How Grace Enables Self-Control

Grace is instrumental in salvation. It also spurs us to righteous behavior. Scripture tells us that it is “the grace of God” that “teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives” (Tit. 2:11–12). The idea that grace teaches self-control can seem a bit surprising. After all, if I’m freely forgiven of my sins by the grace of God, why resist sin? If there’s always more forgiveness on tap, why strive after righteousness?

The apostle Paul anticipated this reaction—“Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?”—and immediately shot it down: “By no means!” he wrote. “We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Rom. 6:1–2) To Paul, the idea that we should keep sinning because of grace was silly, absurd, the equivalent of Bill Gates knocking off a 7-Eleven. Instead, forgiveness lays the groundwork for transformation.

THE POWERFUL PROSPECT OF FORGIVENESS

In high school I had a close friend who described himself as an atheist. When he told me he didn’t believe in God, I could only think of one biblical rejoinder: “The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God’” (Ps. 14:1). Since he was a lot stronger than me, and liked to fight, I kept the verse to myself.

I tried talking to him about my faith, but nothing seemed to get through to him. Nothing except for this: I described to him, as best I could, the experience of forgiveness. “There’s nothing like coming to God with all the bad things you’ve done and asking for Him to cleanse you,” I told him. “It’s like taking a shower after being dirty for a long time. You feel completely new, totally clean.”

He was silent.

“Hey, man. I don’t mean to preach at you,” I said.

“That doesn’t sound like preaching,” he replied looking off at something. “It doesn’t sound like preaching at all.”

I wasn’t much of an evangelist, but I got one thing right. There’s something powerful about the prospect of forgiveness, of being made clean. As the Presbyterian minister Henry Van Dyke said, “For love is but the heart’s immortal thirst to be completely known and all forgiven.” When you feel that forgiveness, the last thing you want to do is rush out and start sinning.

THE BEAUTY OF A BLANK SLATE

In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul gives a long list of “wrongdoers” who will not inherit the kingdom of God. The list includes some pretty despicable characters, including swindlers, drunks, thieves, and adulterers.

But before his readers could feel too superior, he added these words, “ . . . and that is what some of you were.” Those descriptions only applied to his readers in the past tense. Something had changed: “you were washed, you were sanctified” (6:11), Paul reminded them. In other words, because of the fact that they’d been forgiven, they had entered a whole new way of living.

The next verses unpack how “washed” people are to live, by “not [being] mastered by anything” and living free from sexual immorality. Holiness flows from forgiveness.

It’s a spiritual principle, and a psychological one. Researchers talk about the benefits of the “fresh start effect.” Basically it means that when we feel like we’ve been given a clean slate, our behavior improves.

That helps explain why people who use “temporal landmarks” like birthdays, the beginning of a new year, or even the beginning of the week to start pursuing a new goal make greater progress. They feel like they’ve been given a new start and they don’t want to mess it up. According to Francesca Gino, a behavioral scientist, “We feel more motivated and empowered to work hard toward reaching our goals when we feel like our past failures are behind us.”

That’s good news for Christians. We get the ultimate blank slate when we place our faith in Christ. Then we receive that blank slate over and over again. First when we come to Christ and receive a whole new life (2 Cor. 5:17), and then repeatedly as we repent of our sins and ask God for forgiveness (1 John 1:9).

FALSE STARTS AND FRESH STARTS

Unfortunately, we don’t always take advantage of this blank slate. Or at least I don’t. When I mess up, I’m reluctant to confess my sins and ask God for forgiveness. Not only that, but I start avoiding my Bible and stop praying. In order words, I start avoiding God (as if I could).

I realize this makes no sense. I know God loves me unconditionally. But because of my actions, suddenly I feel like we’re not on talking terms. This strange avoidance behavior is always a mistake. When I fail to confess my sins, I’m more likely to sin again. What’s one more sin, I think. I’m already messing up.

Researchers have a name for this phenomenon too. They call it the “What-The-Hell Effect.” Basically, it means that after messing up, we tend to mess up even more. It was coined by dieting researchers who noticed that when their subjects had even small indiscretions (a bite of ice cream or one slice of pizza) it was followed by a full-on binge. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal explains this thinking behind this behavior.

Giving in makes you feel bad about yourself, which motivates you to do something to feel better. And what’s the cheapest, fastest strategy for feeling better? Often the very thing you feel bad about. . . . It’s not the first giving-in that guarantees the bigger relapse. It’s the feelings of shame, guilt, loss of control and loss of hope that follow the first relapse.10

BREAK THE CIRCLE OF SIN

I’m convinced this dynamic plagues my spiritual life as well. When I sin, the shame and guilt drive me away from God. I feel bad about myself, and in a cruel irony, I engage in more of the sin that made me feel bad in the first place.

When I confess my sins, the circle stops. I feel like I’ve hit the refresh button on my spiritual life. Suddenly I’m motivated to resist sin and pursue holiness. Wallowing in my guilt merely makes me sin more. Confession gives me a fresh start and I don’t want to mess it up.

It can be natural to think that feeling really bad about yourself is the way to improve your behavior. But piling on guilt is never the answer. It’s to keep diving back into grace.

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Taken from Your Future Self Will Thank You by Drew Dyck (©2019). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.

Drew Dyck (M.A. in Theology) is an editor at Moody Publishers and the former managing editor of Leadership Journal. His work has been featured in USA Today, the Huffington Post, Christianity Today, and CNN.com. Drew is the author of Generation Ex-Christian and Yawning at Tigers. He lives with his wife Grace and their three children near Portland, Oregon. Connect with Drew at www.DrewDyck.com or follow him on Twitter @DrewDyck.

Greg Gilbert on the New ESV Story of Redemption Bible

The Bible is the epic story of the unfolding plan of God over the course of the history of the world. To help tell that story, Crossway created the ESV Story of Redemption Bible. This new Bible leads readers on a journey through the redemptive storyline from start to finish, with conversational commentary written by pastor Greg Gilbert.

I asked Greg about his experience working on the commentary and his thoughts on the result.

What prompted your desire to help create the Story of Redemption Bible?

One of the greatest joys of pastoring a church has been the opportunity to preach through most of the 66 books of the Bible. As I've done that, not necessarily in order, the beauty of the one great story of redemption has just grown brighter and brighter. If you read it correctly, the Bible isn't just a handbook for life or a collection of pithy proverbs; it's a story, as grand and moving and tragic and glorious as any you've ever heard.

I want to help Christians understand that story better, feel its tensions and drama, and revel in its glorious conclusion. I hope the ESV Story of Redemption Bible will help to do that!

What makes the Story of Redemption Bible unique from the dozens of other kinds of Bibles we see being published? 

The unique thing about the ESV Story of Redemption Bible—besides its stunningly beautiful design—is that it puts the storyline front and center. My job, as narrator, is to act as a kind of tour guide as we make our way through the vast mountain ranges, so to speak, of the story of God's redemption of the world. The point isn't so much to find "nuggets" of application here and there, but rather to walk through, understand, and feel the whole narrative, to sweep our eyes across the mountains and take in what God has done.

To that end, I walk along with you, showing up in the text at certain intervals to explain what's going on, what's about to happen, and why it matters, all with the hope of helping you keep the thread of the story and not get lost and frustrated in the details.

Another unique feature of the ESV Story of Redemption Bible is that if you start in Genesis 1:1 and follow the notes' instructions, you'll end up reading all 66 books of the Bible, but not in canonical order. Instead, we read each minor prophet at the appropriate point in the story—when that prophet was actually preaching—and the result is that instead of being a clump of context-less judgment at the end of the Old Testament, the minor prophets come alive as an integral part of the larger history that's unfolding.

Think of the whole thing as a trek through the Himalayas, with your very own guide to help you through!

When you started working on this project, did you have a particular audience in mind? 

The project actually started as an idea for a Bible for brand-new believers, but honestly, as I made my way through the Bible with my focus entirely on the narrative—the drama, characters, hopes, dreams, prophecies, songs—I realized that what I was learning and feeling was far more than just "good reminders" for me (as Christians like to say!). I was seeing the Bible in a new light, feeling it in new ways, and it was massively encouraging to me.

The ESV Story of Redemption Bible will be useful for any believer, new or not. To be sure, it'll take some work and investment to get the whole benefit of it. Setting out to read all 66 books of the Bible is no small thing! But that's really the best use of this Bible. Sure, you'll get some benefit from the notes, I think, just by spot-reading. But the whole point is to start at the beginning, work to the end, and revel in every glorious, tragic, and redemptive moment of the story.

One of my personal favorite aspects of the Story of Redemption Bible is the look and feel of it! Tell us a little bit about the design work behind this project. 

I actually didn't have anything to do with the design, so I feel like I can be over-the-top in my praise of it. . . I've never seen anything quite like it. The design team mentioned at one point that they wanted to give it the feel of a "one-volume Lord of the Rings," and I think they did it. The gold-leaf, intricate designs, maps, graphs, and charts—not to mention the 66 circular medallions for each book of the Bible—really make you feel like you're setting off on an epic journey.

This Bible doesn't so much have the feel of the desk and study. It has the feel of adventure. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to!"

How do you see this project serving the local church?

I hope this project will help people understand and love the One Story of the Bible more deeply. It is such a shame that so many Christians and churches spend so much of their time digging around in the dust looking for "nuggets" when spread out before them is the majesty of the mountains, if they'd just lift up their eyes and look!

I hope this Bible will help Christians do that, and I pray it will also help pastors communicate that epic story in their own preaching. Ultimately, Christians don't need another practical suggestion on how to make this Tuesday better than last Tuesday. They need to have their breath taken away by seeing what God did, over millennia, to save them from their sins.

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Greg Gilbert (MDiv, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is senior pastor at Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of What Is the Gospel?, James: A 12-Week Study, and Who Is Jesus?, and is the co-author (with Kevin DeYoung) of What Is the Mission of the Church?

Zach Barnhart currently serves as Student Pastor of Northlake Church in Lago Vista, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University and is currently studying at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeking a Master of Theological Studies degree. He is married to his wife, Hannah. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zachbarnhart or check out his personal blog, Cultivated.

The Way of Worship

There’s a story in the New Testament where Paul visits the great city of Athens. Like Oxford or Cambridge or Boston, Athens was a famous intellectual city, renowned for its history, its learning, and its contribution to culture. Athens was said to be the glory of Greece. And yet have you ever noticed Paul’s reaction when residing in this world-class city? Was Paul impressed with its intellect? Did he fall in love with its architecture? Was he amazed by their food?

Acts records that “his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols” (17:16). Later he says to Athenians, in effect, “Look, I can see you are very religious. You have temples and rituals and statues all over the place. You are really into worship. But I’m telling you: you’re going about it in the wrong way” (see Acts 17:22–23). That’s why Paul was provoked in his spirit. He could see that no matter how spiritual or how smart or how sincere they may have been, they were worshiping God in a way that did not please him.

If the first of the ten commandments is against worshiping the wrong God, the second commandment is against worshiping God in the wrong way. The people in Athens were guilty of both. They were ignorant of the God who raised Jesus from the dead, and their approach to religion was not what the true God had prescribed.

Self-Willed Worship

Most generally, the second commandment forbids self-willed worship—worshiping God as we choose rather than as he demands. In particular, the second commandment makes two prohibitions: 1) We are not to make images to represent God in any form, and 2) We are not to worship images of any kind.

The second commandment does not intend to outlaw art or painting or aesthetic considerations. The tabernacle displayed angels and palm trees, the ark will have cherubim, and God himself gave the Spirit to Bezalel and Oholiab that they might be skilled artists and craftsmen. God is not against beauty. What he prohibits is infusing any object with spiritual efficacy, as if man-made artifacts can bring us closer to God, represent God, or establish communion with God.

The Old Testament is full of examples of God’s people using man-made artifacts for self-willed worship. The golden calf is the most famous example. Remember, Aaron proclaimed a feast to Yahweh, and the people declared that these were the gods who brought them up out of Egypt (Ex. 32:4–5). The Israelites weren’t worshiping Baal. They were trying to worship the Lord their God, but they were doing it in the wrong way. They were violating the second commandment.

At other times, the Israelites treated their religious symbols as though they had real religious powers. This too was a violation of the second commandment, turning the ark into some kind of talisman (1 Sam. 4:1–11) or treating the temple like a good luck charm (Jer. 7:1–15). We can do the same with church buildings or pulpits or the cross around our neck.

Like most of the Decalogue, the second commandment is not hard to understand. The what is fairly straightforward. The why and how take some more explanation. To that end, I want to give five reasons for the prohibitions in the second commandment.

No One Like Him

First, God is free. Once you have something to represent God or worship as if it were God, you undermine God’s freedom. We start to think we can bring God with us by carrying around a statue. Or we think we can manage God with the right rituals. Or we think he’ll be our benefactor if we simply pray in a certain direction or make an offering before a graven image. Anytime we make something in order to see God, or see something that stands in for God, we are undermining his freedom. God is Spirit, and he doesn’t have a body (John 4:24). It is not for us to make the invisible God visible.

Second, God is jealous. No image will capture God’s glory. Every man-made representation of the Divine will be so far less than God as to incite his jealousy. Think about it: the more chaste and pure a husband, the more his jealousy is aroused by an adulterous wife. God is supremely pure, and he cannot bear to share his glory with another, even if the other is a sincere attempt to represent (and not replace) the one true God. God is a being unto himself. In fact, he is being. His glory cannot be captured in a picture or an image or a form. That’s why even in Revelation when we have a vision of the One on the throne, he is “shown” to us in visual metaphors: lightning, rainbow, colors, sea, re, lamps, thrones, etc.

The world of the ancient Near East divinized everything. The Israelites divinized nothing—not Father Time or Mother Earth or the sun or the moon or the stars. The separation between God and his creation is one of the defining characteristics of biblical Christianity. Any human attempt to bridge that chasm is not only an attempt at the impossible but an affront to the unparalleled majesty of God.

Third, believing sight comes by sound. In the Bible, especially on this side of heaven, we see by hearing. As Deuteronomy later made clear, the Sinai experience was a paradigm for God’s self-revelation. When the Lord appeared to the people on the mountain out of the midst of re, Moses reminded them, “You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Deut. 4:12). And because they saw no form, the Israelites were commanded not to corrupt themselves by making visible images (4:15ff.).

We make no apology for being Word-centered and words-centered. Faith comes by hearing (Rom. 10:17). That’s how God designed it because that’s how he has chosen to reveal himself. Christian worship is meant to be wordy and not a breathtaking visual display. If God wanted us to see him in worship, he would have presented himself differently in the Sinai theophany. The way God “showed up” to give the Ten Commandments says something about how we are to keep the Ten Commandments.

Fourth, God provides his own mediators. At their best, God’s people have employed images and icons not because they thought God could be housed in a marble bust, but in order to provide more intimate access to God. If God is in heaven, it makes sense that we would want a little portal for him here on earth.

But God’s people should know better. The saints in the Old Testament did not need to fashion an intermediary for themselves; God had already promised mediators through the prophets, priests, and kings. God had his own way to draw near to his people, culminating in a final Mediator who would embrace all three offices at once and pitch his tent among us (John 1:14).

Fifth, we don’t need to create images of God because he has already created them. The implications of Genesis 1:26–27 are staggering. We are the divinely chosen statues meant to show what God is like, created in his image and after his likeness. Idolatry diminishes God and diminishes us.

In Ezekiel 18:11–13, right in the middle of a host of horizontal, neighborly sins, is the mention of idolatry. Why? Because mistreating other people and worshiping idols have the same root: a violation of the divine image. In one case, we are looking for God’s image where it doesn’t exist (idolatry), and in the other case we are ignoring God’s image where it does exist (sins against our neighbors).

We are God’s statues in the world, marking out the planet as his and his alone. He does not need our help in making more images; he asks for our witness.

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Content taken from The 10 Commandments: What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them by Kevin DeYoung, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Kevin DeYoung (MDiv, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina. He serves as board chairman of the Gospel Coalition and blogs at DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed. He is assistant professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte) and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Leicester. He is the author of several books, including Just Do Something; Crazy Busy; and The Biggest Story. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have seven children.

God Uses Unhealthy Churches

“That church is going to die.” I’ve heard that prophecy spoken over churches countless times. Interestingly, this doomsday prediction has been pronounced by people from almost opposite extremes of the “healthy church” discussion, each time about a church that differed from their convictions or preferences.

An elderly pastor who is used to traditional ways of worship looks at a new church plant, with their worship band and blue-jeaned leaders, and pronounces with certainty that this trend won’t last. “The old ways of doing church and worship have lasted for hundreds of years, and will still be here when this fad is long gone.”

The stylishly bearded member of the ten-year-old megachurch looks at the steepled little building on the corner in his neighborhood—where a small congregation has been faithfully meeting for over five decades—and feels certain it will be boarded up or turned into a vintage coffee shop quicker than you can say, “What happened to hymnbooks?”

Sadly, there is some validity to the pessimism that each feels toward the other. But thankfully, it is also true that God is in the business—and always has been—of using flawed Christians in less-than-perfect churches to fulfill his kingdom-wide, generation-spanning purposes.

I was reminded of this marvelous reality even as I recently wrote a book on “how to grow a biblically beautiful church.” Jesus is not only glorified in the Excellent Wife, or the Competent to Counsel pastor, or Radical family outreach, or the impeccably Centered church. Jesus is glorified in Christians and in churches—all over the globe and in every generation—who struggle to parent well, pastor well, evangelize well, or organize well.

In other words, Jesus can be glorified in you and me, and in the pitifully inadequate, sometimes myopic, church we attend.

God Uses Unhealthy Christians

The Bible staunchly resists our consistent temptation to make superheroes out of any of its main characters—except, of course, Jesus. Abraham, the father of the faithful, lacked faith. David, the great king of Israel, was a crummy leader to some of his most loyal subjects. Peter, the bold apostle, caved to social pressure more than once.

Not surprisingly, then, we find similarly imperfect people among the prominent influencers of Christianity. The great theologian Augustine was a severe opponent to other Christian believers who did not agree with his ecclesiology. The famous reformer Martin Luther would compromise some of his own convictions for the sake of expediency. Arguably the best apologist of the 20^th century (and a personal favorite of mine), C.S. Lewis also argued for the extra-biblical concept of a Purgatory as part of the believer’s afterlife: “Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they?” This, in my view, is a significant error.

Think back over your own experience as a Christian. Of the people who have impacted your spiritual life the most—including perhaps your parents, various pastors, godly mentors, even radio or television preachers—haven’t you also noticed areas of weakness in their lives? Don’t they all have some obvious blind spots in their own understanding or behavior? (By the way, if you can’t think of any, that doesn’t mean the person is perfect—it means you know them imperfectly).

The fact is, God has always used flawed people to fulfill his perfect purposes. God uses weak people to show his own strength. God uses people who embrace some degree of doctrinal and practical error, or else he couldn’t use anyone at all.

God Uses Unhealthy Churches

When it comes to churches, just as with individuals, the Bible is strikingly short on perfect roll models. The churches of Galatia were tempted by legalism, the church at Ephesus lost their original passion, the Christians to whom Jude wrote were inundated with false teachers, and … where do we even begin with the church at Corinth?

I could not help but notice the omnipresence of imperfect churches as I researched my recent book about church health. The book is essentially an unpacking of Titus 2. And do you know what Paul is warning Titus about in the first chapter of this letter? You guessed it: false teachers, who are “empty talkers and deceivers.”

But that’s not all. The very fact that Paul gives such clear and helpful instruction to Titus in the second chapter of the letter clearly stems from the fact that in some of these areas Titus—and the church he was leading—were falling short of the ideal. Did Titus himself ever perfectly follow all the useful counsel Paul provides him in Titus 2? I’m guessing not.

Having been a pastor for over 15 years myself, and knowing something of human nature, I’m fairly confident that Titus’ church—even at its best—had some unhealthy Christians in it, and had a number of unhealthy areas where they still needed further teaching or prodding.

In our hypercritical era of sound bites and social media, I sometimes wonder if even a perfect person, or a very mature church, would meet our standards. Would we criticize Jesus because, even though he did reach out to paralytics and prostitutes in his own community, he did not do enough to battle the sex trafficking that was happening in his day in the Far East? Although Jesus himself had no word of rebuke for the church in Philadelphia (“I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name”), would we be satisfied that they had “merely” kept God’s Word and not denied his name? Or would we wonder why they weren’t more committed to picketing Caesar’s palace?

As glaring as the actual errors in the early churches are to our critical eyes today, it is equally plain that God used them. Paul did not give up on them; that’s why we have many of the letters that make up the New Testament. Jesus didn’t immediately reject them; instead he warns and offers correction to them, plainly desiring for them to continue flourishing for years to come.

In the mean time, these are the very congregations through which Jesus established his Church. Members of these churches would disciple the next (second ever!) generation of Christians. Martyrs from these churches would testify to the truth of the risen Savior. Missionaries from these churches would carry the Christian gospel to new continents. God uses churches who embrace some degree of doctrinal and practical error, or else he couldn’t use any of them.

Why Does It Matter If Your Church Is Healthy?

If God uses unhealthy churches, made up at least in part of unhealthy Christians, why then do we have a proliferation of books on church health these days? Does it really matter if you have the nine marks (or twelve marks, or five marks, depending on who you are reading) of a healthy church?

I suppose I can only answer with certainty for myself, since I am publishing a book on how to grow a biblically beautiful church. But I suspect that I speak for most of the other godly pastors and authors who have addressed this subject in recent years. My goal in unpacking Titus 2 for the church today is not to shame every Christian into feeling discouraged about how fall their particular congregation is falling short. Nor is it to spur church leaders to redouble their already exhausting labors in order to fend off every possible criticism that may be tweeted against them.

My hope is that pastors and church leaders, in particular, will receive this book in whatever way is appropriate to their specific situation—perhaps as an encouragement to their faithful labors in the church, or maybe as a helpful corrective if they see some areas where they have gone off-message from what Paul so helpfully describes for us.

By carefully studying and spiritually rooting ourselves in Titus 2 as a helpful model for the local church, my desire is for this book to provoke further conversations regarding how we as individual Christians can grow more like Christ, and how our particular churches can improve our intentionality regarding the Gospel. Although my book is aimed chiefly at pastors and church leaders (reflecting the tone of Titus 2), it is also accessible and relevant to every Christian because the local church is relevant to every Christian.

Why then write about church health? For the same reason Paul wrote his letter to Titus. Not to set up an impossible standard of flawless well-roundedness, but to encourage faithfulness in the essentials, thoughtful consideration of weaknesses, and joyful effort for the sake of Jesus. Recognizing all the while that every church, like every Christian, must ultimately look to Christ to find the perfection for which we long.

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Taken from Adorned: How to Grow a Biblically Beautiful Church by Justin Huffman, © 2018, DayOne Publications.

Justin Huffman has pastored in the States for over 15 years, authored the “Daily Devotion” app (iTunes/Android) which now has over half a million downloads, and recently published a book with Day One: Grow: the Command to Ever-Expanding Joy. He has also written articles for For the Church, Servants of Grace, and Fathom Magazine. He blogs at justinhuffman.org.

Why Does God Permit So Much Evil?

God has all power and all knowledge and is second to none. No equals and no competitors. The fact that evil is rampant in his creation is no surprise to him. It’s there only by permission. Fromtime to time, evil may seem to be running wild, but in fact it’s always on a leash. And we should be grateful that we’ve never seen how bad it could become.

Exactly why God allows evil in his creation, he doesn’t bother to tell us, and he doesn’t need to. He is God. We can’t understand everything about God, but we have enough information to satisfy many of our basic questions. In many cases, God chooses to let us go through whatever evil or trouble we may be facing at the moment. He could have prevented it and allowed us an easy skate, rather than the tough slog some have to endure. He could end it entirely but probably won’t until he’s through using it for his purposes.

An Intruder in God's Good Creation

If we take a close look at both the Old and New Testaments, we notice something interesting about evil’s presence in the world. It is considered an intruder into God’s good creation but is allowed to prowl about for a time, and with a considerable degree of freedom. Yet it’s always within bounds.

Sometimes it may look as though it exceeds all limits, and whereas good often seems to run out of steam, evil seems never to tire. But just when we think God’s hands are tied, he yanks the chain and brings it to heel. He is ruler of all. Evil is evil and good is good, but whereas God never uses good for evil purposes, he often uses or blatantly exploits evil for good purposes. He does this by turning it upside down and inside out.

The stories of the patriarchs in Genesis are wonderful illustrations of evil being exploited for good. One of the clearest pictures comes to us in the account of Joseph. Young Joseph is mistreated, violently abused, tricked, kidnapped, enslaved, falsely accused, and imprisoned. Yet every time he is kicked and abused, he is mysteriously bumped up one more rung of the ladder. He moves from the deep hole in the beginning of the story to the position of the prime minister of Egypt at the end.

God used all the evil directed toward Joseph as raw material to construct not only his preservation from starvation and death but also the rescue of those who abused him as well as the salvation of the entire nation he served. As Joseph says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).

This pattern presented early in the Bible became the blueprint for how God has chosen to deal with evil in his realm for the rest of history. He may permit a certain amount of wickedness to occur, but he always reserves the right to twist and use it for his own purposes. We see the same design in the New Testament.

What we see in Genesis continues throughout early church history, through the centuries of the martyrs, in the subsequent eras of the church, and up to the present day. This is God’s will for the remainder of time until he brings down the curtain and calls humanity to final judgment. After every tiny scrap of evil is dealt with in the complete justice and fairness of God, he intends to recreate a new heaven and new earth where evil is no longer even a possibility—where only goodness and righteousness will exist.

The manipulation of evil for good ends is one of the most exciting aspects of God’s program on earth. He uses the bad things around us in ways we couldn’t possibly expect. He brings good out of the bad not in spite of it but because of it.

The Grand Master

Let’s examine a very earthly and human analogy of this. For example, it’s common practice to exploit the intentions of others for our own ends in a variety of ways. Consider the game of chess. As the competition progresses, the better of the two players cleverly ascertains his opponent’s game plan. He has two options. He can block and frustrate the plan immediately, or he can so arrange his own strategy to account for it, to absorb it. In this way, while his opponent is cheerfully fulfilling his own scheme, he’s also unwittingly fulfilling that of the superior player.

Just when he thinks he’s about to proclaim victory, he’s suddenly checkmated. The game is over.

So it is with God. He’s the Grand Master of chess, who can at any moment impose his own plan over ours (or anyone else’s), so that no matter what, he can bring the game to his own decreed conclusion. We may deliberately live a life of rebellion and selfishness, discarding his will at every point, or we may live a life of Spirit-empowered obedience and self-sacrifice. Whichever course we take, he wins in the end. By scripting his own plot to overarch ours, he allows us to fulfill our plans but ultimately to bring about his will. In this way, evil is both exploited as well as judged, good is rewarded, and God is the victor.

Of course, this is not a perfect analogy, since there are no exact earthly parallels to how God’s nature and sovereignty are involved in human life. God is entirely unique and profoundly mysterious. He is revealed to us only in part. As I said, this revelation isn’t everything we want to know, but it’s enough to grasp the basics of what he wants us to know. The main point of comparison here is that the superior being uses the activities of the inferior for his own will.

Over the years, our family has discovered that some of the best things that ever happened to us came as a direct result of the worst things that ever happened to us. If we take the apostle Paul seriously “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28), then we’ll eventually see how God still writes his superior, more sophisticated script over all others.

No matter what evils befall us, good (even excellence) may be brought out of them. This is one of God’s favorite things to do. This point is too important to pass over lightly.

And we need to remember, just as it is Satan’s purpose to take all that is good and turn it toward evil ends, so it is God’s purpose to take all that is evil in the lives of those who love him and turn it for good. The commandeering and exploitation of evil for good is one of the most powerful aspects of God’s strategies on earth. He skillfully manipulates the bad things around us in ways we couldn’t possibly expect or imagine.

A Truth We Need to be Fixed in Our Minds

We need to fix this truth in our minds. Between now and the final act of history’s play, God has determined to allow evil to roam about on a chain, not free to do anything and everything it wants, but to do much that we wouldn’t want. Evil will always be an intruder and an invader. As long as we dwell on this planet, we’ll always live in occupied territory. Evil will be relatively free (within God’s prescribed limits), but it will always be under the ongoing judgment of the Ruler of all things. Each and every day he will choose to exploit what evil determines to do and to turn it toward his good purposes.

Again, evil will continue to accuse, blame, abuse, misrepresent the truth, destroy, and pillage, but it will remain on a leash. It will never be totally free and will do no more than it’s allowed to do. God defeats it handily, takes it prisoner, and redirects it to bring the good he intends.

Why do I repeat myself? Simply to underscore this critical point: whether people choose to do evil or good in this life, God has decreed that he will write his will into the script of human history and bring it to its conclusion in exactly the way he has purposed.

We can oppose God’s will and do the most terrible things, or we can do everything in our power to try to please him. In either case, he’s able to enter into our own worldly troubles and sins and in some mysterious way bring out of them ultimate good—both his and ours. Without doubt, evil, and all those who love it and are given to it, will face judgment and destruction. But it is to God’s glory that we turn from it and live.

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Taken from Resenting God: Escape the Downward Spiral of Blame, (c) 2018, Abingdon Press.

Dr. John I. Snyder is author of Resenting God and Your 100 Day Prayer. As an ordained Presbyterian pastor, John has served congregations in the United States and planted churches in California and Switzerland. He is the advisor and lead author for theology and culture blog Theology Mix (www.theologymix.com), which hosts 80+ authors and podcasters and visitors from 175 countries. He received his Doctor of Theology degree magna cum laude in New Testament Studies from the University of Basel, Switzerland. He also has Master of Theology and Master of Divinity degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey.

You Don’t Have to Be Busy to Belong

One evening when reading our dinner devotional book, I read about the Feast of Trumpets, a once-a-year event when the Israelites were called (literally) to repentance. The trumpet would sound and they’d remember that their time was God’s gift and whether they’d spent it well or not. Nancy Guthrie writes, “God set up a yearly holiday called the Festival of Trumpets to blast the people out of their spiritual laziness.”

Sometimes I wish we’d get a trumpet blast to arouse us out of our spiritual stupors, so we’d be forced to see how we use busyness to block our ears.

Slowing Down

We need trumpet calls and wake-up calls. We need to say no to the things that lead us away from the story of God and lead us to follow a story of the suburbs. The suburbs keep us busy because we think the more we move, the more we work, the more valuable we will be. If we hope to nurture a life of faith, we’ve got to stop moving long enough to hear God’s voice.

The gospel says: come to the desolate space. Tantrum, scream, cry, face your fears of insignificance and irrelevancy there. Then find rest in a rest that is not of your own making. Find Jesus. And having found Jesus, we will be sent out, and he will ask us impossible things—not to test us but to show us (even in the food we eat) that he provides not only for our hungers but also for the hunger pains of our communities.

God will be found by us in the desolate spaces. Going to desolate places might look like recalibrating our time to fit what we say we value. It might be removing our phones from our nightstands and choosing to not document our lives on social media. It may be committing to read our Bibles even when we’re not sure if God will show up.

Our time is not our own to fill like an empty shopping cart—with whatever strikes our fancy and fits our budget. Our time (like our money) is a means to love God and serve others. Paradoxically, only as we give of our resources will we be filled. This isn’t American bootstrapperism where we muscle it out to be generous; instead it’s slowing down and acknowledging that we have a Father God who sees our needs and kindly answers them for our good and his good pleasure.

But if our schedules are packed too tight—like our closets—there will never be room to let in anything new, including God. Our daily habits, our weekly schedules, and our purchases all add up to how we spend our lives. Anything we turn to that dictates our daily habits also shapes our hearts. We hunger for good work and restorative rest, and yet we stay busy because we fear we won’t find anything in the desolate places. But what if instead of circling the suburbs or distracting ourselves, we simply stopped? What if we said no more often? What would happen if we slowed down?

We could begin to live ordinary time well.

Living Ordinary Time Well

When we live ordinary time well, we practice disciplines that increase our hunger for the right things—not the quick-fix chicken nuggets of the soul, but the nutritious meal. We pray. We read our Bibles. We give. We serve. We partake in the sacraments and dig our hands into the life of the church.

When we live ordinary time well, we choose to spend our time for God’s kingdom instead of building up the kingdom of self. When we do, we don’t have to force our days, plans, or even our memories to provide total satisfaction. In her book Simply Tuesday, Emily P. Freeman writes, “Part of living well in ordinary time is letting this day be good. Letting this day be a gift. Letting this day be filled with plenty. And if it all goes wrong and my work turns to dust? This is my kind reminder that outcomes are beyond the scope of my job description.”

When we stop moving, we realize time was never our own. Then, our days can be received as gifts.

If we slowed down and pruned our schedules, we’d begin to decenter ourselves. We’d practice sustained attention and even be bored. We could begin to imagine what finding holy in the suburbs would look like in our hearts, families, and neighborhoods. We’d give our children the tools to know how to be comfortable in their own skin without having to perform to feel loved. We’d give them (and us) a better way to live in a culture that says you have to stay busy to be seen. We’d show them a better way to belong than through joining a frenzied, success- and image-driven culture.

You Don't Have to Be Busy to Belong

The upside-down kingdom of God in the suburbs stakes this claim: you don’t have to be busy to belong. When we stop striving, we don’t have to hoard our time or treasure. God’s kingdom testifies that rest is possible, not just checking out from the rat race in your favorite version of suburban leisure, but more than that, we can experience a deep, restorative rest.

The gospel says that in Jesus we’re held, protected, loved, and valued simply because we are God’s children. But to imagine a vision larger than what our suburbs sell as success and productivity, we have to have the courage to slow down.

There we have the space to wrestle with all that our busyness hides and there, we pray, we will find God.

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Taken from Finding Holy in the Suburbs by Ashley Hales. Copyright (c) 2018 by Ashley Hales. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

Ashley Hales is a writer, speaker, pastor's wife, and mother to four. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and after years away, she's back in the southern California suburbs helping her husband plant a church, Resurrection Orange County. She's the author of Finding Holy in the Suburbs and a contributor to Everbloom. Connect with Ashley at aahales.com.

How to Cultivate Communal Comfort in Your Suffering

Suffering powerfully highlights what has always been true—we were not created for independent living. Suffering reminds us that God’s grace doesn’t work to propel our independence but to deepen our vertical and horizontal dependence. The strong, independent, self-made person is a delusion. Everyone needs help and assistance. To fight community, to quest for self-sufficiency, is not only a denial of your spiritual need; it’s a denial of your humanity. Suffering is a messenger telling us that to be human is to be dependent.

My friend TobyMac so wonderfully captured with these words: “What does it look like to admit your need and open the door to God’s warehouse of provision?” Consider these seven steps.

1. Don’t Suffer in Heroic Isolation

There’s nothing noble about bearing down and suffering alone. In fact, it’s a recipe for disaster. Everyone has been designed by God for community. Healthy, godly living is deeply relational. Worshipfully submissive community with God and humble dependency on God’s people are vital to living well in the middle of the unplanned, the unwanted, and the unexpected.

The brothers and sisters around you have been placed in your life as instruments of grace, and as I’ve said before, they won’t be perfect instruments, they won’t always say and do the right things, but in the messiness of these relationships God delivers to us what only he can give.

In my own suffering I’ve had to fight with the temptation of self-imposed isolation. I know I need the presence and voices of others in my life who can say and do things for me that I could never do for myself, and I know that the relationship I have with these people is God’s gift of comfort, rescue, protection, and wisdom. Are you suffering in isolation?

2. Determine to Be Honest

The first step in seeking and celebrating the gift of the comfort of God’s people and experiencing how they can make the invisible grace of God visible in your life is to honestly communicate how you’re handling what you’re going through. Honest communication is not detailing the hardship you’re going through and letting all the people around you know how tough you have it. Complaining tends to drive people away and to attract you to other complainers, which is far from healthy and helpful. Rather, every sufferer needs to be humbly honest about the spiritual battle underneath the physical travail so that brothers and sisters around you can fight that spiritual battle with you.

And don’t worry about what people think of you. Remember, you don’t get your identity, peace, security, and rest of heart from them but from your Lord. No one in your life is capable of being your messiah; people are tools in the hands of your Messiah, Jesus. It would be impossible to fully communicate the depth of the comfort, strength, and counsel I have gotten at crucial moments of spiritual battle from the dear ones God has placed in my life. Are you humbly and honestly communicating to others about how you’re handling your hardship?

3. Let People Interrupt Your Private Conversation

You have incredible influence over you, because no one talks to you more than you do. The problem is that there are times when it’s very hard to say to ourselves what we need to hear. The travail of suffering is clearly one of those times. It’s hard then to give yourself the hope, comfort, confrontation, direction, wisdom, and God-awareness that every sufferer desperately needs.

So you need voices in your life besides your own. You need to invite wise and loving people to eavesdrop and interrupt your private conversation, providing in their words things you wouldn’t be able to say to yourself. And don’t take offense when they fail to agree with your assessments; you need these alternative voices. They’re not in your life to hurt your feelings but to give you what you won’t be able to give yourself, and that in itself is a sweet grace from the hand of God. Who have you invited to interrupt your private conversations?

4. Admit Your Weakness

Doing well in the middle of hardship is not about acting as if you’re strong. God’s reputation isn’t honored by our publicly faking what isn’t privately true. The grave danger to sufferers is not admission of weakness but delusions of strength. You see, if you tell yourself and others that you are strong, then you won’t seek and they won’t offer the enabling and strengthening grace that every sufferer needs. And remember, the most important form of weakness that we all face isn’t the physical weakness that accompanies so much of our suffering but the weakness of heart in the midst of it.

Determine to be honest about your weakness, and in so doing, invite others to be God’s tools of his empowering and transforming grace. When you suffer, you view weakness either as an enemy or as an opportunity to experience the new potential that is yours as God’s child. Is your habit to admit or deny weakness?

5. Confess Your Blindness

This side of eternity, since sin still lives inside us and blinds us, there are pockets of spiritual blindness in all of us. As you walk through your travail, there may be inaccuracies of belief, subtle but wrong desires, wrong attitudes, susceptibilities to temptation, wrong views of others, struggles with God, and evidences of hopelessness that you don’t see.

So in love, God has placed his children in your life to function as instruments of seeing. They offer to you insight that you wouldn’t have by yourself. Because they can see what you don’t, they can speak into issues in your life, and by so doing be not only instruments of seeing but also God’s agents of rescue and transformation.

It’s humbling but true of every sufferer that accuracy of personal insight is the result of community, because sin makes personal insight difficult. Since we all have areas where we fail to see what we need to see, we need to welcome those whom God has sent into our lives to correct and focus our vision. How open are you when those near you help you see things in yourself that you don’t see?

6. Seek Wise Counsel

It’s dangerous to make important life decisions in the midst of the tumultuous emotions and despondency of suffering. Often in the middle of hardship, it’s hard to see clearly, to think accurately, and to desire what’s best. The shock, grief, and dismay of suffering tend to rattle the heart and confuse the mind.

When you are suffering, you need to humbly invite wise and godly counselors into your life. I’m not talking here about professional help, although that’s good if necessary. I’m talking about identifying the wise and godly people already in your life who know you and your situation well, who can provide the clarity of advice, guidance, and direction that is very hard to provide for yourself.

Don’t be threatened by this; it’s something we all need, and wise sufferers welcome it and enjoy the harvest of good fruit that results. Have you invited wise and godly counselors into your life to help you decide what would be hard to decide on your own?

7. Remember That Your Suffering Doesn’t Belong to You

2 Corinthians 1:3–9 reminds us that our sufferings belong to the Lord. He will take hard and difficult things in your life and use them to produce good things in the lives of others. This is one of the unexpected miracles of his grace. When it seems that my life is anything but good, God picks it up and produces what’s very good in the life of another. Every sufferer needs to know that the comfort of community is a two-way street. Not only do you need the comfort of God’s people, but your suffering positions you to be a uniquely sympathetic and insightful tool of the same in the lives of others.

Your suffering has given you a toolbox of gospel skills that make you ready and equipped to answer God’s call to be an agent of his comfort in the lives of fellow sufferers. God calls you not to hoard your suffering but to offer it up to him to be used as needed in the lives of others. And there’s blessing in taking your eyes off yourself and placing them on others, because it really is more blessed to give than to receive. Have you hoarded your suffering, or seen it as a means for bringing to others the good things that you have received?

Yes, it’s true that the God of all comfort sends his ambassadors of comfort into your life. They’re sent to make God’s invisible presence, protection, strength, wisdom, love, and grace visible. So welcome his ambassadors. Be open to their insight and counsel. Confess your needs so that God’s helpers can minister to those needs. Live like you really do believe that your walk through hardship is a community project, and be ready for the good things God will do.

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Content taken from Suffering: Gospel Hope When Life Doesn't Make Sense by Paul David Tripp, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Paul David Tripp is the president of Paul Tripp Ministries, a nonprofit organization. He has been married for many years to Luella and they have four grown children. For more information and resources visit paultrippministries.org.

This is What Intimacy with God Looks Like

It was not enough for God to make us his children. He wants us to know that we’re his children. He wants us to experience his love. And that’s why he sent the Holy Spirit. Galatians 4:6 says, “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.” The reason why God sent the Spirit is so that we can experience what it is to be sons and daughters loved by our Father. And notice how the Spirit is described. Most of the time in Galatians Paul simply refers to “the Spirit.” Often in the New Testament he’s described as “the Holy Spirit.” But here Paul calls him “the Spirit of his Son.”

Our experience of the Spirit is the experience of the Son, for the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son. The Spirit enables us to experience what Jesus experiences.

God Sent the Spirit of His Son So That We Might Know That We Are Sons

So the Father has given us the Spirit of his Son so that we can enjoy the experience of his Son, so that we know what it is to be sons like the Son, so that we can enjoy the love the Son experiences from the Father.

God gave his Son up to the whip, the thorns, the nails, the darkness, and the experience of forsakenness so that you could be his child. No wonder he sends the Spirit of his Son. He doesn’t want you to miss out on all that the Son has secured for you. This is his eternal plan: that you should enjoy his fatherly love.

The world is full of people searching for love and intimacy. Many sexual encounters and affairs are a desperate attempt to numb a sense of loneliness. Many people who seem to have it all feel empty inside. The actor and director Liv Ullmann once said, “Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool.” We were made for more. The reason why we yearn for intimacy is that we were made for intimacy: we were made to love God and be loved by him. And this is what the Father gives us by sending his Son and by sending the Spirit of his Son.

What Does This Intimacy Look Like?

We Can Talk to God Like Children Talk to Their Father

“The Spirit . . . [cries], ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:6). The Spirit gives us the confidence to address God as our Father. A number of our friends have adopted children. And it’s always a special moment when the adopted child starts calling them “Mom” and “Dad.” God is infinite, holy, majestic. He’s a consuming fire before whom angels cover their faces. He made all things and controls all things.

Can you imagine calling him “Father”? Of course you can! You do it every day when you pray—most of the time without even thinking about it. How is that possible? Step back and think about it for a moment, and you’ll realize what an amazing miracle it is that any of us should call God “Father.” But we do so every time we pray, through the Spirit of the Son. This is how John Calvin puts it:

With what confidence would anyone address God as “Father”? Who would break forth into such rashness as to claim for himself the honour of a son of God unless we had been adopted as children of grace in Christ? . . . But because the narrowness of our hearts cannot comprehend God’s boundless favour, not only is Christ the pledge and guarantee of our adoption, but he moves the Spirit as witness to us of the same adoption, through whom with free and full voice we may cry, “Abba, Father.”[1]

Think of those adopted children saying “Mom” and “Dad” for the first time. What must that feel like for them? Perhaps they do so tentatively at first. They’re still feeling their way in the relationship. And that’s often what it’s like for new Christians, feeling their way in this new relationship.

But think, too, what it means for the parents. It’s a joyful moment. It’s a sign that their children are beginning to feel like children. It’s a moment of pleasure. And so it is for God every time you call him “Father.” Remember, he planned our adoption “in accordance with his pleasure” (Eph. 1:5 NIV).

We Can Think of God Like Children Think of Their Father

“So you are no longer a slave, but a son” (Gal. 4:7). Slaves are always worried about doing what they’re told or doing the right thing. They fear the disapproval of their master because there’s always the possibility that they might be punished or sacked. Children never have to fear being sacked. They may sometimes be disciplined, but as with any good parent, it’s always for their good. God is the best of parents. And we never have to fear being sacked. You can’t stop being a child of God—you’re not fostered. You’re adopted for life, and life for you is eternal!

The cry “Abba! Father!” is not just for moments of intimacy. It was actually the cry that a child shouted when in need. One of the joys of my life is that I’m good friends with lots of children. Charis always cries out, “Tim!” when she sees me. Tayden wants me to read his Where’s Wally? book with him. Again. Tyler wants me to throw him over my shoulder and swing him around. Josie wants to tell me everything in her head all at once in her lisping voice. They all enjoy having me around. But here’s what I’ve noticed.

Whenever any of them falls over or gets knocked, my parental instinct kicks in, and I rush to help. But it’s not me they want in those moments. They run past me looking for Mom or Dad. They cry out, “Dad!” and Tim won’t do. That’s what “Abba! Father!” means. When we’re in need, we cry out to God because the Spirit assures us that God is our Father and that our Father cares about what’s happening to his children.

We Can Depend on God Like Children Depend on Their Father

“And if [you are] a son, then [you are] an heir through God” (Gal. 4:7). When Paul talks about “sonship,” he’s not being sexist. Quite the opposite. In the Roman world only male children could inherit. So when Paul says “we” (“male and female,” 3:28) are “sons,” he’s saying that in God’s family, men and women inherit. Everyone is included. And what we inherit is God’s glorious new world. But more than that, we inherit God himself. In all the uncertainties of this life, we can depend on him. He will lead us home, and our home is his glory.

What could be better than sharing in the infinite love and infinite joy of the eternal Father with the eternal Son? Think of what you might aspire to in life—your greatest hopes and dreams. And then multiply them by a hundred. Think of winning Olympic gold or lifting the World Cup. Think of being a billionaire and owning a Caribbean island. Think of your love life playing out like the most heartwarming romantic movie. Good. But not as good as enjoying God.

Or let’s do it in reverse. Think of your worst fears and nightmares: losing a loved one, never finding someone to marry, losing your health, not having children. Bad! But Paul says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). The only time Jesus is quoted as saying, “Abba, Father,” is in the Garden of Gethsemane as he sweats blood at the prospect of the cross (Mark 14:36). Even when you feel crushed by your pain, God is still your Abba, Father.

Where does joy come from? It comes from being children of God. How can we enjoy God? By living as his children. How can we please God? By believing he loves us as he loves his Son.

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[1]John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill,  trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics 20–21 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 3.20.36–37.

Content taken from Reforming Joy: A Conversation between Paul, the Reformers, and the Church Today by Tim Chester, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org. 

Tim Chester is a pastor of Grace Church in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, and a faculty member with the Acts 29 Oak Hill Academy. He was previously research and policy director for Tearfund and tutor in missiology at Cliff College. Tim is the author of over thirty books, including The Message of Prayer, Closing the Window, Good News to the Poor, and A Meal with Jesus. Visit Tim’s website and read his blog or follow him on Twitter.

Happiness in High Fidelity

Vanity of vanities. What’s the point? Nothing matters. How is this possible? How can things that initially seem so enjoyable and look so good end up being so unsatisfying in the end?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus helps us understand what lies at the root of Solomon’s unhappiness—and our own. “Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” he says, “. . . but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. . . . For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

In other words, the reason Solomon became dissatisfied with consumption, the reason we will also find it unsatisfying, is because it cannot offer the deeper, richer, sustainable goodness that our souls seek. When we invest our hearts in temporary things, things that John describes as “passing away,” we must constantly replace them to maintain our joy. And so we’re constantly looking for newer, better, faster, and flashier and will gladly pay for them even if we don’t need them.

Happiness: Made to Break

Understanding how our hearts relate to possessions helps explain cultures marked by consumerism and driven by the belief that new is always better. Giles Slade, the author of Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, writes that part of what motivates consumers to keep purchasing is that they are in “a state of anxiety based on the belief that whatever is old is undesirable, dysfunctional, and embarrassing, compared with what is new.”

So in order to be happy, we keep consuming, keep buying, keep indulging—but the whole time, the things we gain leave us empty even as we crave them all the more. We’re not victims of planned obsolescence as much as partners in it.

In order to find lasting happiness, we must invest in things that last, we must store up “treasures in heaven.” Because what ultimately makes something good is not whether it brings us momentary pleasure but whether it brings us eternal pleasure, whether it satisfies both our bodies and our souls.

Unlike modern gadgets that become outdated on release, the technology that allows me to play my Sidney Bechet album is the same basic technology that Thomas Edison patented in 1878. To look at it, a record is nothing more than a hard, flat disk with thin concentric circles, but the circles are actually grooves with microscopic variations that the record needle “reads.” The resulting vibrations are translated into electric signals, amplified, and as if by magic, make my living room sound like a 1940s nightspot.

Spiraling Toward God

Another surprising thing about records is that while the record itself is spinning in a circle, the needle is actually moving closer and closer to the center with each spin. The circles that appear concentric are really one continuous spiral that begins at the outer edge and slowly loops toward the center.

We often think of life on this earth in a linear fashion, a road that leads straight off into eternity. Because of this, when we think about investing in heavenly treasure or things that last, we could easily assume it means forgoing anything but necessities here on earth, that we should only invest in things of an obvious religious or spiritual nature. But Solomon presents a different vision of our time on this earth—one that simultaneously complicates and clarifies the search for good things.

Having realized that seeking pleasure itself is not good, Solomon, began to understand that his problem wasn’t so much what he was pursuing as how he was pursuing it. He had been pursuing good things apart from God, the Giver of good things. But “apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” he asks.

This leads Solomon to an equally profound thought: “For everything there is a season,” he writes, “and a time for every matter under heaven. . . .”

He has put eternity into man’s heart. . . . there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

What Solomon realizes is that our life on earth, all the things we experience, all the work we do, all the good things we enjoy, aren’t simply a hurdle to the next life. They are designed by God to lead us to the next life. They are designed to lead us to him. Like the grooves on a record, God’s good gifts are designed to draw us closer and closer to the center, to draw us closer and closer to eternity and him.

A Broken Record

But sometimes the record is scratched. Sometimes debris gets lodged in a groove. And when this happens, a record can play on a loop, repeating the same musical phrase over and over and over again, never moving forward. This is what happens when we seek God’s good gifts as ends in themselves.

When we give ourselves to pleasure without acknowledging God as the source of it, we get locked in an earthly, worldly mindset. We begin to believe that this present moment is all that matters. And we run in circles trying to satisfy ourselves, never getting any closer to where we need to be. Never getting any closer to true goodness.

Instead of forgoing good things in this life, we need to let them do what they were designed to do: draw us toward God.

Keep Spinning

In 1 Timothy, Paul writes that “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:4). Paul is not suggesting that we can indulge in anything we want as long as we pray over it; he’s teaching how a posture of thanksgiving and submission to God’s Word puts us in a place to know God through his gifts.

From this posture, we acknowledge that all good things come down from him, that without him, we would have nothing. We submit ourselves to his plans and purposes for our lives, even if they run counter to what the world tells us will bring happiness. And we confess that he is our ultimate good.

So that by this turning, turning, turning, this always, only, ever turning toward him, we will come out right.

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Excerpted from All That’s Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment by Hannah Anderson (©2018). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.

Hannah Anderson lives in the haunting Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She spends her days working beside her husband in rural ministry, caring for their three children, and scratching out odd moments to write. In those in-between moments, she contributes to a variety of Christian publications and is the author of Made for More (Moody, 2014) and Humble Roots (Moody, 2016). You can connect with her at her blog sometimesalight.com and on Twitter @sometimesalight.

Finding Hope in a Postapocalyptic World

Nothing is more hopeless than an apocalypse. Or so it might seem. In its original sense, apocalypse means revelation.” The word later came to be associated with an end-of-the-world cataclysmic event because of the link John’s Revelation in the Bible makes between revelation and the end of this world.1 In revealing our present condition, traditional, religious apocalyptic literature directs our future hope. But what about a secular apocalypse such as Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, which depicts a world devoid of religion and nearly all reference to God? Modern apocalyptic literature, which is largely secular apocalyptic literature, demonstrates the truth about the modern condition:  we have replaced God with ourselves as the source of meaning and the center of the universe and it is not enough.

The Road is the simple, but harrowing, story of a father and son who are wayfarers in a postapocalyptic world bereft of nearly all life. Such a place seems unlikely to cultivate hope. But sometimes in circumstances that seem most hopeless, hope is by necessity strengthened.

QUIET CONFIDENCE

Hope is characterized by “quiet confidence,” a quality the man embodies throughout the story. When the novel opens, the two have already set out toward a warmer clime and the sea, not knowing what might lie before them there or anywhere else. They travel for months along burned-out highways, sleeping in woods or abandoned homes. They seem to be alone in the world. Yet, the man promises the boy, “There are people. There are people and we’ll find them. You’ll see.”

As in most postapocalyptic worlds, there are only “good guys” and “bad guys.” The man and the boy are among the good. The father reassures the boy of this as often as he warns him of the other.

“And nothing bad is going to happen to us.

Because we’re carrying the fire.

Yes. Because we’re carrying the fire.”

The man never tells the boy (nor does the narrator tell the reader) what “carrying the fire” means. The fire they are carrying is what makes them good guys. It entails hope. “This is what the good guys do,” the father tells the boy. “They keep trying. They don’t give up.”

HOPE REQUIRES RECKONING

Hope is not the same as oblivion or naiveté. Hope requires reckoning with the world as it is, with reality. The man does this. When the boy asks the man if crows still exist, the man tells him it’s unlikely. And when the boy realizes that they have narrowly escaped being cannibalized, his father does not deny this horrific truth Being reasonable is one of the man’s most prominent characteristics. He remains watchful all the time on the road.

Pursuing the great good allows—or perhaps requires—appreciation of the other goods along the way. Both magnanimity and humility assist this. For even in a postapocalyptic world, goodness can be found. These moments of goodness are what turn an otherwise horrifying story into a work of beauty and power. The story is filled with moments of goodness.

Paradoxically, the bleak world of The Road is an affirmation, even a celebration, of what is good, all the more marvelous in a world with so little good seemingly left in it.

Once, while the boy is sleeping, the man watches over him, reflecting, “All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.”

Because transcendence requires what the story refers to as “revelation and faith,” the desire for transcendence is, whether recognized as such or not, ultimately the desire for God. Despite the absence in The Road of religious faith—and, seemingly, God—something of transcendence is omnipresent nevertheless.

Indeed, transcendence is the fuel, the fire itself, for the whole story and its entire journey.

THE FUEL FOR HOPE

The hope the man has had all along—his hope in the boy and in the “fire” they carry—points to something more than natural hope. The man’s hope allows him to succeed in the quest to reach the sea. By the time he and the boy arrive there, the world as it is has taken its toll on the man. Knowing his life will soon end, the man passes on his natural hope to the boy. “You need to go on, he said. I can’t go with you.” The man poignantly places his hopes for transcendence entirely in his son.

If we accept the central metaphor of the story—carrying the fire—then we see that, after the man’s death (but even before), the boy does carry it forward and, in so doing, extends in some way the man’s natural life. The boy’s sensitivity toward the transcendent is even stronger than the man’s. It is the boy who, in his innocence, seeks to help others that the man, in his greater experience, rejects out of fear. It is the boy who, when they stumble upon a great store of food in a safe bunker underground, insists upon giving thanks—somehow, to someone—before they eat.

Later, when they have reached their destination of the sea and they find a flare gun and the man explains its purpose to the boy—to show others where you are—the boy wonders if somebody “like God” might see it.

“Yeah,” his father answers. “Maybe somebody like that.”

Somebody like that does see the boy. After the father’s death, a family who has been watching them comes to the boy’s aid. They are a father, a mother, and two children. When the boy asks if they are “the good guys,” they assure him they are. And they are. They take him in. And sometimes the woman—the mother—talks to the boy about God.

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Excerpt used by permission, Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books, Brazos (a division of Baker Publishing Group), copyright: September 4, 2018.

Karen Swallow Prior (PhD, SUNY Buffalo) is an award-winning professor of English at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. She is the author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me and Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist. Prior has written for Christianity Today, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, First Things, Vox, Think Christian, and The Gospel Coalition. She is a research fellow with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a senior fellow with Liberty University's Center for Apologetics and Cultural Engagement, a senior fellow with the Trinity Forum, and a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States.

Missing the Spirit for His Gifts

The Holy Spirit. Three words couldn’t divide the church more. I suppose “I hate you” is up there, but that’s more of a division between people rather than churches.

Entire swaths of Christianity have divided over the third person of the Trinity. This division, over the place of the Spirit in the Trinity, left the Eastern Church (Orthodox) on one side and the Western Church (Roman) on the other, which, among other factors, eventually led to what was called the Great Schism.

DOCTRINE DIVIDES

Doctrine does divide. Attempting to forge unity, I’ve heard some people say, “Doctrine doesn’t matter.” Typically, they mean if we would all lay down our doctrines and just focus on Jesus, we would all get along.

But that assertion is also doctrinal. It’s saying to everyone else, if you lay down what you hold dear, and believe in the Jesus-only doctrine I consider precious, then we can all get along. This approach is well meaning but exclusivist, privileging its own view. It also leaves out the Father and the Spirit. We need to dig deeper. Why does doctrine over the Holy Spirit divide?

The fault line of division over the Spirit today is quite different from that of the early Church. The “great schism” affecting most of the modern church is over the gifts rather than the person of the Spirit. The division falls rather neatly along just a few of the Spirit’s more effusive gifts, things like speaking in tongues, prophecy, healings, and miracles.

TAKING SIDES

To simplify it for the moment, there are charismatics who treasure and practice these gifts, and cessationists who adamantly insist most of these gifts are no longer in effect. The groups shore up, take sides, and accuse one another of wary extremes. Some remain in the middle, self-described “open-but cautious.” Entire denominations, seminaries, and churches divide over their views of these gifts of the Spirit.

Wherever you fall in this debate, I think there’s a deeper issue at stake. It’s interesting that we don’t divide over spiritual gifts like service and mercy. We don’t part company over whether mercy is still in effect or if service is still valid. And there aren’t too many divisions over faith, hope, and love, what Paul called “the higher gifts” (1 Cor 12:31). Everyone believes in those.

Maybe, just maybe, we’re fighting over the wrong gifts. Certainly, there are things worth debating. Paul opposed Peter for his gospel-compromising racism. But what is the greater issue at stake here?

MISSING THE SPIRIT FOR HIS GIFTS

Quibbling over a few of the Spirit’s choice gifts, we’ve missed the most important gift of all—the Holy Spirit himself.

Pigeonholing the Spirit based on a few of his gifts is like sizing someone up after a single conversation. I’m not a big Quentin Tarantino fan. His films are too violent for me. I’ve seen clips here and there, and at the behest of several friends I did watch Inglorious Basterds. I’ll admit the initial interrogation scene is riveting, but I still find the flippant ultraviolence deplorable. So my initial impression of Tarantino was not positive, but that was before I met him in person.

One afternoon as my wife and I were waiting to be seated in a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant, I glanced over the hostess’s shoulder. Recognizing a guy sitting by himself in the bar, my wife turned to me and said, “Honey, I think we were in college ministry with that guy.” I smirked and said, “Honey, that’s Quentin Tarantino.” Lunch was dominated by debate over whether we would introduce ourselves to Tarantino after we were done. My wife won the debate, so we walked over to say hi.

To my surprise, Tarantino was quite affable. He asked our names. My wife made a quip about having a guy’s name, and when Tarantino heard her name is Robie, he leaned in. He asked how she got the name. As Robie told the story, Tarantino tracked the plot, asked questions, and laughed along the way with two complete strangers. After a bit more chit-chat, he invited us to stay for a drink. We gratefully declined, but I walked away shocked by how kind and inviting he was. Based on his filmography, I figured he’d be a total jerk. If I’d stuck with my initial impression of Tarantino, I would have been wildly wrong.

GETTING TO KNOW THE SPIRIT

Sizing the Holy Spirit up based on a few of his gifts is a big mistake. If we relate to the Spirit primarily regarding miraculous gifts, and whether they are operative today, we distort and limit our understanding of the third person of the Trinity. He should be known for much more.

Who is the Spirit? Is he a person or a spiritual force? How are we meant to relate to him? Can we pray to the Spirit? Can we worship the Spirit? What is his role in creation? Is he present in culture? What will he do in the future? And what does being filled with the Spirit look like after all?

These are some of the questions I address in Here in Spirit. Instead of relating narrowly to the Holy Spirit, I’d like to broaden our engagement with him by touring aspects of his vast character that are often unexplored. In focusing more on who the Spirit is, we may find ourselves less divided.

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Taken from Here in Spirit by Jonathan K. Dodson. Copyright (c) 2018. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com.

Jonathan K. Dodson (MDiv, ThM) is the founding pastor of City Life Church in Austin, Texas, which he started with his wife, Robie, and a small group of people. He has three great children and is also the founder of Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He is also the author of Here in Spirit: Knowing the Spirit who Creates, Sustains, and Transforms Everything; Gospel-Centered Discipleship, The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing. He enjoys listening to M. Ward, smoking his pipe, watching sci-fi, and going for walks. You can find more at jonathandodson.org.

Discontent: Comparing What Is to What Could Have Been

Sometimes I surprise myself with how surprised I am that things aren’t always what I want them to be. Not long ago, I realized I’d been griping a lot to my friends about how much it was costing me to heat my home in the winter months. I’m one of the only people in the history of the world to have central heat and air. It’s available to me at the push of a button anytime I get cold. But I don’t celebrate the fact that I can walk barefoot in subfreezing temperatures. I’m much more likely to complain about my bill doubling a couple of times a year.

It isn’t just a problem with my heat bill. My life is full of good things that aren’t perfect. That means it’s full of opportunities to prioritize the positive or the negative side of what I’m facing. I have three beautiful, healthy children who are sometimes unruly and always exhausting. I have a job I love that is often more difficult or time-consuming than I want it to be. I’m sure you have examples of your own you could add to my list.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

This tendency to notice what’s wrong more than what’s right is a symptom of a deeper problem. It’s a sign that, at least subconsciously, we’re surprised that the world doesn’t fit the pattern we’ve designed for it. It may be we’ve established a baseline expectation of comfort, convenience, or control that has no place in a world where the outer things are passing away.

In the modern West, our baseline expectation for what life should be is set higher than at any other time or place. But this new expectation has come with a high cost we may not notice as clearly as we should.

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz argues that our “culture of abundance” actually feeds our dissatisfaction with what we have.5 Every day we’re confronted with an overwhelming number of choices about how to structure our lives. But with all these options it’s tough not to imagine what could have been better if we’d made another choice—especially when we recognize the limitations of what we did choose for ourselves. We’re crippled and preoccupied by all the what-ifs.

Schwartz also highlights another unintended consequence of all this choice, one that’s even more to my point. Our vast array of choices feeds a sense that life ought to be fully customizable, seasoned perfectly to my tastes. My expectations about how satisfying my choices should be rise far beyond what’s truly possible. There’s no chance I’m not going to be let down.

Here’s how Schwartz put it in the TED Talk version of his argument:

Adding options to people’s lives can’t help but increase the expectations people have about how good those options will be. And what that’s going to produce is less satisfaction with results, even when they’re good results. . . . The reason that everything was better back when everything was worse is that when everything was worse, it was actually possible for people to have experiences that were a pleasant surprise. Nowadays, the world we live in—we affluent, industrialized citizens, with perfection the expectation— the best you can ever hope for is that stuff is as good as you expect it to be. You will never be pleasantly surprised because your expectations, my expectations, have gone through the roof.6

SETTING REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

I don’t doubt that contentment has always been a struggle no matter when you’ve lived or where. But in the modern West we do face some unique and easily ignored obstacles to joy in the good things our lives afford us. Schwartz argues that as our quality of life has improved in so many ways, our baseline expectation has settled somewhere in the neighborhood of perfection. Best-case scenario, we get what we believe is normal, even owed to us. More likely, we feel disappointed.

Schwartz’s antidote to this modern disease is interesting. “The secret to happiness,” he concludes, “is low expectations.” It makes sense, doesn’t it? Lower your standard for how enjoyable or satisfying life should be, and you’ll be more satisfied with what life is. I believe there is a lot of wisdom in what Schwartz is saying, both about what feeds our discontent and also what it will take to move forward. We need a new baseline expectation for life in the world as it is.

But how do we find our way to more realistic expectations? Here is where I would add one further argument: the path to realistic expectations about life moves through honesty about death. Our detachment from death has carved out the space for our expectations to run wild. The forgotten truth is that even if I could structure every part of my life today exactly the way I want, I can’t stop death from stealing everything I have. I may face a range of choices about life that previous generations couldn’t imagine. But I cannot choose to be immortal. This limitation casts a shadow over every area of my life.

Our perpetual discontent is a sign that, as Augustine put it, we “seek the happy life in the region of death.”8 I don’t stop experiencing the effects of mortality just because I refuse to acknowledge its grip. It’s just that I’ll be surprised by those effects again and again. I’ll continue to believe life is as fully customizable as our consumer society has promised me. I’ll continue to be surprised when it’s not. And at some point I won’t just be surprised by the uncontrollable brokenness of the world; I’ll be devastated. If I complain about the cost of my heating bill in winter, what will I do with job loss, or type 1 diabetes, or the cancer diagnosis of a child?

So long as our expectations for a tailor-made world go unchecked, we will eventually be blindsided by suffering. And when we are blindsided, we will be tempted to reject the goodness of God that is the only source of true comfort.

Here’s what I mean: if my baseline expectation of the world is comfort, convenience, and control—if this is what I assume I’m owed from life—then when I suffer, I will likely blame God. In my frustration or disappointment or pain I may see a sign of his displeasure. Or maybe a sign of his neglect. But one way or another I’ll see my suffering as abnormal, and therefore a sign of God’s absence from my life. I won’t recognize that, in fact, the brokenness I’m experiencing is not a sign of his absence but a primary reason for his presence in Christ.

REMEMBERING DEATH, FINDING LIFE

We sometimes judge the plausibility of God’s promises to us in light of what we’re experiencing now. We are tempted to believe that if God is allowing us to suffer as we are, we can’t trust him to deliver on his promise of redemption, resurrection, and an eternal life of joy with him. We can view his promises as an upgrade to an already-comfortable life, icing on the cake of the pleasant ease that is our baseline expectation. But this is not how his promises come to us in Scripture, and viewed like this his promises will never make sense. If his promises are no more to us than icing on the cake of good lives now, then those promises will always seem irrelevant and otherworldly when we suffer.

But when we recognize death’s hold on us and everything we love, we won’t be surprised that life isn’t what we want it to be. Frustration, disappointment, dissatisfaction—these belong among the many faces of death, the pockets of darkness that make up death’s shadow. These experiences are normal, not surprising. Death-awareness resets my baseline expectation about life in the world.

This honesty about death then prepares me for what is truly surprising: that God the Son subjected himself to the limitations, brokenness, and death that are normal for us. That he would join me in my experience of the normal trials of life in the valley of the shadow of death. That he would do this precisely so that he can revolutionize what is normal.

The brokenness I experience—the frustration, disappointment, dissatisfaction, pain—is not a sign of God’s absence. It is the reason for his presence in Christ. This is why the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). He came because he knows we’re thirsty for more than what we’ve tasted so far (John 4:13–14). He knows that every meal has left us hungry. He came to provide living water, bread of life, full and free satisfaction for all who eat and drink from him (John 6:26–35).

When our eyes are fixed on the weight of this glory, we can experience dissatisfaction or disappointment without discontent. We can embrace what God has given us without preoccupation by what he hasn’t given. There’s nothing we can’t enjoy fully no matter how limited. And there’s nothing we can’t do without, no matter how sweet.

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Content taken from Remember Death: The Surprising Path to Living Hope by Matthew McCullough, 2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Matthew McCullough (PhD, Vanderbilt University) serves as pastor of Trinity Church in Nashville, Tennessee, which he helped plant. He is the author of Remember Death: The Surprising Path to Living Hope and writes occasionally for 9Marks and the Gospel Coalition.

Relax, Jesus is Already Proud of You

I enjoy running and have learned and experienced much with God as a result of this rhythm incorporated into my life. I once ran in a half marathon in Nashville, and the experience provided a glimpse of the gospel for me. The main reason that I was running this particular race was to redeem the first not-so-great experience I had at that same race, years earlier. The first time I ran it, I’d never run a half marathon. Although I set some goals that I was able to reach, it wasn’t the best experience because of the physical toll it took on me. So, after about six years, the opportunity presented itself for me to take part in the race again.

Leading up to this second half marathon, I trained hard to make sure I could meet my goals and exceed my time from the previous race. Along the way, I developed some pain in my Achilles tendon, which led to an interruption in my training. Still, I didn’t want to drop out of the race. Instead I made the decision to rest for a few weeks, hoping that would give my body the boost it need to run.

The morning of the race, I was filled with anxiety. I hadn’t run very much in the month leading up to that day because of my injury, and I wasn’t sure how my body would respond. I knew it was a risk to have missed out on the weeks of training, but I counted on the hope that letting my body heal was enough to get me through the 13.1 miles.

JUST FINISH!

The countdown began, and our group took off. I was feeling good. I began to pace myself behind a man and his son who were running together. They were the perfect rhythm, and it was doubly motivating because the son was at the most thirteen years old. I remember thinking, “If I can’t even keep up with a thirteen-year-old, I’m in big trouble.”

At about mile six, I started feeling my body betraying me. But, as any athlete knows, that’s when it’s time to kick it into another gear. That’s what I did. I kicked it into the “JUST FINISH” gear. It was very humbling. I don’t take for granted that many would be happy to complete a half marathon at all. I had some pretty aggressive goals and had even used words like, “I’ll be extremely disappointed” when asked about not meeting my expected finish time. I had set a pretty hard line on my definition of success. Not only did I not finish at my goal time, but I finished embarrassingly far behind.

Knowing the goals that I set and how hard I was working to achieve them, my wife was incredibly supportive. She continuously encouraged me when I was feeling disappointed in my body. On the day of the race, when I was walking out the door at 5:00 am, while everyone was asleep, I saw that my wife had written and taped a sign to the front door.

The sign said, “You can do it, babe! We are proud of you already!”

When I crossed the finish line after struggling and stumbling through the physical pain and emotional disappointment of my failure, the remembrance of that sign entered my mind.

‘I’M ALREADY PROUD OF YOU’

Whether I accomplished my goals, won the race, or didn’t even step foot on the course, I was already loved. My value had nothing to do with what I did in the marathon. This letter was a picture of the gospel. “I’m already proud of you.” Before I had done anything, before I even stepped to the starting line, she was already satisfied with me.

In Christ, this is how God views us. He is pleased with us, not because of the work we do or the way we finish. It’s because he doesn’t see us—he sees Jesus.

This reality, this love so unfathomable, leads me to a feeling of celebration, relief, and great joy! At first sight of my wife and son after the race, I welled up with tears and couldn’t stop smiling. My little boy spotted me and was calling out, “Hip, hip, hooray!” It reminded me of what it means for me to understand on a daily basis the great rescue I’ve experienced by the work of Jesus.

A good friend and mentor Keas Keasler once said, “The most theologically appropriate response to the resurrection is to dance.” I simply cannot argue with that. Understanding the gospel has reshaped the way that I live and rest.

THE GOSPEL SETS US FREE

The implications of understanding the truth of the gospel in our lives cannot be understated. For so long, I only understood the significance of the story of Jesus on the cross as meaning that when I die, I will get to go to heaven. It’s almost as though I approached life in a way that was apathetic about my current reality. I was grateful for God’s sacrifice on my behalf, but I was just hoping for the best as things played out before me.

Preaching the gospel to myself and studying the Scriptures led me to a personal awakening in light of the work of Christ. Jesus intended that we would experience the fullness of joy and life in Him on earth now, not only after death. Jesus’ words continually point to this message. John 10:10 says that He came to give us “abundant life.” In John 8:36, He reminds us that if He sets us free, we are “free indeed.” I had been dishonoring the finished work of Jesus by attempting to pay for my sin through my self-righteous life, when it had already been paid for by Him.

The central message of Jesus is that of the kingdom of God. In Matthew 4:23 it says, “He went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.” The significance of this idea cannot be understated. God intended for us, as His followers, to be intentional to live into this message. The most vivid picture is found in Matthew 6:33 when He says, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” As we consider what it means to respond to His instruction, we can be encouraged that He is with us as we move forward.

KINGDOM LIVING

We don’t need to be convinced that our world is a broken place. Politically, racially, economically, and culturally, our world is out of rhythm. In Romans 8:22 it says, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” We all long for things to be the way they were in the beginning, at creation.

But, we receive a beautiful promise in the book of Revelation: The One who is seated on the throne says to John in a vision that He is making all things new again (21:5)! The most amazing thing about this is that God intends for us to join Him in the work of the renewal of all things. Jesus even instructs His followers to pray along these lines: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:9–10).

In this verse, Jesus teaches us to ask that earth would look like heaven now. When we pray for and look at our neighborhoods through these lenses, we remember that God desires to “reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross” (Col 1:20) Or as author N. T. Wright says, “We are called to be part of God’s new creation, called to be agents of that new creation here and now.” We, as the family of God, get to join Him in this beautiful work!

Matthew 13:44 says, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” For most of my life as a follower of Jesus, I wouldn’t have used the word “joy” to describe the condition of my heart. So much of my lack of understanding of the finished work of Jesus kept me from seeing God’s intention for my heart and life. Jesus Himself says in John 17:13 that He desires that His joy may be in us to the full.

RESTING IN OUR TREASURE

To know that this discovery of the true treasure has reshaped everything about the way that the man in the above parable will live is a picture of the real response to the gospel. He is willing to forsake all else to give himself to the purposes of simply being with the treasure.

One of the most significant indicators of whether we’ve begun to give ourselves to the understanding and response to soul rest is if we are displaying the fruit of joy in our lives. When we know and understand the magnificent, mysterious, radical, and miraculous love and grace of Jesus, we will find our hearts bursting with the joy of the Lord.

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Content taken from Soul Rest: Reclaim Your Life. Return to Sabbath by Curtis Zackery, Kirkdale Press (June 6, 2018), lexhampress.com.

Curtis "CZ" Zackery is perhaps best known for his deep empathy and contagious passion for the gospel, which defies barriers of age, ethnicity, and religion. Whether teaching, speaking, or writing, CZ provides a perspective on the gospel that is raw, accessible, and relevant. Curtis has served in various ministry and leadership roles over the last 15 years―including church planting, pastoring, and speaking on rest, the kingdom, and the beauty of the gospel. Curtis, his wife Monique, and two sons, Noah and Micah, currently live in Franklin, TN. Learn more at curtiszackery.com.

God's Presence > God's Provision

In the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9–13), Jesus helps us understand where our requests should begin. After establishing that God is our Father who is as compassionate as he is capable, Jesus reminds us that God’s power aims to advance his agenda, not ours. Jesus shows us that Christian prayer begins with longing for God’s presence before his provision. All of the requests at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer are godward. Take a look: Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:9–10).

This removes man from the center of the picture. It displaces our needs and desires, reminding us that the most important things about prayer are not what God gives us by way of his possessions, but what God gives by way of his presence. Throughout the Bible, the people who gain peace and security in this life are the people who long for God’s presence more than his possessions. Jesus teaches us this in his first three petitions.

First Petition: God’s Honor

“Hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9) could better be translated for our ears, “I pray that your name will be honored.” In the Old Testament, when people lived against God’s will and design, their wicked deeds were said to profane the name of God.

To pray “hallowed be your name” means being concerned more with the advancement of God’s reputation in the world than your own. It’s praying that God himself would protect his name from being defamed and obscured, so that people don’t accept a wrong picture of him or reject a distorted picture of him.

God’s name is holy. Nothing can change that reality. We’re simply asking him to work in the world so that his name would be treated as such.

The glory of God has come into the world in the person of Jesus. “Hallowed be your name” therefore means praying that everyone would respond appropriately to Jesus. The world we live in is as unimpressed with God as someone who stays seated when the bride walks down the aisle. This is because they’re blinded to the glory of God as revealed in Jesus (see 2 Cor. 4:3–6).

So we begin prayer by pleading that God’s glory would be seen and submitted to in the person of Christ. The beauty of this petition is that we’re asking God to do what he already wants to do.

This request sets the tone for the rest of the prayer. All that we ask of God must flow from this all-consuming desire.

Second Petition: God’s Kingdom Come

“Your kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10) is a prayer for the success of the gospel in the world. We know the gospel has changed us, so we plead for God’s kingdom to be extended through the gospel going out to the ends of the world.

We’re tired of the world we live in, and we long for something better. We want to experience the fullness of the Beatitudes. We long to be where God’s rule is recognized and adored. God has promised this will happen, and his promise stokes our longing.

When a dad promises his daughter that he will take her to Disneyland, the child knows this trip isn’t a matter of if, but when. In her eagerness to receive the fulfillment of her dad’s promise, she constantly asks, “When are we going? You promised!” This is what it’s like for us to pray “your kingdom come.”

We cannot serve two masters. Likewise, two kings—us and God—cannot coexist. Someone’s rule and ambitions have to die. As Christians, our agendas have in fact died, and it’s glorious because ours would have killed us (Gal. 2:20). Praying “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” unifies us because it helps us long for his kingdom. It keeps us from back-biting, from jockeying for position, from longing to establish little kingdoms of our own.

Third Petition: Your Will Be Done

“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10) further develops the second request for God’s kingdom to come. We long to see God reign here on earth in the same way he already reigns in heaven.

We don’t want people to submit reluctantly to God’s rule. We want them to joyfully submit because they’re convinced he is good. We pray for God’s will to be accomplished on earth however he determines, even if it means our suffering, sacrifice, and death.

Establishing God’s kingdom on earth means displacing lesser kingdoms, which is what churches do through their gospel work. Local churches, after all, are outposts of God’s kingdom. So praying that his will would be done means praying that God would continue to establish his gospel work through local churches.

This prayer for God’s presence to be seen and enjoyed is quite startling to a world that prefers for God to be an absentee Father that just sends a big child support check each month. Because we’re sinful, we would prefer God to give us our demands while demanding nothing in return. We love to set the agenda. But Jesus teaches us here that God’s presence precedes his provision. His agenda is far better than ours.

When our local churches pray and live in light of these first three petitions, it’s attractive to the watching world because we display a different picture of what God is like. It shows the world how ineffective its kingdoms are. It strengthens our witness.

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John Onwuchekwa (MA, Dallas Theological Seminary) serves as pastor of Cornerstone Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

Content taken from Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church by John Onwuchekwa, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187,www.crossway.org.

An Open Letter to Those Who Feel Unqualified to Offer Counsel

Dear believer, The body of Christ needs you. It needs your words and deeds. That is simply part of the deal when you follow Jesus. The apostle Paul wrote, “encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). You are already speaking encouraging words and building people up. Now keep doing it, more intentionally, more skillfully, more prayerfully—when a child scuffs her knee, when a friend is separated from a spouse, when depression strikes a person you know, or when someone has been diagnosed with cancer.

If you feel inadequate to help others in need, especially those with more complicated problems, that is a perfect qualification. The Lord specializes in using people who feel weak in themselves, and your sense of inadequacy will probably protect you from saying something unhelpful. We are usually unhelpful when we are confident that we know what another person needs to hear.

You already know the basics of help and encouragement. First, you have to move toward the other person, which is sometimes the hardest thing to do. You have to talk together and hear what is important to the person. Next, let the person know that you have them on your heart—you are with them and are moved by what they are going through. That might be enough for one day. You have built up the body of Christ.

If there are awkward silences or if you are inclined to go further, you can ask, “Could you suggest ways that I could pray for you?” If you are concerned that such a question could sound like a spiritual platitude, remember that it is only trite if you are not really interested or are not actually going to pray. If the person is on your heart and you are praying for them, you have given them a great gift.

Maybe the person will respond by talking more about his or her life. If so, listen, be affected by what the person has to say, and thank the person for being willing to talk. Then take what the person said and try to find some ways to pray. If you want to be bold and loving, pray then and there. Later, you will want to follow up.

Of course, there is more you can do. Ask your pastor about good books on suffering, and ask others what is most helpful to them when the problems of the day seem overwhelming. You can always grow in your love and words. Expertise is not what makes you an adequate helper; faith, love, and your desire to grow are sufficient.

Sincerely,

Ed

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This article is by Ed Welch, author of Caring for One Another: 8 Ways to Cultivate Meaningful Relationships. The post first appeared on Crossway.org; used with permission.

Edward T. Welch (PhD, University of Utah) is a counselor and faculty member at the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation. He has been counseling for more than 35 years and has written extensively on the topics of depression, fear, and addictions. His books include When People Are Big and God Is Small, Crossroads: A Step-by-Step Guide Away From Addiction, Running Scared: Fear, Worry and the God of Rest, Shame Interrupted, and Side by Side. He blogs regularly at CCEF.org.

The Barrier of Endless Distraction

The person I’m most uncomfortable being alone with is myself. And that’s okay, because I’ve become very good at avoiding myself. For example, if I get stuck alone on an elevator, and I start to feel that anxiety, the dread of having to examine my life—even for a minute—I just take out my phone, and poof! it’s gone. Or if I sense that I need to have a heart-to-heart talk with myself about sin or doubt or fear, all of a sudden I remember that it’s my night to do the dishes—and I can’t do the dishes without listening to a podcast. Self-avoidance is probably my most advanced skill set. I’ve developed it over the years in response to the burden of being alone, which can bring up so many unsettling truths. Of course, I have plenty of help from the rest of society. I’m always being encouraged to read something, to do something, to watch something, or to buy something new. It’s an unspoken but mutually agreed upon truth for modern people that being alone with our thoughts is disturbing.

A friend once described a similar feeling of existential dread to me. He said it would hit him only when he woke up in the morning. Sometimes he’d feel like killing himself. It wasn’t something he shared with friends. But he’d get this sick feeling—like there’s no point to any of it—every morning. He said he needed something more to get him up in the morning. My friend could stave off this sense of hopelessness all day, except for those few moments right after he woke up. Lying in bed, he could feel the pressure of being alive constrict his breath. But once he got moving, drank his coffee, watched the news, and went to work, he was okay. He got swept up into the movement of the day, as most of us do.

The beauty of using my iPhone as my alarm clock is that when I reach over to turn it off I’m only a few more taps away from the rest of the world. Before I’m even fully awake I’ve checked my Twitter and Facebook notifications and my email and returned to Twitter to check my feed for breaking news. Before I’ve said “good morning” to my wife and children, I’ve entered a contentious argument on Twitter about Islamic terrorism and shared a video of Russell Westbrook dunking in the previous night’s NBA game.

While making my coffee and breakfast I begin working through social media conversations that require more detailed responses so that by the time I sit down to eat, I can set down my phone too. Years ago I would use my early morning grouchiness as an excuse to play on my computer rather than talk with my wife and kids, but now our family tries to stay faithful to a strict no-phones-at-the-table policy. We have drawn important boundaries for the encroachment of technology into our lives to preserve our family and attention spans, but that does not mean we’ve managed to save time for reflection. Instead, I tend to use this time to go over what I have to teach in my first class, or my wife and I make a list of goals for the day. It is a time of rest from screens and technology, but not from preoccupation.

As I drive the kids to school, we listen and sing along to “Reflektor” by Arcade Fire. On my walk back to the car after dropping them off, I check my email and make a few more comments in the Twitter debate I began before breakfast. In the car again, I listen to an NBA fan podcast; it relaxes me a bit as the anxiety of the coming work day continues to creep up on me. Sufficient to the workday are the anxieties and frustrations thereof. And so, when I need a coffee or bathroom break, I’ll use my phone to skim an article or like a few posts. The distraction is a much-needed relief from the stress of work, but it also is a distraction. I still can’t hear myself think. And most of the time I really don’t want to. When I feel some guilt about spending so much time being unfocused, I tell myself it’s for my own good. I deserve this break. I need this break. But there’s no break from distraction.

While at work, I try not to think about social media and the news, but I really don’t need additional distractions to keep my mind busy. The modern work environment is just as frenetic and unfocused as our leisure time. A constant stream of emails breaks my focus and shifts my train of thought between multiple projects. To do any seriously challenging task, I often have to get up and take a walk to absorb myself in the problem without the immediacy of technology to throw me off.

Back at home, I’m tasked with watching the kids. They are old enough to play on their own, so I find myself standing around, waiting for one of them to tattle or get hurt or need water for the fifth time. If I planned ahead, I might read a book, but usually I use the time to check Twitter and Facebook or read a short online article. But it’s not always technology that distracts me; sometimes, while the kids are briefly playing well together, I’ll do some housecleaning or pay bills. Whatever the method, I’m always leaning forward to the next job, the next comment, the next goal.

I watch Netflix while I wash dishes. I follow NBA scores while I grade. I panic for a moment when I begin to go upstairs to get something. I turn around and find my phone to keep me company during the two-minute trip. When it’s late enough, I collapse, reading a book or playing an iOS game. I’m never alone and it’s never quiet.

As a Christian, the spiritual disciplines of reading the Bible and praying offer me a chance to reflect, but it’s too easy to turn these times into to-do list chores as well. Using my Bible app, I get caught up in the Greek meaning of a word and the contextual notes and never really meditate on the Word itself. It is an exercise, not an encounter with the sacred, divine Word of God. A moleskin prayer journal might help me remember God’s faithfulness, but it also might mediate my prayer time through a self-conscious pride in being devout. There’s no space in our modern lives that can’t be filled up with entertainment, socializing, recording, or commentary.

This has always been the human condition. The world has always moved without us and before us and after us, and we quickly learn how to swim with the current. We make sense of our swimming by observing our fellow swimmers and hearing their stories. We conceive of these narratives based on the stories we’ve heard elsewhere: from our communities, the media, advertisements, or traditions.

But for the twenty-first-century person in an affluent country like the United States, the momentum of life that so often discourages us from stopping to take our bearings is magnified dramatically by the constant hum of portable electronic entertainment, personalized for our interests and desires and delivered over high-speed wireless internet. It’s not just that this technology allows us to stay “plugged in” all the time, it’s that it gives us the sense that we are tapped into something greater than ourselves. The narratives of meaning that have always filled our lives with justification and wonder are multiplied endlessly and immediately for us in songs, TV shows, online communities, games, and the news.

This is the electronic buzz of the twenty-first century. And it is suffocating.

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Taken from Disruptive Witness by Alan Noble. Copyright (c) 2018 by Alan Noble. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

Alan Noble (Ph.D., Baylor University) is assistant professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and cofounder and editor in chief of Christ and Pop Culture. He has written for The Atlantic, Vox, BuzzFeed, The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, and First Things. He is also an advisor for the AND Campaign.

Retelling the Ascension Story

Three days after Jesus was buried, he rose from the grave and appeared to his disciples. Over the course of the next forty days, the resurrected Jesus, with his nail-pierced hands and spear-split side, spent time in the company of his friends—teaching them, encouraging them, and preparing them for a mission to take the story of his resurrection to the furthest reaches of the globe. On one of those occasions, as Jesus was eating with his friends, he told them to wait for the gift the Father had promised—the Holy Spirit Jesus had told them about. The Holy Spirit would come and comfort them and lead them forward. They were to remain in Jerusalem until this happened.

JUST WAIT HERE

It could not have been easy for the disciples to sit with their risen Lord. For as much joy and hope as Jesus’ resurrection brought them, they had been present at his death. They had witnessed the brutal execution of this man they loved, followed, and gave their lives to serving. They saw his beaten and bloody form hang from the cross as he breathed his last. After he died, they were hollowed out with grief.

Along with their grief was the guilt. The trauma of the crucifixion had revealed weaknesses in each one of them. They watched their loyalty to Jesus collapse under the weight of the chief priests’ resolve to put an end to what he had started. Not one of them had shown the strength they believed they possessed when Jesus was taken into custody. Each one denied knowing him in his greatest hour of need.

On top of the grief and the guilt was the fact that the world as they knew it had changed. When the resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples, it was to remind them of their call to be his witnesses in the world. But after the resurrection, they hardly knew what that world was anymore.

They were fragile and unsettled, but they could not escape the reality that Jesus had in fact risen. And they knew they were somehow tied up in it. How could they not be? In a world where everyone dies, one man’s resurrection becomes instantly relevant to all. His resurrection was part of their story.

The disciples used that time to ask questions of Jesus. They wanted to understand what would happen next. Would he deal with the religious leaders who opposed him? Would he overthrow Rome? Would he restore the kingdom of Israel to her former glory? And if so, when? Would they be part of it?

THE COMING POWER

Jesus told them the Father was establishing his kingdom, but the particulars of this business were not theirs to know. Such knowledge belonged to God alone. What he could tell them, however, was that the Holy Spirit would come on each one of them in a matter of days, and when he did, they would be filled with power.

In that power, they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. This Great Commission, the disciples came to understand, was very much about the kingdom of God. Their mission, though they struggled to grasp it, was in some way the work of building the kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God—the two main subjects Jesus discussed after his resurrection—were inseparably linked, meaning the disciples’ call to bear witness to Christ carried eternal significance.

Forty days after the resurrection the disciples were on the Mount of Olives and Jesus was with them. He told them they would be his witnesses, and after he said this, he began to rise up into the sky right before their eyes. Up he went, until a cloud hid him from their sight. The disciples stood in silence as they watched him go. In that moment the world became an even greater mystery than the one the resurrection demanded they embrace.

Jesus did not need to visibly ascend. What the disciples witnessed was not for Jesus’ benefit but for theirs. He did it so they would know he was actually gone. They would not see him the next day. He would not attend to them in the same way he had these past forty days. They were not to wait for him. Now they were to wait for the Holy Spirit.

As the disciples stood, looking up and watching their friend vanish, two angelic beings dressed in white appeared. The luminous apparitions said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing here looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has now been taken up will come again. He will descend in the same way you saw him ascend into heaven. He is coming back.”

But as far as the disciples were concerned, the time for standing around and looking up to heaven had passed. They needed to let Jesus go and step into the mission he had given them. What was happening in the sky was not their chief concern. What was happening on earth was.

The disciples responded by obeying Jesus’ command to wait. They left the Mount of Olives and went back into Jerusalem and gathered many of Jesus’ followers together in the upper room where they were staying.

USING THE TIME

More than 120 people were gathered in all. There were the eleven disciples: Simon Peter, James and John (the sons of Zebedee), Peter’s brother Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew the tax collector, Simon the zealot, Alphaeus’s son James, and James’s son Judas. With them were the women who had discovered the empty tomb, Jesus’ mother, Mary, Jesus’ brothers, and many more whose lives had been changed by Jesus.

For ten days they waited, but it was not a passive waiting. They used the time. They joined together to pray. They prepared for the work that lay ahead. This was an act of obedience to their slain and risen Lord. In their waiting they trusted him, even though their understanding of what lay ahead was less than clear.

Jesus never told them how long they would have to wait for the Holy Spirit to come—just that he would arrive in a little while. After all that had transpired in Jerusalem in recent weeks, remaining there was as much an act of courage as it was an act of faith. This was the city where Jesus had been arrested, beaten, crucified, and buried. This was the place where Judas had betrayed Jesus for a pocket full of silver and where Peter had denied knowing Jesus for fear of a child’s accusation. This was the city that seemed bent on erasing any trace of the movement Jesus started.

There were more appealing places to wait and families many of them could have gone home to. Each had the option to return to their homes in places like Galilee, Nazareth, and Cana. They could have gone back to their old jobs—fishing, collecting taxes, carpentry, prostitution. They could have even gone back to their old religions—Judaism or Roman paganism. But those who gathered in the upper room didn’t. They chose to obey Christ, and they waited. And they used their time.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE KING

Each person gathered in that upper room over the course of those days had been changed in some way through their relationship with Jesus. The cast of characters would have included people like Mary Magdalene, who had once been possessed by demons, and Nicodemus, the Pharisee who helped cover the cost of Jesus’ burial. Perhaps the synagogue ruler from Capernaum, Jairus, was there with his daughter Talitha, whom Jesus had raised from the dead, and perhaps they were huddled together in friendship with Lazarus, whom Jesus had also raised from the dead. Former lepers, newly sighted blind people, and once-paralyzed beggars would have been milling about in the crowd too.

As it has always been with the people of God, their desire to obey Christ was strengthened by the bond of their fellowship with one another. God had made them to need one another—to be known, loved, and supported. This was the power and influence of Jesus in each of their lives. He had loved and served them in such a way that they had come to need one another. The usual dividing lines of the day—wealth, nationality, reputation—were already beginning to blur. These were people who had come to accept that they were all weak and that Jesus had been strong for them. They were all poor and Jesus had been generous with them. They were all outsiders and Jesus had given them a place with him. These truths drew them toward one another.

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Taken from The Mission of the Body of Christ (Retelling the Story Series) by Russ Ramsey. Copyright (c) 2018 by Russ Ramsey. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com.

Russ Ramsey and his wife and four children make their home in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the author of Struck, Behold the Lamb of God, and was awarded the 2016 Christian Book Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association for his book Behold the King of Glory. Russ grew up in the fields of Indiana and studied at Taylor University and Covenant Theological Seminary (MDiv, ThM). He is a pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and his writing has appeared at The Rabbit Room, The Gospel Coalition, The Blazing Center, and To Write Love on Her Arms.

8 Things to Remember When Teaching Kids Theology

Theology, done well, must inevitably result in doxology, and we shouldn’t be satisfied with less just because we’re teaching children. As they grow in theological understanding, we should pray that the children around us are an example of what it means to thank, praise, and worship of the living God. Here are eight things to remember when teaching kids theology.

1. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS IS TEACHING SCRIPTURE

The charge to raise children in the knowledge and love of God is clearly given in the Bible (Deut. 6:6-7; Ps. 78:1-8), and teaching theology is one of the ways to fulfill that charge. The most pressing concern for those entrusted with the discipleship of children should be the faithful communication and application of God’s Word. The discipline of theology is simply the systematic correlation of biblical truths about God and all other things in relation to him. If children are learning these truths from infancy, it is able to make them wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:15). So teaching kids theology always means teaching them the Bible.

2. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS HELPS THEM READ THE BIBLE BETTER

When children read the Bible, they bring their thought systems, assumptions, presuppositions, and proclivities to the text; they read Scripture through the lens of whatever theology they’ve imbibed. By teaching kids theology, we are making those things explicit, subjecting them to scrutiny, and making sure that the system they bring to any biblical passage is biblically informed. Knowing theology helps kids read their Bibles better.

3. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS IS A LIFE-ORIENTING GIFT

From the moment children are born, they are seeking to make sense of the world around them. As they develop, they begin to create a matrix of meaning related to life, which eventually forms a framework through which they interact with and assess every experience. By teaching children theology from a young age, we nurture the formation of a biblical worldview and guide them towards living a life orientated to God and motivated by his salvific mission in the world.

4. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS REQUIRES HARD WORK AND DETERMINATION

There’s no doubt that it can be hard to teach theology well to children. The greatest resistance to teaching theology to children arises because the children complain that they find it dull and boring. This complaint relates entirely to the methodology used to teach the children rather than to the content–we must never lead children to believe that ‘the glorious deeds of the Lord’ are boring because of bad teaching.

Significant effort must be given to teaching theology in a way that makes it accessible and interesting to all children. It takes hard work and determination to communicate abstract biblical truths in a concrete way, but it can be done. It takes thoughtfulness and creativity to illustrate theological points in a way children will understand, but it can be done. The theology we teach arises out of the drama of the biblical narrative, which means that our theology is not just abstract formulations but is rather inseparable from the concrete story of God’s ways in the world.

5. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS MEANS THAT APPLICATION IS IMPORTANT

Children are always asking the question ‘so what?’ What does this mean for me, my life, or my family? The ‘so what’ factor is an important one to remember when teaching children theology. They long to know what difference all that they’ve learned makes to their lives, and so all theology must be applied well in order for children to assimilate biblical truth it into their worldview.

We want children to have a robust, functional theology, rather than an academic, heady theology. This requires some understanding of the lives of the children entrusted to the care of the family and church. Take time to learn their joys and their sorrows, their peers and their parents, their play and their rest. Figure out what they are listening to and what is informing their understanding, and consider how theology interacts with or challenges those voices. We must be able to answer the ‘so what’ question every time we teach theology to children.

6. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS HELPS THEM STAND FIRM IN LIFE

Children today are surrounded by a myriad of belief systems, and as they encounter and engage with these systems they often sadly incorporate unbiblical beliefs into their worldview. One of the ways to enable children to stand firm is to ground them in a rich theological understanding of the Christian faith. Paul longs to prevent people from being tossed to and fro by “every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Eph. 4:14). By raising children to be theologically robust, we are ensuring their future stability and are protecting them from being tossed about by false doctrines. We are also instilling in them a great confidence in the Christian faith, which will allow them to stand firm in the midst of a complex and confusing world.

7. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS IS FORMATIVE FOR THEIR CHARACTER AND FOUNDATIONAL FOR THEIR ACTIONS

Teaching kids theology from the earliest age shapes their character and will as they discover the nature of God and seek to develop godly characteristics. By understanding God’s purposes for his world, his method, and his mission, the will is orientated to serving God and living for his glory. As well as informing the character development of children, theology also informs how they live in the world. How kids live should directly correlate to what they believe, and so theology becomes foundational for their actions as well.

8. TEACHING THEOLOGY TO KIDS IS ABOUT THE HEART AS WELL AS THE HEAD

There is a danger that teaching kids theology can lead to an abundance of head knowledge related to Christian things but result in little heart change. Of course, it is always right to instruct children in the things of God, because by not doing so we allow them to be informed by something other than Scripture. However, we must strive to allow theology to warm and thrill children's hearts as well as inform their minds.

WIN A FREE COPY OF THE NEW CITY CATECHISM CURRICULUM

Our friends at Crossway are offering two giveaway copies of The New City Catechism Curriculum! The New City Catechism Curriculum expands the questions and answers of The New City Catechism into fifty-two engaging and informative lessons, helping children ages 8–11 better understand the truth of God’s Word and how it connects to their lives.

The giveaway opens on July 19 at 10:00 p.m. EST closes Sunday, July 22 at 11:59 p.m. EST. Winners will be contacted via email by Saturday, July 28, 2018. Enter below for your chance to win.

[GIVEAWAY] The New City Catechism Curriculum Kit

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This post is by Melanie Lacy, editor of The New City Catechism Curriculum. The following article first appeared on Crossway.org; used with permission.

Melanie Lacy (@lacymel) is the executive director of Growing Young Disciples and the director of theology for children's and youth ministry training at Oak Hill College, London.

Unquenchable Love and Unconquerable Hope

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtain­ing the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Pet. 1:6–9)

The year 2016 marked the centennial anniver­sary of America’s National Park Service. In celebra­tion of the anniversary, a particular issue of National Geographic contained some amazing photos of several parks—as only National Geographic can capture. Now, I pride myself on having a Jed Bartlet-like appreciation for the national parks, so when I looked at these photos, I was captivated. They were unlike anything I had seen. In a single image, you could see both day and night, shadow and light, sun and moon. The photographer, for hours at time, took thousands of pictures, and with the aid of technology, “com­pressed the best parts into a single photograph.” The result is a massive and sweeping image comprised of thousands of smaller photos.[1] Yet, the more I looked, the less certain I was that I liked it. For these photos are attempts at seeing what is not meant to be seen— a full day all at once. The scenery was beautiful, yet odd. It was unnatural. Frankly, it wasn’t real.

When we face trials for which we don’t know the outcome or don’t understand the purpose, and strug­gle with wanting to know all the answers at once, it is like we are wanting to see a full photo of the end and the beginning, in one frame. But were we to see such, I think we would be disappointed. It likely wouldn’t make sense, for it is neither real nor what God intends. God, in his kindness and wisdom and mercy, uses trials and hidden things to draw us closer to himself, and even when we can’t understand the outcome or the purpose, joy is revealed in the process.

After Peter reminded his exiled readers that they have a living hope in a God who has saved them and will strengthen and sustain them to the end, he turns to address their trials and suffering.[2]

THE END OF SUFFERING

When enduring the onslaughts of a cynical age, we’ve seen how looking in to find Christ Jesus, our living hope, cannot only sustain until the end of time, but also provide strength for the present. Peter rightly acknowledges that this kind of reliance will lead to joy, much like the supportive James 1:2 that instructs believers to “count it all joy” in the face of trials. With the end still in view, Peter also reminds that these tri­als are only “for a little while” (1 Pet. 1:6). This is not Peter’s attempt to minimize them or belittle the pain and challenges they produce, but to offer another bol­ster of hope that even the longest of trials will, in fact, end. Trials and sufferings are a part of a post-Genesis 3 world. They were not what God intended when he created the world. Whether the result of sin, physical malady, or material loss, trials and sufferings do not escape the believer in Christ (John 16:33) and, indeed, can serve as painful instruments of the evil one.

As we behold and experience the trials that are a shared burden in this world, believers often under­standably question why God allows such to happen. Even though God, in his faithfulness and wisdom, may never allow his children to have the full under­standing of why he permits suffering, Peter’s words here give a great deal of insight and help. Trials, of all kinds, test our faith in crucible-like ways—ways that will show the greatness and goodness of God and result in our greater praise to him. This is, in part, because he endures the trials with us. The living hope we have of Christ himself within us is even better than the appearance of an additional man alongside Daniel’s three friends in the fiery furnace (Dan. 3:25). Through Christ, in every trial we have a shield of faith “with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one (Eph. 6:16). When we are tempted, God is faithful and “will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but . . . will also provide the way of escape” (1 Cor. 10:13).

Often the way to rejoicing is the way of weakness through suffering, and a powerful New Testament portrait of this is the life of the apostle Paul revealed in 2 Corinthians. As J. I. Packer explains in is marvel­ous book Weakness Is the Way, the testimony Paul gives shows

"pain and exhaustion, with ridicule and con­tempt, all to the nth degree; a tortured state that would drive any ordinary person to long for death, when it would all be over. But, says Paul, Christ’s messengers are sus­tained, energized, and empowered, despite these external weakening factors, by a pro­cess of daily renewal within."[3]

Paul begins 2 Corinthians declaring that “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” (2 Cor. 1:9). From this reliance comes “good courage” (2 Cor. 5:6) and the ultimate lesson that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

Packer writes Weakness Is the Way from personal experience. He has lived a life of “physical and cogni­tive weakness” due to a head injury as a child. Yet, Packer’s early learning to rely on divine strength has sustained him. Writing in his eighth decade, after recovering from hip replacement surgery, he shares of his growing “acquaintance with Satan’s skill in gener­ating gloom and discouragement.” Yet, in these years, he reveals, “[m]y appreciation of 2 Corinthians has also grown as I have brooded on the fact that Paul had been there before me. . . . The whole letter is an awe­some display of unquenchable love and unconquerable hope.”[4] By looking in at Christ Jesus, both Paul and Packer show us the way to the fountain of our hope. 

LOVING WITHOUT SEEING

Much like C. S. Lewis’s Orual, Peter’s readers never saw Jesus in the flesh. Yet, despite their exile, trials, and sufferings, they loved him and believed in him. Peter’s commendation of them comes from a man who knew something about faith without seeing. Peter was there when Jesus, in response to Thomas needing to see to believe, said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Of course, Peter also knew much about love for Jesus, as part of his early discipleship involved his restoration by Jesus asking him three times about his love (John 21:15–17).

Therefore, when Peter writes of this faith and love resulting in an inexpressible joy (1 Pet. 1:8), he writes of what he knows. When he was with Jesus before the crucifixion, Peter saw him with his eyes, but did not fully love him. Only after the Resurrection, did Peter truly see Jesus with love and joy—and then once Jesus ascended to heaven, Peter continued to love him even without seeing him—to an inexpressible extent.

While the believer’s joy may not find adequate words for expression, we can get a glimpse of why by the idea that it is filled with glory. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul recounts the time Moses came down from the mountain and—his face being filled with glory to such a degree that the Israelites could not look at him—wore a veil (Exod. 34:29–33). Yet Paul says that the Spirit has “even more glory” (v. 8), and believers in Christ are able to “[behold] the glory of the Lord” (v. 18) and will one day see Jesus face to face.

Jesus Christ remained Peter’s fountain of hope, even though Jesus was no longer on earth. Thus, Peter relays how much more it is true and possible for other believers to love Jesus without seeing him.

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[1] Patricia Edmonds, “Photography That Layers Time,” National Geographic 229:1 (Jan. 2016): 144.

[2] A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, 6:75.

[3] J. I. Packer, Weakness Is the Way (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 99–101.

[4] J. I. Packer, Weakness Is the Way (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 99–101.

Excerpted with permission from Mere Hope: Life in an Age of Cynicism by Jason G. Duesing. Copyright 2018, B&H Publishing Group.

Jason G. Duesing serves in academic leadership at Midwestern Seminary and is the author of Seven Summits in Church History, and editor and contributing author of First Freedom: The Beginning and End of Religious Liberty, Adoniram Judson: A Bicentennial Appreciation of the Pioneer American Missionary, and other works. He is married to Kalee and together they have two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve.

Immigration: What's a Christian to Think?

Nearly everyone seems to agree that we have an immigration problem in the United States. The exact nature of the problem, though, is heatedly disputed.

DIFFERING PERSPECTIVES

From one perspective, our nation is facing an unprecedented invasion of  “illegal aliens,” who violate our laws upon entry and then become a drain on social services and public education systems, depress wages and displace native-born American workers, and then contribute to increases in poverty, crime rates, and even terrorism.

A campaign flier for candidates for the Carpentersville, Illinois, city council some years ago expresses the frustrations of many Americans:

• Are you tired of waiting to pay for your groceries while Illegal Aliens pay with food stamps and then go outside and get in a $40,000 car?
• Are you tired of paying taxes when Illegal Aliens pay NONE!
• Are you tired of reading that another Illegal Alien was arrested for drug dealing?
• Are you tired of having to punch 1 for English?
• Are you tired of seeing multiple families in our homes?
• Are you tired of not being able to use Carpenter Park on the weekend, because it is overrun by Illegal Aliens?
• Are you tired of seeing the Mexican Flag flown above our Flag?

Others see the current state of immigration as a problem for very different reasons. They see millions of people who have, usually for economic reasons, accepted displacement from their home countries to pursue a better life for themselves and their families in the United States, just as generations of immigrants have done before them.

Tragically, from this perspective, these people are not welcomed into our society but are scapegoated and forced into a shadowy existence by broken immigration laws, even though they contribute to our nation’s economy by performing a host of jobs, most of which few native-born Americans would be willing to do. Undocumented immigrant Elvira Arellano spent a year living inside a Methodist church in Chicago in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to avoid deportation that would separate her from her eight-year-old, US-citizen son. She became something of a spokesperson for this perspective:

Out of fear and hatred of an enemy you cannot find you have set out to destroy our lives and our families. As you knocked on my door, you are knocking on thousands of doors, ripping mothers and fathers away from their terrified children. You have a list of . . . Social Security no-match numbers, and you are following that list as if we were terrorists and criminals instead of workers with families. You are denying us work and the seniority and benefits we have earned, and you are taking the property we have saved for and bought.

From either of these perspectives, the immigration dilemma seems frustratingly simple. As both sides rail against the other, and against the government, where Congress has proposed competing bills but has yet to pass into law any substantial changes in immigration policy, we are left with the status quo—essentially the same status quo we faced a decade ago when we wrote the first edition of this book: an estimated eleven million people with no valid immigration status living and, usually, working in the United States. After the presidential campaign of 2016, in which immigration became a central issue, the debate over how to respond to immigrants in the country illegally seems more polarized than ever.

IMMIGRATION: SIMPLY COMPLEX

Since the first edition of Welcoming the Stranger, another category of “stranger” has become particularly controversial: refugees, who have long come to the United States with legal status at the invitation of our federal government, have joined immigrants without legal status as a uniquely suspect category of “foreigner” in the minds of many Americans.

As with the debate over illegal immigration, the refugee debate seems frustratingly simple to those on either side: to some, it is foolhardy to admit anyone into our country from nations plagued by terrorism, lest we welcome terrorists themselves. To others, welcoming the persecuted and oppressed is an unqualified good, integral to our national character. The two sides have a hard time understanding the other, as evidenced by harsh words shared over social media and even over family dinners and church potlucks.

Less vocal in these immigration debates are the many who suspect that immigration is actually a complicated, nuanced issue. Partisans of a particular policy position are apt to view the issue as very simple—right versus wrong, us versus them.

Yet, as political scientist Amy Black notes, it is these “easy” issues that often prove the most complex and the hardest to resolve since our presumptions keep us from hearing the other side. Within this debate, a growing middle recognizes this is not a simple issue. They want a more thoughtful, informed understanding of the issues than offered by the two-minute screaming matches by advocates of differing perspectives on cable news channels and talk radio.

WHAT'S A CHRISTIAN TO THINK?

Those of us who seek to follow Christ, in particular, face a challenge in sorting through the rhetoric to understand how we can reflect God’s justice as well as his love and compassion in designing a national immigration policy, and in the ways we relate individually to the immigrants in our communities. On first glance at the issue, we recognize that immigrants are people made in God’s image who should be treated with respect; at the same time, we believe God has instituted the government and the laws that it puts into place for a reason, and that as Christians we are generally bound to submit to the rule of law. Many are left conflicted, unsure of what our faith requires of us on this pressing issue.

Through the work of World Relief, the Christian ministry where we both work that serves refugees and other immigrants throughout the United States, we might find ourselves on a regular basis in a church, speaking with people about issues of immigration and citizenship, or in a congressperson’s office, talking with staffers about the need to fix the immigration system. Sometimes we speak in Spanish or with translation in Lithuanian, Arabic, or Cantonese to an audience of immigrants eager to naturalize or fearful of what a newly announced immigration-enforcement policy will mean for them and their families. Other times we are speaking in front of a predominantly nonimmigrant church group, answering questions about immigration policy. When we are in front of an audience of nonimmigrant evangelicals or before congressional staffers who are helping our political leaders form immigration policy, we find that many are asking the same questions we have often asked ourselves. This book seeks to address some of the most common questions and misconceptions that we and other Christians have wrestled with as we consider the immigration “problem.”

This book is written out of our own personal experiences with this dilemma, tracing through much of the investigation our own questions have led us to in seeking to understand immigration policy—and, more important, immigrants themselves—through the lens of our faith. While it would be disingenuous to pretend that we do not have strong opinions about how we (as individuals, as the church, and as a society) should approach this issue, our foremost interest is not to convince you of the virtue of any particular piece of legislation. Rather, we hope this book will encourage our sisters and brothers to take a step back from the rhetoric and combine a basic understanding of how immigration works, and has worked in the United States, we do not believe there is one Christian prescription to solve the immigration issue (though there may be decidedly un-Christian ways to view the issue), and there is plenty of space within the church for charitable disagreement on issues such as this.

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Taken from Welcoming the Stranger by Matthew Soerens, Jenny Yang, and Leith Anderson. Copyright (c) 2018 by Matthew Soerens, Jenny Yang, and Leith Anderson. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

Matthew Soerens serves as the US church training specialist for World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals. In that role, he helps local churches and denominations to address issues of immigration from a distinctly biblical perspective.

Jenny Yang is vice president of advocacy and policy for the refugee and immigration program of World Relief in Baltimore, Maryland.