Lately, I’ve been working on study skills workshops for several classes. Our students struggle to manage time, organize their materials, and (most importantly) recall the information they cram into their brains the night before a test.
I think these things are universal, but my job is not to figure out how similar are the struggles… I want to encourage the students to push through! In the process of all my searching (I didn’t have all those education courses, so it’s all new to me), I found some amazing resources.
I got so excited about this “Periodic Table of Elements” song that I showed it to everyone who came into my office (and some who happened to be standing outside!). Then, I started to look up more about this man, Tom Lehrer, who set all kinds of information to music. Two things made me love this: 1) learning happens 2) music happens.
After all my rambling about the beautiful gift and calling to THINK, I’ve been more aware of how thinking happens around me. How do the students think? How does the staff think? How do I think? What is my purpose, my methods, my result?
As I watched this video, I couldn’t help but make connections. We are made with minds to think and to seek knowledge. This, from the recent Desiring God National Conference,
“Knowledge that is loveless is not true knowledge. It’s imaginary knowledge, no matter how factual it is: ‘If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God’ (1 Corinthians 8:1-3)
Knowing as we ought to know is a knowing for the sake of loving. Loving God and loving people.” -J. Piper
So, if our knowledge – the true kind – has something other than empirical (numbers and words on pages with red grades glaring up top) implications, then maybe our ‘knowing’ must come about in a way that remains in our life after gradebooks close.
And for this reason, I love that our “knowing for the sake of loving” can come about as it did for David… through music. He wasn’t memorizing God’s attributes on a list so he could spit them out at the end of the week and move on to the list of God’s commands. No, as David was singing and playing and creating, he was hiding God’s Word in his heart.
How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes! With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word. (Psalm 119:9-16 ESV)
I love this.
I love that even the process we choose to seek after knowledge can reflect our love for the Lord and can more firmly set the knowledge into our hearts. How many times have you praised God through the words in Psalms? When we set out to find our very strength in the Word, it becomes more than just memorization. It becomes bread.
If you think God might be tending to other, more important matters today, here is a very necessary reminder: you are the important matter. God is intimately involved in His creation and the process of our sanctification. He cares so deeply and is so relentless in His pursuit of us, that He offers a transformative grace to draw us into His presence.
Sometimes that grace confuses us because it isn’t peaceful and comfortable and full of relief. Sometimes it means getting broken… actually, I would say more times than not. Read this article by Paul Tripp about the beauty of grace and David’s prayer for broken bones to rejoice in Psalm 51.
He writes,
“Although our greatest personal need is to live in a life-shaping relationship with the Lord, as sinners we have hearts that have a propensity to wander. We very quickly forget God and begin to put ourselves or some aspect of the creation in his place. We soon forget that he’s to be the center of everything we think, desire, say and do…
It’s time for each of us to embrace, teach, and encourage others with the broken-bone theology of uncomfortable grace. Because as long as each of us still has sin living in us, producing a propensity to forget and wander, God’s grace will come to us in uncomfortable forms.”
I am reading “John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, and Doxology,” and learning about John Calvin from some of the authors, pastors, and theologians I most respect. It still amazes me how words penned in the early 1500s could be so poignant today. When the Gospel is at the center, your message never wears out, I suppose.
I have been so encouraged as I grow to know a little more about this fascinating man. Most recently, I have been reading the chapter “The transforming work of the Spirit” by Thabiti Anyabwile.
I’m still carrying around the blessing of these words, quoted from Calvin’s original work.
“Hence we are furnished, as far as God knows to be expedient for us, with the gifts of the Spirit, which we lack by nature. By these fruits we may perceive that we are truly joined to God in perfect blessedness. Then, relying upon the power of the same Spirit, let us not doubt that we shall always be victorious over the devil, the world, and ever kind of harmful thing.”
Wow. I love that word furnished. We are furnished, as an empty house is with furniture, with the gifts of the Spirit. The gifts are IN us and they weren’t before. We were an empty house, except that God saw fit to give us what we did not have to be “truly joined to Him in perfect blessedness.”
Let us not doubt! God has FURNISHED us with the the power to be victorious. Always.
God always wins. Did you know that?
The other day, I was talking to a distraught student in my office who needed to make it through the day. From the look in her eyes, her 10th grade strength was failing and she needed back-up. I had the shortest counseling conversation on record, but I think I’ll be giving myself the same therapy. It went something like this:
“What is your only weapon against evil (bad days, grouchy people, sadness…)?”
(reluctantly)”God…?”
“No, wait, really. What is your only weapon?”
“God. The Bible.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so you are going into battle right now and you’ve got your sword, the Bible. Are you protected?”
“I think so.”
“With what?”
“Armor of God.”
“So, you are going into battle with God’s armor as protection and God’s Word as your weapon.”
“Okay.”
“Is there any chance you will lose?”
“….No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. No chance.”
“Why?”
“Because!”
“Because God always wins.”
Off she went.
You can question my counseling techniques, I don’t mind at all. But, I will say that when she left I felt like God had just given me the same pep talk. It was not a feel-good message about mastering bullies or getting my own way.
It was a reminder that God defeats evil. Always. He hems us in, behind and beside and before and for eternity, in all His victory.
He is always victorious and He has furnished our human houses with gifts of the Spirit. We shall always be victorious over the devil, the world, and every other harmful kind of thing.
That is something beautiful. Evil doesn’t stand a chance.
Timothy Keller challenges us once again to think through some of our assumptions about this time, maybe too quickly labeled “post-modern.” Keller questions whether our labels are justified in the personal accounts of this generation. Towards the end of his blog post, “Late Modern or Post-modern?” Keller writes,
“The underlying thread that ties all this together is the inconceivability of a moral order based on an authority more fundamental than one’s own reason or experience. That was the founding principle of the Enlightenment, and that is the cornerstone of the most recent generation. So how can we say the Enlightenment is over?”
Interesting. What do you think? And does the label matter as much as the question of gospel presentation? Or, is gospel presentation more effective with an understanding of the former?
All good questions to think during my lunch break at my desk!
Here is something to start off your morning… a message from Francis Chan that he gave this past weekend at the Desiring God National Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I woke up this morning still thinking about it and challenged by it in my morning devotions (ironically on the self-centeredness of Saul).
Anyway, if you feel like meditating on 1 Corinthians 8:1-3 and growing a heart for your brothers and sisters, you better listen.
Think Hard, Stay Humble: The Life of the Mind and the Peril of Pride on DesiringGod.org
When I worked in Austin, Texas, I saw this bumper sticker in the parking lot of the university I worked for:
“Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church”
I realize bumper stickers are often cowardly ways to make big, bold statements, but this one rubbed me the wrong way. I wrote this blog post in reflection.
Now, three years later, I want to add a postscript to that blog post. John Piper has a new book out called, “Think” and it examines the questions so many raise and so few answer. Why do we have a mind? What is the purpose of thinking?
The Desiring God National Conference was actually going on this weekend and focused on just that – using our minds to glorify God, enjoy Him and share Him. I get goosebumps thinking about how our minds are made to glorify our Creator!
I’m off to worship this morning in spirit and in truth… glad for God’s design to engage my thoughts with His thoughts.
I wish I could post this video on the back of my car in bumper sticker form. Better yet, I wish I could live life proving this video true. How about that for a rebuttal?
Whether or not this title is earned, many people look to Christians for examples of ultimate hypocrisy (oh, how little has changed in thousands of years!) instead of examples of ultimate servants. I was reading this article over at the Desiring God blog and I really believe it’s a message we need to allow to take root in our hearts.
I’ll admit, Christians can be so stubborn and fearful about theology that we miss the point in living out what theology tells us. In our absence, others step in and try a hand at serving, loving, and giving without the power of redemption at the center. Their efforts, no matter how amazing, simply cannot take the place of life-altering redemption and a secure eternity.
The world is groaning (Romans 8:22) for redemption and (NEWSFLASH) Christians aren’t the only ones feeling the pains of childbirth. The human race, along with creation, is desperate to right the wrong condition of things.
But, there is only one option for redemption and that is through Christ. And in Christ alone I am qualified to do good works.
“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:8 ESV)
If the God of the universe is making all grace abound to me, so that I may abound in every good work, I think it is important to seek out the work. Think of it – God is sufficient in all things and at all times and it is HE who makes me able to abound in every good work.
I believe God is calling us to Himself… calling us to obey… and calling us to live in the delight that will come as a result of our committed hearts (Ecclesiastes 5:20 and 2 Chronicles 16:9) working in day-to-day acts of service.
I want to live BELIEVING so strongly in God’s story of redemption that I wake up LOOKING for ways to abound in every good work. It’s not charity or public policy or brownie points… it’s simply life lived in the bounty of His grace to the glory of His name!
I scanned the last sentence of Eric Metaxas‘s Bonhoeffer and it was regret that stared back when I saw the next page titled, “NOTES.”
Over 500 pages of a beautiful submersion into a life lived completely and I find myself wishing the book were longer so that I could walk next to someone who understood how theology spilled out into and gave purpose to *viviology (knowledge, study, and act of life or living).
Few people, especially those blessed with academic minds, are able to meet the needs of the former without sacrificing the demands of the latter. Bonhoeffer refused to only stand behind a podium in the high brow, organized classrooms of universities and behind closed doors of churches. The more he learned and studied, the greater he felt pulled toward living out the Truth he so passionately taught.
I love how he didn’t abandon the books and the study to live among the people in radical opposition to his intellectual contemporaries’ expectations.
Bonhoeffer saw, in his travels to the United States, what could happen when people step away from Truth and place something else at the center. He traveled to the US first in 1930 to study and teach at Union University and then again briefly in 1939 to consider a teaching position. Both trips were filled with the realization that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is and will always at the center of Christianity. This is what he said during his first visit,
“The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events. As long as I’ve been here, I have heard only one sermon in which you could hear something like a genuine proclamation … One big question continually attracting my attention in view of these facts is whether one here really can still speak of Christianity, … There’s no sense to expect the fruits where the Word really is no longer being preached. But then what becomes of Christianity per se?
The enlightened American, rather than viewing all this with skepticism, instead welcomes it as an example of progress.
…
In New York, they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life.”
It’s funny … how timely these words are today. Maybe “sad” better describes how far we’ve come since Bonhoeffer’s evaluation in 1930. We preach on “virtually everything” but what will reach, save, and transform lives. We preach on trees and health and wealth and all the ways the world is evil, but we don’t preach Christ. Could it be because we are scared of the price? Bonhoeffer’s approach to life was, in large part, informed by God’s approach to grace and discipleship.
We want the discounted version – the less painful, less costly kind of grace – but with the full benefits of its original value. In what he would call “cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer explains how we do ourselves a disservice in settling for something less than what God originally intended (by straying from Jesus Christ at the center of the Good News). In his book, “Cost of Discipleship,” he says,
“cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”
We’ve created a grace that strips it of all its power. When we’re done sermonizing, what we’ve given people is at best hollow and full of despair. There is no life in it. In contrast, is this costly grace:
“costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” “
I still cannot figure out how Bonhoeffer merged his knowledge with his life, but I can certainly see that he did. For three months in 1931, he conducted confirmation classes in rough neighborhood of Wedding. He took the post shortly after being ordained and the zeal with which he approached the class of fifty boys might have been characteristic of a new minister, but the care and perseverance he applied in every aspect of his teaching was unique. His life with those boys emphasized community and sacrifice. The textbook was not drudgery, opened with great pain and resistance. The Text was carried around in their hearts and gave the greatest joy to its living out.
Even as the very church he helped to build up (The Confessing Church) failed to stand for Truth when it mattered most, Bonhoeffer’s resolve grew only stronger. He believed that he had been “grasped” by God – that he had been chosen for something. But, that something was only important because of (and dependent on) the God who decides to break through and use people, sermons, and situations for His glorious purposes.
He resolved to not only preach Christ and Him crucified, as Paul declared in his letter to the church in Corinth, but he endeavored to LIVE in obedience to Christ’s costly call to follow as a disciple.
How do we marry Theology and *Vivology?
I think it means knowing the Word so well it becomes a part of you. I think it means keeping your bookshelves loaded and guarding time for study, even if technically no longer a student. I think it means dedicating uninterrupted times of prayer. I think it means loving Truth because you believe in your deepest soul it redeems and reveals life. I think it means fellowship around campfires and crazy games of soccer. I think it means coffee and conversation and debate. I think it means keeping Jesus Christ at the center – recognizing that every good gift is only good because God wills it to be so.
And, I think it means delighting in this life. I think it means being deliberate about our thanksgiving – walking in each day knowing that God’s glory is what shines bright to reveal He is at the center.
I must end this musing here, but I promise I will continue to ponder.
Until then, would you, with me,
.let LOVE FLY like cRaZY.
*I might have just made up this word, but give me credit because it’s got two parts that should work together – viv is the latin/greek root word meaning “live” and ology is a suffix used to describe bodies of knowledge. I’m trying to say that, just like we aspire to grasp theology, we must also pursue a grasp of vivology and a combination of the two. What is knowledge of God without a life lived out as a result of that knowledge? And really, how does one know about ‘living,’ exactly?
Here’s something I wrote in May when my friend Heather was visiting, but it certainly applies to tonight. I just got home from a MARVELOUS night of capture the flag with my favorite seniors, then dinner, then dinner #2, and then various antics following. I think my joy almost burst a couple times I was so full of it!
I laughed and laughed and laughed and I praise God for every surprising snort and crazy convulsion. I love laughter. I will have to write more about that later. For now, enjoy this REPOST from May.
——————– After a crazy day, an afternoon filled with charades and catch phrase and laughter, and a typically cheesy serenade for the 11th grade girls… Heather and I went for coffee and finally caught up a bit. I chose the Latte Au-Lait, which means I am now WIDE awake and she’s zonked out (getting the sleep she needs so we can leave at 5:45 am to lead worship tomorrow at staff devotions).
I just want to write something quick tonight… maybe it will turn into a poem, but right now it’s just thoughts about pleasure. As I think about the students and this culture and (maybe) popular culture in general, I decide that our greatest sin is pursuing lower pleasures.
I know C.S. Lewis probably illustrated this idea more deeply than my brain can think it right now, but still it seemed a mini-revelation tonight.
God promises in Psalm 16:11 that in His presence there is FULLNESS of JOY and at His right hand there are PLEASURES forevermore. Wow! What a promise!
God promises the kind of joy that bursts out from inside our souls and overflows to uncontrollable laughter… the kind of joy that you can’t keep from showing on your face… the kind of joy you can’t wait to share with everyone you meet… the kind of joy that makes your heart feel like fire and makes you want to dance and shout and play in the rain…
NOT ONLY that, but also pleasures forevermore. God offers us pleasure that never ends – He created us with the desire for pleasures forevermore and He is delighted when we pursue the highest kind. He planted that little seed inside us, in the soil of our humanity, that tries to break the surface and soar toward the sun… all the ways our humanity longs to have pleasure can be traced back to the way we were created in His image to experience pleasures forevermore.
The moment I decide to pursue a less pleasurable pleasure than what I was created for, I am choosing sin. I know, it sounds confusing. Usually we associate pleasure with sin, but right now I am saying that we sin when we pursue less pleasure or lower pleasure. Because I know God created me and placed in me a desire to have infinite joy and pleasure, I know that anything less than a pursuit of THAT means two things:1. I am not experiencing the most pleasure possible (can only be found in and through God)2. I am trying to make lower pleasures fulfill my God-given desires for the BEST pleasure (which, of course is a fail from the start).
God created us, knows us, and delights when we are absolutely bursting with joy.
I’m re-posting this story because I could not afford to pass it up. This so clearly articulates what my emotions seem to keep me from saying. After studying at a Christianliberal artscollege and then working at a different liberal arts college for a year, I have grown to respect “creation care” with a healthy disdain for its deception.
Deception? You ask.
Yes, deception. When we are torn from the MAIN THING and convinced that other things are just as important, we have lost sight of Truth. As you can read in this article, we can even cleverly REPLACE the central message of the Gospel with a different message entirely.
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 