New leaves and new life

If I haven't written lately, it hasn't been for want of something to say. The past month has been a time of coming out of the survival mode necessary for making it through the desert and into a time of unparalleled life. How do I put into words the sensation of downpour on parched roots? Of life flowing through long-dry veins and unfurling new leaves and fast-ripening fruit? But I want to. If I could write about theories of knowing Jesus and His peace this past year, I can write now about the tangible press of His presence in my heart, His hands lifting up my head, the surprising joy of walking closely with Him and riding in the front seat of what He is doing in the world. More soon.

Motivating factors

The best friends are the ones willing to hold a mirror to your life and challenge you to reach higher. In this manner, I came to a mindset-changing realization this morning (thank you, J).

My heart is for the Lord. I long to see His Kingdom lived out-- fellowship, love, justice, redemption, peace, and joy. This is the very beat of my heart. But somewhere along the line, I have become more focused on the antithesis of this. My mind has become consumed by my hatred for what is not of the Lord. At first glance, this doesn't seem like such a problem. Are hatred for the wrong and love for the right such different things? Don't they lead to basically the same actions? Perhaps, but the quality of life and character of the living are so very different.

Jesus, with a passion, hated what was wrong. But Jesus was never driven by hate. Hate was never the motivating factor of His actions. On the contrary, He knew the intimate details of right, He knew what good looked like, and He loved it. Knowledge and love of God's perfect Kingdom motivated His every word and action. If He grew angry at corruption and brokenness, it wasn't for their sake alone. It was because He KNEW perfection, and nothing else would satisfy!

I want to be driven by a love of God, not a hatred of Satan. I want to trade my cynicism about the way things are for idealism about how they can be. I want to trade my abhorrence of brokenness for the knowledge and pursuit of wholeness. I want to be running toward the light, not just away from the darkness. I want to know Christ in His perfection and let that relationship be the motivation for everything else I do.

Jesus, keep my eyes fixed on you and not on the raging seas around me.

Quick to say uncle

"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
-Paul, in 2 Corinthians 2

I've been seeing a great deal of two extremes lately. This summer has been the end of a long dry season in my life, and I have been blessed greatly by opportunities for sweet fellowship with Jesus and some of my best friends. There have been a good number of moments lately where I've had my breath taken away by just how beautiful life can be.

At the same time, I'm watching a number of friends deal with circumstances on the opposite side of the spectrum. Losing a child or a friend, facing sickness and injury, looking ahead to long months or years of struggle and isolation-- there is no doubt in my mind that this world is broken.

But here's what hit me today: we are so quick to say uncle. We are so quick to ask for God's mercy, and to ask that He will deliver us from anything that begins to feel uncomfortable. Now, God is merciful, and I am thankful for that. But as I watch my friends face their challenges, I see pure gold start to come through in their character. Faith that hadn't had a chance to shine is being refined and coming out strong and beautiful. What do we miss if we always seek an easy life? Are we begging for deliverance from God's very means of blessing and refining us? Are we more concerned with our comfort or His glory?

"In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!"
-Jesus, in John 16

Only one righteous

I have read through all or part of the Old Testament a handful of times in my life. I inevitably find myself frustrated and discouraged, aggravated with the Israelites and their inability to stay on track for more than a generation at a time. The people as a whole stray to the right and left innumerable times, and even the most famous kings and leaders commit egregious errors.

There is no one righteous, no, not one.

Noah, Abraham, Moses, David... these giants of storytime all have black marks on their names. Even if their lives honored God overall, they each faltered and failed in humiliating ways.

But that is what makes the gospels incredible. When you arrive at the life of Jesus after reading page upon page of prophets lamenting the fallenness of Israel and foretelling the lamb without blemish who will take it all upon Himself.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53:6

They say the traits that irritate us most in other people are those we most hate in ourselves. Like Israel, I fall over and over again into the same sins, disbelieving God's all-sufficiency and seeking help elsewhere. I come back again and again to the same mercy, the same love, the same open arms. Thank you, precious Lord, for grace.

The piano took up the living room.

My little cabin in the woods is well-furnished. In the weeks after moving in, I inherited (from various friendly folks) a couch and two love seats, a long coffee table, and a dining room table with three chairs. Add those to the bed that already lived here and the red travel trunk I brought with me (my mother's, from college), and you have yourself a home! Yesterday brought one final piece of furniture into the cabin: a Jacob Doll New York Boudoir Grand piano.

I told Grandma Duke about it today, and she got almost as excited as I had. "Oh, that's company," she said. "Something like that, it'll keep you company. It's almost like having someone there with you... if you'll play it when you want to make a joyful noise, and play it too when you're not joyful, that piano will keep you company. That piano will... well, it'll talk to you."

I chuckled at the time, but I think she was right. I've struggled at times with living alone in the cabin. I've had to wrestle my impractical desire for a dog or a kitten to the ground more than once. I came home today and scooted the piano to the perfect spot (behind the wood stove, backed up against the island in my kitchen space). I got out the furniture polish and shined it up, and then I sat down and played and sang my heart out.

Maybe it's a silly thing to set so much stock on a Jacob Doll Boudoir Grand with a few odd keys, but Jesus knew what I needed, and I think He delights to give gifts to His children and watch them rejoice.

Resurrected life

Easter. How should we respond?

"If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And, being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross."

This is resurrected life. Submission in order to truly be free. Setting yourself aside in order to truly love. And, in this process, unity and fellowship and fulfillment. Logically, it doesn't make sense. But nearly ten years of following have shown me that this is where true joy lies.

Spinning the Gospel

Every Christmas and Easter a tendency comes out in the church. We want to find a new way to preach the old stories, to unearth a new facet of the Gospel, to find a new angle on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. We figure people have heard it all before. What will bring them to church and to faith if we can't find a new edge?

Martin Luther, when asked by members of his congregation why he insisted on preaching the Gospel every week, responded that he preached the Gospel every week because every week they forgot it. He would move on to something else when he saw evidence that they had truly received the Gospel and were living accordingly.

Paul wrote, in his letter to the Romans, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes..." In his letter (with Timothy) to the Philippians, he wrote, "I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord... I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings."

The Gospel is enough. We don't need to spin it or twist it or find a new way to present it. May the truth be spoken, may it fall on ready hearts, and may God be glorified in our representation of Jesus now as He was in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection 2000 years ago.

What I want to do

This passage came to mind today as I thought back over the past couple of weeks and tried to come up with something encouraging to write:

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do... I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out... for what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing... In my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
Paul, in Romans 7

It's been a pretty lazy, selfish week or two, if I'm honest about it. And the funny thing, as I was discussing with a friend on the phone a few days ago, is that selfishness doesn't tend to actually get us the results we want. We want joy, fulfillment, peace, purpose, and comfort, but we turn from the Source of every good thing and try to meet those needs elsewhere. It's selfish because it does not seek first to glorify God, but it's also futile, leaving us bitter and unsatisfied. The truly self-serving choice would be to take up our crosses and seek God's kingdom first, losing our lives for a short while and thereby gaining every worthwhile thing in this life and the next.

I take comfort that Paul expressed my very feelings so very well. If a man used so mightily by God struggled with these same things, God is truly able to redeem any life. I rest in His grace.

Disobedience and disbelief

"All disobedience to God's laws, and distrust of his power and goodness, flow from disbelief of his word, as all true obedience springs from faith."
-Matthew Henry, from his commentary on Deuteronomy 1

God's Word is pretty straightforward. Love Him, love others, honor and obey Him, acknowledge your sinfulness and His grace through Jesus on the cross. All of the commandments basically melt down, as Jesus pointed out, to "Love God and love your neighbor." And yet we disobey. And Matthew Henry hits the nail right on the head with his commentary: when we disobey, it is because we disbelieve in God's goodness, His promises, and His faithfulness to do what He has said (both the positive and the negative). If we obey Him, it will be the best thing we can do, the best life we can live (not easiest, but best) and the best consequences we can reap. If we disobey Him, it will be the worst. And if we really believed that, we would act accordingly, repenting of sin and stepping out in faith. So why don't we?

Trusting Him today for tomorrow

"If we are careful to do our duty, we may trust God with our comfort... Many Christians anticipate evils, questioning what they shall do, and fearing to proceed in the way of duty. But we have no right to anticipate evils, so as to distress ourselves about them. To carnal minds we may appear to act absurdly, but the path of duty is ever the path of safety."
Matthew Henry, in his commentary on Leviticus 25

"Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
Jesus, in Matthew 6:33-34

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
Micah 6:8

Little by little, I get glimpses of the future, fragments of plans among the oceans of possibility. But more common still is the sense that for the moment I am precisely where I need to be, and my lot at present is to live it out well. There are times of action and movement and change in life-- may we act boldly when required to! But so much of life is to be where we are and to live it well. Tomorrow will come, and we will receive it and make our plans and adjust accordingly, but God has given us only today. What will we do with it?

Robbing the Gospel

We see all things in light of our own experiences. There is really no stopping it, and I do not think this fact is, in and of itself, a bad thing. There is a great deal of diverse wisdom to be gleaned from the experiences and perspectives of the people around us. However, I think we have to watch out for the tendency to focus too single-mindedly through our own lens, especially in looking at the Gospel. We cannot shape the Gospel with our personality and experiences. The Gospel shapes us.

If we, out of a disproportionate sense of guilt and shame, focus only on sin and repentance, we rob the Gospel of mercy.

If we blithely fixate on joy and love and freedom, we rob the Gospel of wrath and justice and heartbreak.

If we spend all of our energy on puritanical law-keeping, we become Pharisees and rob the Gospel of its power to redeem the imperfection of our unredeemable lives.

If we throw aside law and justice altogether and fix our eyes only on grace and forgiveness, we rob the Gospel of its structure and guidance for this life.

If we look at the Gospel and see only a good man, or a forgiving man, or a revolutionary fighting for social justice, we rob the Gospel of its holy divinity.

In short, if in any way we make the Gospel about ourselves and our own agenda, we rob the Gospel of its axis and anchor, Jesus Christ. The Gospel is for us, and hallelujah for that. There is mercy and grace and joy, and we are the ones that benefit. But the Gospel is about Jesus. The Gospel is about the glory of God. It is not about us.

Holiness and mercy

I have been studying the Old Testament since around the start of the year, trying to get a better grasp of the history of God's people Israel leading up to the birth of Christ. I'm hanging out in Leviticus and Numbers at the moment, reading them along with Matthew Henry's commentary and building a working understanding of the laws and sacrifices and ceremonies and procedures ordained by God at that time.

What continues to stand out is the combination of holiness and mercy. God is holy, perfect, set apart. No wicked thing can enter his presence, and He can tolerate no sin. He calls His people Israel to be holy as well, set apart from other nations because of His purpose for them. The consequences for sin are harsh. But He makes merciful allowances. Where He could have condemned, He offers atonement and second chances. He allows for poverty, asking only what the people are able to offer, not willing that any should perish. And, thousands of years down the line, along comes the Son of Man. The lepers who have for years shouted, "Unclean, unclean!" are healed by a touch of His hand. The woman who has bled and wept and wondered for over a decade is returned to community and fellowship again.

His holiness requires our holiness and can accept nothing less, but His mercy enables us to walk in holiness and provides a way for reconciliation.

Imaginary sinners

Everyone is a sinner. Everyone also sins. It's easy enough to admit that you are a sinner-- very few would claim perfection, if only for fear of having their closest friends point out just how far that is from being true. To admit your individual sins, though, and to see those specific sins as they play out very significantly in your life and the lives of others, hits harder. When our own specific instances of weakness and sin and failure are thrown in our faces, we so often want to crawl in a hole and give it all up. We daily claim our identities as redeemed sinners, but one individual sin is enough to finish us completely and make us doubt the grace of Christ. I know He forgives all, but can He possibly forgive this? Yes.

"The true Christian daily pleads guilty before God, and seeks forgiveness through the blood of Christ. And the gospel salvation is so free, that the poorest is not shut out; and so full, that the most burdened conscience may find relief from it."
-Matthew Henry, from his commentary on Leviticus 5

To doubt the power of the grace of Christ to forgive one sin is to impugn the power of the Cross. It is to say to the One who gave it all, "It's just not quite enough." His grace is sufficient for us, for His power is made perfect in weakness. Grace is made perfect in the sin it covers over.

"God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world."
-Martin Luther

Duty

"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' "
Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We exist to bring Him honor. He has made it clear how to do this: love God, love each other. If we live this way, our life is perfectly glorifying to Him and also perfectly satisfying to us.

But we don't. We sin. We seek to glorify ourselves instead of God, and we love ourselves above our fellow man. We can live a redeemed life and get closer and closer to holiness by the grace of Christ, but our nature is still sin. Our nature is sin, and our duty is holiness-- polar opposites. There is grace, oh praise the Lord, there is grace flowing down abundantly from the cross of Christ, and that grace will cover over all our sins, but let us not ever believe in our own achievements. Let us not ever say to God, "Give me the credit I deserve," for if He gave us all we deserved, we would be sadly surprised to find ourselves in Hell. Let us humble ourselves before Him, love Him and each other as He as asked, and ask nothing more than that our life would be a pleasant aroma to Him.

And in all of this, oh mercy of mercies, we truly find joy and peace.

Equipped

Forgive as I have forgiven you.
Love one another.
Rejoice in the Lord always.
Be holy, as I am holy.

Hard words. They sound good, certainly, on skimming over them. We generally agree that forgiveness is a positive thing, we like to love and be loved, and we don't mind having joy. Holiness is a little tougher to get behind sometimes, but we could accept it. But always? The command to rejoice is the only one that explicitly includes the always, but it's implicit in the others. These commands are to fuse together into the lifestyle we live. We are to forgive every offense, love every fellow human being, and rejoice in every circumstance. We are to be holy, blameless, and set apart by our faithfulness in following these commands. Every day.

The secret is this: if He demands it of us, He equips us for it. If He sends us down a path, He has walked it before and will walk it again by our sides. We do not have to follow these commands on our own strength; in fact, we cannot. But He lived them once in a perfect life, died for our failure to live them, and will live them again through us if we let Him. And we, through dying to ourselves and living to Him, will benefit. Everything is to be gained-- forgiveness, love, joy-- and nothing is to be lost except those things that will only cause us sorrow in the end.

The purpose of Israel

I've struggled from time to time with the purpose of the people of Israel throughout the Old Testament. It has always seemed a little arbitrary to me-- was there something so great about Abraham that led the Lord to choose him as a father for the chosen people? Was there some redeeming characteristic about the people of Israel that caused the Lord to rescue and redeem them time after time? The various times I have read through the story of God's relationship with the people of Israel, what has stood out to me is not any great quality about Israel, but rather their persistent unfaithfulness. Then why? Why choose these people? Why stick with it for so long?

Abraham was a righteous man. There are instances throughout Genesis where God tells him that because of his faithfulness in various situations, he will make him a great nation. But I think that's only part of it. As I have been reading through the Old Testament again for the past few weeks, I have been struck by the way it all points to Jesus. From the very entrance of sin into the world, God is working out a plan for the redemption of the human race. He makes a promise, He chooses a people, He does everything to keep that people holy to Him, and all of it is to make the path straight for Jesus to enter the world and save it by His ultimate sacrifice.

The Old Testament stories are powerful on their own, and there is plenty to be gleaned from each of them, but most powerful to me this time around has been the centrality of Jesus to it all. From the very beginning ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," "Through Him all things were created...") Jesus is everything. After the fall of man, through the whole story of God sanctifying mankind back to Himself, Jesus is everything. In the gospels, Jesus is everything. In the accounts of the early church and the letters written within it, Jesus is everything. At the end, when all things are summed up, the answer is still the same. Jesus is everything.

Quiet times

Pretty much any mature Christian will tell you that quiet times are important. Work it into your schedule, a time where you are reading the Word, praying, meditating, just being quiet before God. It's not really a disputed topic. If you want to get to know a person better, you spend time with him. The same principle applies here.

Most mature Christians also have a standpoint on what that quiet time should look like, and when it should take place. Some are staunch supporters of the morning routine, others tend more toward the reflective, end-of-day routine, and still others have found a time during the busy schedule of the day that works for them.

Two people that I respect very much in the faith have given me these words of advice:
"Give God your first, give Him your best, and then give Him more."
"[Quiet time should be] your first, best time."

I don't think there's a time that is necessarily holier than other times. I do think that in this, as in so many other things, the heart is key. Are you scheduling your time away with God first as you place things into the day's agenda, or are you putting it wherever it will fit in? Do you intend to do it at one time and then really do it whenever you happen to remember? Did you plan to have it be a reflective time at the end of the day, a time where you could go back over the day's happenings in a prayerful mindset and weigh them all against Scripture, or were you just too lazy to get it done any other time of the day?

I struggle with this. Sometimes Jesus got up early in the morning to pray (we have a lot of scriptural examples of this), sometimes he stayed up late to wrestle with God (think Gethsemane), and sometimes the idea was to take the disciples away to a quiet place and just rest in the Lord. Again, I don't think there's a time of day that is by nature holier or more conducive to spiritual thoughts for everyone, but there probably is one for you. It probably won't be all that easy to make it happen. But it's important.

All of that said, I am going to go have some quiet time. After 1 a.m. And no, this was not intentional.

After Christmas

"When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart." -Harry Thurman

The work of God through Jesus didn't stop with a baby born in a manger, it didn't stop with a man who grew up to be a good teacher, it didn't stop when that man died on the cross, and it didn't stop with his resurrection from the dead or ascension into Heaven. The work of God through Jesus continues in us and through us today as we surrender to his good, pleasing, and perfect will, and as we love the people around us and proclaim healing and redemption into the brokenness of this world.

Merry Christmas, all year long.