Tag: faith

I’m continuing to study Revelation and just spent the last few months teaching the first half of the book to a small group of friends. As I continue to go deeper into the truths contained in this last book of the Bible, and those truths continue to seep into the cracks and crevices of my mind and heart, I am consistently faced with the contrast between how we portray the Christian life (at least in the context of evangelical America) and how John exhorts his own audience. How we portray the Christian life to others is important. And many times that is influenced by our own culture and what seems to be popular.

For the past several years people have been talking about dopamine and its relationship to the technology we use. Apparently the social media companies know all too well what will keep our attention and bring us back. They give us hit after hit of mindless entertainment, fear inducing conspiracy, or lust enticing images. The question I’m asking is this – do we present the Christian life in the same way? Or do we allow the ethos and exhortations of Scripture to direct us in how we pursue Christ?

According to one interpretation, which I am finding to be rather convincing, chapters 6-20 are depicting parallel and intensifying cycles of judgments that occur during what is called the ‘interadvent’ period. In other words, John is giving his audience and us multiple angles from which to see and understand what is going on from the time of Christ’s ascension until his Second Coming. If this interpretation is correct, then it makes perfect sense of John’s repeated mentions of and exhortations to patience and endurance. (You can read those in 1:9; 2:2; 2:19; 3:10; 13:10 and 14:12.)

If we’re being honest, endurance and patience are not appealing in a world that has us feeding off quick bursts of dopamine and promises of bigger, higher, more epic. Let’s tell it like it is, endurance and patience just aren’t sexy concepts. But they are patently biblical. Patience and endurance are two necessary components of a Christian life that is waiting and trusting in God’s sovereign purposes in a world filled with deception and chaos, threatening to undermine our faith and seducing us to believe its lies. Patience and endurance are needed to keep us on guard against the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil. Quick hits of spiritual inspiration just don’t fuel us for the long haul.

I used to run ultramarathons. Maybe some day I’ll be able to get back to them. What I found so fascinating about them was all the spiritual parallels. You can run a 5K without much training and without any fuel. But as you increase the distance, 10K to half marathon, half marathon to marathon, and marathon to 50K and beyond, you need to train your body to get used to the constant pounding. You need to take care to fuel it consistently. You need to learn how your body and mind react to the low points and you need a strategy to deal with those. You also need some crazy friends to help you keep going when you feel like quitting. If the apostle John were familiar with ultramarathons, he may have used that analogy when exhorting his audience to endurance and patience.

How do you see the Christian life? What are your unspoken expectations about how its supposed to go? Don’t let the culture (and sometimes the messages of church culture) dictate those expectations. The Christian life is not supposed to be an unbroken string of mountain top experiences. We’re not always going to be ‘on fire’ for Jesus or live as radically as others exhort us to. I prefer John’s exhortation to endure with patience. I think that’s what Eugene Peterson had in mind when he called the life of faith a “long obedience in the same direction.”

Sometimes old books and outdated books get culled from my seminary’s library and end up on a table for anyone to take as their own. A free book is always appealing so I’m always looking over what’s available. The older books don’t always catch your eye. The binding may be tattered and the covers may be completely plain without any design. But this one did catch my eye because of the author, an author I had never heard of until coming to seminary.

This is one of the main benefits of seminary – broadening your learning across the centuries of church history, and exposing yourself to old and new authors. Before beginning my studies, it had been too easy for me to fall into familiar reading patterns, always reaching for Sproul, Piper, and Grudem. But in my first class in seminary I was introduced to someone named C.F.D. Moule. He was an English Anglican priest and scholar who taught for some time at Cambridge. Though he lived most of his life in the 20th century, I had never heard of him. Because of my professor’s mention of him and his work in a class on Paul’s epistles, his name was put on my radar. When I saw this old commentary of his on Colossians and Philemon I grabbed it.

New and shiny and colorful always seems better doesn’t it? Who would rather drive the dingy old car compared to the shiny new one? But outward appearances can be deceiving and a faded cover and broken binding doesn’t mean there isn’t treasure on the pages inside. I had been thinking about Colossians 3:1-4 and union with Christ and thought I would turn to this old commentary to see what Moule had to say about it. I was not disappointed.

Colossians 3:1-4 says this: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

What do these phrases in bold mean? How can I have died but still live? And what does it mean for Christ to be my life? Moule’s comments deserve a much wider reading.

And that death, because it was “with Christ,” in union with Him, was followed of course by life, by resurrection, by part and lot in His own immortal and victorious state as the Risen One; you died, and your life lies hidden, stored, safe-guarded, once placed there, secure for ever, with our Christ in our God. There it lies, and there it lives; and so if you would live it out, using this wonderful life-power for spiritual triumph and service here on earth, you must go evermore to find it there; you must “seek” it; you must “with Him continually dwell,” in steadfast recollection, simplest reliance, and ceaseless secret reception of the divine supply.

Death and life are two animating principles of the Christian life. In this passage we learn that once we place our faith in Christ, a death has occurred, death to the old man, the part of us united to Adam. Life has come, powerful resurrection life because we are now united to the second Adam, to Christ. This is where our life is found, where everything is found. So why go back to that old man to find what we need? It is a broken cistern as Jeremiah says. It is like a parched man going to the Dead Sea for refreshment.

Therefore, in order to live this Christian life, we must constantly go to Christ. It seems simple but oh how often do we default to our own resources! I’ve been meditating on Moule’s words and believe they perfectly describe what it means to abide in Christ: we must steadfastly recollect the facts of what our salvation means – we have died and been raised with Christ; we must simply rely on him and not ourselves; and we must without ceasing drink from the infinite well of his divine supply of grace.

Losses and disgraces are the wheels of Christ’s triumphant chariot.

Samuel Rutherford

If God truly works all things together for our good (Rom 8:28) then trouble must be included in all those things. I’ve been reading Rutherford’s letters and have been occupied with the ones he wrote during his own time of trouble while under house arrest for his non-conformity. (You can read more about that here if you’re not familiar.) This morning I read one of the five letters he wrote in one day, June 16, 1637. They are full of sweet submission to the Lord’s purposes and a struggle to express sufficient praise for his glorious and most fair Savior.

Trouble is never something we aim at in this life. No one drives toward the ditches and potholes on the road. But when we find ourselves in the ditch, possibly one of our own making, possibly not, we are impatient to get out. But what if there’s a lesson in that ditch that the Lord wants us to learn? In the next life we will experience eternal rest, but in this life we are promised the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. (See Romans 8:14-17 and Philippians 3:10-11) Rutherford learned to enjoy the ironic, upside down beauty and joy of that fellowship. He didn’t despise the losses or disgraces because he knew his Lord had experienced the same on his behalf. And he was confident that because the Lord had triumphed over death and lives forevermore, he had the authority and power to turn all his losses into joyful gain.

Christ and His cross together are sweet company, and a blessed couple. My prison is my palace, my sorrow is with child of joy, my losses are rich losses, my pain easy pain, my heavy days are holy and happy days.

It’s hard for me to process this when others around me are suffering trouble and loss. What can I do? How can I help? I have experienced a tiny bit of the truth Rutherford is expressing but I can’t make others learn that lesson. And we all know that Romans 8:28, offered without sufficient wisdom and care, can come across as trite and unwelcome for those in deep trial and sorrow. So what to do? How to pray? We may not be able to do anything, and we may not have any eloquent words to pray. But what we can do is come alongside our friends, get in the ditch with them, and not merely offer platitudes from the outside. We may not say anything while in that ditch but our fellowship with them will speak more than words. Didn’t Christ do the same for us?

Lord, help us to love as you do.

How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts!

Psalm 84:1

When you read this verse, do any pictures come to mind? If we think back to the instructions for building the tabernacle, we may picture the fine twined linen, the blue and purple yarns, and cherubim skillfully worked into the curtains (See Exodus 36). Those things were indeed lovely and costly. Gold, silver, and bronze covered various pieces of tabernacle furniture, and the clasps, bars, and frames of its structure. God himself gave two craftsmen, Bezalel and Oholiab, special skill to make all these things. In addition, Moses is instructed to have those filled with skill to make the priests’ garments in such a way that displays beauty and glory (See Exodus 28).

The Lord is certainly beautiful and glorious beyond our comprehension and the place in which he has chosen to dwell – the tabernacle in Israel’s case – is designed to reflect that. I think we would do well to meditate on the beauty of God and how that relates to his glory. If we did, maybe our hearts wouldn’t be so tethered to this world, but rather, filled with eager anticipation for the next.

But when understood in the original language, this word ‘lovely’ points to something beyond outward aesthetics. The word in Hebrew is an adjective meaning well beloved, very dear. The closely related noun form of this word is used 19 times in Song of Solomon to refer to ‘my beloved’.

What makes the dwelling place of God beloved? What makes it very dear? The King of covenant love dwells there! His loyal and steadfast love has opened the door into his presence for those upon whom he has set his special affection. They are his beloved people. And now that we have been brought in, we enjoy and delight in all that our Beloved is for us.

This is why the psalmist expresses his longing for the dwelling place of God with language of yearning and fainting. You don’t respond in this way to a place that is merely pretty to look at. And indeed he goes on to clarify the object and terminus of his affection when he says, “My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.”

I have loved learning Hebrew and am grateful for the tools to dig deeper into the original languages. But one of the challenges of seminary is to take what you are learning in class and have it transform your heart. So we must go beyond the Bible nerd phase of digging for the original meaning of the word ‘lovely’ in Psalm 84. We must go beyond that exciting point of discovery and ask how that piece of information should affect my worship this Sunday and how I go about the rest of my week. For me I think it is beginning to transform how I see the weekly gathering of believers. Have you ever said this, “I didn’t get anything out of the service/sermon today.”? That question may reveal that you are looking at the weekly gathering of believers as a consumer. But what if you and I entered worship with the expectation that we are about to meet our Beloved Lord? That this is a place where he especially dwells with those upon whom he has set his special affection? What if we looked forward all week long to this day of days not as a way to get our spiritual ‘fix’, or to check off a box, but as a day that is set apart to enjoy his presence and cultivate a greater longing for the last Day when he will come back and take us to himself, and all our soul’s longings and faintings will be satisfied?

It’s not the outward, tangible details that make God’s dwelling place so beautiful and glorious. It’s who he is as our King of covenant love. Do you know this King? Are you longing for his return? For when he returns, all will be consummated and he will make his final dwelling place with his beautiful Bride, and all of us will cry, “Glory!”

As C.S. Lewis famously said in The Weight of Glory , “We are far too easily pleased.” For all my love of sports, and I’ve spent countless hours since childhood watching men and women strike or throw a ball, tumble across the floor and swing up into the air, run around in circles trying to achieve world records, I think one of the devil’s schemes is to use the good gift of sports to derail our affections, to convince us that the joy and excitement we feel over our team winning, or this person achieving a world record, is the pinnacle of joy and delight.

No. We were made for so much more. We were made to be swallowed up in the enjoyment and praise of our Creator and Savior. But even when we realize the truth of this, and begin to experience a tiny sliver of it here on earth, we can become disappointed because we see how great a chasm there still is between what we experience of Christ’s love and the infinite riches that await. We’ve been given a sip of the glory but our eyes have become opened to the vastness and depth of the great sea of his love. How can we ever reach it? Yes, we were made for so much more, and he is deserving of more than we could ever give him but we are just lumps of clay! This is what I think Samuel Rutherford is getting at in the following quote:

Oh, where is He? O Fairest, where dwellest Thou? O never-enough admired Godhead, how can clay win up [attain] to Thee? How can creatures of yesterday be able to enjoy Thee? Oh, what pain is it, that time and sin should be so many thousand miles betwixt a loved and longed-for Lord and a dwining [pining away] and love-sick soul, who would rather than all the world have lodging with Christ! Oh, let this bit of love of ours, this inch and half-span length of heavenly longing, meet with Thy infinite love! Oh, if the little I have were swallowed up with the infiniteness of that excellency which is in Christ! Oh that we little ones were in at the greatest Lord Jesus! Our wants should soon be swallowed up with His fulness.

Have we settled for stale enjoyments? Have we allowed our God-given capacity for enjoyment and worship and praise to terminate on things that can only be truly and fully satisfied by an infinite Love? This morning I feel my utter lack, the inability to enjoy God and give to him what he deserves. My attention wanders and drifts, settling for lesser loves. The Lord sees and knows this. I thank God for brothers and sisters like Samuel Rutherford who also recognized their own lack. And praise him for his mercy, that he is a compassionate Father who does not condemn us for our lack but continues to call out to his children and say,

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Isaiah 55:1-2

I used to run a lot. I was never fast, but I loved pretending I was. I would go to the local high school track and do a workout that involved fast (for me!) short intervals. I enjoyed accelerating around the curve and would pump myself up by imagining I was Allyson Felix in the Olympic 200 meter race. My watch told me the truth that I was actually twice as slow as Allyson, but for that brief moment on the curve, heading into the straightaway and on to the finish of the interval, my imagination helped my legs to turn over quicker.

In letters to his friends and parishioners, Samuel Rutherford often reminded them of the time. Like Paul to the Romans, he emphasized that “salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.” (Romans 13:11) How then shall we live? The Bible uses metaphors to speak of the life of faith. We walk with God (see Galatians 5:16 and Colossians 2:6-7), but we also are called to run (see Galatians 5:7 and Hebrews 12:1-2). In a letter to one of his elders, Rutherford encourages him to run fast, knowing what time it is.

Love heaven; let your heart be on it. Up, up, and visit the new Land and view the fair City, and the white Throne, and the Lamb, the bride’s Husband in His Bridegroom’s clothes, sitting on it. It were time that your soul cast itself, and all your burdens, upon Christ. I beseech you by the wounds of your Redeemer, and by your compearance before Him, and by the salvation of your soul, lose no more time; run fast, for it is late. God hath sworn by Himself, who made the world and time, that time shall be no more (Rev. x. 6). Ye are now upon the very border of the other life.

We don’t know exactly how much time we have left in our short lives. The Lord has determined all our days. And we don’t know how long it will be before Christ returns. But if we woke up this morning we are all one day closer to seeing him. Our life with the Lord is a walk, but as we get closer, as we come around that curve and see the finish line, we can all pick up our knees, and pump our arms, running faster until we cross over to that new Land, our forever home with Christ.

Samuel Rutherford had been away from his church, from his dear congregation, for a long time. In his letters he laments all the dumb, silent Sabbaths he spent away from them, away from the ministry he loved to do. Some suggested he go abroad, to this place across the sea called New England. He would be free to preach there, but he refused. In a letter to his friend John Stuart, he describes the state of his heart and his desires:

Now, for any resolution to go to any other kingdom, I dare not speak one word. My hopes of enlargement are cold, my hopes of re-entry to my Master’s ill-dressed vineyard again are far colder. I have no seat for my faith to sit on, but bare omnipotency, and God’s holy arm and good-will. Here I desire to stay, and ride at anchor, and winter, whill God send fair weather again, and be pleased to take home to His house my harlot-mother. Oh, if her husband would be that kind, as to go and fetch her out of the brothel-house, and chase her lovers to the hills! But there will be sad days ere it come to that.

Rutherford had opportunities to go elsewhere, but he refused. His heart was with the people of God in his own country, people who he describes as unfaithful to God at the present moment, a church that was taking its orders from the state instead of the Lord. But his refusal wasn’t based on any hope that things would get better. In fact, he was convinced it would get worse. But he didn’t base his faith on these outward signs.

I have no seat for my faith to sit on, but bare omnipotency, and God’s holy arm and good-will.

Many of us are facing impossible situations. Many of us have prayed for decades for someone or something and outwardly things don’t seem to have moved an inch. But does our faith sit in the outward signs or is it rooted in God’s character, in his power to save and his good promises to his people? True faith is anchored right there. It is able to keep still and winter and wait until God is pleased to act. In the meantime, we can be sure that God is still working behind the scenes, preparing the way for our prayers to be answered.

There once was a girl who wanted to be the best. She was pretty good at school and half decent at swimming but one day she took up the clarinet and after a few years realized she was more talented than most. So she practiced. She took private lessons. She received recognition and was rewarded with solos and awards. Being first, being the best, felt good.

Moving to a new state to start high school was tough, but this girl soon found her niche in the band. Her parents found her a new private teacher and drove many miles each week to take her to all her lessons and rehearsals. Then came auditions for honor bands and big city youth orchestras. She continued to succeed in capturing one honor after another, more solos and first chair placements. When she failed to beat out the competition, she felt bad and tried not to get discouraged, but it was impossible for her to keep from comparing herself with others. That mentality had become a default switch. She wanted to be the best.

The clarinet was the center of this young girl’s life and her talent eventually brought her to one of the best music schools in the country. Filled with ambition, she set out, at least subconsciously, to find out that first year in college who all the clarinet players were and where she ranked. She wanted to be the best after all. That was the only way to get the awards and the recognition and to one day get the coveted symphony job she so desired. As she labored daily in the practice room, it felt really good to see her name rise in the ranks after each audition. By the end of that first year she found herself sitting in the top orchestra next to the number one player. She saw nothing wrong with her ambition.

Early in her second year, some things went seriously awry in this girl’s personal life and she found herself lonely and lost. But in the midst of this lostness, the Lord was seeking her. Friends invited her to church and she began to read the Bible. She met Jesus Christ and realized she was not the best after all. She came face to face with who she really was at heart – a sinner in need of redemption. Within a short time after placing her faith in Jesus Christ, she found a kind of fulfillment and joy in her relationship with God that the clarinet couldn’t give her. There were brand new desires planted within her reborn self. Music started to become something different and her relationship with Jesus Christ slowly began to reshape her goals and ambitions. For sure, being the best clarinet player was still a goal, but others around her started to become people to love instead of people to impress or obstacles to climb over in getting to the top.

That girl with the clarinet who wanted to be the best was me of course. I turned 53 this year and have now been following Christ for almost 34 years. The girl who came to faith at 19 seems like a world away and I am filled with thanksgiving for how God has worked in me, as Paul says in Philippians, “to will and to work for his good pleasure.” But that desire to ‘be the best’ followed me into my Christian life and still lurks in the shadows, subtly trying to exert its influence. Being born again doesn’t completely rid us of the ingrained habitual sin that’s shaped us. Some habits of the flesh, some ways of being and thinking and operating in this broken world, cling so closely and are so multi-layered that it takes decades to see progress. And certainly the renewal of the mind that is part of the sanctification process won’t end until we are free of this flesh and stand glorified in the presence of God.

But how has this particular sin pattern followed me into my Christian life and what has that looked like these past 34 years? What God has shown me is that the genuine zeal he gave me in pursuing holiness can be intertwined with legalism and pride, turning my motivation from pleasing the Lord to ‘being the best’. Not the best clarinet player, but the best Christian.

As a new Christian, it looked like trying to have my ‘quiet time’ every day, because all the books on spiritual growth advised that and all the ‘best’ Christians did that. When I succeeded I felt good. When I missed a day or two or maybe a week, I lamented about how bad I felt in my journal. Over the years the Lord has been faithful to teach me that this ‘quiet time’ is really about cultivating communion with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and that can be done in the morning but also throughout the day as I learn to delight myself in him.

As a young mom, this ‘be the best’ mentality made me think that being at home and having my babies follow a strict schedule was the only way to be a good mom. That’s what Elisabeth Elliot and Growing Kids God’s Way recommended after all. I remember meeting another young mom who carried her baby in a sling and silently judging her, thinking she was really spoiling her baby. As my children grew, the Lord has been faithful to convict me and chip away at my pride, teaching me that parenting is not a competition and my children are not trophies.

As I’ve grown in my faith, I have faced the temptation to look at others and what they are doing, whether serving the needy and vulnerable, or giving to missionaries, and think that I have to do all those things and do them better. I have sometimes approached the Christian life like a Girl Scout, ambitious to fill my sash with all those merit badges. But the Lord has taught me about the goodness of my limitations and the body of Christ who works together, each member needing the other to serve the Lord and love others all for his glory, not mine.

You would think that after almost 34 years of walking with the Lord, this ‘be the best’ mentality would hardly be a problem anymore, a thing of the past that I’ve outgrown. While the Lord has given me more wisdom and discernment to see it, it still entangles me from time to time. When I entered seminary in 2023, it reared its ugly head and manifested as anxiety over grades and a desire to impress my professors. It’s been surprising and humbling to see how important a GPA can be to me after all these years.

As I’ve come up against this latest temptation to ‘be the best’ I’ve thought about the roots of that mentality. Lurking underground is a root of insecurity, a fear of not being enough. We look at ourselves and the things we’re good at, trying to maximize them so we have some proof of our own worth. But all that is an unending construction project doomed to failure from the start because we’re looking at the wrong person. Being the best falls apart when instead of comparing ourselves to others we reflect on the perfections of God and his Law. It is in that mirror that we see our true selves and our devastating lack. We’re not enough! We’ll never be the best! But praise the Lord for the gospel because instead of leaving us to ourselves, God condescended in love and sent his own Son to not only forgive and redeem us but to bring us into union with Christ so we can be remade into his image. The Christian life is not a spiritual self-help program, a way to become a better version of ourselves. This is where our security lies – in him, not ourselves. As Paul explains at the end of 1 Corinthians 1, our salvation did not come about because we were the smartest or the strongest. In his wisdom:

“God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.'”

It is out of that security we’re freed from this insatiable need to prove ourselves and compare ourselves with others. We’re also enabled by the Spirit who lives in us to live a life that’s truly pleasing to the Lord, working heartily for him as we love others and point them to the only One who is the best.