Just a string of sad days here in the middle of Iowa and “whoa-o-oa” is about all I want to sing. It’s just not getting better – the circumstances, I mean.
The bad news just keeps coming and it feels like death. It feels like thick, heavy, black death.
Whoa.
So, how is it that my soul can again feel light and breathe freedom? Honestly, today I wondered. I was clinging to God’s promises through tears… but still clinging.
There was once a death that killed death. The death that my sin deserved was nailed to the only One undeserving of wrath so that the debt could be paid and I could be free. God sent Jesus to feel the full weight of His wrath and to embrace the full victory of His glory.
Christ stepped into the place of wrath where we should have stood so that we can step into the place of light where He now stands.
Whoa.
God sent Jesus, who buried death in His grave.
Whoa.
I’ll sing when it feels like death because Jesus buried death in His grave and then He rose again.
“Luke 12:32 is a verse about the nature of God. It’s a verse about what kind of heart God has. It’s a verse about what makes God glad—not merely about what God will do or what he has to do, but what he delights to do, what he loves to do, and what he takes pleasure in doing. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
(Love to the Uttermost Holy Week Devotional, p. 2)
I am wrong about a lot of things… and often. As I read the above from the Holy Week devotional, I asked the Lord to examine my heart and see if I was wrong about this one wondrous thing. Because of all things to be wrong about, the nature of God is pretty major – maybe the most major thing to be wrong about in all of life. A.W. Tozer wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
Many people view the nature of God as one they must hide from at the risk of being smitten or they reject that God must be hidden from and stand defiantly in opposition.
The former view of God is a fearful one that hides not only from God’s judgment but also from His blessing. The latter view is a boastful one that defiantly exposes oneself to God’s judgment but also rejects His blessing with clenched fist raised high.
Can we hide from God – from His judgment or His blessing?
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,
”even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you. (Psalm 139:1-12, ESV)
No, we cannot hide from God. We can find the deepest cave, the most secret tunnel, the most remote island and He will find us. The world and everything in it is His. We can never run so far that we are beyond His gaze. If He desires, His judgment will find us as easily as His blessing.
Can we defy God’s judgment and reject His blessing?
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:18-23)
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17, ESV)
No, we cannot defy God. We cannot erase the righteous wrath of God by closing our eyes and raising our fists. He created us and imprinted His name on our hearts as a trademark of His craftsmanship. He will pour out His wrath and His blessing whether the world receives them with eyes open or closed.
There is no hiding from God and there is no defying God. But, if we understand the true nature of God, we will not want to hide or defy Him.
the kingdom is a wondrous thing
In Luke 12:32, we read that it is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. God, in His very nature, is delighted to give us the most precious and beautiful and costly thing – Himself.
Today is Palm Sunday, when we remember that Jesus rode triumphantly on a humble donkey into the city that would betray Him. He had set his face like flint toward Jerusalem (Luke 9:51), determined to submit to the Father’s will and experiencing the joy set before Him as He endured the scorn (Hebrews 12).
It is futile and foolish to hold up clenched fists in defiance of this kind of precious, beautiful, costly love, but it is also foolish to hide from it. The enormity of God’s glory is a weighty and scary thing, but God purposed to cast out all fear with His perfect love (1 John 4:18) when He sent Jesus to satisfy His wrath for those He had chosen.
The cross uncovers a Father who provided a way for His creation to be reconciled, but not out of obligation or master schemery. His provision was not a plan B or a compromise. He did not need to make provision that any would be reconciled.
The Father provided a way for His creation to be reconciled because He is in His nature good and merciful, tender-hearted and loving.
God gave the kingdom to His creation willingly because it brought Him great delight. He gave His children the kingdom – His Son – out of the kind of joy we don’t have room in our brains to understand. His glorious face shone with pleasure when His Son paid the ransom due for His children to be reconciled to Him. Can you imagine? The God of the universe delighting in you coming home, delighting in the sacrifice of His own Son so that you could come home?
Both hiding from and defying God are rooted in fear. And fear (the unrighteous kind) has no place in God’s reconciliation mission of our souls.
Will we let the perfect love of Christ cast out all fear?
Will we admit where we are wrong about this wondrous thing?
There is a line in one of my favorite hymns, Count Your Many Blessings, that sings this melody in the second verse,
“Are you ever burdened with a load of care? Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?”
And it is this song that came to mind as I read from 1 John that “his commandments are not burdensome.” The weight pressing on top of hunched, wearied shoulders is not the weight of God’s commandments.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.
And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:1-5 ESV, emphasis mine)
Because we are freed to follow, freed to love, freed to obey, freed to hope in believing the power of Christ’s death and resurrection.
Freed.
If a slave is released from the toil of one yoke to another – from the demands of one set of chains to the demands of another – we do not proclaim him free. He is not free. The nature of his slavery is that he must work to live.
The nature of our freedom in Christ is that Christ’s work grants life. The work is accomplished and freedom is gained in believing.
So, when we read that our love of God is expressed in our keeping of His commandments, it is not because our law abiding secures our life.
Did you hear that, friend?
There is not one law-abiding thing you can do to make your life more secure. Christ has done all the work and offers you all the reward.
This is the victory – the glorious, weightless truth that Christ broke the slave chains of sin and destroyed the yoke of death. And He did all this without our help, while we were helpless.
Today, remember that keeping God’s commandments is what we are freed into and that Christ stands in the gap when we obey imperfectly. When we believe that Christ truly conquered and canceled sin on the cross, our righteousness rests on the burden he bore on our behalf. Let’s love Him and keep His commandments with this kind of grace hemming us in.
The cross might seem heavy that you are called to bear, but there is no cross so heavy as the cross Christ bore on our behalf to free us to love Him, obey Him, serve Him, and enjoy Him.
It’s raining/snowing and the murky sky suits this Thursday.
I don’t mean that today is despairing, but I do mean that today seems like one of those days where weighty thoughts find a rightful place in the front of my brain. Maybe it’s the ushering in of the Lenten season or perhaps the strange, brown winter we’ve been ambling through… but today is full of weight and maybe you’d like to carry it with me.
Honduras never left my heart, but these past few weeks it’s been intense with two huge fires. You might have heard the news stories about the prison fire and the central market fire. The fire in the market was 5 minutes from where I lived a few short months ago. My sister in Christ tells me to pray for open doors so ministries can reach out during this time. My heart is heavy.
As I try to reflect in prayer during Lent, this blog post by Brett McCracken with Lenten Prayer requests is especially helpful. Oh, that my heart would be situated in a place where I can hear from the Lord.
Now that I’m living in the States again, this whole season feels different. There is something about a Catholic/Latin culture that surprised my spirit around this time. Apart from soccer, the religious traditions surrounding Easter always caused my heart to slow and consider the cost. This blog post by Russell Moore, “Always Mardi Gras, Never Easter” reminds me I must readjust my cultural lens to understand how to engage in conversations with Catholics/Protestants here.
I thought this article “Give up the Gimmicks, Youth Pastors” was an excellent read. I struggle seriously with all the games/programs/bells/whistles that make up our youth outreach programs in the US (and to Christian youth in general). I just don’t know what the best method is to effectively “speak their language” without sacrificing the content they are more than ready to receive.
I know I’ve certainly wrestled with “Why?” questions when it comes to God’s sovereignty. Just last night, I met up with some friends and before I could sit down they told me they were arguing about reincarnation. Before the conversation got too far, I found out the one guy’s mom was a Jehovah’s Witness and he knew his theology. At one point, he looked at me cynically and said, “Oh, sure. It’s about “sovereignty” isn’t it? Right. God is “sovereign” and that’s why it’s okay to say He created everything only to let it go to crap so that He could save it?” Whew! I tried to meet him where he was at and encourage his questions, but when I read this article from DesiringGod.org, “Why Did God Let Paul Become a Murderer?”I thought about all the answers that are foolish to those who don’t believe in the cross. I need serious grace and faith to believe God will give the words that make sense in the right time to the right people.
Well, folks, that’s a lot of reading. I’ll repeat the challenge from my last “this & that” post: How can my knowledge of God inform my obedience in a way that leads to actions full of love in reponse to these things?
Last night, I spoke with one of my dear friends who is still living and working in Honduras. She shared about a time recently when she was so full of sadness – days of heavy, unrelenting sadness because of the brokenness she sees. We agreed that sometimes – precious, painful sometimes – God responds to our prayers to, “break our hearts for what breaks Yours,” by allowing us a sliver of His pain. We couldn’t handle any more than that, but if we are fervently praying, we shouldn’t be surprised when our hearts start to swell inside our chests. We shouldn’t wish it away either. Those moments are precious – gifts to draw near to Him and grieve all the ways we’ve mangled his magnificent design. And then, to pray for His purpose to be realized through us – that every nation, tribe, tongue will hear the glorious news of the Gospel. The news that sets the crooked straight and the broken mended.
even with heavy hearts, in the power of the resurrected Savior, we can
As I thought over the past few days about the significance of Christ’s death and resurrection, I was tempted to stop several times because it’s just too much. It’s too much to think about how marvelous God must be to have a perfect, sovereign plan. It’s too much to figure out how many ways God set up history to reveal Christ’s glorious moment on the cross. It’s too much to understand the agony and suffering and war that must have waged in the very flesh of Christ during the final hours. It’s too much to grasp the encompassing all of Christ’s payment. It’s too much to believe that I can stand approved and righteous in front of a holy God because of Christ’s completed work and victory over the grave.
It’s too much.
I think so often we give up when it comes to understanding the Lord. We say things like, “Well, we’ll never understand anyway” or “Who are we to understand?” Sometimes it might be genuine awe of God’s greatness and sometimes it might just be laziness. What I’m realizing this week, through amazing conversations with friends and words in books and time spent with my Savior, is God’s intentionality in giving us a mind to understand. We cannot love a God we do not know. So, God gives us the ability, through our mind to become alive in our love for Him.
Regarding the command to love the Lord with all our mind, Piper says in his book Think, “loving him with all our mind means that our thinking is wholly engaged to do all it can to awaken and express this heartfelt fullness of treasuring God above all things.”
When we get lazy or distracted or discouraged, our thinking fails to engage fully, express deeply, and (most importantly) treasure God supremely. The strange thing is, the so-called shortcut is only hurting ourselves. When we choose to NOT treasure God supremely, we cannot experience the joy of all joys that flows out from this treasure!
I’m reading and processing and reading and processing. Is anyone else reading (or has read) the book Think by Piper? What are your thoughts? Here are some other things that I’ve been browsing that you might find interesting:
I’m kind of obsessed with this website: ChristianityExplored and not just because the people talk in English accents. I love that they answer hard questions and share personal stories about the power of God in their lives. If you need a little inspiration, check it out!
This quote is still so relevant today even though it was written in 1908 by G.K. Chesterton. This is pretty powerful stuff.
“What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert–himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason. . . . The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. . . . There is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it’s practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. . . . The old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which makes him stop working altogether. . . . We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy [Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1957], pp. 31-32
let LOVE fly like cRaZy
with all your HEART, SOUL, MIND, and STRENGTH
toward the Savior
I’m just reposting this quote because it is such a beautiful reflection of the cross as we prepare for Semana Santa. I love how he says, “all of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary.” If I’m finding myself in an inflated place, maybe I should see about a visit to Calvary once again.
So good to remember the words of the saints who have gone before!
“Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.” John R. W. Stott The Message of Galatians (London, 1968), page 179.
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 