we find that His yoke is easy and His burden is light - He's bearing it from within us. He really does give us rest from things that wear us out, like anxiety, guilt, temptation, and discouragement. It is far easier to live life that way than to try to do it in any other way. But the hard part is shedding our old habits and trusting God that this will work best if we do things His way. The hard part is overcoming our stubborn tendency to still do it the way we are used to. This should be a huge incentive to us to keep up with our spiritual disciplines once we've started. Keep the momentum up, and we won't have to pedal as hard to get going again.

Two of the Most Important Thoughts on Pleasure

2010-02-12T15:54:00.008-06:00

Since I've been talking about letting go of our desires in order to find our deepest desire satisfied in God, this seems like the time to share these. Following are two of the most important quotes I have ever read outside the Bible on what pleasure is and why we get into so much trouble trying to find it in the wrong places. I hope they inspire you the same way they have me.

"The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

("The Weight of Glory" from The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis, p. 25)

Now read Lewis's insight on how God can be in favor of pleasure, yet give us so many rules that seem to place limits on things we find pleasurable. We make ourselves miserable by pursuing pleasure clumsily instead of the way it was meant to be enjoyed (Note: Lewis wrote the following as the words a supervising demon might use in explaining the art of deceiving humans to a novice demon, hence the speaker refers to God as "the Enemy").

"Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He had forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula."

(The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis, p. 44-45)

An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure - doesn't that grab you as a perfect description of how we stubbornly go about chasing after sins? It sure convicted me.

Our Fear of Letting Go of Our Pleasures

2010-02-12T05:10:00.008-06:00

To sum up the last post, you were designed and created to find your satisfaction in God, because that is the only place a living being can experience real satisfaction. As long as you find something more desirable than knowing Him and experiencing Him - as long as you hold something back as more dear to you than God - you will never be content.

This is the part that most people get discouraged at. We are used to relying on lots of things in the world (romance, sex, money, vacations, friends, family, food, books, television, etc.) for comfort and pleasure. The idea that we must set all these aside and desire God more than any of them, and further that we are supposed to be satisfied entirely by God Himself, feels threatening. We aren't yet used to enjoying God and being satisfied with Him alone, and so we are anxious that this idea of desiring God above all things will mean that the desires we are used to will go unfulfilled and will be a disappointment to us. This is where we have to act in faith. "Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart." says Psalm 37:4. And God has promised us that "whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever." John 4:14. If we want that deep longing in our hearts that none of these other things have ever fully satisfied to be finally fulfilled, we must trust God that He means what He says. We must seek Him first and most deeply.

One of the great delights we will find is that when we are most satisfied with God, we can enjoy the other good things He has given us too. Some past things we must give up entirely, because they actually come between us and loving God - those are sin. But many things we can safely keep as long as we never let them become more dear to us than our experience of God. Not one of the things I listed at the beginning of the second paragraph is bad in itself. It is only bad when taken in a way that puts it before God or disobeys His teaching. The safest thing you can do if you want to keep enjoying a thing is to always make sure it is never more important to you than God. For if you have begun to desire it more than you desire God, then what can God do in His love for you but remove the thing that is distracting you from fulfillment?

On the other hand, when we make God the center of all our desire and affection, the other worthwhile things we enjoy are not robbed of their pleasure. They are actually made more enjoyable. The most mature Christians you see are not people that never have any fun. They find enjoyment and delight in many things - but they enjoy the Lord more. The things they love, they love for the Lord, with the Lord, and because of the Lord. They don't enjoy anything without enjoying it together with God. That is the way to be content in life.

Don't Settle for Half-Hearted Religion

2010-02-12T04:37:00.005-06:00

Ray Ortlund shared a very short, powerful insight from his father at The Gospel Coalition blog that is right on point with the problem I addressed in my introduction to this blog. It's a good reminder that doing things only halfway usually keeps us from experiencing the pleasure and joy involved in whatever it is we're doing. That applies equally - or even more so - to living the Christian life.

There are really only two options in life for satisfaction and fulfillment: either go after God with all your heart, or be unfulfilled. Any illusion that there is a third way - some way that we can find contentment by doing some things God's way but other things our way - is a false hope. God's command is not that we abandon everything in this world that we enjoy. His command is simply that we learn to treasure Him more than anything else that we also enjoy. If we don't seek Him as the central source of our satisfaction, we won't find it in anything else. C.S. Lewis said it brilliantly: "It is not simply that God has arbitrarily made us such that He is our only good. Rather God is the only good of all creatures... If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows-the only food that any possible universe ever can grow-then we must starve eternally." (The Problem of Pain, p. 47).

A Little Bible Reading Can Go a Long Way

2010-02-09T10:54:00.002-06:00

Don't get discouraged about Bible reading by thinking there's a quota you have to meet. You don't have to get through the whole Bible in a year and you don't have to read from several different sections in the same day. Even a short reading each day can have significant impact. Tom Elliff has a good example of this at his blog. He has made a practice for about 28 years of reading one chapter of Proverbs each day, regardless of whatever else he is reading in the Bible. His post gives some great insights into how putting the words of Proverbs before your mind every day can produce some valuable results. Having started my own daily Bible reading in Proverbs several years ago, I agree heartily with what he has to say about the benefits.

Tom's post identifies one of the key benefits of Bible reading: by spending time each day focusing on what God is teaching, you gradually learn to change your mindset and you begin to recognize bad or self-defeating attitudes in yourself. Reading your Bible is a regular reminder of what healthy thoughts are, and the more you listen to what you read and consciously try to incorporate it into how you think each day and how you make decisions, the more you will benefit from it.

The end goal of Bible reading is not just to learn some things about God. It is also to elevate your own thinking and improve your own choices so that you will be in harmony with God. The more you draw close to God and live and act in harmony with Him, the more you get to enjoy the way God designed you and what He has planned for your joy. God has a beautiful plan for you, but you won't get to appreciate or experience it unless you follow His instructions for it. Make no mistake: learning to listen to God and follow His instructions is a duty we all owe to Him because He is God Almighty and Lord over all. But God has not designed it to be simply a duty or obligation. He has planned it to be the pathway to our deepest satisfaction and joy.

Why You Feel So Thirsty and Empty

2010-02-02T21:11:00.002-06:00

Once you believe in Christ as Lord and Savior, reading your Bible every day is the gateway to satisfaction in God. I am not saying that missing a day here or there means you won't find joy. What I am saying is that if you only read your Bible once a week, or only when someone preaches to you, you're missing out on what keeps faith and joy alive. It's like trying to keep a plant alive without watering it.

I am convinced of this because that is exactly what my experience has been. More importantly, though, this is exactly what Jesus said about how much we need our Bibles. He told us that God's words are the food by which we will live: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4 (Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 8:3); see also Luke 4:4). What He was saying is that we need God's Word the way we need food – to survive! And we need it as often as we need food – daily. He was teaching that God's Word will nourish, refresh, and sustain us just the way food does.

He also taught us that if we want eternal life, we must abide in Him, and that if we want Him to hear our prayers His words must abide in us. (John 15:1-11). That means they have to remain in us, and in order for that to happen we have to keep them close and keep them in our minds. "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17). In fact, it's so crucial to the Christian life that Jesus Himself is referred to as "the Word". (John 1:1).

This is a message God gives us again and again in the Bible. I wasted nearly ten years of my Christian life feeling empty and discouraged because I didn't listen to it. But I know now from experience that God simply means what He says: "Blessed is the man… [whose] delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither." (Psalm 1:1a; 2-3).

If you're feeling withered, God has given you the answer.

Two Essential Secrets to Bible Reading

2010-01-30T19:12:00.005-06:00

One of the reasons that many people view Bible reading as a chore is that we often go about it the wrong way. First, we do it just like we would do homework or preparing a report for work: we try to just sit down and do it. But the Bible is not simply a book. It is a message from the Living God. The Bible even says that its words are "living and active" (Hebrews 4:12). There is something spiritual going on here. We can't experience the Bible meaningfully apart from experiencing God. So we need to pray and invite God to act as we read. Here's a promise I love: "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him." (James 1:5). My habit now is to ask God for help and understanding every time I sit down to read the Bible.

So don't try to go about Bible reading mechanically, like digesting a math assignment. It's a spiritual thing, and you need to go about it in a spiritual way. Pray for God's help, pray about what you read, and listen to the words to see if God stirs anything in your heart. When you hit something that really moves you, stop and spend some time thinking about it and asking God to show you what He wants you to do with that.

A second problem with our Bible reading is that most of us do it because we think we're supposed to. That's like saying we have to eat because we're supposed to. Yes, we are supposed to eat. Life doesn't function well if we don't. But are we stuck eating dirt and grass? No - we have an incredible variety to choose from, and we can usually eat what we enjoy! The same thing is true of Bible reading. Reading your Bible is a gift - it's something God has given to you in order to help you find the life He created you to enjoy. So approach it expecting something good to happen. Don't do it in the hope that if you stick with it for the rest of your life, God will approve of you. That's not how faith works.

God approves of those who trust in Him and pursue a relationship with Him in the heart. He doesn't keep score of your obedience to see if you've made the cut. He pays attention to whether you have the right attitude about Him and really want to know Him. He looks to see if you want to experience what He has prepared for you. So don't read your Bible as if you can earn God's blessings by doing your homework faithfully. Read your Bible with hope, trusting God that if you spend time with Him in the words He has given you, something wonderful will happen. In other words, do it because you are trusting Him that you will find satisfaction if you seek it through Him.

Bible Reading Made Easy

2010-01-30T18:29:00.003-06:00

The way I started reading my Bible every day was by reading Proverbs. My father-in-law suggested it because there are 31 chapters, so you can read a chapter a day and that will take you through the whole book in a month. It's easy to keep track of, and having a sense of accomplishment right away is helpful. After working through the book four times, I really wanted to expand and experience the rest of the Bible. In the previous 10 years I had managed to read through the Bible perhaps twice, over a long period of time. But after starting simply by doing Proverbs chapter by chapter, I was hungry for more of the change in my outlook that I had experienced in those four months of daily Bible reading.

Just like any new habit, the key to sticking with it is to avoid biting off too much to chew at the beginning. Start with too much ambition and you're likely to get discouraged. It's more important to start and stick with it than it is to accomplish a certain goal right away. So where do you go after Proverbs? Or should you start somewhere else? There's no right or wrong place. The entire Bible is valuable. Listen to how Paul cherished it: "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

So all Scripture is useful, and you can start wherever you are most interested. If it helps to have a suggestion, I recommend starting with Matthew 1 and going through all four Gospels at whatever pace works for you - even just half a chapter a day. Spending time listening to and observing Jesus each day will do amazing things for your life.

Don't Get Discouraged If You Don't Feel It

2010-01-23T19:20:00.005-06:00

I want to make clear at the outset that this was a process. For example, I didn't just wake up one day and decide I really wanted to read my Bible every day, and then happily take to the habit. At first the changes were very small and slow, and it was all I could do to get myself to keep the ambition of reading some of the Bible almost every day. I would miss days and then try to catch up, and sometimes it felt like an obligation that I wasn't excited about taking time for. But I knew that the way I had been doing things before had left me disappointed and unhappy. I knew that my previous pattern of life had failed. So I was trusting God that there was something better for me if I devoted myself to reading the book He gave us.

I would say that for the first several months Bible reading often felt like doing homework. You learn interesting things, and sometimes you have a pleasant time, but often it feels like a chore to get out of the way. So if anyone has tried this or is trying it and has found it to be difficult to stick with, I can empathize. I've been there, but I also can testify that sticking with it caused something wonderful to happen for me that was well worth it. The Bible is full of promises that God will give wisdom, hope, and encouragement to those who read and listen to His Word. The more I read, the more I placed my trust in Him that something would happen in me if I kept at this habit. And I gradually found that I really wanted to read my Bible - in fact, I began to realize that I was generally happier and less overwhelmed during the day if I had made time to read my Bible that day. As I stuck with it, I could see the difference between days I read the Bible and days I didn't. My spiritual mindset was beginning to change.

How I Discovered Satisfaction in God

2010-01-23T17:06:00.004-06:00

This post is basically the overview of what made me come alive and taste real satisfaction. The posts to come will expand on the outline here and show how it all played out. I was raised without any belief in God for nearly 19 years. Sometime I will share how God opened my eyes to see the truth about the spiritual life and convinced me that Christ is my Lord and my Savior. But in my first post here I emphasized that there was still something missing from the faith I was living. This post starts to lay out how I went from being a Christian who believed and prayed, but was disappointed and still caught up in desires for sin, to becoming a Christian who enjoys God and finds satisfaction in simply experiencing Him.

I can't give you a secret recipe that will automatically introduce you to satisfaction in God if you just take the steps in the right order, because finding satisfaction in God happens through developing a personal relationship with Him. It's not mechanical – it's a dynamic, living, spiritual experience of coming close to the Divine and learning to know and trust Him. You let Him quiet your mind and release your tension in prayer, you listen to Him, you tell Him what troubles you, you wait for Him to do things in your life and in your heart, and you learn by experience that He is faithful and gives you what you need. Truly knowing God and finding satisfaction in Him is not like following a map or trying to learn how to operate something. It is much more like falling in love and starting a new relationship.

Thankfully, a lot of people before us have developed this relationship and have left great advice on how they went about it. The relationship still depends uniquely on the interaction between the two people involved and how they relate to each other, but the experiences of others give us a good idea how to get started. Most importantly, a relationship with God is unique because He gives and invests far more than you do and He actually works spiritually inside you to change you. So it will differ somewhat for each person, but the things below were fundamental for me, and from reading widely through what other Christians over the centuries have experienced, I believe these things will be fundamental for most people in finding a steady satisfaction in God.

I began reading my Bible every day.
I was genuinely unhappy and dissatisfied with where I was spiritually and with
the results of my own efforts to manage my life. I confessed that I had done a
lousy job and that I was not keeping God's Word faithfully on my own. I wasn't
succeeding in fighting the desire for sin, and I was sick of being trapped in a
cycle of doing things I was ashamed of and then having remorse and guilt.
I learned to consciously focus on admitting I could not do what I needed to do
myself and putting my trust entirely in God to do it instead. I was learning
that prayer doesn't just include asking God for what we think we need, but also
includes asking God to change us and do in us what He desires to do. I learned
that you don't keep God's commands by trying harder; you keep them by asking Him
earnestly to make you obedient and trusting Him that He will do it.
I truly desired to know God more and find satisfaction in Him – I was becoming
convinced that we were meant to enjoy God Himself for who He is, not just for
what we get from Him, and I wanted to learn how to do this.
As I read the Bible daily, I was learning to trust God's Word and His promises
instead of having my attitude shaped by how I felt or what I saw in my own life.
I was learning to put aside my own expectations of what was possible or what was
going to happen and believe that all things are possible with God instead.
I began to trust God that I could really let go of the things I had been holding
onto for comfort and pleasure, and that He would replace them with something
better and more satisfying. I learned to practice turning to Him when I was
tempted by sin, trusting that He would ultimately give me more satisfaction and
pleasure than sin could – without any shame!
I made my relationship with God and my time with Him my highest priority.

That Sounds A Lot Like a Conversion…

2010-01-16T00:32:00.003-06:00

This is a short post, but includes a long list at the end.

Some people would say that this sounds a lot like the difference between having faith and not having it at all. But I believe there were many signs to demonstrate that I truly believed in Christ and had faith before this happened. It seems to me that I was a genuine Christian, but I was also stuck in a shallow state of sanctification that I needed to be pulled out of. I have known other Christians who seem to have been through the same process or are still struggling with it. It is important for Christians to think about when faith actually begins and how we can know if we are truly alive in Christ or just deceiving ourselves like the Pharisees who persecuted Jesus and the Early Church. You need to be sure that you really know God, not just some imitation you have created for yourself to justify your way of life or make you feel important. But for the moment my purpose here is to encourage those who already believe in Christ who are nevertheless still struggling with satisfaction and yearning to experience the abundant life that Christ promised.

I also want those who may read this who don't believe Christ is their Savior to see just how extraordinary and powerful the pleasures of knowing God can be. If what you read is moving you, then I encourage you to take a Bible and literally ask God out loud to show you whether Christ is the answer. As you listen for Him, read the passages below and see what happens in your heart and mind. No one can explain quite how faith happens - it's a spiritual thing - but this is the way many people have found confidence to believe that Jesus Christ is who He says He is.

"but your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
so that he does not hear." Isaiah 59:2

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus… ." Romans 3:23-24

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Romans 5:1

"but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Romans 5:8

"if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." John 3:16-18

"But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." John 1:12-13

"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us. …" 1 John 3:16

"For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus… ." 1 Timothy 2:5

"He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."
Colossians 1:13-20

"For 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'" Romans 10:13

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." Ephesians 2:8-9

"yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified." Galatians 2:16

"'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' And they said, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.' And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house." Acts 16:30-32

"these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." John 20:31 (which means there is more to see if you keep on reading!)

Scripture quotes courtesy of this excellent online Bible website: ESV Bible Online

I also recommend: Bible Gateway (many, many different versions can be searched)

What Does Satisfaction in God Mean?

2010-01-15T23:11:00.006-06:00

I am absolutely convinced that what happened in my life to introduce me to lasting satisfaction and joy was the work of God. There is no other way to explain the radical change in my heart and mind that caused me to lose interest in sin and awakened me to find satisfaction in experiencing God. What I mean by "experiencing God" is a peace, fullness, and contentment that come from thinking about God, reading the Bible, praying, loving other people the way He taught us to, and enjoying hope because of all the promises God has made to us.

This amazing fullness and satisfaction is not something that can be directly compared to anything else in the world. It is superior in every way. But the pleasure we get from many things in life bears some resemblances. If you look at the most beautiful thing you know through a spyglass that is grimy and covered with dust on the end, and then look at it with a completely clean glass, you will have some idea of the difference. The pleasures of earth are a dim shadow cast by the pleasures of God - a foggy reflection.

For most of us, the strongest and most satisfying emotion we have experienced is love. What you feel for your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend, or for a child or a parent, is a good starting point for thinking about what experiencing satisfaction in God means. I think that might be one of the reasons He gave us these experiences, and why He uses marriage so often in the Bible to illustrate His relationship with His people. Being satisfied with God is a lot like love: you are happy just thinking about Him or remembering something He said to you (e.g. in the Bible), or joyful because you know Him and can come close to Him in prayer. But it's better. It's deeper, and it never ends because He is always available to you anywhere, at any time, forever.

Many people find it hard to believe they can feel this way about God. I used to be one of them. But something changed in my heart in an incredible way so that I started experiencing this very powerfully. My goal here is to explain how and why I believe this happened, and I will start laying that out after the next post.

So Why Should I Keep Reading... ?

2010-01-12T00:22:00.004-06:00

If you don't believe in the Christian religion, then my last post may have left you thinking there's nothing here that will be of use to you. You're wrong. Part of what I will do on this blog is explain how I changed from being dissatisfied with life - disappointed by all the pleasures we try to satisfy ourselves with - into a person who has found satisfaction and contentment. I'm talking about the kind of satisfaction that is fulfilling enough that you don't feel like you need to go chasing after anything else. Even if you don't believe Jesus is helpful to you, I am certain you want to be satisfied and fulfill the deepest desires in your heart. It hurts to feel empty and to be disappointed. So take a listen to what happened to me, because you just might find that the results are worth trying for.

A second reason to keep reading is that you might be surprised by what happens. Right now, you might feel like you've heard enough about Jesus from other people and that nothing new is going to make a difference to you. But when I talk about what happened in my life, I'm going to share how the Bible made a difference in my happiness. The Bible also says that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (In other words, through the Bible – Romans 10:17). It also says that the people in the church in Galatia in the 1st century received the Spirit of God by "hearing with faith" (Galatians 3:5). So I have some confidence that if a person listens to what God has to say and listens to what God has done for me, something might change in the way he or she thinks about God and the Bible. It's a pretty safe challenge: if there's nothing to what I'm saying, then you probably won't change your mind. But if what I'm saying is true, then God has been at work here and reading onward might open a door for you to a place you are longing to go.

Without Faith, Nothing Else Works

2010-01-11T23:53:00.004-06:00

I want to make sure I make something perfectly clear before I continue: The pattern of events that brought me to deep satisfaction in life will not do a person any good if he or she doesn't have faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. If you don't confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead so that you could have forgiveness of sins and eternal life, then you need to start at the beginning (see Romans 10:9). The things I will say here have proven to be of great benefit and encouragement to me in living the Christian life, but you have to begin that life by putting your faith entirely in Christ to save you from sin and death.

The things that changed my life are not part of a self-help regimen or the elements of a good productivity and personal improvement plan. They are part of a supernatural work of spiritual transformation in a human life. That's the only thing that will save a person from the dissatisfaction that comes from trying to satisfy your soul with what the world has to offer. This change is more than physical or emotional: it is spiritual, and it comes through the original, Almighty Spirit of God Himself. Reading the Bible can help you see Christ for who He is and may be the very thing that leads you to put your faith in Him, but you won't experience a transformation of heart and mind until you do place your faith in Him. And that transformation is what is necessary to find satisfaction.

Does God Want Us To Be Satisfied?

2010-01-10T04:47:00.005-06:00

God's desire for us is that we be satisfied in Him, not discouraged and thirsty: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4. Jesus said, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" John 7:37-38. And elsewhere He said to the woman drawing water from a well, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:13-14. And in Revelation, which is placed last in the Bible because it deals with the end of all earthly things and the beginning of man's new life in heaven, God says "To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment." Revelation 21:6. In eternity with God no one will be thirsty.

Peter told the crowds in the temple in Jerusalem: "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus[.]" Acts 3:19-20. The Lord wants to refresh you. In fact, Jesus said this about the reason He came into the world: "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." John 10:10. In other words, when Christ came from God He brought to us the full life that we lacked. When we respond and come to Him, we are filled up - satisfied.

The Beginning of the Journey

2010-01-10T03:39:00.003-06:00

I read C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" a couple of years after I first believed in God. It was a great blessing in my development as a Christian. Yet for many years after, I struggled to find contentment in my Christian life. My growth was slow and halting, and the evidence of grace in my life was at many times barely perceptible. In other words, I sinned a lot and wasn't too successful in staying away from it. Looking back, I can best describe those years by saying I was always thirsty. I was longing for something I didn't seem to have, and I wasn't satisfied in what I did have. This left me vulnerable to wounding and scarring from disappointment, depression, and sin – not to mention the effect on others.

I now count one of the greatest demonstrations of God's mercy in my life to be His delivering me from this long season of spiritual thirst by showing me how to find satisfaction entirely and completely in Christ. The difference is so dramatic and amazing that it will take many conversations to describe it accurately, but the bottom line is that I've found a fountain of life that truly satisfies when nothing else will. There are still times when I feel pain, discouragement, weariness, and temptation just like any other person does. But when I feel dry or thirsty, I now know where to go to get filled up. Instead of feeling like something's missing all the time, or running after other things that don't really solve the problem, I am learning to go directly to God and receive satisfaction from the source.

I can testify that this works: God does satisfy deeply, and the desire or need for things that are sin is weakened and much easier to defeat when you experience satisfaction in God. But there are many Christians who don't have this satisfaction, just as I didn't have it for years. There seem to be plenty of books, and good ones, that will introduce the new convert or the skeptic to the basics of Christianity. It is the middle ground between that and between truly living with a satisfaction in God that seems to be in need of more explanation and accessibility. Countless believers throughout the history of the Church have found their satisfaction in God and learned the secret of the contentment that Paul describes in Philippians 4:11-13. Yet experience has convinced me that many Christians are struggling in this middle ground and are finding it to be a very discouraging place.

You can't love anyone else without wanting them to experience as much happiness as you do. So my mandate for writing this blog is that other people would experience real satisfaction in Christ and learn how Christianity truly provides contentment. My goals are to wrestle openly and honestly with the things that make life hard for all of us, and the things that really hurt and disappoint us; to share the ideas and the truths that have blessed me and given me the most satisfying encouragement and fulfillment; to show how God has helped me understand my own suffering and my own sin, and how He has shown me reasons to be filled with joy and encouragement; and to share how I have found rest for my soul and satisfaction in my life by seeing God more clearly and learning to enjoy who He really is. Although I will delve deeply into the actual experiences that led me to satisfaction in Christ and show how I got there, I will also share other thoughts that seem worth contributing. Readers can click on the tag "Finding Joy" to just read the posts on finding satisfaction in Christ.

I don't have the answers to all of life's problems in my head, but Christ does have the answers – indeed, He is the answer. My prayer for what I write here is that my experiences will lead others to find satisfaction in God as well so that their struggles become secondary to the joy they receive from our Savior.

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