The dangers of pleasure; or, idolatrous gratitude

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.

Sign o' the times

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.

Joy in the midst of battle

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.

The hope of all

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.

Make it stop

A "Friends" movie?

Really?

Whose heart needs to get staked to let this terrible show finally die?

Heart matters

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)

Let it be the end

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.