Learning to Live in This Home Away from Home

If you’re a Christian, you’re a miracle. Your conversion was a restoration of fortunes, a miraculous release from captivity, and a joyful homecoming. With God, there are no “boring” testimonies. But over time, life gets boring. We wonder how we lost that lovin’ feeling. We want the good times back. More than that, we want a future of greater glory.

Israel anticipated the hopeful restoration of Zion. But they didn’t just hope for a prosperous city—they looked forward to a reigning king, their promised Messiah.

They looked forward to the time when, after the anticipation and the hope, after the promises and the prophecies, Jesus comes. He lives and dies and rises again to save his people from their sins.

But that’s not the end of the story. The Bible concludes not with a deep sigh of rest but cries out in desperate anticipation, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20). God’s people aren’t home just yet.

Such is the tone of Psalm 126, a psalm of ascent, filled with what was and longing for what will one day be.

LONGING FOR BETTER DAYS

Even without knowing much of the context, it’s easy to see that Psalm 126 speaks of an Israelite restoration so grand that even the surrounding nations remembered it (Ps. 126:2-3). Maybe it was their return from exile in Babylon. Maybe something else.

Whatever it was, it was like a dream (Ps.126:1). It was the happy day from which all others orbited, evoking laughter and joy, like Job after his suffering (Job 42:10). And the psalmist wanted another hopeful and joyous restoration.

Christians recognize this feeling of elation. Like the conversion experience or a season of personal revival, spiritual restoration awakens zeal for the gospel. These brief moments can stick in our memories for a lifetime, and if you’re like me, are ones to which your heart longs to return.

The psalmist understood that longing. The Lord had done great things for the people of God, and they were glad (Ps. 126:3). But that gladness faded, as it tends to do.  We need more than memories of great things done. We need the hope of great things to come.

NOSTALGIA ROAD

An initial reading of this psalm can leave the reader with the impression that nostalgia weighed the psalmist down—like remembering “the good ole days” that are now long gone. But that’s not quite the tone.

Nostalgia takes us half-way home; it takes us back to the place of our former blessing, but it can’t take us to future hope. Like the glory days of old, only God can take us to that blessed shore. Only God can gather us together with lasting joy, like Israel bringing in plenty during the harvest (Ps. 126:5-6).

“Nostalgia” first appeared as a word in the 1770s, springing from the combination of the Greek words nostos, meaning “homecoming,” and algos, meaning “pain.” In the 1800s, encyclopedias of medicine listed nostalgia as a disease: “severe homesickness.”

Isn’t that what we all are, to some degree or another? Homesick.

Israel sure was, even at home. So are we. We’re homesick for God, for what only he can provide. We’re homesick for final freedom, forgiveness, refuge, victory, and peace.

Christians live in a world that looks like home without the satisfaction of home. As C.S. Lewis said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” Made for another world, indeed. But we’re in this one now, and we must learn to live here.

LEARNING TO LIVE HERE

Far from a disease bringing one down, the memory of Psalm 126 causes the careful reader to swell with hope. Today may not be like yesterday, but God doesn’t intend to take us back to what was. He intends to bring us forward to what will one day be.

The Garden of Eden was a pointer to—not the culmination of—the glory to come. God’s gift of your future is better than the varied gifts of your past. In the end, even all the revivals of history will pale in comparison to the great revival coming on the clouds. Walking with Jesus is a journey of hope!

So Psalm 126 is not a great and longing sigh as much as it is the first verse of a new and hopeful song. Yes, there is a plea for restoration (Ps. 126:4), but it’s not a cry of desperation. It’s a cry of expectation. It’s a cry for God to do it again, grounded in faith that he will.

The lesson is that learning to live here is more than coping with a happy memory, it’s rejoicing in a coming glory. That doesn’t mean homesickness is easier to bear. It means, given to Christ, nostalgia points us homeward to glory rather than backward to the Garden.

Jesus reverses nostalgia’s direction. With him, as good as our past was, the best is yet to come.

THE GARDEN OF GRACE

However, the glory to come doesn't make the present angst disappear. Life is full of disappointments. So God gave us the Psalms—as Tim Keller says[i]—to pray your tears (Ps. 126:5-6).

No single event of blessing is enough to sustain us forever. We forget. We weaken. We falter. We fall.

We need a resurrection hope. That's why God sent his Sower to sow gospel seeds into our lives (Mark 4:1-20). But that seed doesn't grow instantly. Cultivating takes time we don’t often want to spend. It takes watering when we don’t want to. It takes, in a word, maturing.

Learning to pray our tears is the maturing process by which we prepare for a greater harvest. Psalm 126:5-6 promises “those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” As we weep toward God, he takes our tears and plants them in his garden of grace. They take root and grow. But the harvest comes later—as late as the resurrection.

SHOUTS OF JOY

I imagine Mary Magdalene and the other Mary on their way to the tomb of Jesus, weeping as they walk. What a joy it was to know him, to be by his side as he taught, as he healed, as he filled the world with happiness and hope. But that was yesterday. Today, their tears are with him in the grave, buried in the ground.

As they approach the garden tomb, the earth quakes and the stone rolls away. Someone stands before them. His appearance is like lightning. His clothing is white as snow. He seems to know their tears. “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen.”

Could it be? Then behold—he appears and says, “Greetings!”

They fall and worship. Then they rise and go, to tell his disciples that they too will see him. (Matt. 28:1-10).

In other words, they’re coming home with shouts of joy (Ps. 126:6).

NO MORE TEARS

Sally Lloyd-Jones captures this joyful mood in The Jesus Storybook Bible. Mary runs,

And it seemed to her that morning, as she ran, almost as if the whole world had been made anew, almost as if the whole world was singing for joy—the trees, tiny sounds in the grass, the birds . . . her heart.

Was God really making everything sad come untrue? Was he making even death come untrue?

She couldn’t wait to tell Jesus’ friends. ‘They won’t believe it!’ she laughed.

She laughed. Oh, she laughed!

Her mouth was filled with laughter (Ps. 126:2) because the Lord had done great things for her (Ps. 126:3). But not only for her. The Lord had done great things for all his people, for all his friends, for all of us.

Those great things of the resurrection came by way of death. That’s the Christian life: first the cross, then the crown. It's the planting that produces the harvest, the death that produces life. As Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

Jesus is the proof that buried hope grows into glorious reality. The tears of the cross bore the fruit of the resurrection. He went out weeping, bearing his life for sowing; he came home with sheaves (Ps. 126:6), bringing many sons to glory (Heb. 2:10).

COMING HOME TO A BETTER STORY

Israel’s story was a good one, but a better one was yet to come. And there’s a better one coming for us, as well.

One day, the Lord will restore our fortunes—untarnished communion with him, coram deo. The first earth will pass away, and the holy city, the New Jerusalem, will come down out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

We will receive our glorified bodies on the new heaven and new earth. On that great and glorious day, God will say to all his people, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man” (Rev. 21:1-4). He will wipe every tear from our eyes, and death shall be no more!

No more mourning. No more crying. No more pain.

The former things will have passed away.

We’ll finally be home.

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David McLemore is an elder at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He also works for a large healthcare corporation where he manages an application development department. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons. Read more of David’s writing on his blog, Things of the Sort.

[i] Timothy J. Keller, “Praying Our Tears,” February 27, 2000, City Life Church, Boston, sermon, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive.

God Will Help You

I once survived a season of life when three of my daughters were ages three and under. It was nonstop sippy cups and naptimes and potty training and diaper changes and “Hey, that’s mine!” and “Share that toy right now or Mommy is going to take it away” My husband was pastoring a community of young adults at the time; he was gone almost every night. My best friend’s husband was a youth pastor and he also was gone almost every night. Her three kids were each two years ahead of mine. So nearly every evening was spent at the park, where two moms wrangled a total of six kids, running the children into exhaustion until we moms crossed the bedtime finish line.

Because my best friend was just ahead of me in the parenting marathon, I had the benefit of watching from behind how she handled the ages ahead. Each evening at the park I saw how she dealt with the fours and fives and sixes of her own kids.

As I watched her interact with her kids at the park, here’s what I heard her say over and over and over: “God will help you.” It was their family’s refrain, her motherly chorus.

A PARENTAL REFRAIN

“But, it's my turn!” God will help you.

“She pushed me!” God will help you.

“No! I don’t want to go home!” God will help you.

It probably sounds a little silly out of context like that. Of course she said many other instructive and helpful words. Of course she gave commands, doled out discipline, lavished warm hugs, and physically removed her children from harm.

“God will help you” wasn’t all she said. But she always said it.

I heard this truth so often that I began picking it up, too. It stuck in my mouth and sunk into my heart because nothing is truer. It’s no pithy, “Be nice . . .” or, “You can do it!” or, “Just obey, kid.” It’s real, robust truth.

There’s nothing I could say to my child, age one or twenty-one, that would be truer than the statement, “God will help you.” It turns out my friend was following the example of the Israelites.

Where Israel’s Help Came From

“God will help you” is the banner of Psalm 121, a Psalm of Ascent, which was corporately rehearsed by the Israelite pilgrims as they ascended the hill to the temple mount in Jerusalem for feasts three times a year.

Together, they sang, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps. 121:1-2).

As they climbed, they confessed. The Lord—and the Lord alone—was the source of their help. He was there, in the temple above, and they looked up, seeking him, and remembering how he made heaven and earth and that he would help them, too.

Their confession of need and call for help morphed into a reminder of truth to each other. They moved from speaking in the first person to the second person, and proclaiming to each another,

“He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night” (Ps. 121: 3-6).

It’s as if the pilgrims were first reminding themselves, and then one another, this is who our God is! He is our helper. He made the earth. He keeps our feet on the path. He never sleeps. Day and night he keeps us. God will help you.

The benediction is future-focused: “The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore” (Ps. 121:7-8).

Those ascending the hill were rehearsing these truths truth to one another. The Lord has kept you. He is keeping you. He will continue to keep you. He’s not changing. God will help you.

Where Does Our Help Come From?

My friend knew that her children needed the Lord’s help. She knew they were like the Israelites, helpless on their own. She knew that they most centrally needed help from God above, their maker, sustainer, and redeemer.

She knew that if she only demanded good, achievable behavior, then she would raise pharisaical children—children who would become adults who would rely on their own efforts to produce outward results rather than inner change. She knew their human efforts would eventually ring hollow, that they would be unable to do more or try harder. She rehearsed to them from a young age the truth that they would need God’s help. She taught them their help must come from the Lord.

We live in an age of self. Self-help, self-empowerment, do-it-yourself. We want to be self-made men and women who reach down and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

In this self-absorbed and self-reliant age, we need to be reminded that this same reality applies to us. You and I need to return to the truth of Psalm 121. It is God who made us. It is God who made heaven and earth. It is God who keeps us. It is God who will help us.

Self-esteem psychology says look within. The psalmist says look up.

Jesus says, “Come to me and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28-30). He harkens back to the psalm. The Son’s offer of rest reminds us that he is God saying to us, “I am the maker of heaven and earth. I hold your feet to the path. I keep your life. I never sleep. Come to me.”

Good News for a Weary Age

What do we need help with right now? Where are we striving after with our own efforts and energy? Where have we run dry, come to the end of ourselves? Where do we need to stop looking within and start looking up?

Both this psalm and the gospel of grace say, “behold” (v.4), not “behave.”^[i] The call of Scripture is to look up—look up to where our help comes from. It comes from the Lord.

God, through his Son and by his Spirit, will help you.

The words “God will help you” never grow old and never fall short. They are true and they are able.

To the woman in my church whose husband is unfaithful: God will help you heal. To the young man oppressed by addiction: God will help you be free. To the adult daughter whose mother is dying: God will help you let go. To the pastor whose faith feels burnt-out and dry: God will help you be refreshed. To the lonely single: God will help you rejoice. To the poor, the sick, the needy, the sad, the desperate: God will help you.

As you and I ascend, as we climb, as we journey like pilgrims in this life, let’s remember Israel and her song. Let’s lift our eyes to the hills. Let’s remember that God made heaven and earth. He holds our feet to the path. He does not sleep. He will keep us. He delights to help his children.

In this age of self, let’s return to the rhythms of the covenant community ascending the temple mount. Let’s confess that we are not enough on our own, but the Lord is. Let’s remind ourselves and each other, God will help you.

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Jen Oshman is a wife and mom to four daughters and has served as a missionary for 17 years on three continents. She currently resides in Colorado where she and her husband serve with Pioneers International, and she encourages her church-planting husband at Redemption Parker. Her passion is leading women to a deeper faith and fostering a biblical worldview. She writes at www.jenoshman.com.

[i]I am indebted to Jared Wilson’s book The Imperfect Disciple for this phrase.

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.

When We Steal the Spotlight from God

When I was entering junior high, my mom bought me a book I found irrelevant and a little rude. Although I don’t remember the title, it would be hard to forget such a cheesy cover illustration—a smug-looking teen girl with a cartoon planet Earth orbiting her head. The point of the book—and the message my mom wished to convey—came across clearly: Don’t think and act like the world revolves around you.

Although younger generations often are accused of self-centeredness, we’re all guilty at any age. An adult who talks incessantly about his or her achievements or problems is just as absorbed in their own affairs as a tyrannical toddler who calls everything “mine.”

As with my mother, the sins I see in my children—wanting to get their way all the time, and expecting others to cater to their demands—are a proximate illustration of my own egotism. In matters such as parenting, or even minor inconveniences like hitting all red lights when I’m in a hurry, I expect my will to be done and throw a grown-up temper tantrum when it’s not.

When I think and act according to my pleasure instead of God’s glory, I elevate myself above my creator. It’s both sinful and absurd, like a clay pot trying to commandeer the potter’s ceramic studio.

Stealing the Spotlight

Unlike more cut-and-dry sins like envy or murder, self-centeredness can be deceptively nuanced. We only have one pair of eyes through which to view the world, so we’re limited in our scope and ability to understand God, others, and even ourselves.

We’re also hardwired for self-love. It’s a survival instinct. We exit the womb crying to be cared for. But this basic urge is corrupted by our sin nature. Like Adam and Eve, we become dissatisfied with the role of steward and, despite our abundant provisions, crave greater wisdom, authority, and attention.

Paul warned his son in the faith, Timothy, about the temptation of self-centeredness, along with other sins that will abound in “the last days”: “For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy” (2 Tim. 3:2).

Paul isn’t referring to innate self-love here; he’s talking about self-idolatry. He’s cautioning Timothy about the root sin from which the others grow: the desire to be God.

The Bible pulls no punches when addressing this attitude. God commands: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3)—including ourselves.

He promises to assert his rightful position as King: “The haughty looks of man shall be brought low, and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day” (Is. 2:11).

And he issues severe warnings to the proud: “Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished” (Prov. 16:5).

God cares about his own glory and opposes those who try to steal his spotlight. Of course, we don’t usually see it in those terms. Pride deceives us, cloaked as desirable gifts like fulfillment, peace, and pleasure. Although we already possess these benefits in Christ, we forget our true identity and look for worth by measuring ourselves against others.

C.S. Lewis comments on this tendency in Mere Christianity: “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.”

What We Really Need

In addition to battling the comparison trap and our fleshly desires for self-glorification, we face a barrage of cultural messages encouraging personal gratification through attention to self-care. “Take time to make your soul happy,” the inspirational memes suggest. “Find what fills your cup.” “Be your own light.”

While taking care of one’s physical and mental health is appropriate and necessary, this train of thought can sometimes lead to harmful overthinking about our needs, and incorrectly pointing to ourselves as supreme problem-solvers and soul-fulfillers. We also confuse needs with desires, resulting in frustration and disappointment when we don’t get what we believe we need.

That mindset reflects the age-old pattern of defiance first formed in the Garden of Eden. As Edward Welch describes in When People Are Big and God Is Small, “In the garden, man began repeating a mantra that will persist until Jesus returns. Adam said, ‘I want.’ ‘I want glory for myself rather than giving all glory to God.’ ‘I love my own desires rather than loving God.’ This came to be known as covetousness, lust, or idolatry.”

Any road that follows self for satisfaction will ultimately lead right off the cliff of insecurity into the chasm of despair. God made us not so we could make much of ourselves or our needs, but to praise him. When we fail to complete our primary purpose, seeking instead our own lust fulfillment, we’ll inevitably wind up disappointed. As Solomon laments in Ecclesiastes 6:7, “All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.”

We were created to delight, but not in our own accomplishments or self-actualization. Rather, we were created in his image to reflect God’s son, the light of the world. “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:1-2).

Imitating God involves prioritizing his will above my own, seeking his pleasure more than my happiness. It means I must die to self so I can live for Christ to be seen and known—to be a light for his glory.

Dying to be Raised

If sin predisposes us to look out for ourselves first and foremost, how do we combat these impulses and reprogram our desires and subsequent actions? How do we shift our perception of the Earth’s axis from ourselves to its rightful place as God’s footstool?

We aren’t left to our own devices to deal with our pride; we have the founder and perfecter of our faith to model after and join with:

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5-8).

Jesus taught, healed, worked, rested, and broke bread with others all for the glory of God. In every facet of his life, he didn’t exalt himself as Lord but rather submitted to “the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38). Because we share Christ’s position and purpose through his redemptive sacrifice, we can also empty ourselves of selfishness by humbling ourselves before our mighty God.

For me, this emptying involves releasing my death grip on expectations. I have to make plans built on the knowledge I’m not in charge of whether or not they’re accomplished, trusting God’s sovereignty to prevail. I must die to the desire to see my will done and have my needs met, preferring his will and pleasure instead, just as Jesus did in submission at the cross.

Dying to self is a necessary part of sharing in the suffering of Christ. But the benefits of being raised with Christ far outweigh the costs of following him. We’re pardoned from sin and its punishment, free to enjoy the fruit of the Spirit alive in us, and filled with the hope of eternity spent with our Savior.

The problem of thinking too much about ourselves must be solved by thinking about Jesus. We can transform our self-centered attitudes by renewing our minds with the truth of his humble heart, and how he, for the joy set before him, endured the cross to obey and bring honor to his Father (Hebrews 12:2).

When we look up and fix our eyes on Christ, we realize the world and everything in it exists from him, through him, and to him—not us.

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Jenn Hesse is a writer, editor, wife, and mother of two sons. She co-founded a ministry that supports women walking through infertility, infant loss, and adoption, and has a passion for equipping others to know Christ through his Word. She writes at jennhesse.com and can be found on Twitter @jennmhesse. 

What's in a Name? For Christians, Everything

I resent my childhood nickname. My childhood wrapped up in the 1980’s, so naturally, the film Karate Kid enthralled me. Convinced I could take on the bullying hordes of my second-grade existence, and wanting to establish that you shouldn’t mess with me, I began to parade around the school playground chopping, kicking, punching, and yelling, “Hi-yah!” as loudly as I could. Instead of warding off would-be attackers, all these antics did was earn me the name “Chuck.”

This was not what I had hoped for. In trying to imitate Daniel Larusso’s training from Mister Miyagi, I thought I could take up the role of school hero and karate champion. Instead, I was the class weirdo, and, as a cool as being called “Chuck” today might seem, to a second-grader, it was decidedly not cool.

Ever since, the idea of imitating someone worries me. I’m afraid it will backfire and give me a bad reputation. What if I earn another odd nickname that will make me the butt of more jokes and ridicule? I think that’s why many people struggle with growing as a Christian.

WHAT’S IN A NICKNAME?

We are, so to speak, trying to become who we are not. And it’s obvious—we are not Christ. We don’t behave like Christ, we don’t love like Christ, we don’t sacrifice like Christ. And that makes it difficult for us because if we are not Christ then becoming like Christ seems foolish and doomed to failure. In the big picture, no one wants to earn the life-long nickname “loser.”

Yet, that’s the reality of the name that we possess by faith. If you are a follower of Jesus, then you have been given a nickname that speaks to your identity: Christian. The name itself is so familiar today we might forget it was used as a derogatory term for the earliest disciples. “Christ-people,” or “little-Christs,” was what the on-looking world used to call those first followers of The Way who were looking to imitate Jesus in all of life. And it is in that name we find who we are really are becoming—Christ-people.

The name “Christian” stands as the doorway into this new identity. True spiritual formation must recognize this reality. To be truly “Christian” means entering through the door of Christ (John 10:7). For the Christian, growing spiritually requires that we grow in Christ. So not only is Christ the entry-point of our spiritual journey, but he is also the culmination of our spiritual path.

WHAT IT MEANS—REALLY MEANS—TO BE A CHRISTIAN

In perhaps the clearest job description of a pastor, the Apostle Paul sets out the goal of the Christian life. Within the church we labor together “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness” (Eph. 4:13). True spiritual formation is marked by maturity in Christ. Another way to say this is the goal of spiritual formation is to become like Christ.

This goal of spiritual formation, to become like Christ, is spoken of throughout the Scriptures. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “we all, with unveiled faces are being transformed into the same image [Christ] from glory to glory.” The writer of Hebrews exhorts us to “run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2). The identity of Christ will firmly and forever be fixed on the people of God.

This is nothing new within the teaching of church history. Christianity has long taught that true maturity and development is contained in becoming like Christ. Athanasius, one of the early church Fathers declared that Christ became a human so that humanity could become like Christ.^[1] Calvin said, “the end of regeneration is that Christ should reform us to God’s image.”^[2] In more recent days, one Biblical scholar has stated, “The glorified Christ provides the standard at which his people are to aim.”^[3]  Our trajectory, as Christians is to be conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29).

We must start with Christ as the entry point to truly being Christian, and the goal is to be like Christ as the culmination of his work within us. So how do we get there? What are the means by which cultivate the image of Christ within us?

YOU BECOME WHAT YOU BEHOLD

Paul writes in Colossians, “just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith” (Col. 2:6). Therein lies the whole arch of becoming like Christ: we begin in Christ, we continue in Christ, we are transformed to be like Christ. The means of Christlikeness is Christ himself. If Christ is the means to growing Christlikeness, then we are only changed inasmuch as we are looking to Christ, or beholding Christ.

The deeper we view, look at, and watch Christ, the deeper we are changed. “We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit,” (2 Cor. 3:18) writes Paul to the Corinthian church. As we look at the glory of Christ, we are transformed into the very same glory we are observing. Christlikeness comes from fixing our eyes on Christ for all of life.

Looking at Christ will devastate us because it will show us how unlike Jesus we truly are. We’ll see our brokenness, our need, our evil and vile hearts. If we’re sensitive to this devastation, we’ll be capable of repentance and crying out for grace. If we’re hardened by the distance between ourselves and Christ, we’ll turn away and fail to behold Christ any further.

Yet as we look and are humbled to repentance, we will also be transformed. We will see the grace, mercy, and goodness of Christ. We will long to follow and trust him. We’ll demonstrate true faith as we embark upon the calling and formation he has for us. As our faith grows, we will look more and more at Christ and at the day of our last breath, when we will depart this life and finally enter into glory alongside Christ.

Beholding turns into Becoming that leads to Being.

PATTERNED AFTER CHRIST

Perhaps, this is the one place we do want to take up an imitation of someone. More than trying to be the Karate Kid, imitating Christ can transform our lives. As we behold, we will receive a new nickname. The name itself might be scandalous to the world, but beautiful to the Savior who gives it to us by his grace.

Maybe as we come to Christ and behold Christ and imitate our lives after Christ we will enjoy fully the moniker “Christ-people” or, simply “Christian.”

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Jeremy Writebol is the Executive Director of GCD. He is the husband of Stephanie and father of Allison and Ethan. He serves as the lead campus pastor of Woodside Bible Church in Plymouth, MI. He is also an author and contributor to several GCD Books including everPresent and Make, Mature, Multiply. He writes personally at jwritebol.net. You can read all of Jeremy’s articles for GCD here.

[1]. Paraphrased from On the Incarnation

[2]. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 189.

[3]. F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1984), 350.

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.

Shaking Free from the 'Shoulds'

I don’t know exactly where they come from—these negative, dictating thoughts. The uniform they wear reads “Should,” and they consider themselves experts on any and every nuanced area of my life. Sometimes our relationship feels like an awkward dance, in which I dread being their partner but can’t drum up the courage to exit the dance floor. I twirl stiffly from one "Should" to another, barely touching but getting close enough to see the pursed-lip disapproval on each face.

There are some who dominate the room. "Should-Be-A-Better-Mother" is perhaps the most formidable, along with "Should-Be-A-Better-Christian" and "Should-Be-More-Healthy."

Like a finger pointing in my face, my own thoughts attack even the most mundane decisions, and no matter which way I go, it feels like a misstep:

“You let your baby cry too long last night.”

“You didn’t let her cry long enough to self-soothe.”

“You should have gotten up before the kids, to read the Bible and pray." 

“You better not be falling back into legalism with your ‘quiet time.’”

“That’s the sugary food you’re packing for your kids’ lunches?”

“Wow, they’re going to be disappointed when they see these boring vegetables.”

All these thoughts are swirling before I’ve even made my coffee in the morning.

STICKS AND STONES

Then I remember these words: Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

Long ago, a woman was caught in adultery and brought before a crowd for judgment. I can imagine those pointing fingers, condemning voices, shaking fists, and murderous eyes. She faced the possibility of a gruesome, excruciating death for her transgression.

Stoning.

Being hit so forcefully and repeatedly with rocks that you experience internal bleeding, organ failure, and death. A word so archaic today that we miss the weight of it.

Right on the heels of a man using her body for his own pleasure, she was now being used by the religious leaders of the day as they sought to trap Jesus. They saw him as a threat to be neutralized.

The Pharisees wielded power over the people, the malignant mass of their manipulation being fed by twisting God’s word and greasing the palms of the politically elite. This man, who claimed to be the Word made flesh, and his message of repentance and faith in the Kingdom of God burned their evil pride like heavenly radiation. But they had him now!

How would he respond? He must either betray the Mosaic law, given by the God from whom he claimed to descend, or depart from his ministry of healing and loving to engage in violence, which they could report back to the Roman rulers.

But instead, the soon-to-be-striped back they thought they’d pushed against the wall stooped to touch the very dirt he created before time began. He stood up and the tension was palpable, as everyone awaited his words.

Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.

Shaking Free From The 'Shoulds'

I wonder how long the silence hung there, as every mind within earshot tried to process the cosmic shift they had just witnessed. Did they realize that this man writing in the dirt, so clearly not interested in throwing stones, was the only sinless one among them?

I wonder what it felt like for the woman to watch her accusers, her abusers, walk away one by one. Death was no longer imminent, but I wonder how long she was able to savor that reprieve before the shame and the "Shoulds" swooped in. But her pardon was before her in bodily form.

What it must have felt like to look into Jesus’s eyes! Perhaps for the first time in her life, a man’s gaze rested on her, free of selfish motives and quick assessments of what she could offer him.

She was face to face with her Creator and the lover of her soul, the same man who would soon die to remove her shame forever and offer her his pure, white robes of righteousness.

“Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you,” he said.

“No one, Lord.”

“Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:3-11).

Oh, that we’d be taught what to do when the words come from within when we look down and see the stone in our own hand! That we’d be taught to repeat this refrain over and over again: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:1-2).

The same freedom offered to that woman thousands of years ago is offered to us today!

If we believe by faith that Jesus was God made flesh and that he accomplished what the Bible said he did—lived sinless, died in our place, absorbed the full wrath of God toward sin, defeated death by resurrecting after three days, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, reigning today as our faithful advocate—then we are free!

LEAD ON, LORD JESUS

Free from condemnation, free from stones hurled from the mouth of the liar. Free to face the stones in our own hand and speak the gospel truth to ourselves.

I am not who you say I am. I am who Jesus says I am.

I do not have to please you. I was created by Jesus, to glorify him and enjoy him forever.

I do not have to fear your judgment. Jesus faced the only truly fearful judgment, that of the Holy Father, and he passed the test.  

I do not have to perform to meet your arbitrary standards. I am judged by Christ’s perfect performance, and his righteousness covers me. 

His Spirit, by his abundant grace, shifts my perspective and removes the fear from my heart, like stones dropping from open hands. Those “Shoulds” thoughts lose their power. Their shaking heads and rolling eyes fade completely out of sight, as Jesus extends his nail-scarred hand to me.

Why do I contort my life to please such horrible partners, when the light of the world offers to lead me in the greatest, most joyful dance imaginable?

By his grace alone I turn my back on all those "Shoulds" and take his hand.

Lead on, Lord Jesus.

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Myra Dempsey and her husband, Andrew, live in Newark, Ohio, with their four children. Myra is a stay at home mom, loves to write, and ministers in their local church teaching women's Bible studies and leading groups on gospel-centered sexuality. She blogs at dependentongrace.com and can be found on Twitter @MyraJoy and Instagram @myrajoy1019.

The Big God Behind Your 'Small' Ministry

It was a big day in Jerusalem. The temple built by Solomon, but destroyed by the Babylonians, was being rebuilt. It was a day of great celebration for the Israelites. The Jews had suffered for decades because of their disobedience (see 1 Kings 9:6-9). They endured exile and captivity, besiegement and destruction. However, Ezra tells the story of a new day, when the people gathered together to celebrate the laying of the foundation on the second temple.

They celebrated the Lord’s mercy with trumpets and cymbals. They sang and thanked him. They shouted with great shouts to praise his name.

Though many shouted for joy, there were others who “wept with a loud voice” (Ezra 3:12). They wept because they were disappointed. These older saints wept because they remembered the former splendor of the first temple, and the meager foundation of the second was underwhelming.

WHEN YOUR DAYS SEEM SMALL

Haven’t we all been underwhelmed by the work of our own hands at some point? We have a vision of what our ministry or family or career should look like that is so much grander than the current view.

On this day when people were disappointed with the lack of splendor, the prophet, Zechariah said, “Whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice” (Zech. 4:10).

Most of us will spend our whole lives living in days of small things. How do we navigate this space between what we see and what we want to see? How can we cultivate hearts that don’t despise these days, but rejoice in them?

Consider the following ways to be encouraged when you’re unimpressed with what God has entrusted to you.

See the Tree In the Seed

We’re attracted to the spectacular. Our eyes are drawn to all things bigger, brighter, and better, so we limit our scope of success to these ideals.

When we do, we overlook the significance of small things. The thing is, small is valuable when God defines the terms.

When Jesus spoke to a crowd that needed food, he didn’t despise Andrew’s suggestion of a boy’s lunch of five loaves and two fish (John 6:9). He used something small to glorify himself in a big way.

God is not disappointed by small. He uses the small things to accomplish his purposes.

Do you feel what you have to work with is small? Listen to Jesus: “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches” (Matt. 13:31-32).

In God’s economy, the tiniest seed becomes a tree. The smallest of things becomes significant because of its role in the kingdom. The final product is not determined by its beginning.

Richard Sibbes writes in The Bruised Reed, “See a flame in a spark, a tree in a seed. See great things in little beginnings.” God’s grand plan for our redemption began with a fragile newborn in a manger.

Do we see great things in little beginnings?

Find the Glory in the Mundane

We have great expectations, especially when it comes to our place in the world. It’s no surprise, then, that changing diapers and mowing the lawn and paying the taxes all just seems so . . . boring.

But we must strive to see God’s work like he does. We must value what he values.

We want to be sensational; God wants us to be faithful. The desire to have maximum impact in our culture is not a bad one. But devaluing ministry that has a smaller reach contradicts God’s values.

Consider Eunice and Lois (2 Timothy 1:5), the mother and grandmother of Timothy, apprentice to Paul and early church leader. These two women are not known for wowing crowds and signing books. We know them because they poured into a young Timothy. By worldly standards, their ministry was small. But we have the benefit of seeing the great value of their investment in one person.

We value productivity but are often underwhelmed with progress; God values productivity and progress. God’s salvific work in our lives is a miracle, and we should praise him for it. God’s sanctifying work of transforming us into his perfect image happens by degrees (see 2 Cor. 3:18) but is no less miraculous. Sanctification is often small, mundane, and untweetable. Nevertheless, it is a miracle, and we should praise the Lord for it.

What about you? Are you disappointed at the footprint of your kingdom work? Are you envious of someone else who seems to have more influence than you do? Remember, any impact you have on the advancement of his kingdom is a work of grace. Praise him for his work in big and small things.

Trust God in the Tension

The celebrity culture we’ve created adds to the pressure not only to succeed, but to succeed publicly and grandly. We have no tolerance for the unimpressive. We’ve given others the power to validate our success, but that validation was never ours to give away.

In the tension between our vision and our reality, we must trust God to accomplish all that he desires for his glory. We trust him to make his name great in our smallness.

The gap between our vision and our reality is not to be despised. God doesn’t look at small things disapprovingly. On a day when the rich were making it rain in the temple offering box, a poor widow gave two copper coins. Jesus told his disciples that she gave more than all the rich people gave that day, because she gave all she had to live on (Luke 21:1-3).

What seems humbling, meager, and unimpressive to us may look glorious to God. Oh, to see what he sees! We can’t judge his work by our standards. When the people were unimpressed with the splendor of the temple, Haggai encouraged them by telling them to be strong and to work, for God was with them (Hag. 2:4).

Underwhelmed saint, heed Haggai’s words and keep striving in your kingdom labors, for God is with you. Desire to be faithful, not sensational.

WHEN GOD HAS HIS SAY

“Perhaps you are frustrated by the gap that still remains between your vision and your accomplishment,” Os Guinness writes in The Call. “You have had your say. Others may have had their say. But make no judgments and draw no conclusions until the scaffolding of history is stripped away and you see what it means for God to have had his say.”

God will have the final say. And it will sound like this: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”

As we long for this day, let’s rejoice in the day of small things.

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Christy Britton is a wife and homeschool mom of four biological sons. She is an orphan advocate for 127 Worldwide. She and her husband are covenant members at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, NC. She loves reading, discipleship, Cajun food, spending time in Africa, hospitality, and LSU football. She writes for several blogs, including her own, www.beneedywell.com.

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.

From Abandoned Resolutions to Spirit-Empowered Goals

We are nearly halfway through 2018. How are you doing with the goals you set in January? Unfortunately, many of the resolutions made during the New Year are abandoned within just a few months. The gyms that were bursting at the seams in January are now nearly vacant. Fast food chains saw a dip in sales in mid-Winter, only to be back with a vengeance in early Spring. Why does this happen? Why do people continue to make resolutions only to drop them completely months or even days later?

Perhaps part of the problem lies in our microwave mentality that expects change to happen overnight or our desire to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” and meet our goals through our own strength.

We often see the goals we have as mountains we must traverse through sheer will-power and determination, but what if we have it all wrong?

What if practically keeping our goals is not like scaling a mountain, which requires large steps and allows us to see immediate progress?

What if reaching our goals is a much slower, deliberate process, requiring many small actions over time, like the slow accumulation of the tiny grains of sand that comprise a large sand dune?

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SMALL

We can easily become intimidated and discouraged by trying to tackle a large goal all at once.

The truth we often miss is that in order to accomplish anything, we must take small daily steps towards our goals. These small daily habits, even if they only take up fifteen minutes of our day, build upon previous actions, until our goal is finally realized.

We see this principle throughout scripture, where we see how seemingly infinitesimal things can grow into something magnificently large.

Jesus often pointed the disciples' attention to the mustard seed and how modestly small it was. He spoke of how our faith, though as small as a mustard seed, could move mountains.

He explained the exponential growth of the kingdom of God by comparing it to the tiniest seed that grows into a colossal tree.

He spoke of yeast and how the smallest bit could spread throughout an entire piece of dough, leavening it completely.

So it is with anything we try to accomplish to the glory of God. The small steps we take each day, by the power and grace of God, can grow into something bigger than we could ever fathom.

RIGHT MOTIVATION IS KEY

Many times, we fail to accomplish our goals because the motivations behind those goals are wrong. If your motivations for reaching a goal are weak or superficial, then the entire thing will collapse or blow away in the wind.

For example, you may have a goal to work out more, but do you want to do this for vanity's sake or for the purpose of being healthy and strong? You may desire to serve in your church, but do you desire to do this so that you will be perceived a certain way or because you are seeking to bring glory to God?

Failure is imminent if we base our life goals on worldly ambitions, rather than what is important in light of eternity.

Jesus in Matthew 6:33 shows us where our priorities should lie, "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."

We need to ask ourselves, “Are our goals self-centered or are they Christ-centered? At the end of the day are they glorifying to God? In reaching these goals, are we loving others better?”

If not, we must ask God to shape our goals and to give us right desires. Self-centered goals are short-lived goals. They are superficial and empty. The motivations behind our biggest goals must be Christ-centered, otherwise, they will ultimately fade away

PERSISTENCE IS ESSENTIAL

Sand dunes are formed in a harsh and ever-changing environment, with shifting sands and fearsome winds. Our lives can sometimes seem to mirror the chaos of a dune being formed in the desert. As soon as we lay down a base of sand, some of it blows away, and it can feel like every step we take forward takes us ten steps back.

Horrendous storms can come into our lives in the form of the loss of a job, the breakdown of a relationship, or a chronic illness. These storms can seem to blow away all we have worked for.

The truth is everyone faces setbacks. It is those who persist despite the discouragement who will see the fruit of their labor, even if it is years down the road.

We can often reason that if only we were in another season of life, reaching our goals would be easier. The truth is that every season of life is challenging in its own way and conditions will never be perfect for our goals to take shape.

When we make it a goal to make disciples, do we give up when the person we are meeting with flakes out on us, or do we persist? Do we pursue that person as Christ has pursued us?

When we want to make it a goal of being in the Word daily, do we give up when we take on a career that requires a lot of our time? Or do we carve out the time we need with our Savior, even if it means sacrificing sleep?

When loving our spouse well becomes difficult or inconvenient, do we persevere in love, or do we retreat to what is comfortable?

We must learn to persist even in the midst of discouragement and inconvenience if we want to see the fruit of our labor.

THE STRENGTH THAT GOD SUPPLIES

With all of the storms and difficulties of life, it can seem impossible to find the strength to persist. How do we do this?

Ultimately, the ability and strength to work towards our goals come from God.

Peter writes in 1 Peter 4:10-11, "as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen."

Our ultimate goal should be to glorify God. We are merely stewards of the gifts, talents, relationships, and resources God has given us and we must use them with the wisdom and strength he alone can supply.

We must depend on God's strength as ours will ultimately fail.

The prophet Isaiah echoes this truth, "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint," (Is. 40:28-31).

We can be sure that whatever we attempt for the glory of God, he will supply the strength we need. He is a never-ending well of power to those who realize their weakness to do anything in their own power (John 15:5).

Let us lean on the strength he gives as we steward the time and gifts he has given us. The world will tell us that we need more will-power, more self-control, more determination.

The truth is we need more Jesus.

He will be our strength in weakness. He will give us the right desires and dreams that we couldn't have dreamt ourselves. His ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Is. 55:8-9).

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you finish out the second half of 2018:

• What are your goals?
• Are your motivations behind your goals self-centered or Christ-centered?
• Are there some goals you have given up on that you need to pick back up again?
• Are you persisting in these goals in your own strength or by the strength that God liberally supplies?

No matter where you are in this journey, may you be encouraged to run this race well, to throw off anything that is hindering you, and to fix your eyes on Jesus, who is the author and finisher of your faith (Heb. 12:1-3).

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Delilah Pugsley is a wife, friend, sister, daughter and a Christ-follower serving in a church plant in Mid-Missouri. She writes on her blog https://www.graceinreallife.com, and you can reach her at delilahpugsley@gmail.com.

Boaz and the Power of Power

According to traditional interpretations, when Boaz sets foot in the story, readers breathe a sigh of relief and exchange knowing glances. We have met the hero. Let the romance begin! His arrival awakens hope that Ruth’s fortunes are about to change for the better. It isn’t uncommon to hear contemporary single women say, “I’m waiting for my Boaz.” But relegating Boaz to a romantic figure not only downsizes him and cheats him of the enormous credit he actually deserves; it also distracts us from the truly powerful role he takes and the deep gospel wisdom his story contains. For far too long, we’ve been cheating Boaz by caricaturing him as “the guy who gets the girl.”

Furthermore, that portrayal raises grave questions about his character. What kind of egregious abuse of power is involved when the owner of the field eyes a female gleaner with romantic motives? How will he dishonor his family by bringing home a bride who lacks social or economic advantages and, worse, is barren? Besides, if Boaz had marriage in mind, what was the hold-up? Why didn’t he at least send her home with his assurance that neither she nor Naomi would ever have to worry about hunger again? Instead, Ruth continues slaving in the hot sun for the entire harvest season.

In fairness to Boaz, the dissonance between the romantic version and the narrator’s portrayal of a man surely means Boaz deserves a closer look. We learn he is an older man of Naomi’s generation when he addresses Ruth as “my daughter” (2:8; 3:10, 11), just as Naomi addresses her (1:11, 12, 13; 2:2, 8, 22; 3:1, 16, 18). The genealogy at the end of the story reveals Boaz is Israel’s native son, born to a prominent family in the leading tribe of Judah. His grandfather Nahshon was the commanding general of the tribe of Judah and the third man in rank after Moses and Aaron. Through Obed, the son Boaz fathers by Ruth, Boaz becomes the great-grandfather of King David, the royal line that ultimately leads to Jesus. Talk about pedigree!

At their first meeting, Ruth knows nothing about the landowner in whose field she comes to glean. So her proposals to this daunting older landowner included a high degree of apprehension. International Justice Mission engages countless legal battles globally to counteract the abuse of widows when tribal strong- men seize their property, depriving widows of their only means of sustaining their families.5 That scenario plays over repeatedly in today’s world. It was the kind of danger Ruth faced.

THE PIVOTAL MOMENT

Much is made about the initial encounter between Ruth and Boaz in Boaz’s barley field. Without question, this meeting is the pivotal moment in the story. But no one could know ahead of time that things would turn out well. Good stories have tension. One of the key questions posed by the presence of Boaz is, how will this impressive man use his power and privilege? For starters, the enormous social and cultural disparity between them could not be more pronounced. They are polar opposites. He holds all the advantages.

The disadvantages belong to Ruth. Throughout human history and right up to the present, the differences between them are the makings of some of the most horrific violations of human rights. Only consider the explosive combinations: male and female, rich and poor, young and old, Jew and gentile, native-born and immigrant, powerful and powerless, valued and discarded. Anyone watching this nitroglycerin mixture would be expecting something terrible to happen, especially when her request implies criticism of how he’s managing his field.

But Boaz’s response to her request to glean in territory that was off-limits to gleaners is a show-stopper. He was not offended, although obviously taken aback. Her perspective on Mosaic law was eye-opening to him. Not only does he listen and grant her request, but he exceeds it with evident determination that nothing must prevent her from succeeding. He even serves her a meal. How countercultural is that?!

A MAN AHEAD OF HIS TIME

We must not miss the earth-shaking implications of his response. Boaz has just been introduced as a man who needs no improvement. In the eyes of the culture (and also of the narrator) he is golden. And yet, his exchanges with Ruth are eye-opening to him. He realizes what she is trying to do. Her perspective sheds new light on a business he has been running for years.

It is one thing for notable theologians such as John Calvin or Jerome to engage in conversation with noble women who are wealthy patrons. It is quite another for a man of Boaz’s stature to engage in conversation with a woman who culturally speaking is beneath him. He is bridging a cavernous gap. Yet, as the story demonstrates, and as he acknowledges, she is in every sense his match. The way he honors her bears that out and goes against the way life typically works in this world.

What if Boaz had dismissed, ignored, rebuked, or even abused her for violating social boundaries? How would the rest of the story have played out? Ruth and Naomi would have lived a hand-to-mouth existence. Naomi would not have revived. It never would have entered her mind to send Ruth to Boaz in hopes of finding shelter. Ruth wouldn’t have attempted to rescue the legacy of Elimelech. His land would have remained fallow until later—perhaps after Naomi’s death. The elders and villagers wouldn’t have witnessed this stellar man becoming even greater by making unrequired, extraordinary sacrifices for Elimelech’s sake. There would be no marriage and no Obed.

Boaz’s response raises a huge issue for Christians. One of the biggest obstacles to a deepening walk with God is resistance to rethinking our beliefs, listening to others, learning, and changing. All through the Bible, God is repeatedly asking some of the people who walked with him the longest to be willing to be wrong and to learn and grow. Sometimes walking with God means learning truth requires means rethinking your entire life. Abraham’s journey with God began in earnest when he was seventy-five—an age when people have a right to be settled in their ways. Abraham had to change, and with each change he grew deeper in his faith. More recently, after decades of ministry, a pastor began to realize he had gotten some things wrong. When one of his parishioners questioned what was happening, the pastor replied, “You gotta give me room to grow.” Room to grow and the courage to change— that reflects what happened to Boaz.

Boaz openly violates cultural expectations in his interactions with Ruth. Instead of showcasing patriarchal standards of masculinity, Boaz subverts them. He bucks the system. He is not held captive to dominant definitions of masculinity. He is free of such expectations and big enough to do the right thing, even when it costs him. In his interactions with this foreign newcomer, Boaz accepts her influence and in doing so discovers room to grow.

Boaz was a man ahead of his time. In the workplace today, equal pay for women remains an unmet goal. Boaz went beyond equality. So Ruth’s take-home pay was as much as fifteen to thirty times what a male harvester would pocket for a day of labor. Boaz pursued the spirit of God’s law—to seek justice for the poor and to feed them.

BOAZ AND THE POWER OF POWER

When it came to the obligations of the kinsman-redeemer and levirate laws, Boaz enjoys loopholes that would make a defense attorney salivate. He isn’t Elimelech’s nearest relative, nor is he Elimelech’s blood brother. Legally, he is beyond the demands of the law. Furthermore, Ruth’s combination of the two laws is highly irregular, especially in Naomi’s case, where the statute of limitations had expired. So when Boaz goes to Bethlehem to press the nearer kinsman-redeemer to purchase land he is likely to inherit anyway and to marry Ruth to produce a male heir for Elimelech, he’s pressing his case beyond the requirements of the law. It raises the question, how did Boaz get away with this?

Boaz’s self-appointed advocacy for Naomi on Ruth’s behalf demonstrates how radically out of step he is with his culture. At the male-dominated seat of government, Boaz gives women a legal voice. He assumes Naomi has property rights and insists that purchasing her land is an urgent matter. If that wasn't surprising enough, he bends the law to require the kinsman-redeemer to fulfill the levirate law too in lieu of a blood brother.

He also bends the law emphatically toward women’s rights—a concept unheard of in ancient times but a pressing contemporary global issue today. And Boaz, a heavyweight among Bethlehem leaders, proves unstoppable. Not only does he push through everything Ruth requested, he depletes his own estate to rescue Elimelech, just as he vowed he would. The fact that not one man attempts to oppose him signifies just how powerful Boaz was.

Boaz shows how male power and privilege can become a powerful force for good. He voluntarily makes extraordinary sacrifices beyond what the law requires. His story also refutes the misguided adage that the rise of women comes at a cost for men. The rise of Ruth influenced Boaz to become a better man—one of the best men in all of Scripture.

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Content taken from Finding God in the Margins: The Book of Ruth by Carolyn Custis James , ©2018. Used by permission of Lexham Press, Bellingham, Washington, LexhamPress.com.

Carolyn Custis James is an award-winning author and international speaker. She blogs at www.carolyncustisjames.com, as a Leading Voice at MissioAlliance, and at Huffington Post, is an adjunct faculty member at Biblical Theological Seminary, and a consulting editor for Zondervan's Exegetical Commentary Series on the New Testament. Her books include Malestrom―Manhood Swept into the Currents of a Changing World, Half the Church―Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women, and The Gospel of Ruth―Loving God Enough to Break the Rules. She speaks regularly at church conferences, colleges, and other Christian organizations and is a visiting lecturer at theological seminaries. 

Spelunking Our Way to Salvation

My favorite Batman movie is The Dark Knight Rises. And not just because it has Christian Bale, and not Ben Affleck, playing Batman. I love this film because it resonates with my soul. Batman’s back is broken in a battle against the evil Bane, and the Dark Knight is left for dead in a dark, inescapable pit. Bruce Wayne, our strong hero, is broken, hopeless, confused, and trapped in a deep cave.

Caves are dark, musty, disorienting, and lonely. And sooner or later, we all end up in one.

Not literally, of course. But in the course of life, our souls stumble into caves of brokenness, pain, hurt, grieving, and suffering. We feel like David fleeing his family, friends, throne, land—everything—because his son Absalom betrayed him. This is the cave.

LIFE IN THE CAVE IMPACTS EVERYTHING

Loss brings us to the cave. Loss of friendship, loss of dreams, loss of family, loss of hope. Often, loss is accompanied by even more loss, as friends, fans, and supporters who were around distance themselves.

The cave feels like rock bottom. The damp, cold, walls are all you have to cling to.

Life in the cave impacts everything.

Your finances, marriage, and career can be great, but it doesn’t matter—you’re in the cave. What brought you here hurt so deeply that the pain bleeds into every part of life.

If part of you is in the cave, all of you is in the cave.

WHAT DARKNESS BRINGS TO LIGHT

In the cave we are stripped of every hope other than Jesus. Hobbies, entertainment, food, and iPhones—none of these can help. They can distract from the pain, but some caves are just too dark to find comfort in distractions.

In the cave our pride is crushed. We become more aware than ever that Jesus—only Jesus—will never leave or forsake us. We are stripped of all the idols that are so prevalent outside.

In the cave we find out how much we really love Jesus, and how much we really trust him.

Caves are lonely, but you’re never alone in the cave. We have a God who does some of his best work in the cave. This makes even the darkest of caves beautiful.

The God of the Bible is a good God. He uses our pain and suffering, our brokenness, to bring about something beautiful. He uses all things for the good for those who love him (Rom. 8:28). He woos us in the cave.

CAVES REVEAL US

Spelunking is the exploration of caves. Spelunkers grope around in the dark with headlamps lighting their way. They never know what they might find, but in the end, the adventure reveals something about themselves.

I wouldn’t wish time in the cave on anyone, yet I wouldn’t trade my time there for anything. I’ve been in it more than once, and I would rather not enter it again.

Yet I know I would not know Jesus the same way I do today without times in the cave. Just as a miner delves deeper into the mountain to uncover flecks of shimmering gold, there is beauty in the depths of our cave because God is committed to mining our hearts and revealing the stone encasing them.

Caves reveal our hearts, and they reveal our closest friends. Jonathans reveal themselves to Davids in the cave. No friend can live there with you. Only you and Jesus can dwell there, but true friends can and will visit you in the cave. They will enter your pain, listen, pray, comfort, point you to Jesus and help in any way they can. It is these friends that help you see the dim, distant light that is the way out. These friends are priceless. They have seen the way out, and even though they don’t dwell in the cave, they can offer tremendous hope.

Jesus uses friends and family to help us take our first wobbly steps out of the cave. He uses them as a due north, a compass in the midst of a confusing, lost and dark time. That doesn’t mean everyone who abandons you is not a true friend. Certainly, some are inch-deep friends, but many just do not have the courage, maturity or time to visit you in the cave.

Some are in a cave of their own, and some are in such a time of joyful frolicking outside they don’t even recognize others are in caves. Don’t hold on to bitterness. While it reveals your truest and deepest friends, the cave also grows our compassion for those in caves and those who have no idea what this pain is like. We bear with one another and we grow in learning how to share one another’s burdens.

PURIFIED FOR COMMUNITY

While the cave is a very lonely place, the Lord never intends to use it for isolation, but as a furnace to melt away the impurities of superficial, self-centered community, purifying us for community with him and a newfound compassion for others.

Time in the cave deepens our longing for authentic Jesus-centered community, marked by dependence, brokenness, vulnerability, confession, and love. He reveals true friends, but also makes us into true friends, the kinds of friends that would visit others in the cave.

Jesus and Peter are restored after Jesus enters his cave, but Judas and Jesus were not. Finding the way out doesn’t mean every relationship is restored, but that every person is forgiven and Jesus is fully trusted to be the just judge. Confess all that you can confess, own all that you can own, and leave God to judge the rest. This helps us get off the floor of the cave.

Look to Jesus. Trust Jesus. Some things will reveal themselves over time as you wait upon the Lord. Sometimes the Absaloms show themselves to be Absalom, and the Jonathans show themselves to be Jonathan. Other times we never know. Either way, trust in Jesus. He is trustworthy.

THE ULTIMATE CAVE IS EMPTY

How do we know he is worthy of our trust? Because he willingly entered into the ultimate cave in order to keep us out of an eternal one.

Jesus left a heavenly paradise willingly to enter a cave on Earth. He was respected, followed, sought after and had a ministry that impacted villages, cities, towns and drew audiences from royalty to peasants and the sick. He walked with close friends, had moments of validation and appreciation both from people and from the Father. He knew life on Earth outside the cave.

He also knew ministry in the caves. He was a man of sorrows. He wept. He knew betrayal, abuse, false accusations, and abandonment. He knew physical, spiritual and relational pain and torment.

On the cross, he took on the sins of the world. He took every man, woman and child’s personal cave, all the sin they committed to get there, and all the sin committed against them that sent them there.

Jesus entered a very real cave. He was beaten, mocked, abused, abandoned and buried in a dark, cold, musty cave and left breathless, lifeless, dead. The king of heaven was crucified on a cross and buried in a cave. He didn’t have to do this. But he chose to out of love for us!

The Dark Knight Rises ends with Batman learning from his past and coming out of the cave stronger than ever. He defeats Bane, saves Gotham, and marries Catwoman.

Jesus is better. He defeated the ultimate cave. The stone was rolled away, the cave is empty, and Jesus is alive!

Jesus heals, restores, saves and resurrects. We have hope new life will come bursting forth from our deep, dark caves because Jesus Christ burst forth from his.

We get to ask for help, prayer, and friendship and be honest about our condition. And even in the darkest cave, we can have hope, knowing no cave is permanent for those who have trusted in Jesus.

And one day he will make all things new, even us. He will shine brighter than the sun, wipe away every tear, and turn every dark cave into a life-giving meadow! All creation will join together in worshipping and praising our King Jesus! And we will frolic for all of eternity, together in community, with him.

In the meantime, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, in both the meadows and the caves. Let us rejoice with those who rejoice, and mourn with those who mourn. Living like a true friend to those around us who are in the meadow or in the cave, always pointing to the one who truly will never leave them or forsake them, always pointing to Jesus!

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Jake Chambers is the husband to his beautiful bride Lindsey, and a daddy to Ezra, Roseanna, Jaya and Gwen. Jake is passionate about Jesus and helping others meet and follow Jesus. He helped plant Red Door Church in San Diego and enjoys serving the local and global church through preaching, teaching, listening and praying.

The Sweet Salvation in the Cup of Christ

I’m a terrible gift-giver. I don’t give bad gifts as much as I don’t give any gifts. I’m not anti-gifts; I’m just not good at picking them. So most of the time I don’t. But about once every five years, I experience a stroke of gift-giving brilliance. My father’s tendency to stand in front of the refrigerator, looking for something to drink, has become something of a running joke in my family. He would fling the double-doors wide open, staring expectantly at the contents, hoping something would stand out. This Christmas, my stroke of gift-giving brilliance kicked in. I decided to solve his problem. I went on a drink-buying binge and bought him twenty-five different kinds of non-alcoholic drinks, one for every day of December, leading up to Christmas.A vast majority produced indifference, while only a few stood out as true winners.

Then there were the few outright epic fails. I won’t name brand names in order to protect the guilty, but one involved a cold-pressed juice with cucumber, spinach, kale, lemon juice, romaine, and apple. My dad has a stomach of steel, mind you, but he took one swig of that drink and practically snorted it out his nose. “That’s like drinking a bale of hay,” he said. The rest of the bottle promptly made its way down the drain without so much as a second sip.

As I reflected back on my dad’s twenty-five days of drinks, picturing his distorted facial features, I leafed through the pages of Scripture and found a group of people with a similar experience. But their drink of choice carried far more significant reminders than a bale of hay.

SIN LEAVES A BAD TASTE IN YOUR MOUTH

When the Israelite people, led by Moses, left behind 400 years of slavery and escaped from Egypt, they experienced the miracle of parted waters at the Red Sea, the provision of manna and quail from heaven, the delivery of the Ten Commandments, the precise blueprints for the tabernacle—one move of God after another. Even after all that, their appetites weren’t satisfied and their thirsts weren’t satiated.

While Moses was taking his sweet time up on the mountain with God, the Israelites down below cried out to Aaron, his brother: “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him” (Ex. 32:1).

Aaron asked the people to give him all their gold, and “he took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool” (Ex. 32:4). And then the real fun began.

The next day, the people held a festival, rising early to sacrifice burnt offerings, present fellowship offerings, and indulge in basically every sort of sexual immorality imaginable. The people let loose, and the miracle of the parted Red Sea became a distant memory in light of the present pleasures.

Both Moses and God looked down from the mountaintop, witnessing the short-term memories and sin-filled sacrifices of the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and their anger burned. Moses eventually made his way down the mountain and "took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it” (Ex. 32:19-20).

Bottoms up, he told them. Cup your hands and start scooping. Drink long and slow and deep, and find out exactly what your sin tastes like. Feel that finely-ground gold wash across your lips, over your tongue, bumping into your taste buds along the way. Feel the grit between your teeth.

There’s nothing that burns your throat quite like the taste of your own sin. Moses knew it wouldn’t be enough for the people to simply tear down the calf and melt it into something else. They needed to ingest the very sin they were so determined to relish just hours before. They needed to know what idolatry tasted like so they never did it again. The fools were to drink the fools’ gold. So, drink up, he said. Drink down to the very last drop, let there not be a single speck of gold left in the waters.

I imagine their faces twisted and distorted with disgust much like my father. Sin always tastes disgusting when we are forced to drink it for ourselves.

ANOTHER CUP SET BEFORE US

That’s the way of sin, though, isn’t it? It seems enjoyable and harmless when we first set out. We rationalize it, justify it, defend it. A friend of mine used to preach sexual abstinence until she found herself giving her own purity away to a long-time boyfriend. After that, she repeatedly had sex outside of marriage with various different boyfriends and had a ready defense every time. She made no apologies, and after a while simply became desensitized to her own sin. Her rationale was that since she already crossed the line, she might as well keep going.

The Israelites did their own rationalizing. They exchanged the glory of God for a lie, and God gave them over to their sins in the same way we read about in Romans 1:21-24. He eventually gives us over to exactly what we want when we persist in our sins. A holy and righteous God can do no less. If sin is what we choose, then he will see to it that we freely drink of those sins.

But praise Jesus, there is another drink we can choose from, another source to satisfy our thirsts that does not involve finely ground gold.

“Then [Jesus] took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to [his disciples], saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you.  This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’ ” (Matt. 26:27-28).

Drink from it—all of you—he said. Drink of his blood and find the sweetness of salvation instead of the sickness of sin. Drink of his blood and find the forgiveness of foolishness instead of the finality of flaws.

Jesus raised a glass to all that could be different for sinners like you and me. He raised a glass to the blood of the covenant, his blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. The beauty of the gospel is we no longer have to live like the Israelites, grinding up our sins and pouring them into the waters to scoop up with our hands. We no longer have to walk around with twisted and distorted faces, forcing ourselves to down our bitter-tasting sins. We no longer have to make the exchange, giving up the truth of God for lies.

You have a choice: drink from the cup of your sins and feel the burn all the way down, or drink from the cup from which the precious blood of Christ was poured out and feel the burn of redemption all the way down. His cup overflows and never runs dry. It’s the cup that always satisfies, always quenches, always fills, always redeems, always forgives.

May the fools drink no more of the fools’ gold, but of the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

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Courtney Yantes spends her days as an event planner, coordinating events and conferences designed to inspire change and promote access for people with disabilities. She graduated from William Woods University with a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in business administration. She enjoys blogging, traveling, and generally organizing anything she can get her hands on. She is a lover of all things Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and relishes a life free of social media accounts.

When Gospel-Centered Goes Too Far

Many in the church today live under the banner of “gospel-centered.” It’s in our Twitter bio. It’s in our books, our conferences, our worship. The phrase defines an entire philosophy of ministry. It even curates the content we consume—after all, you did visit Gospel-Centered Discipleship to read this.

When does gospel-centered, and all it represents, go too far? You might chafe under the notion that gospel-centeredness may not be the be-all and end-all of our lives and ministry, but allow me to explain.

THE FOREST AND THE TREE

One of the most haunting condemnations Jesus hands down is found in the Gospel of John. Jesus had just miraculously healed a disabled man, allowing him to walk again. When the man discovers that it was Jesus himself who made him well, he reports what happened to the Jews. They were furious at these reports and confronted Jesus, accusing him of performing these works on the Sabbath, which went against Jewish religious practice.

Jesus’ response only made them angrier: “My Father is still working, and I am working also” (John 5:17 CSB). Not only was Jesus working on the Lord’s Day, but now he was making himself equal to God! (John 5:18).

As the Jews derided and persecuted him, Jesus rebuked their inability to understand the point of it all. After exhorting the crowds, he stuns the Jewish leaders by saying, “You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me. But you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40).

Jesus diagnosed their problem as being so consumed with the message that they missed the Messiah. Eugene Peterson paraphrases Jesus’ words this way:  “You miss the forest for the trees!” The Jews were so concerned with the what of their faith that they failed to see the who behind it all.

And so we often do the same. We drive home the need to focus on Scripture as narrative, but sometimes forget to focus on the Protagonist. Less-than-careful preachers point their church to theology, and somehow, not to Christ. We walk through the forest and fail to notice the beauty of the one mighty Tree before us.

Gospel-centered goes too far when we miss the forest for the trees; when we’re so gospel-centered that we miss Jesus.

This is more than mere semantics. We must remind ourselves that the gospel is only something worth centering our lives on if, standing at the center of that gospel, is Jesus Christ. “He is before all things, and by him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). “Your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). Indeed, the news of the gospel is only good because of who it proclaims.

PREACHING CHRIST IN OUR GOSPEL

In his new book Spurgeon on the Christian Life, Michael Reeves observes that Charles Spurgeon felt compelled to say that he was preaching Christ, “because of how easily we reduce ‘the gospel’ or ‘the truth’ to an impersonal system.” Reeves notes that “Spurgeon saw theology much like astronomy: as the solar system makes sense only when the sun is central, so systems of theological thought are coherent only when Christ is central. Every doctrine must find its place and meaning in its proper relation to Christ.”

The book cites multiple excerpts of Spurgeon commending preaching Christ, including this one:

“Yes, it is Christ, Christ, Christ whom we have to preach; and if we leave him out, we leave out the very soul of the gospel. Christless sermons make merriment for hell. Christless preachers, Christless Sunday-school teachers, Christless class-leaders, Christless tract-distributors—what are all these doing? They are simply setting the mill to the grind without putting any grist into the hopper, so all their labour is in vain. If you leave Jesus Christ out, you are simply beating the air, or going to war without any weapon with which you can smite the foe.”

I appreciate the wide lens with which Spurgeon applies our need for preaching Christ, because this is not just a pastoral issue. Yes, preachers have an obligation to preach the same message—“Christ!”—every Sunday. But this is also true for the youth pastor, the children’s ministry worker, the elder or deacon, the layman.

This is not a call to abandon the “gospel-centered” banner. But it is a call to remember that standing at the core of our message is Christ—the Word made flesh (John 1:14). Yes, our biblicism and crucicentrism and conversionism and activism and all our other -ism’s are all fundamental to our gospel-centeredness. But each of these attitudes fall miserably short if Christ is not present and precious in all and through all.

KEEPING THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING

If we believe that Christ belongs at the center of our solar system of faith, then we will see that he affects everything and holds all things together. Here are just a few implications of a faith focused on preaching Christ.

1. Preaching Christ affects how we read Scripture. Too often we limit discussion of Jesus to the New Testament, but as Jesus affirmed in John 5, the Old Testament is all about him, too. It’s more than a few passages here and there, like Genesis 3:15 and Isaiah 53; the whole of the Old Testament is centered on the person of Christ. As Tim Keller reminds us, “Each genre and part of the Old Testament looks toward Christ and informs us about who he is in some way that the others do not.” The echoes of Christ ring through the hallways of Proverbs and Hosea and Exodus. The Old Testament is an unfolding of God’s redemptive plan, but rest assured, Christ is there throughout.
2. Preaching Christ affects how we pray. Prayer is one of the most personal tools we have to communicate with God, and when we remember our prayers are to a Person, we begin to speak as we ought. We do not pray to the abstract or the impersonal. We pray like a child of God showing love and crying out to his Father who hears him and takes notice.
3. Preaching Christ affects how we sing. When we gather for worship, it’s easy to sing about the gospel—that “Christ has died for us”—but which word do we emphasize? Too often, we emphasize for us, when it is Christ that should get the emphasis. A worship service focused on Christ will join together in songs that turn our eyes off of ourselves and onto Christ, helping us engage in more vital worship.
4. Preaching Christ affects how we serve. Serving because it’s part of the membership covenant is a poor reason to serve. Yes, the gospel’s good news compels us to live as servants of all, but a stronger motivator will always be our love for someone—namely Christ. May the gospel compel us to serve and live sacrificial lives, but may we be even more compelled to lay down our lives because of the Savior who did so for us.

To put it simply, what makes us Christian is Christ. We ought to keep the main thing the main thing. As Spurgeon quips, “If [Christ] be omitted, it is not the gospel…you are only inviting them to gaze upon an empty table unless Christ is the very centre and substance of all that you set before them.”

Continue to be gospel-centered, by all means. But as we invite people to the table, let’s not forget to invite the Guest of Honor.

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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.

Two Roads Diverged in a Garden

My heels backed up to the edge of a twenty-five feet high wooden platform just large enough to accommodate two people. My shirt was drenched with sweat. My muscles shook from adrenaline and fatigue, the effects of several ropes-course obstacles. We were attached to a tall, pencil-like tree swaying in the breeze. Jeff, the course facilitator, tethered me into the final element of the course—the zip line. He challenged me to not simply ride the zip line to safety, but to face my fear of losing control by crossing my arms over my chest and falling backward. The tether would catch me and the zip line would take care of the rest. This “trust fall” would only work if I resisted the instinct to grab the tether.

I wasn’t interested in Jeff’s challenge.

Without hesitation, I looked Jeff in the eyes, said, “No thanks,” grabbed the tether, and eased my weight onto the zip line for a controlled ride to the ground.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you trust God?”

Jeff’s question came as a shock—a blatant undressing of my vulnerability and weakness. My fear of heights was obvious, laying bare my desire for control. I had a choice: to close my fist and grab the tether, or open my hand and trust.

My preference for control won, and I zipped away, grasping the tether—and my sense of control.

TWO WILLS DIVERGED IN A GARDEN

Humanity’s first battle for control took place in a garden, provoked by the ancient serpent’s deceitful words: “God knows that when you eat of [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5).

Until this point in time, human will had been aligned to the divine will in a relationship of trust and obedience. Now Eve stood on the precipice of a new possibility—an alternative path where she was in control. Would she choose trust or control, an open hand or a closed fist?

Eve saw the fruit of the forbidden tree as desirable “to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6), and she took some of its fruit and ate, sharing it with Adam, her husband. Eve and Adam chose the closed fist of control.

This act of disobedience resulted in the divergence of human and divine wills, changing the course of history. Our battle for control had begun.

THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL

The “opening of their eyes” to a world of wisdom awakened Adam and Eve to their nakedness and vulnerability. They quickly fashioned coverings for themselves. A relationship with God, once marked by trust and obedience, was instantly undermined. All for the sake of control.

Like our first parents, we are experts at constructing coverings to hide our vulnerability. Setting out to deceive others, we unintentionally deceive ourselves with our homemade fig leaves. We take comfort in this deception since it helps us feel in control, but in the end, it’s only an illusion.

As descendants of the Fall, we fabricate worlds of control, attempting to keep life’s struggles—suffering, sickness, loss, tragedy, grief—at arm's length. But sickness and death don’t make appointments. Loss and tragedy don’t submit to our parameters. Whenever the unexpected comes crashing into our lives, we can hardly handle it. We become confused and shell-shocked, angry and bitter like our lives are out of control.

NOT WHAT I WILL, BUT WHAT YOU WILL

This great battle of control we find ourselves in came to a head in another garden:

“And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And [Jesus] said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray,’ And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.’ And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.’” – Mark 14:32-36

Jesus, like Eve, had a choice before him. Not a fruit, but a cup—the cup of God’s wrath. Before Jesus drank from it, he held it in his hands, considering an alternative path. He wrestled with his Father, struggling to the point of blood and tears (see Luke 22:44), saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me” (Luke 22:42).

Human and divine wills tragically diverged in the first garden. But the result would not be the same here. The open-handed will of the Son—not grasping for control (Phil. 2:6), ever obedient to his Father (John 5:19)—changed the course of history when he said, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Jesus’ words of submission are not a request, but a statement of fact. They are the clear-eyed recognition of the indomitable supremacy of the Father’s will over man-made illusions. Jesus considered every alternate reality and possible future in which human wills could supersede the divine will—and rejected them outright, even though it meant drinking the cup of wrath.

LOSING CONTROL IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO GROW

Our lives of comfort and safety are nothing but smoke and mirrors. We are actually closest to reality when we lose control. Losing control removes the veil from our eyes, clearing the illusion so we see our situation for what it is.

On that high ropes course, I took comfort in every bit of control I could find. The experience helped me recognize my unrelenting desire for control, my delusion that I could be like God. But there is only one God, and he is in control. And my will can only be aligned with his when I trust him.

Our greatest opportunities for growth come in the most difficult circumstances. By removing our sense of control—even if just for a moment—God grants us a chance to recognize our illusions of control. These moments are opportunities to open our clenched fists in trust and submission.

When we lay down control, we let go of something that never belonged to us anyway.

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Mike Phay serves as Lead Pastor at FBC Prineville (Oregon) and as a Staff Writer at Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He has been married to Keri for over 20 years, and they have five amazing kids.

Whose Kingdom Come?

I memorized a prayer I’m afraid to speak aloud. It calls for mutiny against myself. It goes like this: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).

Paul David Tripp writes, “‘Your kingdom come’ is a dangerous prayer, for it means the death of your sovereignty.”

Not being in control is terrifying to our sinful flesh. We want what we want when we want it, how we want it, where we want it. We want the right house in the right neighborhood next to the right school.

But for believers, a tension exists between our flesh and the Spirit inside us. The Spirit desires God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, while our flesh seeks to establish our own kingdom and sovereignty.

We are to be imitators of Christ, who demonstrated perfectly how to lay aside his own will and desire the will of his Father.

THE KINGDOM OF ME

Our kingdoms reflect us. They represent our thoughts, desires, and values. If you need help identifying your kingdom, look at your bank account, your conversations, your thoughts, your activities. After your bills are paid, where do you spend money? When you lie in bed, what thoughts dominate your mind? What do you do in your spare time?

Our kingdoms exist to serve us. We rule our kingdoms and demand everyone else bow to our needs, wants, and desires. In my kingdom, comfort is foundational. I don’t want to be too hot or too cold. I like soft and stretchy clothes. I want foods to fit my moods. My kingdom has few problems, little criticism, and more resources than I need. I’ve convinced myself I could happily live in this safe and comfortable environment forever.

My kingdom exists to serve my desire for safety, comfort, and happiness. I’m the queen of my kingdom, and it’s easy to control. I spend my days ensuring the comfort I crave.

Despite the energy I put into building my kingdom, it has a fatal flaw: it doesn’t satisfy. It never could, because my own pursuits are not meant to satisfy me.

I was created for a different kingdom—a better kingdom—one beyond my control. A kingdom where I’m a servant and not a queen.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

God’s kingdom reflects what he desires and values. It exists to bring him glory. In this kingdom, he is sovereign over all. In this kingdom, he is Lord.

The kingdom of God reveals his sovereignty over the redemption of man; it is for those who do his will (see Matt. 7:21). Glimpses of God’s kingdom are shown as all things are being made new, as we are restored to him and to each other.

God’s kingdom in heaven exists without death, crying, and pain (Rev. 21:4). His kingdom is filled with people from every tribe, tongue, and nation (Rev. 7:9). The curse is gone in God’s kingdom—there is no sin, poverty, sickness, or injustice (Rev. 22:3).

The kingdom of God will satisfy because it will bring God glory, which is what we were created to do. When we fulfill our purpose, we find our satisfaction. John Piper says, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” I wasn’t created to do my will; I was created to bring God glory by doing his will (John 6:38).

GIVING UP MY KINGDOM FOR GOD’S

I like my safe, comfortable, controllable kingdom. Since I'm the queen, it feels like I’m in charge. But truthfully, I’m no monarch. I’m a fool settling for temporary comfort when eternal riches and security are offered.

C.S. Lewis writes in The Weight of Glory,

“It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

My flesh wants to build my kingdom on earth. But God has liberated me from bondage to my flesh (Rom. 6:18), and in freedom, I can choose to lay down my will for his. By his grace, I desire to give up my kingdom for his. Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

The Christian’s life includes a call to deny self (Matt. 16:24), but our sin keeps us focused on the present. Jonathan Edwards prayed, “Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs.” We would be wise to desire a kingdom mindset with eternity in view.

YOUR KINGDOM COME

His kingdom is in heaven, but it’s not yet on earth. That’s why we pray, “Your kingdom come.” John Piper says, “We should pray that every day. Bring the kingdom, Lord. It’s not here the way we want it to be. Bring your kingdom. Bring your reign fully in people’s lives, in my life, in the world.”

God is bringing his kingdom to earth through his people. As his children reflect his image, the world will see Christ’s rule. When we, like Christ, say, “Not my will, but yours, be done (Luke 22:42),” the kingdom of heaven is made visible.

Church, we need to pray boldly, “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” We must die to ourselves. Let’s seek the destruction of our kingdoms as we realize his and live for his glory (Matt. 6:33).

God’s kingdom is coming. He will rule fully on earth as he does in heaven. And those who destroy their kingdoms to seek his will reign with him forever (Rev. 22:5).

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Christy Britton is a wife, homeschool mom of four biological sons, and soon-to-be mom of an adopted Ugandan daughter. She is an orphan advocate for 127 Worldwide. Her family is covenant members at Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, N.C. She loves reading, discipleship, spending time in Africa, hospitality, and LSU football. She writes for various blogs including her own, beneedywell.com.

God Loves Me—Right?

The worship band starts up and you sing lyrics you’ve heard a hundred times before: “How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that he should give his only Son, To make a wretch his treasure.” But the words catch in your throat.

You don’t feel like a treasure. In fact, you haven’t felt God’s love at all lately.

IS GOD’S LOVE EQUAL?

You would never say God doesn’t love you, but you’re not sure he loves you as much as someone like Charles Spurgeon, William Carey, or even the people up front leading the music. They've served God in obvious ways, so God is probably more accepting of them, right?

Maybe you’re tempted to believe there are two levels of God’s love. First, the love that exists between Father, Son, and Spirit. This love is eternal and perfect, the fullness of what our earthly love points to. This is the deluxe package of God’s love. Second is God's love for us. You know, the basic package.

We feel like there’s a difference between God's love for his Son and his adopted children like some wrongly believe that parents have a greater love for their biological children than their adopted ones. But Jesus speaks a better word to us.

God doesn’t just love you as much as any other brother or sister—he loves you as much as he loves his Son.

JESUS’ COMFORTING SPIRIT

Jesus describes the Father’s love for him—and for us—in John 14. Sensing the disciples' uneasiness as he discusses his return to the Father, the Savior comforts his followers with a promise: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18).

How will Jesus come to them while he’s in heaven? Through his Spirit. The sending of the Spirit unites believers to Jesus. That Spirit signals to the disciples, and to us, that we’re not alone: "In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you" (John 14:20).

Jesus’ ascension and the giving of his Spirit are testimonies that God has not left us alone. Our triune God has broken into this sin-wrecked world in order to reclaim his people.

Jesus did not merely accomplish his earthly work and then tell the disciples, "Y'all stay strong. I'll see you when you die or when I return." The Father sent the Spirit to unite us to Jesus, to conform us to the image of Jesus, and to hold us firmly to the hope that is in Jesus.

If you possess the Spirit of Jesus, then you possess the unadulterated, unfiltered love of God.

HOLY AND BLAMELESS

God does not begrudgingly forgive you. He won’t stand with arms crossed at the gates of the new heavens and new earth with a frown as you sulk by. Those three words—"you in me"—are a glorious promise that what is true of Jesus is true of us. Our sin has been taken away and when God looks at you, he sees Jesus, who is "holy and blameless" (Eph. 1:4).

At the beginning of John 14, Jesus assures his followers:

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also (John 14:1-3).

Did you catch that? The disciples are anxious about Jesus’ departure and fear what’s next. He comforts them by assuring them they will dwell in the Father’s house. Not in some rickety shack out back; no cupboard beneath the staircase. We are promised a room of our own in our Father’s house with our brother Jesus.

SONS AND DAUGHTERS

When we come before the Father, we do not come as mere servants of his Son; we come as sons and daughters ourselves, not because we are by nature sons and daughters, but because we have been wrapped in Jesus’ sonship.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God (Gal. 4:4-7).

What does this mean for our fellowship with God? It means you don't get the scraps of God's love. You get the prime cut. When you’re brought into union with Jesus, you are united in love with the eternal fellowship of Father, Son, and Spirit.

Sure, we’re still sinful people, and there will be a day when we experience that fellowship to a greater degree. But you can rest today in the promise that you share in this triune fellowship.

This is why Christians are called to live a life of holiness. Those who have tasted from the pure waters of triune fellowship are foolish to return to the stale, festering waters of sinful desires.

“You shall be holy, for I am holy,” is not a burden to shoulder, but a result that flows from being caught up in the divine love of Father, Son, and Spirit. But we’re prone to forget the beauty of heavenly love, choosing instead to chase pale imitations of it through relationships, possessions, and experiences that only bring disappointment and despair.

REMIND YOURSELF OF GOD’S LOVE

If you long for God’s love, remind yourself:

• Christ himself mediates every prayer you utter (Rom. 8:34).
• God is not an absentee Father; he has made himself known through his Word.
• Your church is a proclamation of God’s love represented as a family comprised of brothers and sisters from every nation, tongue, and tribe, all equipped with spiritual gifts.
• God demonstrates his faithfulness through every sunset, sunrise, and rainbow. It is the daily soundtrack that God “called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9).

If Satan throws the fiery darts of shame and guilt at you, don’t despair. There’s an empty tomb that speaks a better word than your guilt. It speaks of redemption and grace. It speaks of forgiveness. It speaks of love.

As Psalm 136:26 says, “Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

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Cody Cunningham is one of the pastors of Immanuel Community Church in New Orleans, Louisiana. He also is on staff with Reaching and Teaching International Ministries, an organization that provides theological education for pastors overseas. In addition, Cody is a husband, dad, avid reader, and coffee lover. You can read his other writings at codycunningham.com.

She Went from Destitute to Daughter—and So Can You

Before Cinderella was the most sought-after footwear model in all the land, she was a despised maid. She was a mistreated, neglected stepdaughter forced to tend to her bratty sisters. This part of Cinderella's story highlights something many of us struggle with: shame—particularly, the shame that comes from being shunned. Whether it’s a high school clique that keeps you from sitting at their table or an evil stepmother who treats you cruelly, no one wants to feel despised.

Cinderella’s story points us to an older, richer one that also features a destitute woman. This woman, whose name we don’t know, had a physical reminder of her isolation—a continual flow of blood.

PORTRAIT OF A DESTITUTE WOMAN

Her condition made her unclean in the Roman-era Jewish culture. According to Jewish law, every woman was considered unclean during the period of her menstruation. This meant that no one could touch them because they would also be made unclean. If the menstruating woman sat on a chair, it became unclean and nobody else could sit on it, or they would become unclean. This poor woman had a perpetual menstrual flow, so she was perpetually unclean.

Therefore, she would have likely lived separately from everyone. She couldn’t be touched by anyone. If she were a young woman when she contracted this condition, she would never have been able to be married or have a family. If it happened later in her life, after she had a family, she would never have been able to touch her children, hug them or comfort them in her arms, or even hold their little hands. This condition had ruined her life and she was desperate to be healed from it.

She had subjected herself to painful procedures with multiple doctors, yet she had only grown worse. Her humiliation, rejection, and degradation must have been completely devastating.

But that wasn’t the end of her story.

A SICK GIRL AND A DESTITUTE WOMAN

The poor woman’s story begins as an interruption to the narrative of Jairus and his sick daughter (Mark 5:21-24; 5:35-43), but the two stories are intertwined. Jairus’ daughter was twelve years old and the bleeding woman had suffered for twelve years, though both parties were desperate for healing. Jairus was the leader of the synagogue, a well-known and respected man. He acted as a powerful advocate for his daughter by pleading with Jesus for her life. The destitute woman had no one to advocate for her.

Even still, somewhere in her broken life a glimmer of hope still flickered. So desperate was she for healing, that on hearing of Jesus’s power and that he was passing through her town, she risked everything to go and touch him.

She would have had to cover her face and sneak out of her house. When she entered the crowd, she would have made everyone she touched unclean. Had she been discovered, she could have been stoned. But still, she pressed on and pressed in through the crowd, nearer and nearer to Jesus.

As Jesus walked to Jairus’ house to heal his child, the bleeding woman pushed her way through the crowd, reached out, and touched the hem of his robe.

Immediately, she was healed.

THE GOSPEL HEALS AND ADOPTS

As this healing is taking place, we can imagine Jairus is eager for Jesus to hurry up so he can come and heal his daughter. Jesus, however, takes his time with this woman, even while the young daughter's life is hanging in the balance. Jesus’ unhurried approach shows that God has equal time and power for all. No one is more important to him than anyone else.

The beauty of this story, which captures so much of the gospel, is that Jesus wills that no one should perish, but that all should come to eternal life (John 3:16-17; 1 Tim. 2:4). Here, Jesus stops in the middle of a lifesaving mission for an important man’s daughter and heals an unknown, nameless, rejected, and unclean woman. He healed not only her physical ailment but her deeper, spiritual ailment as well. And he accepted her in a way she had never even dreamed of by calling her “daughter” (Mark 5:34).

The gospel heals and adopts. It heals us of our spiritual ailment—sin—and adopts us into the family of God (see Eph. 1:5).

The love of God stretches infinitely; it reaches into the hearts and lives of every person despite their social status, nationality, income, gender, or renown (Gal. 3:28). This is the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

JESUS KNOWS YOUR NEED BETTER THAN YOU DO

The destitute woman’s faith was probably influenced by superstition. She had likely heard that some people believed Jesus to be the Messiah. There was a widely held belief at the time that if a person touched a tassel on the Messiah’s garment that person would be healed. Desperately holding onto this belief, the woman kept pressing in until she touched the clothes of Jesus.

And she was healed! This was all her dreams come true! All the suffering, all the doctors, all the years of isolation, rejection, and pain, came to an end the moment of her healing. As soon as she received healing for her greatest need, she turned to flee for home, intending to leave in obscurity. But Jesus had a different plan.

REDEEMED AS A DAUGHTER

Jesus understood the woman’s true need in a way she didn’t comprehend. And so, he calls her out of the crowd, saying, “Who touched me?” And she stopped.

Why didn’t she just keep running? Why did she stop and come back? Well, because it’s hard to run when the voice of God is calling you. The same voice that called Lazarus out of the grave called to this unknown, desperate woman, and at the sound of Jesus’s voice, she fell at his feet, trembling in fear, and told him the whole truth.

After she confesses, Jesus does something unheard of, yet wonderful—he reached down and touched her. The purest, most righteous man to have ever lived touched the unclean woman, claiming her as his own. The word “daughter” that Jesus uses here is a term of the most intimate endearment. It would never be used with a stranger. He uses it nowhere else in the gospels.

Jesus adopted this nameless woman into his family. He touched her uncleanness and called her precious daughter, and then he told her to go in peace.

When something dirty is touched by something clean, the clean thing becomes dirty. If you clean your car with a white rag, the rag will soon be black. Jesus took our “uncleanness,” to the cross with him. He became the dirty rag which washed us clean, and just like the woman in this story, he accepted us into his family.

While she had desperately wanted healing, and had thought that was her greatest need, Jesus knew the true needs of her life. He gave her public acceptance, healing, and peace. He called her “daughter.”

FLESH PRESSES, FAITH TOUCHES

This story shows us that God knows our needs better than we do. We may come to him imperfectly, as this woman did, not truly seeking to know him more but to lay hold of an answer to prayer. Yet he is still willing to accept us.

Augustine writes,

“Flesh presses, faith touches. He can always distinguish between the jostle of a curious mob and the agonized touch of a needy soul.”^[1]

If your need is great enough to make you sincerely and desperately turn to God, if you, like this woman, will risk everything just to reach out and touch Jesus, he will meet your needs and more.

He will be your Savior. He will deliver you from your shame.

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^[1]Quoted from George Campbell Morgan, The Gospel According to Mark, (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1927), 127.

Jody Ponce is on the women's ministry team in Calvary Cork, Ireland. She is married to Ricky Ponce, and she is the mother of three young children.

The Outlandish Joy of Obeying Jesus

Where does your resolve come from? For Jonathan Edwards, it came from God. He did not look first to himself—what he wanted to do or to become. He looked first to God, and that made all the difference. Edwards wasn’t always the pastor and theologian we know today; God grew him into that role. He started out like the rest of us, wrestling with who he was and who he wanted to be. But God gripped him and set him apart to himself. He granted Edwards a vision of life that dimmed the spotlight on the man and brightened it on God.

Edwards’ 62nd resolution is but one example:

"Resolved, never to do anything but duty; and then according to Eph. 6:6-8, do it willingly and cheerfully as unto the Lord, and not to man; “knowing that whatever good thing any man doth, the same shall he receive of the Lord."

Could God use a man who resolved such a thing? Could he use anyone who didn’t?

Doing our duty before the Lord is the greatest life we could ever live, but it’s the thing our flesh wants most not to do. Add in the resolution to do it willingly and cheerfully and one has the makings of a frustrating life. This resolution is not for the faint of heart. It is a promise to oneself to remove the “I” of life and replace it with the glorious God of the universe—a God who was the true master of his life, the only one who knew who he should be and do.

Edwards was not a perfect man; only Jesus was. But his resolve to follow Jesus for who he is calls us to consider the remarkable life of the Christian. Everything we do is under the sight of God, the guidance of God, and the love of God. Our lives are not meaningless, and the sooner we realize that the sooner we’ll begin to live as we should.

To realize our lives aren’t meaningless is, at the risk of sounding contradictory, to realize that we aren’t all that important. We are not nothing, to be sure, but we are not everything we tend to think, either.

So who are we? We’re unworthy servants willingly and cheerfully serving Jesus.

WE ARE UNWORTHY SERVANTS

In Luke 17, Jesus is talking to his apostles. After a hard teaching about temptation, they said to him, “Increase our faith!” Jesus tells them about a mustard seed of faith strong enough to move mountains. Then, for some reason, he shifts to duty.

“Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” – Luke 17:6-10

We all want increased faith, but for what purpose? If our request for increased faith is merely to see mountains move, we’re asking God to grant faith for an end that is not him. In our “God-dreams,” we must be careful not to use God’s name in vain. We must be sure our desires match his. Faith in Christ doesn’t make us miracle workers, it directs us to the Miracle Worker.

We are all tempted to spiritual pride. So Jesus sets us in our place, reminding us of who we are: unworthy servants. We’re free in Christ, but we’re slaves to him. And when a slave has done his duty to his master, he does not expect any gain in return. He has not given anything to his master he does not already have. He will not receive a reward for doing what he’s commanded.

Is this offensive to you? It is to me.

But it wasn’t to Edwards. He resolved never to do anything but duty. Like the Apostle Paul, he identified himself as a “bondservant” of Christ (Eph. 6:6). His idea of life began and ended with the Word of God; what he commanded was his duty to obey. Is that a dull life? Well, that depends on your master, doesn’t it?

NEVER TO DO ANYTHING BUT DUTY

What did Edwards mean by “never to do anything but duty?” He meant a life not of dull service but a life of intimate following. To follow a hard master is a wearisome task, but Jesus is no ordinary master. Instead of demanding harder work and higher yields, Jesus says,

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” – Matt. 11:28-30

What is the work of Jesus Christ in the world? He came to save his people from their sins, redeem all things, restore all that’s lost, and mend all that’s broken. He came to destroy the power of sin. He came to give sight to the blind and to raise the dead. He came to set the captives free, to rescue the oppressed. He came to live the perfect life, die the guilty death, and rise again in glory. He came to bring man to God and God to man.

Jesus is the life-giving master. He’s the only master who, if we follow him, will give us tasks of glory and, when we fail him, will forgive us completely. He calls us into his work, things no less significant than the spread of the gospel for the salvation of the world. He asks us to do our duty, as unworthy servants, because that’s who we are. We have no righteousness of our own that compels him to us.

We cannot carry out his commands apart from his grace. We have no claim to make on our Maker and Savior. We are unworthy in every sense of the world—but it is for the unworthy that he came!

OUR DUTY IS OUR YES TO GOD

Doing our duty increases our faith. As we obey, we see God at work. What then is our duty? In one sense, it is nothing less than our immediate and constant yes to God. It is not a yes to the things we want to do but a yes to all the things he calls us to do, even if our yes’s are to seemingly small requests:

• “Yes, Lord, I will pray right now for this suffering man.”
• “Yes, Lord, I will turn my eyes from her so as not to lust.”
• “Yes, Lord, I will obey your call to work hard today.”
• “Yes, Lord, I will be gentle with my wayward child."
• “Yes, Lord, I will love this person I just can’t get along with.”
• “Yes, Lord, I will suffer quietly, enduring false accusations because you know my heart.”
• “Yes, Lord, I will deny myself because in Christ I have all things.”

We don’t do our duty before Jesus under the shadow of the law, we do it under the Son of Righteousness. Paul explains in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

The joy Jesus had for his servants led him to the cross. How much more should his joy lead us into his work?

THE OUTLANDISH JOY OF OBEDIENCE TO JESUS

Christ gives his people his Spirit—all the internal will and cheer we will ever need—if we seek him and search for his voice. Jesus’ wish is our command. In the remarkable grace of God, our moment by moment yes brings heaven’s work to earth.

And our work is not apart from his watchful eye. What we do for him will yield rewards in the end. He will remember our service to the saints (Heb. 6:10). He will return all the good we did (Eph. 6:8). We are unworthy servants, yes. We’re bondservants of Christ, it’s true. But we’re doing the works of God (John 14:12)! We cannot claim our seat at his table, but one day our Master will seat us at his marriage supper of the Lamb.

Being a servant of Christ is a lowly thing until you see how high a thing it truly is.

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David McLemore is the Director of Teaching Ministries at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He also works for a large healthcare corporation where he manages an application development department. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons.

Is it Possible to Be Content with My Calling?

In the fall of 2013, I was visiting a local park with my four-year-old and two-year-old in tow when I saw a mom with a newborn baby and felt a sudden, overwhelming relief that I was “over” that baby phase. Earlier that summer, I had come to an emphatic decision that we would not have any more children. Being a notoriously open-ended person, this was a rare, clear decision. Little did I know, I would become pregnant within the month.

A BABY

To say I cried about my pregnancy is an understatement. It took months of processing with friends to even come around to the idea that having another baby could be a good thing. It sounded like terribly tedious work. And though it might seem obvious that this was God’s calling for me, I couldn’t quite accept it.

When little Rosie was born, I delighted in her. But I also delighted in knowing I was only two years away from potty training and “normalcy.” Those next two years, however, turned out to be some of the hardest of my life.

On the outside, my life may have looked fine. I participated in church community groups, discipleship groups, and women’s bible studies. I was an involved parent and had pulled my eldest out of public school and started homeschooling.

A BREAKDOWN

But on the inside, I felt like I was dying. The addition of a baby to homeschooling and full-time care for three kids under five felt like more than I could physically and emotionally bear. I felt like I had lost my worth, my dignity, and my hope. How could God be calling me to this? I remember many times cleaning up after my five-year-old, three-year-old and baby thinking, The sole purpose of my life is picking things up and putting them down again, like Sisyphus, pointlessly pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it fall down again. What was the point?

There were times I would wander all over the house and say over and over again, “I hate my life; I hate me.”

So I started clawing at anything that promised what I was craving: worth, significance, meaning, and purpose. I threw myself into homeschooling classes, curriculums, and co-ops. I revived my doula business. I planned ministry events.

But as I attempted to busy myself, my body started shutting down. A trip to the doctor to address the fatigue ruled out major illness but hinted at depression. It was a wake-up call. I finally surrendered my crusade for meaning and purpose, submitted to my husband and stopped homeschooling (after the 100th time he asked, “Why are you doing this?”) I took a break from some responsibilities and my body slowly healed. My kids started school. I made some new friends and visited some old ones. I started seeing glimmers of hope all around.

But my questions lingered: “Why did God allow this? What is my life for?”

A WILDERNESS

Around this time, I read a very helpful article that started to give me a picture of what God might be up to:

“Time and again, God calls his people to himself by leading them out of the familiar and into a wilderness. In this wilderness, the urgent needs of survival require a radical assessment of their identity and what their life is really about… In every case God brings his people to a point in which they have to reckon with their identity as his children. They can live for their own agendas, wants and needs, or choose to trust in their Heavenly Father.”–Winston Smith, ‘The Hunger Games: Appetite and Identity’

God was leading me through a wilderness. It was full of service and mundane repetition. He had given me a good gift—the task and the joy of serving a child—but it had become a burden because I insisted on pursuing other agendas, wants, and needs. God had brought me very deliberately to this point to reckon with my identity and my agenda. He obliterated my “felt need” to be recognized and to use my talents. He shut the doors to easy escapism and freedom from responsibility. He pressed the gas pedal on the effort needed to serve my family.

My response was to fight and question God for bringing me on this path—being a wife, being a mom, being . . . everything that I was. My flailing for meaning and pursuit of other activities actually drained my resources for my true calling. Suffering was compounded by sin. And in the wilderness, I so often chose escapism, depression, anger, self-pity, regret, selfishness, indulgence, sensuality, sulking, isolation, and fear.

But I knew, as a daughter of my Heavenly Father, there must be a better way than demanding my own agenda, living for my wants or needs of recognition, success, or escape. How could I learn to trust my Heavenly Father?

AN ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS

In May of this year, I had a dream. In the dream, I was taking my two-year-old into our shower. She had poop in her diaper and on her fingers and she had smeared it all over her face. In my frustration, I muttered, "Why did you do this? You know better. Ugh!"

Then, suddenly, Jesus was there to my right, in a white robe on the threshold of the shower. I was aware it was Jesus, but didn’t dare look at his face. I just stared at the ground, frozen.

Then he spoke to me with clear, authoritative, and kind words. I was so mesmerized and giddy by Jesus’ presence that I didn’t even remember exactly what he said! He was speaking words of truth over me about who I was in him—a beloved daughter. He spoke to me about my identity. He was so kind, and his words so true. His presence was full of intensity and wonder and joy. His glory was magnetic. And I was filled with so much love for him. Not just love, but adoration and worship.

My heart melted, and in a puddle of tears and love, I blurted out, “I will clean up poop for the rest of my life if you want me to. I’ll do it for you!” It seemed to be the only natural response to give him anything he’d ask for.

Then I woke up.

ANSWERS TO THE WHY

This encounter with Jesus was so richly layered with meaning. Jesus Christ is present with me in every moment (Matt. 28:20). He prays over me (Rom. 8:34). He sees me and speaks to me (John 10:3). His words are truth (John 18:37). He has absolute authority and it is a good authority (Matt. 28:18). He is beautiful and wonderful, and our worship songs don’t go far enough to describe him!

But it took me days to realize that in this dream were the answers to the questions I had been asking: Why did he lead me into this wilderness? What is my purpose? Who am I?

In the midst of a poop- and frustration-filled scene, Jesus’ presence changed the “why” of it all. His presence transformed a dirty task into a complete joy because I knew it was the King of the Universe who was asking me to do it. And this King of the Universe was so full of glory and radiance that to be asked by him to have any job on this earth was a complete privilege and not a frustration.

Now, imagine if the King of the Universe came to you and personally asked you to do the earthly work you are currently doing—because he has done just that! In God’s complete control, he has appointed your earthly tasks, work, and relationships. It isn’t appointed in some impersonal or vague way, but Jesus asks you, “Will you do this, for me?”

Paul’s exhortation to the Colossians captures this: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Col. 3:23-24). Your work, even your mundane work, is a personal service to the Lord of all.

REMEMBERING WHO CALLED ME

So much in the previous two years—the homeschooling, the fantasizing, the jobs, and, dare I say, the ministry events—was a confused scramble for identity and purpose. What God had given me—a baby—was an opportunity to work and serve, not just a helpless infant, but Jesus Christ himself! The job didn’t give me money or worldly glamour. It didn’t require my “skills” or talents. But it was a gateway to joy and purpose.

And Jesus isn’t asking us to serve when he hasn’t. This King of the Universe, our master, is the ultimate servant. “For even the Son of man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Jesus Himself went into the wilderness. He was tempted. But he was keenly aware of the Father’s will and calling for him. While he was physically run down, Jesus returned Satan’s lies with truth. Jesus could have used his earthly fame for comfort, money, a plush life, and demands for others to serve him. But his Father’s will and calling was his food—his sustenance—and he didn’t forget it in the wilderness or afterward. For the joy set before him, he served and served until the dust of humiliation and execution on a cross (Heb. 12:2). And by this service, we have new life!

Remember to whom and for whom you are working. Joyful contentment is possible even in the most ordinary work and dirty jobs when you realize it is the King of the Universe you are serving. If you find yourself in a wilderness, God is intimately present with you and has appointed this journey so that Jesus Christ will be magnified in your life. And his countenance and beauty are so wonderfully beyond compare, it will give you the strength for any work or service to your family and community until you see him face-to-face.

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Robin McGee lives in Austin, TX with her husband and three daughters. She spends most of her days loving and serving her family and church. She enjoys singing, playing the piano and researching.