These past few weeks, the very public turmoil caused by my pastor Matt Chandler's tumor discover, subsequent surgery and revelation of a malignant biopsy, has brought a lot of love and prayerfulness out of so many. As I wrote the other day, it's caused me to become, if not introspective, than it's made me spend a lot of time holding myself up against what Matt's going through. The question that rolled through my mind a lot was: if this was dropped on my lap today, would I be as strong as he's being?
But that was the wrong question. Firstly, it's not me--it's Matt. And was Matt strong enough? Well, no--if he was trying to do this on his own steam I doubt he would have made it this far, almost a solid month later, without cracking. It's been with the support of his family and the church, those both close to him and those who just hear him, that God has mustered strength for Matt. God was not surprised by this development, and while to many this may sound horrible, but it's true: God was not surprised because it was a part of His will for Matt's life, and He'll undoubtedly use it to work in so many others. As John Piper tweeted a couple days ago, "God never does only one thing. In everything he does he is doing thousands of things. Of these we know perhaps half a dozen."
But that question: it's not what I should be concerned with. God hasn't cast me adrift with no control. He's demonstrated to me over and over, in so many ways, from just the way things work out in a day to the way He delivered me to this place, to this job, to this church and to my group of men, that He is in control and working. Through the Word and through the Spirit, working in tandem to open my eyes to His hands at work, I know He's in control. And He won't throw something at me that He won't also provide the strength to endure. I have my own personal sufferings; the pain I've endured the past two months has been a trial, but it brought me to a place where I was more mindful of God on a daily basis. And in this time where the whole body of the church is facing the fear of loss, God brings a powerful reminder: we cannot lose when He's already won.
I'm not talking that "total victory" nonsense, nor am I going to turn this into another extended discussion on the prosperity gospel. But I will say that in the way I see Matt Chandler living today, I see the balance God has struck between the fact that He's already won every battle in Christ's death and resurrection, and the fact that each day we renew our battle with the spiritual enemy both internal and external. It's why Paul describes the life of a believer in 1 Corinthians 9:24 as a race, one we are to run in as though we want to win. I want to be a man who is as strong in my faith as Matt Chandler is, but even in that desire I have to recognize that coming to that point is something to be ordained by God. I look forward to that day, as I pray for renewed strength each day leading up to it, that I might fight my battles with His might and not my own.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.--Philippians 1:6
Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.--Philippians 1:19-26
Victory is the end to war, and seems like a fitting way to end this little blog series. I'm sure I'll return to the idea again, but for now I'll set it to rest. The men around me who serve as my own band of brothers and I spent today praying for Matt and his family, and for our body; I pray that this leads me and all of us to renew our efforts to reach out to all around us in love, and that it sparks a revival in our community.
That's a question I think crosses the mind of everyone who believes, especially since I am relatively young in my faith and inexperienced in dealing with that "dark night of the soul." God has done so many amazing things, but as the Bible demonstrates in the history of both the Jewish people and the early church, people pressed by the world are quick to become fearful, and forget the good things God has done for them already; I am no exception.
Every morning I spend some time with God, early on while it's still quiet and peaceful and my mind is fresh. Reading the Word, studying it, and meditating on what God has done for me in prayer, these are all key to setting me up for a day where I look to Him. It's hard, though, to know when and how to carry the banner of God forward in life. I live in the proverbial Bible belt, yet there are so many around me who have no regard for God. There's a part of me left over from older times that wants to retreat into the American evangelical style of Christianity where I snipe at everyone else's faults while setting myself up as a moral paragon, but two things stop me: the work God has done to pull me out of that mindset, and my own memory of what I have done and still am capable of. But how do I carry out in my daily life what is seen by all others as pure foolishness? I was even amused to look at a comment on a Driscoll video I was watching and see it proclaim "You Christians are all FOOLS! Yes, YOU, m#$^@f$@&%s!"
I am, and I am a fool joyfully so.
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.--1 Corinthians 1:20-25
The only way I can carry that banner is to live as that fool. And the only way I can know what that means is to continue my meditations on God, seeking from Him the way that He's set down for me, the way to love Him and obey Him. Why do I do it? Because I was a kid and got told so in Sunday school? I've been on my own for years, it would have been a small matter to jettison such history, and I've seen such things many times over the years, people who came up through church who now are indistinguishable from the world. It's because God changed my heart, He made Himself unmistakeable to me, and He still does. Because of that, I will gladly embrace what is to the world foolishness, because I'd rather have God's foolishness than the wisdom of a world that's dying more every day.
Do I reject the world? No. Even God does not reject the world--He sent His Son because He loved the world. I pray that God would make me a man that loves my fellow man deeply, but I also know that such love is a byproduct of loving Him--and so, I seek God's continued transformation of my soul.
I have had a good last few months. In spite of a month of pain, in spite of an unknown future, God has proven that He is so much better than all that. When the world and my own sin set about to attack, to press on me and break me away from Him, I hold on that much more firmly. I dig in tight and reach for the Word. There is joy in Christ, true joy and hope, and if my faith enrages another to the point that they'll call me vile names, then my only prayer is that I might be there to witness the point that God changes that man's heart, should that be His will. I pray it is.
It's 6:30pm tonight, and I'm crying in the freaking car as I drive home. Crying! Can you believe that? I know I can, and I'll tell you why: because Matt Chandler loves God more than he loves anything else, and I want that.
They released his pathology report today: the tumor was malignant and uncontained, but the language seemed to indicate the doctors were still pretty optimistic about the whole thing. However: this is brain cancer we're talking about. Probably one of the worst two-word combinations there is to hear, let alone about yourself. Especially after you've just had your head dug in and now they tell you it's not over yet. Yet Matt has heard this, and he digs in with his family both personal and church around him and says "God is better." And it hits me because that's what I want.
I want my heart to be in a place where God is always better. Rich or poor, He's better. Sick as a dog and on the verge of death or having another normal healthy day? He's better. Hugging my first son on the day of his graduation from college? God's still better than that. Standing at the funeral weeping and holding my wife because our child passed before he could even crawl. God is still better.
My heart craves that sort of strength, that combination of my will with His that leads me to always seeking my joy in Him. Always. Not when the day has been pretty good and I've managed not to do bad things. In all things, at all times. This is Christian hedonism, and it's what I pursue.
Father, I pray to You that if it is in Your will, that You will bring healing to Matt, whether it's through Your miraculous work or through the skilled hands of a doctor. If Your will is that he should return home, however....I pray for strength and healing for all of us. I ask that You would not allow this to become an embittering moment for anyone, but rather that You would let Yourself be glorified in all of us reaching out to each other in love and support, that we would be filled with the Spirit to the point that corporately we do exactly what we have been seeking to understand through Matt's words all these years. I pray that You would give us the strength, the will, and the wisdom to live as real Christians, to live out Paul's words of Philippians 1:21 when he says, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." I know this is going to hurt...but help us all to keep looking to You through the pain, to see Your beauty and remember what we are running for.
Every other day or so I will get in a conversation with another believer in the area in the course of daily life. For example, the other day I was getting lunch during a normal work day, so I headed to Subway to get me a sammich. I saw a guy probably a couple years younger than me with a Bible and a book on Paul on his table, so I engaged him and we spoke for a bit. As soon as I told him I went to the Village, his first question was "How's Matt Chandler?"
It's a little weird to have a celebrity of sorts for a pastor, and all the more amusing to me to think of where the church came from and how it has arrived where it is. It's one of those situations where only a fool would dare try to claim it was anything other than God that created this situation. And so we have a situation where a church of about 150 or so hired a brash young man who was on fire for Christ to preach the Word, now swollen to nearly 8,000 and still growing across 3 campuses. When faced with one of the most unthinkable situations--the discovery of a small tumor in Matt's frontal lobe--the church dug in and prayed hard, and all the more amazing to me, around the world people joined in. Through Twitter I was able to keep track of people in Africa, Europe and Asia who were praying for Matt, for his healing, and moreso that God's will would be seen in our words and deeds, no matter the outcome.
Before going in for surgery, Matt recorded this video, which was played in all the services the Sunday after his surgery. My campus' pastor, Beau Hughes, spoke right to the heart of the matter in addressing the struggle with anxiety that so many face, and that has in fact colored my own life in the years since leaving home. Even the music that night collaborated in the effort to speak the truth of God's sovereignty in the face of my own lack of control. Yet it was the Holy Spirit moving and revealing the truth of all of it in relation to my own heart that moved me most. The foolishness of our post-Enlightenment rejection of the supernatural does not discourage me from saying that in that fully spiritual moment God spoke to my heart and baptized me again in His Spirit, and the joy felt there was moving beyond speech's power to describe.
You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.--Psalm 4:7
There is not a conclusion to this story, not yet. Nor am I its author; I'm just a character, going where the Author wills it so. But I won't worry about whether He will have writer's block, or run out of ink, or get bored with me and decide to just destroy me for grins. In joy and in pain He has been forging me and in both I will take Him.
"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."--Matthew 6:25-34
I will worry again. There will be days and circumstances that send me reeling, but all I can do is live my life a day at a time. I'm writing this more for my own benefit than anyone else's, so that on the days when I'm feeling pressured by life I can look back and be reminded. I have nothing to fear from life's pain, for all it will serve to do is lift me closer to Him and remind me that this is only temporary.
Since returning from a trip out of town, I've been in a lot of pain. I am thankfully scheduled to see a doctor today, but for the last few weeks I have been limping around with a lot of pain in my left leg. Sitting relieves it some, but in other ways just shifts it. Pain can, as I've written before, be a motivator, but it can also be very distracting. Pain can make one turn inward in self-pity. Even sitting here writing this is something of a burden on me, as I'd much rather be doing something that involves less working my mind and more just absorbing entertainment to distract me.
A consequence has been that it's been difficult to sit down and study the Word lately. I end up turning to it trying to find comfort but studying it has gone out the window. In the end, I find myself struggling with maintaining a grip on even basic truths, because my mind is willful and doesn't want to focus on God. It's given the enemy openings to exploit my fears and doubts, to amplify my sin before my eyes and darken my sight of Christ and His sacrifice for me.
I've had quite enough. To hell with this pain. I am not going to let it get between me and God, and I am sure as hell not going to let it drag me into some pool of despair. I am going to dig in on Romans 12:2: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." God is the one who is doing work in me, changing my heart. I am responsible for my mind, what it is fed with and where it's focused, and I am not letting it take the easy road to destruction.
Last week was the final week of the men's Bible study for this season, until it starts again in January. A speaker came to give his testimony, Dr. Willie Peterson, a man who has been a big influence in the life of my table leader. Listening to him brought two important lessons to me. Well, one was a reinforcement of a previous one from our last speaker: all the Godly men I've met always point outward, they are always quick to give credit for where they are to others, and it was no different with him. There was no self-aggrandizement, only "oh, this wasn't me, this guy and this guy, they're the ones who led me out of where I was and showed me the way." In the same way God has convicted me where my own pride has held me up, and I seek every day to give it up, to surrender it, and it helps when I find real joy in being around men who lead me to be this way.
The other lesson was a practical one: find someone in the Bible that you feel kinship with in some way, someone that's similar to you, and study their lives. Contrary to popular misconception, the Bible is not full of Ned Flanders types that do nothing but float around while God dumps wrath on the rest of the fools around him. Time and time again, God picks up unlikely people and sets them up high. It is His way. It's mentioned explicitly when Jesus speaks on the Beatitudes in Matthew 5: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." That's absolute craziness to normal human thinking, but God shows His hand by working contrary to how we think things should work. The man I feel has the most in common with me is my biblical namesake, David. There are three reasons in particular: 1) He was a musician; 2) He was a leader; and 3) He struggled with lust. Granted, there's much more to him than this, but these are pretty big points in his story, and they're pretty big points in mine.
So, I'm pursuing the renewal of my mind by looking at his life as it's written about, from the beginning. I'll write about it some here, especially as I find parallels with my own walk. The biggest thing I notice about him right at the beginning, that I strive for: he has absolutely no fear of anything earthly, but knowing more about him, he has total fear of God. I am digging in here so that I may push forward with that as a goal.
This morning was the second-to-last Tuesday morning men's Bible study for the fall over at church. Last spring was the first one but I didn't make it all the way through; being on the road combined with lots of other excuses led to me bailing on it about halfway through. This time, though, God granted me the drive to get my ass out of bed at 5am and get ready to make it there by 6:15. It's been one of the most fruitful things I've been involved in, and my table leader has made a huge impact on me, in terms of how I am approaching the people around me and how I'm approaching my quiet time with God. In my search to put things down that separate me from God, I often forget that the biggest thing we're called to do is love Him and those around us, and that part of that call is to go into the world and make disciples for Christ. I can't say that I've got any disciples following me around, but I do have a group of men who are pursuing Christ alongside me and who encourage me in my bad times and celebrate with me in the good, and through whom God has given me hope for the future and a lot of strength. So while the professional musician in me despises waking up while it's still dark, thankfully the Spirit's been a lot stronger.
I've been worn out lately, just feeling tired, especially after our trip out of town and back where I was up for about two days straight. In spite of that, I'm glad to be reminded on days like this that God's still there, when it's so easy for me to start feeling weighed down with my own problems. I wrote last time that I was feeling really introspective, and I talked with the guys about that today. It was getting to the point where it was interfering with my ability to do life in any way. Introspection is good to a point where it drives you to put down something that's destructive, but as with everything else on earth it quickly becomes destructive when uncoupled from real submission to God. I've found myself going into "I need to fix this or God will be mad at me" mode several times, and even though I know it's wrong and wholly unbiblical, it's hard not to think like that. I still struggle with sin--but of course I do. I'm justified, but I'm not perfect; at the same time, I need to continue to live in confession with the believers I'm close to, and to keep looking to Christ in those times when I feel tempted.
Beau preached this Sunday, and he spoke on the issue of anxiety, how it leads us to try to control our lives yet frustrates us with our inability to do so. This can be good to a very limited degree in that it brings us to realize that we're on a wrong course, but so many of us (myself included) have a hard time letting Him drive. Matthew 6:22-23 says, "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" I grow more anxious when I spend my time looking at the things that concern me--the things that tempt me to sin, the possible problems to com in the future--because they begin to overwhelm me. I need to look to God because He's the one in control, He's the one who's set me free, and He's the one who gives me the strength to endure and the ability to rejoice. I'm gonna pull over and let Someone Else drive.
I'm continuing my new job and things are going well at Ye Olde Musick Shoppe. Sold a sax with a very nice commission attached, and felt good about that, which of course led me to thoughts of "am I taking joy in receiving this, or in knowing that God is providing for me?" I am amazed that God has instilled a lot of patience in me, because I know under other circumstances always being so introspective about little things like that would piss me off after a while. However, it's the little things that always seem to get in the way, always seem to grow quickly into big things that drag me off course. Grumbling about someone who annoys me becomes grousing about every person I encounter, which becomes an unloving attitude. Lingering on a girl's picture for a little too long rushes headlong into lust. It's for these reasons I've been reading another Piper book. Of course, Piper is not the Word, but he does help me understand it. I'm thankful that so many great minds have been reconciled to God--John Piper, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Jonathan Edwards, and many others--to shine truth's light on the Word.
Lately I've been in Colossians, but I've felt pulled into the Psalms a lot. I was named after King David and I feel like I have a lot in common with him; I swing back and forth between a deep devotion and love for God and suddenly finding myself running headlong into some dumbass decision that I know better than to do. Psalm 145 is it for me today:
I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.
One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness. They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.
The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
All your works shall give thanks to you, O LORD, and all your saints shall bless you! They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power, to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.
[The LORD is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.] The LORD upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.
You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing. The LORD is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. The LORD preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.
My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.
As anyone who knows me can say, I am a long-time admirer of C.S. Lewis and his writings. I find him to be incredibly insightful into the state of both the individual believer and non-believer, and of the church as a whole, even to the modern day. As they say, the more things change the more they stay the same, and reading a book like Mere Christianity can be very revealing when he speaks critically about the state of the church in his day, or how in his day as in ours people on all political sides were willing to take up the Word as a political club to get what they want but not at all willing to submit their lives to its Author.
Lewis was a prolific writer and me being a prolific reader, naturally I continue to take in as much of him and others as I can. When someone asks me "What stirs your affections for God?" I always respond with "reading the works of those who love Him and writing about how they impact my life." But all this introduces new opportunities into my life for the sin of pride, as I build my knowledge and read more and more, and spend more time writing about it.
But what's the answer? Not to run hard the other way, becoming someone who divests himself of the mind on the idea that "it's not spiritual," as though the Spirit can only be made manifest in overwrought emotions. As C.S. Lewis would say, that's an example of Satan getting us to argue about which of two equally wrong ideas are better (there I go again). Rather, there must be a central truth to govern it all, to put it all in place, and that's Christ. It's why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10 that believers are at war, and as part of that war we "take every thought captive to obey Christ."
A place I have trouble with this is when I come to face down my sin of lust. It's hard to combat a deep sexual desire with knowledge--knowledge becomes this ethereal thing, hard to pin down, hard to make practical in that moment. I know a lot of things that I don't put into practice, but then, a philosophy that makes no impact on the life of the one who holds it isn't much of a philosophy. So clearly knowing a lot and reading lots of great writers is not enough. I have to submit all of my desires to Him, and do the hard work that will result in my greatest desire being for God. Only in that do I find myself a step closer to growing into a Godly man, rather than a boy held captive by his whims like a piece of paper blown about in a storm. Even then, though, I'm not the ultimate captain of my fate--rather, I am trading the destination-less tumble that is my life under my own command for the straight and steady course laid out by Christ, with its destination of true joy with God.
Or to go back to the war analogy, on my own I'm under fire in the battle field, no communication and no plan, with certain death looming. Submitting to Christ I am given strategy and tactics, I know which way I'm going, and death holds no fear for me, because no matter how today turns out He's still there. There's real joy, real pleasure to be had there, and I pray that when things get difficult God will make me just as mindful of this at that point as well.
Hear my prayer, O LORD; give ear to my pleas for mercy! In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness! Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.
For the enemy has pursued my soul; he has crushed my life to the ground; he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead. Therefore my spirit faints within me; my heart within me is appalled.
I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of your hands. I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.
Answer me quickly, O LORD! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit. Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.
Deliver me from my enemies, O LORD! I have fled to you for refuge! Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground!
For your name’s sake, O LORD, preserve my life! In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble! And in your steadfast love you will cut off my enemies, and you will destroy all the adversaries of my soul, for I am your servant.
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church...--Colossians 1:24
It's funny that this is the verse I ran into today after the last few days of dealing with proponents of the prosperity gospel. Paul is not submitting with annoyance to God in hard times--this man is rejoicing as he suffers. This is not normal for humanity. Who likes to suffer? I know I don't. But he had been so transformed by the power of the Gospel that he looked at suffering for Christ's sake as something to take joy in. Whether or not he was happy is debatable, but happiness and joy are not the same thing.
Paul has an eagerness to pursue Christ that I desire in myself. I have grown deeper in my affections for Him, but at the same time my desires and my faith are still immature. I know more than I did, I am stronger than I was, and all this comes from God and through His hand, not from anything I've done. Yet I consistently seek more of Him. In God I find real growing joy, even in the midst of pain; in God I find the only thing that inspires me to be excited that doesn't bore me eventually. I pray that I will have the courage to be a minister of the Gospel today to those I interact with, and for courage when the enemy's attacks come. Whatever may come, He is there and He's always moving and working in me, and for that I am more grateful than even I can express; He is life and whatever else comes, no one can strip that from me.
I wanted to post about stuff coming up that I'll be performing at. Specifically, I'll be playing with Quentin Moore at the DFW Neo-Soul Extravaganza. Quentin is a great musician who's recently released his first album of soul/R&B music that gets back to the roots of R&B, and I've enjoyed covering the bass parts on tuba for the last few months now. This will be a big show featuring a lot of different acts; check out the commercial for it here:
There will be free food and drink specials, and admission is only $10. The event will be held in David A's Club at the Sterling Hotel, 1055 Regal Row in Dallas; doors open at 8pm.
Some time ago I used this blog as an extended comment space to respond to someone I had engaged in debate on a YouTube video. As I am obviously taken with the capacity for long-windedness, 500 characters just doesn't cut it when I'm trying to make a point, and it certainly isn't sufficient when the subject is absolutely of crucial importance to the state of the human heart--mine, yours, and all of ours. The video in question for today is thus, a video of Mark Driscoll of Seattle's Mars Hill Church displaying a clip of Houston's famous pastor Joel Osteen of Lakewood Baptist Church. The clip Mark shows is a good summary of Osteen's general thesis of ministry:
I don't think I need to tear apart the specifics of what Osteen says any more than Mark does; he addresses the salient points. As always, however, any videos critical of Osteen often attract his supporters, who look upon those who would be critical of him as people who just want to "tear him down," as people who are simply jealous of his success (which is funny given that two of his most vocal critics, Driscoll and my own pastor Matt Chandler, run churches that each run thousands of people across multiple campuses every Sunday), or as simply not understanding that everybody has something different to offer the body. Often used as an example for this is the biblical principle that the body of Christ is just that--a body, with different parts that all require each other, and to be certain the call to exhort is an important one. The problem comes when you are exhorting people to be strong in something that is unscriptural. In particular I'll be responding to these comments from sapphiredewdrop:
he is only concentrating on a partial truth. every pastor(even us) have a certain gift or a "special" message. each one is a piece of the puzzle. also this pastor could present the truth without downing another pastor. Downing another does not show humbleness. and joel is pointing out the promises in the bible that has already been given to us.
and
The Bible...which is the Living Word of God does offer us health(instructions on healing). Healings are shown throughout the Old and New Test. Salvation is the center of our faith but there is still a world out there and a Satan who will try to steal,kill, and destroy. Sometimes when a person feels they must give up the words Olsteen shares from the Bible can be a great help. And the preacher is not telling Olsteen he is telling his congregation.
and finally
Also, Jesus was not born poor. Many of his relationships were good, esp in the end when he rose. I think this pastor is looking at things before the resurrection of Christ. Because in the "end" Jesus was a victor. In fact in Col. 2 it says that he was triumphant over them by the cross.
First of all, I want to establish that this is not about Joel Osteen as a person, nor is it to say "He's not a believer because he says x." I don't know his heart, I don't know the essence of his relationship with God, but I do know what comes out of his mouth, and it is that which I will be addressing. Additionally, I pray that anything I say here that is contrary to what the Word lays down as truth would be called out as such or simply fall on deaf ears...or blind eyes, in this case. This is a serious matter of dealing with what is a major issue within the American church, and one on which I have felt personally convicted over past praying and ways of thinking--that is, looking to God as though He is my means of getting to x, rather than looking to God as the goal I am striving for, closeness and joy in Him above all other things.
My primary contention comes with what I argue is the central point of Osteen's entire speech in that clip, and indeed his ministry in general, laid out in this phrase that lies as the hinge of the entire segment:
You are not a sick person trying to get well, you are a well person fighting off sickness.
Not only is this statement incredibly dangerous to the life of a believer, it's 100% unscriptural. It is, in fact, the polar opposite of what God says our natures are. If we were still living in Genesis 2, then yes, he'd be right at least in that particular statement--but we aren't. We're in Genesis 3 (or, as Driscoll would say, in Acts 29), and we're living in a broken world, with broken sinful hearts. The Bible has a lot to say about the condition of the human heart, but it's best summed up in Jeremiah 17:9:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
Right there Scripture undeniably opposes the idea that we are naturally well--on the contrary, we are naturally in a state of rebellion, opposed to God, opposed to what is righteous and He who is righteous. We are full of sin and live in sin, and it's only because of His grace that we are able to find any freedom. Man's wisdom is not sufficient and should not be trusted--this fact is serious enough that Proverbs says it twice:
There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.--Proverbs 14:12
and
There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.--Proverbs 16:25
Yet Osteen is not focused on the way to God; rather, it's what we can get from God that he is concerned with. Even the things that are good on their face--health, an end to depression and low self-esteem, an end to pain--are dangerous if they become our idols. It is, as Jonathan Edwards calls it, the "joy of the hypocrite." The hypocrite's joy is not based in closeness with God, but rather, in the idea that "God rejoices in me! God makes much of me!" which leads to "I must be a great person if God loves me so much!" This belief was just as alive and just as dangerous in Edwards' time as it is today.
Jesus has called those who would follow him to the realization that in order to be healed, they must first know that they are sick, not well.
After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, "Follow me." And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.
And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" And Jesus answered them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."--Luke 5:27-31
"After this," by the way, refers to three specific miraculous acts Jesus performs in the beginning of his ministry: He calls the first disciples after causing them to catch a huge amount of fish simply by casting their nets on the other side of the boat, He cleanses a leper, and He heals a paralytic. So clearly God does perform miraculous acts in the lives of those whom He calls. But these were in the course of bringing people to realize how much they needed Him, and of demonstrating His authority on Earth. Jesus could have healed all people on the planet with a single thought, yet He did not. And here in this passage we see that the only people who were able to experience the real joy that comes with closeness to Christ were those who were innately aware of their broken states; those who looked at themselves as being righteous because of their acts were able only to see a threat to their position.
Yes, God heals, God brings prosperity, God can make a man rich. He also can and will allow sickness and pain to enter a man's life, and He can take away everything you have. This is why it is crucial to understand the truth behind the phrase "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." Not in His things, not in His promises, but in Him. This is a difficult concept to deal with, but the Bible is not known for being full of easy-to-digest concepts, nor is it known for being a book that endorses the general direction of mankind. In John 5 Jesus goes to a pool that once a year was stirred up, and whoever was first able to enter the pool was healed of whatever their problem was.
In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me." Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.--John 5:3-9
Jesus healed one man, out of many. Why did He do this? Surely He could have healed all of them, it was certainly within His power. But He healed the man because it was what was in obedience to God's will:
So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will."--John 5:19-21
Jesus lived in express obedience to the will of His Father--and just as it was the will of God that the lame man should walk, it was also the will of God that the others who were there should not be healed. This is a side to God's hand in this world that is hard to understand, and impossible to appreciate if you look to God as Giver of Stuff, as a divine Santa Claus who takes away the nasty things and gives you good times. To extend Piper's famous phrase to its next logical conclusion based on the Word: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him in the midst of loss.
While Osteen makes the wrath-absorbing reality of the cross of Christ almost incidental to "the world out there," the Bible makes it clear that this is in fact the true center of reality, and in ignoring this he misses the entire point. When Osteen says "Our original state is total freedom" he does his congregation a huge disservice in not only teaching contrary to the Bible, but in telling them that the normal way of life, without any call to seek God, to submit to Him, or to understand His Word, is goodness. Anyone with access to a television can tell you this is a lie, and surely those who tie themselves to the philosophy that God is naturally there to provide good times in this life will find nothing but disappointment.
So what does this mean--why pursue God? I mean, really now, if God's going to do what He's going to do, what do we get out of it? This is not some sort of Kantian "good is good because it's good" argument. On the contrary, there absolutely is reward, but it is not for earthly reward that we do this:
"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."--Matthew 6:19-21
But what are we laying up in heaven? Some sort of eternal vault filled with bars of gold? Jesus brings up the matter of the heart, and we already know that the human heart is naturally a broken, sinful thing that seeks itself above all other things, but we also know that the heart is healed through God's work in us, over a lifetime of sanctification as God brings us to deeper and deeper realization of who He is and what His love truly means for us. What God is doing in us over our lives as the power of the Gospel transforms us, is showing us the true order of created things as He intended it to be--and it has nothing to do with being rich, or poor, or sick, or well. Those people who were closest to Jesus when He was on Earth died very horribly for His name and so that they might be examples for how much more valuable Christ is than anything else on Earth.
Mark 10:45 says:
"For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
Not "The Son of Man came not to be poor but to give us freedom from poverty." Not "The Son of Man came not to be sick but to give us freedom from sickness." Not "The Son of Man came not to die but to give us freedom from physical death." Quite the opposite, in fact--in pursuing Christ the biggest realization and the most truly freeing one--true freedom, not this "freedom from lack of stuff" business--is laid out in Psalm 118:6
The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?
Not "Man will be unable to hurt me because God's on my side" but rather "Let man hurt me. Let him kill me. I have God, and he can't take that away." Or as Paul put it succinctly in Phillipians 1:21:
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
And as Jesus says in Matthew 16:25:
"For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."
Over and over and over again, the Bible calls us to realize that its entire point, its purpose for existing, is to point us to God. What God brings into our lives is incidental and temporary, whether pain or pleasure, loneliness or closeness with another, wealth or poverty. Joel Osteen turns God into the means to get what we want to get. The Bible calls that idolatry, and calls us to repent of it; the Scriptures call us to the true joy that is closeness with Christ and freedom from our obsession with the temporal things of this world. I only pray that I take this as seriously in my heart in difficult times as I do in good times.
I invite sapphiredewdrop and anyone else to respond and point out where I've gone wrong, but at the same time I challenge you to base your critique in the Word, not in a personal problem with the way Mark Driscoll preaches or any other personal dislike. There's nothing wrong with saying "I don't think that he is a pastor that would bring me into a closer relationship with God," but if you can't refer to the Bible to defend Osteen without proof-texting or if you just can't refer to the Word to defend him, you might want to put a critical eye to yourself and where you are in relation to what the Bible actually says. I will not attack you or call you names, but I will a heresy a heresy. Beware what you believe, because it's your eternal soul at stake, and we should take Paul's charge in Phillipians 2:12 to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" very seriously.
I don't really know who reads this blog, which on one hand is a little disturbing since I have little doubt there's a lot of "I know that guy, and he was a jerk to me, so how can he be talking about Jesus on here?!" stuff going down--but on the other hand, it's also a part of me holding myself accountable. People who knew me in past years, however, are probably surprised that I don't spend much, if any time addressing politics and current events. Not so long ago I was something of a political junky; I was relatively active in campus politics, even serving a term on SGA at my undergrad school and taking part in College Republicans both there and at UNT, I listened to a lot of talk radio and spent a lot of time blogging on political matters. But this blog, relatively new compared to my previous efforts, contains little to no political content, and I'm in something of a mood to address why that is.
I became somewhat burned out in terms of dealing with political issues I would say some time between the 2004 and 2006 elections. My side had ostensibly won, but I was unhappy with the direction I saw the country and my party going. Fired up going into the elections, conservatives had become apathetic and the party leadership was more concerned with establishing some sort of permanent majority with (R) behind it than being actual leaders--putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. I was also struggling to understand why I should care about particular matters that to some seemed crucial. Why should I care if some school or courtroom posts the 10 Commandments, or if a particular state legalizes gay marriage? Not to say that I didn't or don't have opinions on those, but they didn't strike me as things that required major cultural battles. In short, I had come into the knowledge that political views of any kind, no matter how logical or right they might be, had nothing to do with achieving any sort of real joy or fulfillment in life.
When God pulled me back in that day in November of 2007, when He grabbed me by the proverbial collar through Matt Chandler's voice and said "You are going to go here, and you are going to bury yourself in Me among these people," God revealed that of course those things were unfulfilling--they could never be. If I clung to earthly matters as though they were crucial and eternal, as though I was the one in real control instead of God, all I would succeed in doing would have been to frustrate myself. I don't have my old blog up anymore, but I do recall posting things to that effect, that I didn't see how things could end up in a good place. The world is certainly becoming a darker place, as wars, famines, diseases, political oppression, enemies foreign and domestic, and quite simply the pure wickedness of man grow with each passing day. I was brought up listening to those who preached optimism, but I had forgotten that it is not in man that such optimism should be placed.
"And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet."--Matthew 24:5-7
"Aslan is on the move!"--Mr. Beaver, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Placing my hope in man simply confirmed what I knew about the Bible and God--that is, that this world is sinful, and that it will get much, much worse before it gets better. But even as things grow dark God continues His great work, breaking down doors to faith in places once thought inaccessible to Christianity, not through war and cultural suppression but through love and mercy, and the faithful work of those whose own hearts were changed by the Gospel. By trying my hardest to battle purely on man's field I put myself in an indefensible position--man, as is his nature, will naturally seek out the easiest way, the least opposition. Even when man chooses the harder way, he only does it so that he may come out the other side able to boast, and that rarely ends well.
I still consider myself a conservative. I am deeply troubled with the idea that the President wants to transform huge chunks of the economy into subsets of the federal government. Anyone with the ability to observe can simply look at other countries who do the same to know that it cannot succeed. Raising taxes has never worked and it will not, no matter how you justify it. I will stand up in a moment and say that I oppose his plans. But I will submit every word to the Word, remembering that even the leaders I see as ultimately destructive are established by God--not that I cannot vote against or oppose them, but that I recognize my losses in elections are for His reasons and the greater good of all things. That raises a lot of new and hard questions, but if I trust God, it means I have to trust Him even in those moments where it seems like everything is going wrong.
I will also oppose those on any side who attempt to use the Bible as a weapon to support a particular political agenda. C.S. Lewis spoke against this in Mere Christianity; as soon as you make the Bible a means to your end, rather than living your life for God and seeking Him as the center of all things, you go very, very wrong.
This doesn't mean I will never express political viewpoints, but it does mean that I'm not here to rant. The truth of the Gospel is first, and everything else, especially myself, is secondary.
I've been going to the men's Bible study at church Tuesday mornings, which means much earlier mornings on Tuesday, but it's been very good. We're doing a study from John Piper's Desiring God network, called God Is The Gospel. Part of it is watching Piper speak on the subject at hand on video, and in the days leading up to the day we come together we spend time individually with workbooks answering questions on particular aspects, which helps prepare us more for what he's going to speak on. This Tuesday he was speaking about prayer, about its role in the life of a believer and what it is and is not supposed to be. It's a hot subject to be sure, whether you profess to be a Christian or not.
One point he made is that scripturally, prayer is the equivalent of a radio in the battlefield--we are, as the Bible mentions frequently, at war with an enemy that is not flesh and blood but is spiritual, and one that has an advantage in that we were born on the enemy's side and therefore have a natural bent towards going that way. In prayer we are constantly deferring to our Commander for instructions, for truth, for the way through especially in those times when otherwise our natures would lead us astray. The problem (especially in American Christianity where we've been conditioned to believe that the war we're involved in is over some sort of external morality rather than over our own hearts) is that as he put it, we've turned prayer into a "domestic intercom." We're not submitting our lives to God and seeking His direction in prayer, we're calling the bellboy to bring us some room service because things are a little uncomfortable. One thought that struck me, and that I thought would be good to dive into here from both the Word and from his writings would be: "How can you preach 'Christian hedonism' and then turn around and say that our lives are war? How can we be enjoying God when we're fighting?"
These aren't mutually exclusive concepts. On the contrary: what we are fighting for, is joy itself, and I'm not just saying that because it's the subtitle of the Piper book I'm reading right now, "When I Don't Desire God." As Ephesians 6:12 says, I'm not fighting against external physical enemies, even though it would seem that there are many--but no, those who are indifferent or even hostile to Christianity are those who I'm called to love and carry the gospel to, not fight as though it's me or them. My battle is "against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." It is also, as Paul says in Romans, against myself:
Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Cognitively, I know that the joy I experience in closeness with God is far, far better than anything else. The moments I have tasted that joy have resulted in real growth and transformation as I have desired in prayer for a long time now. Yet a big part of me is still tied deeply to earthly things--whether they are explicitly sinful, as in lustful desires or pride as I wrote about yesterday, or just things I have used to kill time over the years. Even now as I write this it's hard to not want to stop in the middle of it to check Facebook, or go eat something, or just randomly wander around the web, let alone the temptation to venture into the darker parts of the Internet.
The thing is, though, even if I become this perfectly disciplined church boy who loves nothing more than putting on my finest clothes and singing hymns in church, is that the solution? Certainly not--for one thing, a church service is not the wholeness of life in God. Besides, I don't wear suits to church (though maybe I will one of these days...just to mix it up). Likewise, if I did nothing but sit around absorbing theological texts and memorizing Scripture, would that mean I was leading the life God intended? Again, not at all (though in their own ways those things do stir my affections for God, but they are also areas that I must always submit to Him because they can also become prideful things for me: "Oh, look at me, I'm so smart reading these big books and whatever the current cool author is among people at the Village." I want to be reading them because God's leading me to do so, not to make myself look churchy.)
So: what the hell am I supposed to do? If even the good things in my life can be twisted, and in fact I am fighting tooth and nail every day so that I may experience the joy of God's presence in my life in spite of the fact that my heart still desires what is wrong, what am I supposed to do about it? How can I fix that?
I can't.
The more I wrestle with it, the more I'm forced to the conclusion that all I can do is what I'm doing, but continually, every day: going to God in prayer, asking Him to heal my sinful heart; seeking Him in the Word; I have to be watchful for what enters my mind that it doesn't lead me to selfish and sinful lines of thinking, and of what I allow myself to ponder, whether it's an image that will drive me to lust or an incident that will result in me being anything other than the servant of those around me. All these things I must do through difficulty, because they don't come naturally. I am also thankful that I don't have to do them alone. God has put me in a house with two other men who are likewise pursuing joy through battle, and in a church full of the same. God has brought us together for encouragement even when the enemy strikes--even when we are the enemy.
Now what was the sort of "hole" man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must law down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor--that is the only way out of our "hold." This process of surrender--this movement full speed astern--is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person--and he would not need it.--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, ch 4: The Perfect Penitent
For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.--Romans 15:8,9
"Repent" is a word that pretty much everyone even only peripherally aware of Christianity, at least in the West, is aware of--often, because you hear some crazy guy on the street corner shouting it while wearing a sandwich board sign opining that the end of the world is nigh. But it's a key word, perhaps the key word to a believer, as it is the beginning of forgiveness and the birth of hope and faith in our lives. Through repentance we come to love--to experience God's great love for us, to comprehend that this love is completely unwarranted yet offered in spite of ourselves, and through that, to loving God as He calls us to, with every ounce of our being. From that we become men and women who love those around us, even those we don't know, and those who have wronged us.
Repenting is something I've had trouble with since I was a kid, and it certainly hasn't gotten easier as I've gotten older. You have the things you do in life, good and bad (at least by the typical cultural definitions) and over time you start to look at those things as a part of you. The problem is, those things for me stopped being supports in my life--they became anchors, dead weight holding me down, frustrating me, inspiring me to spend lots of time looking backwards at my youth and glory days, and worrying about the future and what it would bring. But the idea of letting go of anything seemed contrary to what I should do to survive. What were those things? Well, there were a lot of different ones, and God is still revealing things to me, but a few big ones: my participation and achievement in the world of drum corps, my continuing education and my career in general, and the big one: my independence and self-absorbtion--or in a simpler term, my pride.
Since I was a kid I've been very independent. I am the stereotypical "first child" (which is good, since that's what I am), charging out headfirst after whatever it was I was pursuing. But it became something I made more than it was supposed to be, and in the end I used it to make much of myself, and little of God. So over the course of several years, God slowly pulled my supports/anchors away from me. My participation as a staff member with a couple different junior corps, which to me was supposed to lead to a fruitful career running a hornline, led instead only to frustration, and I have not felt God move my heart to similar participation since then. I was forced to leave school in a combination of academic and financial failure, leaving me worried about the long-term consequences for my career; my only performing work was coming as a member of a band with a history of turmoil and headed for more--and at that time God began to convict me of exactly how sinful I was. I was somebody who had been brought up with a foundation of Christianity, who understood it cognitively and believed it, but my heart had not been substantively transformed by the Gospel. I was still living in sin.
The biggest realizing in the course of repenting for me has been that you're not simply repenting of a list of actions (though for most it starts there). What I am repenting of is the state of my heart. My heart lives in dire opposition to God, to submission of any kind let alone to Him. It is, as Jeremiah 17:9 says, "deceitful...and desperately sick." And there is nothing of my own strength that I can do about it; even if I manage to be "good" in the sense that I don't do what is culturally or even biblically considered bad, that accomplishes nothing. The law brings only conviction, after all; it does not bring commendation to those who manage not to break it, and in all likelihood doing so would simply make me a self-righteous hypocrite, just as selfish with what God gave me as I would be if I was buried in some other sin.
Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.--Luke 17:33
Jesus lived, and died, as a man who had surrendered his whole being to God. Of course, he was able to do this because he was God, and therefore was aware in full of the joy that comes with being in His presence. But that is what makes God's mercy a twofold act of righteousness: 1) God is merciful on us because He allowed His Son to absorb His wrath for our sins, and 2) He gave us a model for what it truly means to submit and live for Him. There is so much more to it that I seek to understand, but I do praise Him for my salvation, and for bringing me to a place of submission, to where I could understand that loving my own life above Him was only a guarantee that I would die completely, but in surrendering it to Him I would find real life as Jesus demonstrated in His resurrection. I crave more, I need more, but at the same time I am satisfied that He will show me in due time. I take joy in that longing, in that desire for God if you will, because it is the only desire that leads to the true fullness of joy, rather than ultimate disappointment and frustration.
Every day in the course of reading the Scriptures and praying, I am forced to come back to the question of how seriously I take my sin. Not the external actions, but the demands of my heart to do those things, the bent in my nature that drives me towards the things that hurt me and pull me away from the fullness of joy in God. The only conclusion I can come to is that I don't take it seriously enough. I have been more successful in battling it of late, but I still fear living in true openness and confession of what I struggle with even though I know, on every level, what sort of joy is set before me. I'm writing this perhaps as more of a reminder to myself than anything.
When I'm face to face with sin it pulls at me. It's not unattractive in its way--after all, why do something if it doesn't appeal to you? Whether it's lust in thinking about a woman or wanting to look at pornography, pride in asserting my own will over God's or desiring to be a king instead of a servant to the people who are around me, or any of the other myriad of sins that my heart would or does perpetrate, I see the appeal at the time...but even in that I see the danger and the result. I know where it will drive my heart and my mind, and what sort of person I'll become in my actions--not one I am proud of by any means.
When I surrender to my sinful nature instead of fighting it, I become a man filled with fear--not "Oh no, God's gonna punish me now cuz I was naughty," but just the fear of everything in life. Fear of the loss of control, fear of the loss of--well, anything and everything. It becomes almost a level of paranoia, of me trying desperately to hold onto what's not really mine in the first place. When I surrender I find myself pulled away from God--not pushed away, but that I pulled myself away in my own pride. Every step of the way from there is marked with frustration and anger, and even in those times when I'm just wandering in the desert and I try to pray I just can't find the words. I end up feeling like I'm just saying stuff to try to make myself feel better.
Let me clarify: this is not "I committed a single sin, so therefore God has cast me out." What I'm describing is where I have discovered myself after allowing myself to enter a pattern of repeated sin, and tried to salve the pain of it with more of the same. It's where I brought myself, and where God rescued me from by His Spirit, convicting me, moving me to confess and be open, reminding me to be open-handed with all that I have because it's not mine. I thank God that he pulled me from that place. It's in meditating on this and on the fact that my salvation has not one bloody thing to do with my own goodness but instead rests entirely on Christ, on the cross, that I find the greatest peace and strength in my life.
When I do focus on this, looking down the road to God and hoping for Him above all things, I find myself able to understand why Paul said of the fruit of the Spirit, "against such things there is no law." (Gal. 5:23) If I want to throw myself into all the stuff that feels good now that's always an option--but in those things I am putting myself back up to judgment by the law, and in that there is absolutely no hope of passing. I cannot grow closer to Christ while I seek in my heart and through my deeds to do and think what is wicked.
The closeness with God I find in the Body of Christ, the deep longing in my soul for more and the delight I want to take in him is what I crave more of, on a level I can't put into words that would adequately describe it. I want to be the sort of man who in all things fully fits the concept of the title I put on this blog. It's easy for me to take pleasure in God when things are good and I'm working and can pay my bills. As terrible as the idea sounds, I pray that God will mold me into a man who can be faced with the greatest loss of his life--whatever that may be--and in that moment find his greatest joy, his only real joy, in knowing that God is still in control, that His hand is still guiding everything and that there is nothing that happens no matter how difficult or painful that does not work for the best. I don't know what that is going to look like in my life...I have to be honest, I'm afraid to find out. But that is the sort of man I know I want to be, more than anything else, and I pray for the strength to know that day and to know on that day that God is great, that He is good and does good, and that He is more valuable than anything.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:15-23)
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, "Where is your God?" These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. (Psalms 42:1-6)
There is a particular course of events that I haven't gone into detail here about, nor do I plan to. Those close to me know what I'm referring to; if you don't, I'm afraid you'll have to stay in the dark. It involves people I was once close to, and my prayer is that regardless of the outcome tomorrow, that it would be the end of this. Here's what I posted last time around, I think it's still fitting.
Father, as I sit here on the eve of what I hope will be the end of a lot of frustration, I pray for the ability to forgive. I don't want to be hanging on to bitterness anymore than I want those who have caused it to hang on to it. It hurts me and eats at me, and I want to give it to You, to leave it at the foot of the cross and go forth into tomorrow and beyond forgiving and forgiven--not in a sense of smarminess and a desire to show up anyone, but in genuine love. I ask that You let Your Spirit stir in me and bring me to that genuine love...without Your strength I am a frustrated, bitter man angry at the world and the people around me because I don't have what I want. With You I find that none of those things I want are as desirable as You, and in You I find real peace.
I feel like I'm in a different place now in my heart than I was when I wrote that. I have a better understanding of what it looks like in my life to love my neighbor, and to bless those who persecute me, yet it's still a fitting moment to turn to God for strength. Whatever happens, I pray that He will let this be the end of this chapter, and the beginning of forgiveness and reconciliation.
I've written about this in private a couple times and that word keeps coming to me; I think there's a reason for that. Nevertheless, I trust God to do everything in His own time. I just hope that He does allow this page to be turned at last.
Be not afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases. For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him. For though, while he lives, he counts himself blessed--and though you get praise when you do well for yourself--his soul will go to the generation of his fathers, who will never again see light. Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish. Psalms 49:16-20
In estimating the credibility of the doctrine two principles ought to be observed. In the first place we must remember that the actual moment of present pain is only the centre of what may be called the whole tribulational system which extends itself by fear and pity. Whatever good effects these experiences have are dependent upon the centre; so that even if pain itself was of no spiritual value, yet, if fear and pity were, pain would have to exist in order that there should be something to be feared and pitied. And that fear and pity help us in our return to obedience and charity is not to be doubted. Everyone has experienced the effect of pity in making it easier for us to love the unlovely--that is, to love men not because they are in any way naturally agreeable to us but because they are our brethren. The beneficence of fear most of us have learned during the period of "crises" that led up to the present war. My own experience is something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear.--C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, Ch. 6: Human Pain
And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother.'" And he said to him, "Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth." And Jesus looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were amazed at his words. but Jesus said to them again, "Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God." Peter began to say to him, "See we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first."--Mark 10:17-31
A lot has happened to me over the course of the summer. Traveling and performing was a big feature for the first half; though slow recently, it's about to pick up again. I've been struggling to make ends meet and searching for jobs. I wasn't feeling very optimistic in the currently climate, but all I could do was pray and ask for patience, and trust that God would provide. He had already provided me with a new home and a landlord who understood the plight of the post-collegiate, as well as a family that loves me and a church family that has been there for me through my tough times.
God provided new work for me in the form of a job at Brook Mays, a store that has, in a sense, returned from the dead; formerly a huge chain of music stores, a run-in with a much larger store chain resulted in legal action and bankruptcy, but a new company has taken on the name and now I am working in retail sales at one of the stores. I'm out of the pizza game (seemingly) for good, which is fine with me; business had been dropping off and with it hours. There are other things going on with the music front, though I'm not at liberty to be specific. However, it's likely I'll have more news before the end of the year.
This summer has been one with a lot of pain and difficulty, and little time to relax and enjoy anything. Even times when I would go out to do something fun, it was always tainted by nagging concerns in the back of my mind about what bill I'd be missing a payment on next. I had to combat it by simply letting go--not of working hard, but of worrying, which is no simple matter. It has been a drawn out process involving what every other experience that trains one in faith does: prayer, studying the Scripture, and letting the Spirit lead me to an understanding of what God's doing and to provide me with a measure of the peace that passes understanding.
At the end of this what I have been left with is a deep and abiding desire for more growth, but also a concern for the future. I know myself, and I know how easily I can fall to temptation. If things go as they might, will success prove more destructive than the pain and frustration of being stuck with mounting debt and no apparent way out? Again, though, this is an area where I ought to trust God to do what He will to achieve His ends, but I wish I could simply elect to follow Him and have that be that. As Lewis said, I know full well when I am going to start heading back towards what I shouldn't; why does it take pain to drive me back? When I get hold of the wheel it is my tendency to steer hither and yon towards whatever part of the horizon looks the most attractive, even as Jesus stands quietly beside me, warning me of the rocks beneath the waves.
I pray continually for a renewed heart that is truly that of a Christian hedonist, one that takes its fullest pleasure in God and doing what is pleasing to Him. No matter what happens, I know that the work God does in my life will ultimately lead to that. I just wish, like any child waiting to be stabbed in the arm by the vaccination needle, that it didn't have to hurt so much.
I am reminded tonight of C.S. Lewis' use of the phrase "good stories" to describe the way that God has written Himself on the souls of humanity. In other words, every culture has little things that are a part of it that God has put in so that when His Truth comes, there's something there for it to cling to, to allow it to be understood and made sensible culturally. I am no anthropologist, although it would be interesting to find out details about that. However, tonight I realized that even in our secular culture, God still has Himself built into the wisdom of our age--even if it is in an insult. From a post on a message board I frequent:
Faith is a moron answer to a question that they can't answer because they know the answer is moronic.
And, of course, it is. In fact, that's basically the gist of the Gospel. Paul puts it thusly in 1 Corinthians 20-25:
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
God has set up the universe in such a way that those who want to come to Him don't get to come on their terms. We don't come into His love as strong, wise men full of ourselves, having solved the mystery of the world by being so darn smart. Nor do we do it by trying to tune ourselves into the universe. It isn't really anything we can do at all. We are brought into His presence, in our weakness and foolishness, and it is in that, that God is able to do His best work. All our works are built on foundations of pride and sin; no matter how right we might be we always manage to take it the wrong direction. Even in Christianity humans manage to grab hold of it and miss the entire point, in multiple directions--becoming all-knowledgeable about the Scriptures while forgetting that it's supposed to be influencing the way we look at the world, or becoming compassionate for our fellow man but forgetting that the purpose is to spread the Gospel to everyone.
That poster was right on, and I am thankful for that opportunity to say my piece, as well as to learn more about how God has worked in this world as He prepares to redeem it.
I've posted a couple YouTube videos here. I have always been a little ambivalent about it, not so much because of the videos, but for the community that grows up there. It is, of course, the same one we live around day in and day out, with the daily life masks off, our basest ways exposed under the mask of a username. Comment debates are interesting sometimes, but frustrating also; you get a few hundred characters to make a point, and when you are trying to discuss something like this, it's easy to give over to the quick knife to the throat in favor of something more meaningful to keep under that 500 character limit.
So in the name of trying to make a meaningful point, to avoid saying things I regret in moments of aggravation, and most of all to be as thorough as possible, I'm addressing a discussion in the comments on the issue of marriage and what the Bible's view of it is. We have one individual that holds out that all Christians are supposed to be striving for singleness, and is apparently devoid of any sense of humor when it comes to preaching. Nothing wrong with the latter in and of itself, and that's why there are a lot of different styles of doing life as a church. I love the Village for a lot of reasons; one of them is that when I hear Matt speak as he does in that clip, it reminds me of what I have and continue to struggle with, and of the things in my life that do stir my affections for God: a straightforward desire for what is true, combined with good humor and a little sarcasm. To others, that's offensive, or at least off-putting, and there are bodies where that's not how they do church. Not a thing on Earth wrong with any of that--unless you start trying to say that it's wrong to do it any other way. (and the same would apply to every style, including the Village's)
Now, I am replying to the comments:
"He never compared marriage with dinner. He compared pursuing dinner to pursuing women."
That too is irrational. First off, I hope you mean A woman and not women. Of course, if you think women are like dinner than I can see the confusion. Secondly the goal of both "pursuits", as you say, (though I cant say I've ever pursued dinner) is as I originally stated. If you listen to the context it is clear that he is talking about marriage(37-45 sec).
Peace. God bless as you pursue HIM above all.
and
Sorry, you must have missed my main two points: 1. comparing marriage with dinner is irrational. 2. Seek God above all. I try not to sugar-coat or water down truth as much as I possibly can. For that,and other reasons, i don't expect to be popular. "He intended us to pursue a spouse.." Really?Da definitive text for Christianmarriage is 1Cor 7. It starts with: "Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman."and also contains things like "Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife." It's a shame that modern "Christians" are teaching the opposite of Scripture in the name of "Christianity". People should be able to find truthful sermons w/o all the heresy. Of course, the Bible warned of all this.
My primary problem with these comments is that they miss the real point and purpose of the passages quoted. Furthermore, they take what was meant to be a freeing message by Paul to a people who had come to Christ out of a life of idolatry and turn it into yet another set of rules for us to follow, lest we make God angry. This is not the intention. The passage in question is 1 Corinthians 7. Here are verses 1-11
Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman." But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.
To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.
By itself, that seems to make the commenter's point, right? He says it right there: married should stay married, single should stay single, right? But that's not what Paul is talking about in this passage. Firstly, context; the first verse speaks about a matter that the Corinthians had apparently written to Paul about: men and women should abstain from sex. Paul wants to clarify this, by saying that it isn't abstinence God is calling for, but rather, the context that He intended for it. Paul says that so they might avoid sexual immorality, husbands and wives should not neglect each other sexually. He puts it in finer terms than that (at least after the translation; one wonders how that comes across in the original to someone alive at the time), but the temptation he calls them to avoid is one of sexual immorality. He also says that one should marry if one "burns with passion," one of my favorite biblical euphemisms.
Are there people who do not have desires such as that which need quenching with a spouse? Undoubtedly. If JesusIsPerfect is one of those people, he has my respect; that is a special calling and one to which admittedly more people ought to aspire, at least in seeking God's calling for them. But I daresay not even a significant minority of Christians were given that particular gift. Paul is one, and he spent his life single and pursuing God's call to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles. Most of Jesus' apostles were not, and they married and raised families as they did their own work in His calling.
Verses 17-24 shed more light on what Paul is discussing, and put it in a context that takes it out of the "here are rules to follow" context and puts it into a context of freedom in Christ:
Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.
What is my calling? It is where God has put me in my life--but is that static? Having watched the way God has moved in the lives of people around me, and at the Scriptures and how they address the people who followed Christ, most assuredly not. Peter was a fisherman; Jesus walked up and called him over, and suddenly he was a student learning to become a preacher of the Gospel. Or Paul himself--a Pharisee among Pharisees, one of the best with the brightest future, yet God called him into a life where he surrendered all that for the name of Jesus. My friend Aaron was an airplane mechanic doing pretty well for himself; now he finds himself a missionary.
Me, I was a musician and still am, but my calling pulls me into a place where I am required to trust God fully. Times get dark and I still have to trust Him. And He may some day call me to marry--since I definitely qualify under the "burning with passion" category, I hope so. But what I seek is to, as Paul says here, lead the life that God has assigned to me, to be content in my calling as it stands today, but also to remain daily in prayer and in the Word so that I may know the time that God calls me into something new, whether it's marriage, a new line of work, a new home, or anything. That is all that anyone who has been redeemed by Christ can do.
God created marriage. He established it before sin entered the world (Genesis 2), and He created for Adam a mate, a helper that would be perfect for him. He didn't make marriage as just as place to get desire out of your system, but as a shadow of our relationship with Him, in how it grows and must be cultivated. Jesus frequently used the analogy of a wedding for the day He will return to set all things to rights. Ephesians 5 explains how men and women who are seeking Christ are to live in marriage: men as the servant leaders of their wives, submitting to God in all things, wives in submission to their husbands--not silent servility, but love that is based in God and His calling for both. The moments of pure bliss that do exist between a husband and wife are those moments that show us most what God has intended to make of the world.
Paul is not calling us all to desire a monk-like existence; rather, he's calling us to live our lives by putting our relationship with God first, and interpreting our calling in that way. When the Israelites were dragged out of their homes and exiled to Babylon, God through the prophet Jeremiah told them:
"Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the LORD.
"For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 14I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile."
In saying that God was telling the people of that generation and their children that they would never see their home again. God had set aside the people of Israel as His own, to let them be a sign to all of what the people in His kingdom would be like in relation to the world when He established it in Christ. We too live in a place that is not our true home; our hearts belong to the kingdom Jesus established, but for now, until we die or He returns, we are here. And in that time we should continue to do all these things, working for the good of our home and letting our families flourish. All these things are good and righteous in the Scriptures and in the calling God set before His people then and now. I post all this not to attack anyone or to rile up discord, but to remind all involved that the truth of this matter far exceeds 500 characters and exceeds a list of dos and don'ts. Our calling is something we all must seek out daily and individually, in God's Word and in prayer. I'm certainly not one to be a great representative of being good at that, but I still seek it.
