glenna marshall

There Will Be Joy

Every morning at 6 a.m. you can find me sitting cross legged and bleary eyed on the tan couch in my living room. Outside, the sun rises with reliable regularity, its pink morning glow filtered between the tulip trees in our backyard. I’ve been looking at the same view for more than ten years of mornings there on that couch. What’s more predictable than the rising sun is the way the Lord keeps His promises to be with me. He’s a present God. He’s demonstrated it throughout all of Scripture. He will love His people by being with them.  And what’s more, not just with but in His people.

As a believer in Christ, the trembling heart of this thirty-six year old woman is a place where God is pleased to dwell. So, I know that when I rub the sleep from my eyes and adjust my glasses so I can see the print better in my study Bible, God is with me in the wee hours of the morning. True, He’s always with me, but I believe the primary way I can enjoy His presence is by listening to His voice in Scripture. And listening to His voice has strengthened my faith in His faithful presence in my life.

“I rise before dawn and cry out for help; I put my hope in Your Word.” Psalm 119:147

There were a lot of years when I didn’t view it that way. I stumbled to the couch forty minutes later than planned, flipped through the Bible aimlessly, skimmed some verses, and left wondering why I bothered. I believed the gospel but struggled to connect the Scriptures to my circumstances. I went to the Word looking for a prescription and was disappointed when I couldn’t read the doctor’s handwriting. The problem, however, wasn’t the difficulty of the words, the depths of theological truths, or my cerebral limitations. No, God didn’t give us His Word only to dangle it in front of us so we could wish we were a little smarter. The Bible is for everyone.

One of my discipleship partners told a story recently of a patient she used to see in the clinic where she worked as a nurse. The patient was near forty years old and mentally disabled to the degree that he was unable to live alone. But each time that he saw my friend at the clinic, he delighted in telling her what he had read in his Bible that morning. He would overflow with the goodness of the truths he’d read and held close to his heart. My friend was always convicted by his love for and devotion to the Word. “So,” she said to our discipleship group one afternoon at the local coffee shop, “there’s John Piper on one end of the spectrum and this patient on the other, and both of them love the Word and can understand it enough to share it.” There just aren’t a lot of excuses for our resistance to studying the Bible, are there? My reluctance to really giving myself to study of the Word in years past was based largely upon laziness.

“Happy are those who keep His decrees and seek Him with all their heart.” (Ps. 119:2)

Through several years of physical suffering and emotional stress, the Lord plied the practice of Bible study out of my undisciplined heart. He brought me to the point of desperation to see my deep need for His instruction. In the vise of pain, the question that sent me to the Scriptures each morning sounded like Peter’s: “Where else can I go? You have the words of life.” After practicing it diligently for more than a decade (which is just a breath compared to the many saints who have loved Jesus longer and harder than I have), here are three things I’ve learned about giving yourself to regular, intentional Bible study: You will never not need the Word, no time in it is wasted, and there will be joy in studying it.

You will never not need the Word, no time in it is wasted, and there will be joy in studying it. Share on X

You Will Never Not Need the Word

Sanctification, the process of becoming like Christ, is ongoing. Growing in godliness and faith should be a pattern in every believer’s life. While there will be discouraging stalls and surprising spurts, the one who has been made a new creation in Christ will be known by his or her good fruit. While Scripture assures us that our sanctification process will end in glorification, for now we must wake up each morning to renew our minds and fight our sin until we see Him face to face. Or, if we won’t do those things, we’ll deceive ourselves and then wonder at the lack of fruit in our lives. It always gives me pause when I hear of Christians who do not value regular Bible intake. I do not understand how we are supposed to grow in our knowledge of and love for God if we do not expose ourselves to His chosen means of revelation. There will never be a time, Christian, when you do not need the Word of God. Not until you are gathered around the throne of God with every believer is it safe for you to stop giving yourself to study of the Word.

“Never take the word of truth from my mouth, for I hope in Your judgments.” (Ps. 119:43)

In his second letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul said this, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, and you know that from childhood you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:14-17).

In terms of salvation, obedience to God, knowledge of His character, living as a disciple of Christ, and being equipped for good works, we cannot function apart from the Word. The Bible is not like other books. In studying, in memorizing, in articulating it to others, the Word of God is being imprinted on our hearts. We’ve been given the mind of Christ. When I trace the crooked path toward holiness through my adulthood as a believer, I can see that the Bible is changing the way I think.

Apart from knowledge unto salvation and apart from being equipped to know God, serve the Church, and speak the gospel to the lost, the Bible is a gift during suffering. I am telling you from experience, the Bible both prepares you for suffering and perseveres you through it. I don’t know how I would have lived through my years of chronic pain without the Psalms. I don’t know how I could have pressed on through years of discouraging ministry without Paul’s instructions and exhortations for the Church. I don’t know how I could have rightly mourned my infertility without the truth of God’s goodness jumping off every page of my Bible. And now, when life is full and still and blossoming with hope like every spring should, I am hiding away the encouragement from 1 Peter in the closets of my heart so that when I find myself down in a valley of  the shadow, I will know for certain Who is with me.

“Trouble and distress have overtaken me, but Your commands are my delight.” (Ps. 119:143)

There will never be a morning when my flesh does not cry out to be served, when my impatience doesn’t lord over my children, when my snarky attitude wants to be quieted, when my pride doesn’t fight for glory. I will be deep in my need and putting my sin to death until I see Jesus. Thus, there will never be a  time when I will not need the truths of Scripture and the presence of the Spirit to aid me in the process of killing my sin, renewing my mind, and making me holy.

No Time in the Word is Wasted

Though desperate times in my life resulted in the desperate measures of disciplined Bible study, there have definitely been dry spells and seasons of what seemed like little growth. Even during the years when I did nothing more than read aimlessly without a map, none of my time spent in the Word was wasted. The Father, the Spirit, and the Son will always testify to one another (Jn. 12:44-50, 16:5-13). Believers can trust that the Spirit who lives in them will use their exposure to the Word for good.

“Open my eyes so that I may contemplate wonderful things from Your instruction.” (Ps. 119:18)

I remember long, dry seasons when I simply could not get my heart to engage with the Word and when affection for the Lord felt non-existent. But feelings are not truth-tellers, and the Spirit was doing the good work of helping me “hide” the Word in my heart. Admittedly, there have been seasons in my life when prolonged study has not been feasible. Certain stretches of motherhood have left me with little in my tank, and it was a success to simply read the Word on a semi-regular basis. This was to my benefit! Through simply reading passages or carrying around a few verses on a note card to memorize, I was absorbing the Scriptures, and that can never be bad for our spiritual health. I can look back at dry spells and seasons of exhaustion and see the Lord’s persevering work in my heart with every moment spent in His Word. He was teaching me to press on even when I didn’t feel like it, and that is when perseverance is best learned.

There Will be Joy in Studying the Word

One morning last week, I was sitting in my usual spot watching the sun rise and scribbling down notes from 1 Peter. It was in the middle of a thought about holy living with an eye on our “temporary residence” on earth (1 Pt. 1:15-17) when I realized that I was smiling. At 6:30 in the morning, I was only partially caffeinated, sporting impressive bed-head, and yet–smiling. There was literally no place I’d rather have been than that faded, tan couch near the windows where the sun rose between the branches of the tulip trees.

It’s not always such a happy practice, sure. Happiness and joy aren’t always made of the same substance. There are mornings when I can’t focus because I’ve slept poorly or when my heart is clouded with anxiety or concern over life circumstances.  Sometimes my two-year-old wakes up far too early and I’ve to pull apart my passage in the morning with an episode of “Paw Patrol” in the background. Some mornings I sow my sorrows in tears over my Bible knowing that if joy doesn’t come in my lifetime, it will certainly come in eternity. Overall, when I look at my mornings spent studying the Word from a cumulative standpoint, joy is the primary word that comes to mind. Gritty, overflowing, hard-won, gift-from-God joy. It’s followed closely by the word transforming. You see, I’m not the same person I was ten years ago when I first began to study the Bible with something beyond a prepackaged study or a quick daily skim of a few verses. The Lord has used His Word to convict, correct, teach, train, encourage, heal, stretch, challenge, change, sanctify me. Though study is work, it has grown to be joyous work that draws me near to the God I have so long claimed to love. He is always near, and I am learning that it is a joy to listen to His voice.

“Those who fear You will see me and rejoice, for I put my hope in Your word.” (Ps. 119:74)

If you’re plodding through the Bible right now, take heart. The Lord is near, and there will be joy found in listening to His Word. If you’re living through suffering currently, take heart. The Lord is near, and there will be joy found in listening to His Word. If you’re not sure where to start, take heart and begin reading today. The Lord is near, and there will be joy found listening to His Word. We have been given an unmatched, incomparable gift in the Scriptures. God has given us Himself! Take and read, Christian. There will be joy.

“I have your decrees as a heritage forever; indeed, they are the joy of my heart. I am resolved to obey Your statutes to the very end.” (Ps. 119: 111-112)

Sometimes we are motivated but don’t know where to start! If you’re looking for some actionable steps to incorporate into your Bible reading time, click here for a free PDF guide and a video demonstration of my exegetical method. The steps are easy to implement and adopt and will help you to ask four main questions of each passage after considering historical context and genre.

Photo by Perminder Klair on Unsplash

The Bad News is Really Bad

“I’ve got bad news, kids. You’re terrible people.”

That wasn’t my exact opener for my Wednesday night kid’s class at church, but it might as well have been. We’ve been going through Old Testament history for a few months and are currently working through the judges material. My synopsis of the book of Judges was received just fine by the three children in my class for 4-6 year olds, but when I asked for examples of doing what is right in our own eyes, the room was oddly quiet.

Admittedly, Judges is a tricky book to explain to small children. I focused on the cycle of sin that we see on repeat throughout the book: Israel sins, God sends judgment, the people cry out to God, God relents and forgives, but then Israel sins again, and the cycle repeats in a downward spiral. I even cut up a paper plate to demonstrate what a downward spiral looks like, so to speak. But, when I began talking about the cycle of sin in our own lives and the power of the gospel to break the cycle of sin, I received a few quizzical looks.

“What’s sin?” one little boy* asked me (in his defense, he doesn’t attend church often). Below is the dialogue that followed.

“Sin is any disobedience toward God,” I replied. “So, for example, when you disobey your mom, you’re also disobeying God because He has put your mom in charge of you.” I further explained that if we wanted to be reconciled to God (or, “friends” with God so the youngest in my bunch could understand), we need to believe that Jesus paid for our sin at the cross and then we must follow Him and live our lives like He did.

“Oh,” the little boy responded. “Well, I don’t do any of that sin.”

I tried not to smile. “You know what, buddy, I’m afraid you do. We all do.”

The look on his face was not one of amusement. “Not me. I don’t ever do anything wrong.”

I squelched a laugh. “Can you think of a time when you did something selfish or unkind?”

“Nope.”

I pressed him further. “So you’re telling me that every single time your mom has ever told you to do something, you have always immediately jumped up, said ‘yes ma’am!’ and obeyed perfectly?”

“Yep.”

I gently replied,”You know what, kiddo, I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, but I don’t believe you. You know why? Because the Bible tells us that every single person who has ever lived has sinned except for Jesus.”

He continued to shake his head in disagreement.

“Let me give you an example. So, it’s hard for me to admit this to you guys, but sometimes I get impatient with my kids and I yell at them. Does that seem kind?”  All three kids shook their heads no. “When I do that, I’m not doing what’s right in God’s eyes, and it’s sin for me to be unkind to my children. I’m disobeying God by not loving my children and showing them kindness. Does that make sense?” All three nodded. Great, I’m the only sinner in the room and they all know it. 

“Now can you give me an example of a way maybe you have done what is right in your own eyes?” (I wasn’t looking for a confession but rather trying to help them picture what sin against God looks like in their context.)

Mr. Innocent continued shaking his head no, but the girl sitting across from me shyly raised a hand.

“Sometimes my mom tells me to do stuff, but…(the little girl turned her head to the side and whispered into her shoulder), sometimes I don’t do it.”

“That’s a good example!” I encouraged her. “We don’t always want to do what our parents tell us, so we disobey–”

“I said sometimes!” the little girl interjected. “I disobey just sometimes.”

“Well…okay.” I was losing this battle. I looked to the last little member of my class. “Anything to add?”

He looked at me with big eyes and absolutely zero response.

“Pleading the fifth, I see.”

We Must Be Devastated by the Bad News.

To be honest, I didn’t think I’d meet any disagreement on human depravity in my class that night. But the resistance I encountered is just a more frank display of what I see in most adults. Perhaps it seems like I was badgering the kids in my class, but I love them each and was as gentle as possible while also trying to expose what we all have difficulty admitting: we are bad people at heart. I’m not addressing the value of our lives. This is not an imago dei discussion. I’m talking about the curse of sin that has run through the roots of every family tree since Eden. R.C. Sproul said it this way, “The doctrine of original sin teaches that people sin because we are sinners. It’s not that we are sinners because we sin, but rather, we sin because we are sinners; that is, since the fall of man, we have inherited a corrupted condition of sinfulness. We now have a sin nature.” (source)

It is counter-cultural and some would say damaging to teach this to our kids, but the good news of the gospel isn’t good news at all if we’re pretty good people at heart. Until we understand that we’re not “pretty good” at heart, we cannot understand the gravity of Jesus’ redemptive work at the cross. Pretty good people don’t need a savior and we should consider Jesus’ sacrifice at the cross wasteful if we all believe we’re not that bad. The truth is, even sometimes disobedience (only sometimes!) is still a wedge between our dark hearts and our holy God. Even one sin is enough to drive us from the presence of God; just ask Adam and Eve.

Coming to terms with our sinfulness and our bent toward disobedience and dissatisfaction in God is the first step to believing the gospel. The gospel will not be good news to us until we are first devastated by the bad news. 

The gospel will not be good news to us until we are first devastated by the bad news. Share on X

The Bad News Makes Way for the Good News.

I explained to my little class that they wouldn’t really be able to love Jesus until they realized how much they needed Him. Agreeing with God that we are a sinful people is the impetus for new birth. It’s something a child can believe and own, but it’s difficult at every stage to admit: I am not good. And further, I cannot make myself good. 

The Bible tells us that no one seeks after God and that there is in fact none who are righteous (Ps. 14:1, Rom. 3:10-11). The Law given in the Old Testament exposed the desperation of God’s people for a redeemer. They could not obey perfectly, nor could they rescue themselves. Case in point: Judges was a disastrous, dark period of biblical history wherein people only did what they desired. They were slaves to their flesh. The apostle Paul termed our crooked human nature a “body of death” (Rom. 7:24). He’s not being extreme.

Acknowledging our helpless sinfulness is a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it we must in order to see the glory of the provision made for us at Calvary. The God we cannot reach in our state of despair reached out to us by sending Jesus as a propitiation for our sin. In a scandalous exchange, Jesus became our sin, and we get to wear His righteousness. Only repentance and faith in and through Christ can break the power of our sin cycle and dress us in the purity of Christ. In that exchange we move from sinner to saint. We’re not sinless, not yet. But one day we most certainly will be.

We Need to Hear the Bad News and the Good News.

I was a child when I first believed the gospel. I thought up until that point that I was a good kid and that God probably really liked me a lot because I didn’t disobey my parents very much. I thrived on being “the good kid.” Do you see it? Though outwardly obedient, my heart was dark and dead. Pride snaked its way through my veins hissing half truths that seemed probable: I’m not that bad. I’m not like that person over there. God probably even loves me more because I’m pretty good. 

But through the many gospel presentations given by my parents, my pastors, my Sunday school teachers, my Wednesday night class teachers–I gradually became aware of my sinfulness. It was crushing to understand that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. But beneath the crushing weight of sin is where we hear the Savior say, “My burden is light. Believe in God, believe also in Me.”

I’m parenting two children myself, and it never feels good to tell my boys that they need new hearts. It goes against the grain of our self-esteem boosting, identity-affirming culture. Though I affirm my love for my children, their uniqueness and giftedness, their imago dei, I am doing them no favors to tell them they are innocent human beings who are pretty good at heart. And yet, giving them the bad news is quickly followed by the very best news: Jesus can make you new! 

*No names have been used in order to protect the guilty, the sometimes guilty, and the never guilty. 

Photo by Varshesh Joshi on Unsplash

I Have Spiritual Amnesia, and So Do You.

Something strange happens in the nighttime hours.

Every night, when I go to bed, I know who I am in Christ and what I believe about the gospel. It’s a hard fight, and by the end of the day it’s likely a worn-down version of what’s real. But, I’ve fought all day to believe it, and the Holy Spirit has reminded me of who God is and who I am, respectively. Temptations and frustrations alike have pulled at the strands of faith that feels a little thin. Doubts and pain pick at my resolve. From the rising of the sun to its setting, life is hard pressed on every side for the ones who long to remain faithful to Christ. But perseverance and grace propel me to the end of the day with faith intact. I go to bed resolutely resolved to keep believing the gospel. It’s not that the gospel is so weak that I must work hard to believe it. It’s that the gospel forged a new life out of my dead one, and sometimes it’s still hard to believe I am a new creation. 

But every morning I wake up with a kind of amnesia. I’m not aware of it, not really. I wouldn’t say I’ve forgotten who I am or who I worship. I could tell you. Quickly, I could tell you while rubbing the grit of sleep from my eyes. My long-term memory works just fine. Still yet, I drag my weary body to the coffee pot while it’s dark outside. I sip coffee for a minute or two, waiting for wakefulness to take effect. I sit on the couch, Bible in my lap, and work hard to force out the forgetfulness that tries to wrap its arms around my heart.

I can’t stop forgetting.

Forgetting is the problem that sprang up in the garden of Eden. “Did God really say….” was all it really took for Adam and Eve to misremember what God had actually said. This is why all of the commands and statues given by God throughout the Old Testament were bookended by declarations of who He was and what He had done for His people. He knew how easily they forgot that He was their rescuer and that they belonged to Him. Golden calves turn up mighty quick when the people of God get distracted.

We’ve not changed all that much, we who belong to the Lord. Though moved from sinner to saint, from old man to new man, I’m still shrouded in this human skin, still fighting to put on the new self every day. And herein lies the remedy for that morning amnesia: renewing my mind every day (Eph. 4:23). I know from years of forgetting that without a morning review of what’s true, I will eventually struggle to separate fact from fiction. I know I’m not alone in this. I sit here each morning in the pre-dawn hours with a long line of believers who’ve fumbled through seasons of forgetfulness and landed in a position requiring regular recalibration to unchanging gospel truth.

Did you ever see the movie “50 First Dates?” The protagonist, played by Drew Barrymore, suffers from short-term memory loss due to a car accident she can’t remember. She relives the same day over and over until Adam Sandler’s character invades her life and puts her on a different course after the two fall in love (over and over). In the end, every morning she must re-watch a video of her life events to reorient herself to the reality she can’t remember. With horror and tears, she must remember the terrible things that have happened in her life so that she can grasp the new, good things that have come since.

In a similar way, when we expose our hearts every morning to the truth of the Word of God, we are forcing ourselves to grapple again with the horrible things that we have done so that we can be presented with the truth of what Christ has done to set us free. Every morning we need to remember who we used to be, what God has done, who we are now, and how we should live with that knowledge. Though we are redeemed, our new hearts are still buried beneath a cloak of human frailty. We live in the tension of already and not yet. Remembering but forgetting. Each day we wake up with a spiritual amnesia that must be addressed anew with the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

How do we remedy our spiritual amnesia?

Read the Bible every day.

Every single day. I’m not talking about reading a verse that’s emailed to you each morning. I’m talking about sitting down with zero distractions and putting the Word of God in your front of your face. I’m talking about whole books of it; I’m talking long, slow swallows of Scripture every morning. I know the dangers of legalism, so I don’t say “every single day” because you’ll be super-holy in checking off a little box every day. A far greater temptation to me is forgetting who I used to be, who I am now, and what God has done to resurrect this dead heart. As I am still fighting sin and longing for a better country, I need the Word of God every day because I need Christ every day. Renewing your mind each day isn’t done without exposing yourself to the truths of Scripture. Pray your way through the comforting, rebuking, teaching, correcting, eternity-hinging words of God each and every morning (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Neglecting Bible intake will gradually whittle down our resolve to follow Christ because we’ll forget how much we need Him. (A crash course in redemptive history will illustrate my point here, so start in the Old Testament to see what I mean.)

Meet with the people of God.

What I need most from my church is their presence in the pews every time the doors are open. I need them next to me to stand and sing, listen and learn, repent and resolve. I need to know that I’m not living this Christian life alone. My church needs the same things from me. Do not forsake meeting together with the family of God. Living the Christian life in solitude will not help you renew your mind or hold fast to the gospel. I’ve seen it in church ministry more times than I can count: disconnect yourself from the local church and you will find yourself slowly disconnecting from Christ. Instead, make every effort to come together with the people of God to proclaim again and again the goodness of God, the redemption of sins we have in Christ, the gift of eternal life in the presence of God that the Spirit has guaranteed. Let’s remember together who we are in Christ so we can take the very good news of the gospel to the world that is desperate for Him.

We need to remember who God is.

These steps couldn’t be simpler or more straightforward. They aren’t even steps, really. But they are often the very first things to go when life gets hard and unbelief presses in. They are, in fact, what we need the most when life gets hard and unbelief presses in. When we give in to temptation and can’t rise above our shame, we need to remember who God is. When the love of God seems cold and distant, we need to remember who God is. When suffering shows up on the doorstep unannounced and unexpected, we need to remember who God is. When life is full of sweetness and peace, we need to remember who God is. At the very moment we open our eyes in the morning we need to remember who God is.

When you go to bed tonight, make sure you’ve made room in your morning tomorrow to remember who God is and what He’s said to us in His Word. It’s too easy to find yourself standing next to a tree with a hiss in your ear and wonder what it is that He really said.

Each day we wake up with a spiritual amnesia that must be remedied anew with the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Share on X

 

Photo by Alexander Possingham on Unsplash

Is it Sinful to Live in the Past?

I was juggling housework and a very energetic two-year-old yesterday morning when the phone rang. My friend on the other end, also dealing with a little one, had called with a very specific question about suffering and sin. As I’ve mulled it over, I decided to address her question publicly (with her permission).

She asked me, “Is it sinful to live in the past, even when the past wasn’t a result of poor choices but difficult circumstances not of our choosing?”

It’s a loaded question, really, and I told my friend that. When you dig into the root issues, you’re talking about God’s sovereignty and the problem of evil which are not easily explained in one blog post. And yet, there are some passages of Scripture that came to mind immediately when I considered whether or not it was sinful to dwell on a past marked by suffering. Specifically, I thought of Job and the apostle Paul.

If you’ve read my writing for very long, you know that I frequently address the topic of suffering. In one calendar year, we experienced a nearly failed adoption, the death of my grandmother, my persistent struggle with chronic illnesses, and my mother’s brain tumor and subsequent brain surgery. Because I’m a writer, I wrote about these difficulties as a way to both process and find hope. I shared them with you to help you connect the sufferings of your own life to what is true about God as revealed in Scripture. It’s the primary reason I write: to remind you to let Scripture inform your suffering, not the other way around. So often we work backwards, letting our circumstances dictate what is true about the character of God, which aids only in making God in our own image. What I hope to accomplish with my writing, speaking, and music is to point you to the Word of God first so that you can rightly view your hardships through a biblical lens that explains how God can be good, even in our suffering. Essentially, let’s let God tell us who He is. That said, I believe there are two thoughts to bear in mind when we consider our past sufferings.

The Past Can Serve Us 

My years of living with chronic pain and infertility are the vehicles I use to tell the story about God’s kindness and sovereignty, but they are just that: vehicles. The main story I tell is the one about God that comes from His Word, and the truth of the gospel must pierce every part of my testimony or else I’m just a resounding gong bemoaning the hard things that have happened to me. I’m not that unique; hard things happen to everyone. So, here is where I believe that my past experiences can serve as a place of ministry. When I stand at a podium and talk about how difficult it was to rock a baby to sleep every night for months without knowing if I could keep him, I share the ways my heart felt like broken shards of glass so that I can highlight how the faithfulness of God put all those pieces back together. When I write about the years that I cried out to the Lord for healing because of the disastrous effects of physical pain, I do so to explain how the Lord’s presence and the ministry of His Word persevered me through even the darkest nights of body and soul. The past experiences are merely the touch points for liberally handing out the greatest comfort, which is the truth of God’s unchanging, purposeful nature as seen in Scripture.

“…for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little, and I know how to have a lot. In any and all circumstance I have learned the secret of being content–whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. I am able to do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13)

I want to be able to say with Paul that I’ve learned contentment in every circumstance. I’m not there yet by a long shot, but with each round of small sufferings I’ve learned that when contentment is found in Christ, then the treasure is not so much the end of specific sufferings but rather His constancy in the midst of them. He is the treasure. In this way, our sufferings serve us as ways to recount God’s past faithfulness to us. You see this pattern in Scripture frequently. The psalmists often structured their songs about suffering by beginning with despair and ending in praise. How did they make this shift? The key is that they nearly always called to mind the past faithfulness of God in order to believe in His future faithfulness. The Psalms are rich with a beautifully relatable pattern of panicking about circumstances, lamenting what has happened, remembering God’s past faithfulness, and resolving to trust Him because of that past faithfulness. I don’t believe the psalmists are “living in the past,” but rather, are allowing the constancy of God’s goodness in the past help them to persevere through present and future sufferings.

The act of remembering God’s past faithfulness is one of the recurring themes of Scripture I’ve noticed in my Bible reading over the past few years, and I believe the practice is meant to remind us who God is as we are bent toward disbelief. Or, in the case of suffering or hardships, we’re bent to let those things tell us what is true about God. Remembering God’s past faithfulness must be done by knowing Him as He’s revealed Himself to us in Scripture and looking for the ways He’s kept His Word in our past difficulties. In this way, I believe we can safely allow our past hurts to highlight God’s goodness to us and give us a place of ministry to those who are currently suffering. It’s incredibly important to keep God as the hero of His story and yours to prevent what I believe can be the sinful aspect of “living in the past.”

The Past Can Enslave Us

There is nothing more annoying than listening to someone recount all the ways they’re victimized by their circumstances. Our culture feeds this self-entitled worldview by liberally spooning out the lies that we are basically good and therefore undeserving of anything bad that happens to us, even the consequences of poor or sinful choices. Here again, we must let Scripture inform the way we think about even the most basic of truths about humanity: the heart is desperately wicked and there is no one who is good or who seeks God (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:10-12).

Sometimes we suffer at the hands of our own sinfulness or at the hands of others. Sometimes we suffer because of our commitment to Christ. And sometimes we suffer and never know why. It is this last one that my friend was addressing in her question. Suffering that seems arbitrary is hard to swallow. I think of Job, who never knew what was behind the catastrophes that shattered his life. And yet, I am thankful for the account of Job’s suffering in Scripture because we are taught how to process suffering that we cannot understand or categorize.

The Job replied to the Lord: “I know that You can do anything and no plan of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this who conceals My counsel with ignorance?’ Surely I spoke about things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know…Therefore I take back my words and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:1-3, 6)

What was most comforting to Job in the end was not the cessation of his suffering but the strong, bold statements about the character of God–His wisdom, His authority, His universal sovereignty, even and especially in Job’s suffering. I wouldn’t say that Job “lived in his past,” but he let his experiences serve as a vehicle to grapple with what was true about God.

“Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead. I pursue as my goal the prize promised by Go’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. Therefore, all who are mature should think this way.” (Philippians 3:12-15a)

Paul suffered a lot for his relentless preaching of the gospel, but I don’t see him as a victim of his past. Rather, I see a man who recounts them as a way to talk about the prize of pursuing Christ wholeheartedly. He presses forward for the treasure of Jesus, for maturity in the faith, for a citizenship anchored in heaven. The difference between living as a victim of your circumstances and rejoicing in them is again viewing God as the hero of the story. When we prop up ourselves as the heroes of our own stories, we count our sufferings as undeserved and unjust which puts us at odds with both God’s position of authority and sovereignty. Rather, I believe we should recognize that whatever God allows into our lives has first been filtered through fingers that are threading together a tapestry of redemption that we cannot fathom. Our sufferings may seem arbitrary at times, but what we don’t see is the way God may use them to display the power of the gospel to a watching a world. Avoiding self-victimization begins with trusting a good, sovereign God with our suffering. Maturity grows from the recognition that we’ve been taken hold of by Christ, not our sufferings.

Remembering God’s Faithfulness or Recounting My Miseries?

As people of the cross, the challenge lies in recounting God’s faithfulness in our past, rather than dwelling on how we felt about our suffering. Like most of our struggles as sojourners longing for our better country, we must challenge our feelings with the truth of Scripture. We miss the ways God has worked things for our good when we dwell on our miseries rather than His good purposes.

We miss the ways God has worked things for our good when we dwell on our miseries rather than His good purposes. Share on X

So is it sinful to live in the past? It can be if we allow ourselves to be enslaved to a victim mentality. In so doing, we miss the way our past sufferings can serve as a rich palette for painting a picture of the Scriptural truths about God’s unending, faithful goodness to us. But we must first endeavor to see Him as both the treasure and the hero of our past, present, and future.

 

Photo by Moritz Schumacher on Unsplash

Recommended reading: Future Grace: the Purifying Power of the Promises of God by John Piper

There’s Blessing in the Longing

I want to run away from these words.  I hit “publish” so you wouldn’t feel alone when your hopes rise and fall in a tumble of confusing might-have-beens.

It’s embarrassing to admit after thirteen years of one-lined tests that sometimes I still find myself entertaining a glimmer of hope that my situation might change. It’s a small hope, nearly nothing really. But that doesn’t seem to matter. It will still swell and grow and cloud my memory of the way things have always been. I spent a week wondering if maybe everything I’d fought to squelch down over the past decade would find room to breathe in the way of Sarah or Rachel. Hannah. Elizabeth. Every alarm went off in my head—don’t do it. Don’t unlock that door. Hope doesn’t live there.

But I did it anyway. And now I’ve added an extra padlock to the door because the answer was no. The answer is always no. And deep down, I know that the answer will likely always be no because for some reason I cannot fathom, God is more glorified this way, in this continual no. I pressed down the feeling of disappointment as I tucked my kids into bed last night. There’s no reason or room for complaining here in this house where we tuck in our answered prayers with comforting regularity.

I just wanted to see You do it, I told the Lord later when I climbed into bed. I turned this way and that trying to find a position that lessened the familiar grip of physical pain clenching my lower back. It’s not that You can’t. I know You can. Why wouldn’t You do it? It’s not like it’s hard for You. I just wanted to see You do it.

How can a thirteen-year-old wound still reopen with such presence? I thought it was closed up tight. Most of the time it is. So when it opens after such a long time, I’m caught off guard by the way it rubs against my faith. I’m surprised that the remembered pain is just exactly the way it feels now. I turned over on my side and wedged a pillow between my knees to relieve the pressure of a painful back spasm that, to be honest, hurt a lot less than the ache in my heart. I turned out the light and prayed for sleep to come before the sadness swallowed me whole.

Morning dawned gray but not without mercy. I sat on the couch during the early morning hours with my coffee cup and my Bible. I pondered the words of Paul as I read all the way through Ephesians. I pictured him writing from jail. His chains were for our good, he said, and he was right. We needed him to sit in jail and pen the words about who we used to be before Jesus made our hearts new. We needed him to sit in one place and encourage us to be who we are, who we really are in Christ. Like his original readers, we need the reminder that God has given us Himself and that He is always enough.

Maybe the tears on my face haven’t dried up just yet. Maybe the no still stings as much at thirty-six as it did at twenty-four. Maybe the Lord’s path for me will never include the thing I only pray for when I think no one is looking. Maybe a year from now I’ll still feel disappointed in the no. Maybe.

But this I know to be true: God has blessed me with a lot of physical blessings as well as  every spiritual blessing. He has lavished His love upon me. He has breathed life into my dead body and resurrected my dead heart. He has secured my inheritance.

He withholds no good thing from His children, He says (Ps. 84:11). So how does that measure up when the good things I’ve longed for still go missing? If He had satisfied my every physical longing with every physical blessing, I might not feel the hollowness inside, might not learn to name it. Having every desire met might distort my vision of what it is I need. It might keep me from seeing just how much I need Him. Him. The Giver, not the gifts.

There’s blessing in the longing.

I feel like that’s the most upside-down sentence I’ve ever written, so I’ll say it again to make sure I believe it: There’s blessing in the longing.

Longing reminds me that the things I want in this life are unlikely to fill my heart. Good things, even, can turn my heart away from loving Christ the most. If their absence requires me to keep cracking open this heart of mine before the Lord and letting Him tell me what’s most important, then let them be absent. If it keeps sending me back to the Word for what I need the most, let the test always carry a single line.

There is blessing in the longing, it’s true. Oh, it hurts like someone’s bulldozed your imagined future until all that’s left is rubble and chaff. It hurts. But the ache, the longing, the desire for something to be sealed up is an internal reminder that what we long for the most is the One who spoke our very lives into being.

It’s always been Him beneath the ache. It will always be Him.

There is blessing in the longing, it’s true. Oh, it hurts like someone’s bulldozed your imagined future until all that’s left is rubble and chaff. It hurts. But the ache, the longing, the desire for something to be sealed up is an internal reminder that what we long for the most is the One who spoke our very lives into being. It’s always been Him beneath the ache. It will always be Him.

I don’t know what your heart is longing for today. I kind of hate the fact that the things I think I’ve conquered can pull me back to a place of mental reorganization. I slide the file labeled “infertility” back to its corner, hoping I don’t have to pull it out anytime soon. Maybe you feel that way about the thing you’ve just thought of without even trying. Didn’t take long to conjure up that void, did it?

Here’s the good news: it’s not really a void. It’s a reminder.

Paul says in Ephesians 3 that because of Jesus’ work at the cross we “may be filled with all the fullness of God.” So you see, it’s not really a void. Unmet desires make it feel like a void, but you can’t be empty when you’re filled with the fullness of God.

No, you can’t be empty when you’re filled with the fullness of God.

No, you can’t be empty when you’re filled with the fullness of God.  Share on X

 

 

Photo by pan xiaozhen on Unsplash

Keep a Soft Heart

Repeatedly inked on the pages of my journal for the past ten months are the words keep a soft heart.

Truly, it has taken all thirty-six years of my life to develop a one-sentence prayer that expresses one of my deepest and most regular needs.

Keep a soft heart.

Truly, it has taken all thirty-six years of my life to develop a one-sentence prayer that expresses one of my deepest and most regular needs.

I searched for the words to express it in my teens, scrambled to articulate it in my twenties, and now in my mid-thirties I’m finally learning to name the need that stretches its way out of my chest with my first conscious breath every morning. In the lifelong march against bitterness, cynicism, unforgiveness, it is my anthem: keep a soft heart. Against the old, dead version of me who tries to resurrect herself with frightening force and regularity, the petition for a soft heart has become my steady, daily battle cry.

You know what I mean, right? That prickly, closed-up version of your inner being so full of rough angles and hard edges that you refuse to let anyone inside, refuse to obey what you know the Lord is calling you to do, refuse to open yourself up to anything that might make you uncomfortable—you know what I’m talking about, yes? It’s the heart that gives a cold shoulder to all that is meaningful in the Christian life, that shuts down to all that warms the soul, that resists the unifying thread that knits us together with other believers. It’s seasonal or perhaps a coping mechanism, but at its core it’s destructive. While it might seem temporarily safe to wall oneself away from vulnerability within the Church or before God, I’ve learned lately that what aids me best in my relationships with other believers, what helps me more readily submit my desires to the Lord’s plans, what most encourages me to lay aside my rigid, Pharisaic worldview is this: a soft heart.

Why a soft heart? Why not a determined heart or a solid heart?

When it comes to an open, submissive heart (for I think that’s essentially what we’re talking about here), I think of the word malleable. Not in a doormat kind of way, but in a teachable, empathetic, walk-a-mile-in-their-shoes kind of way. I want a heart that is workable, like putty, in the hands of my Savior. When I consider the act of taking up my cross and following Jesus, malleable seems the prerequisite for dying to myself and, more specifically, my pride. I want a heart that doesn’t freeze up or bristle at correction. I want a heart that throbs with openness even when it is costly. I want the pulse of my spiritual life’s blood to beat with a disarming vulnerability. I want to hold staunchly to truth while also clinging tightly to love. I think the key in holding the tension between truth and love is a soft heart.

A soft heart knows its place. A soft heart understands true humility. A soft heart knows who it is before God, knows it is dust, knows it is equally guilty of all the things it wants to keep record of when it comes to the hurts inflicted by others. A soft heart knows if it kept an honest record of wrongs, it could not stand but for the covering of Jesus.

A soft heart is the first thing I notice in a fellow believer who receives correction with a nodding head and a quiet acquiescence. When I see it in someone else, I find myself instantly warmed toward them because it reminds me of Jesus who was obedient to the point of death, who laid aside His desires for His Father’s. A heart yielded to its Savior is a proclamation of God’s enduring work in that person. The fruit of self-control and gentleness make much of Jesus when it comes to both spiritual-familial relationships and plans that veer wildly off the rails. How I long for my first response to suffering, to criticism, to hope deferred to be a soft one! How I long for my first response to be an acknowledgment that Jesus is the captain of this ship, that He commands my destiny.

Though you may not see the gradual softening, God is still molding you, rolling those hard angles in His hands, sanding down what's rough and bristly into something soft, malleable, open.

How do we keep a soft heart?

Prayer

Regular, persistent prayer cannot be understated. The petition for a soft heart is the prayer that has rewritten itself more times than I can count on the pages of my life. I imagine I’ll be praying it until my last breath. But what’s beautiful about the companionship of prayer and sanctification is that God is pleased to answer the prayers for a soft heart. His desires are for us to be rooted and grounded in His love, to be filled with His fullness, to be like Him. (Eph. 3;17-19). Though you may not see the gradual softening, God is still molding you, rolling those hard angles in His hands, sanding down what’s rough and bristly into something soft, malleable, open. Keep praying for a heart that is open and submissive to Him. It’s my daily prayer for myself.

Scripture

Scripture speaks to our thorny hearts. Just this week, my study in Ephesians addressed the very topic in its reminder of what life in Christ should look like:

You took off your former way of life, the old self, that is corrupted by deceitful desires; you are being renewed in the spirit of your minds; you put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth…All bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ. Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children. And walk in love, as the Messiah also loved us and gave Himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.

Ephesians 4:22-24, 31-5:2 (HCSB)

In years past I have allowed hurts, closed doors, and the Lord’s deviation from my plans (or, to put it in realistic terms, my lack of submission to His plans) to harden the outer edges of my heart. Learn from my mistakes: this only results in an insular, closed-off, arms-length existence. This is not how we were meant to live as believers. We were meant to live as the many, varied moving parts that only collectively make up the body of Christ. The Word is a both a telescope and a mirror, showing us first the good character of God so we can then see ourselves rightly. When the Word shines the light on the ugliness down deep, we can then see the grace that abounds to us.

John Piper puts it well: “If we are ever to grasp the gospel, we must grasp the ugliness of our sin. If we never admit that we don’t just do bad things — we are bad — the gospel will never land in power. Our sins will always be healed lightly. I need to crawl into the cesspool of my heart and claw my way to the bottom, believing there’s Jesus’s blood down there, not hell. But it’s at the bottom of our sin, not only part way down.”

The Word is a both a telescope and a mirror, showing us first the good character of God so we can then see ourselves rightly. When the Word shines the light on the ugliness down deep, we can then see the grace that abounds to us.

Look to Christ.

“And walk in love, as the Messiah also loved us and gave Himself for us…” (Ephesians 5:2a)

In Jesus, we find not a trace of bitterness or grudge-holding. Though direct in His delivery of truth, He still exuded empathy and kindness. He is our standard, the one we should strive to imitate. Living in the likeness of God, we must wrestle down what’s old and dead and dying in us by recognizing who we are because of what Jesus has done. Rather than ruminating on derailed plans or perceived injustices, look at the perfect person of Christ instead. This requires us to circle back to step two and read the Scriptures. Fixing our gaze on Jesus is an essential step in our sanctification, in throwing off what’s old and wearing what’s new, in this heart-softening process. Scottish 19th century pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne said this “for every look at self, take ten looks at Christ.” I can’t really improve on his advice. Let the time spent looking at Christ far outweigh the time spend navel-gazing.

When we believe the gospel and repent of our sins, the Lord gives us a new heart that beats for Him. My prayer to keep that heart soft is not an attempt to add to His work but simply to echo what He has already purposed to do for those of us who believe: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. And may your spirit, soul, and body be kept sound and blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who will also do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, HCSB)

Photos by Gaelle Marcel and  Jamez Picard  on Unsplash

 

 

Real Love Awakens Us to Real Life

Last week I fell down a rabbit hole of remembering.

It began with a search for my journal from the year we adopted our oldest son and ended with me digging through a musty pile of notebooks in the basement. I swiped away cobwebs from the dark corner of the cellar where the box of my life’s chronicles sat precariously close to the crawl space, a perfect haven for spiders, mice, mold, and memories.

In this rebirth, wherein a rotting corpse rises from the grave a brand new person, bleakness gives up its seat to the hope of all hopes. But God. In Christ.

I lugged every last notebook out of the basement and up the stairs where I wiped down the cover of each book with a damp cloth. There were at least twenty, and that doesn’t count the ten or so that are hiding in random bookcases and drawers around the house.

Though my very first journal opens with my seventh birthday, I chose the notebook from my last semester of high school. I’ve been reading for three days and am currently drowning in my sophomore year of college. I’ve always been grateful to be a lifelong journaler, but I have to admit my embarrassment about who I used to be. Pages and pages inked with my conflicting desires to both follow Christ and find security in someone besides Him.

I feel sorry for the girl who couldn’t figure out who she was, who believed she loved without reciprocation, who couldn’t bring herself to speak to people she didn’t know. She had a lot of dreams but was too afraid to chase them. Loneliness and longing were the parallel themes of her life; both throbbed with a misunderstanding of who she was. She wanted so badly to be accepted, to find “the one” who would love her for who she was, not who she thought she should be. She did the best she could to anchor herself in the truth of Scripture, but bubbling beneath the surface was an insatiable desire to be enough for someone to give her a second glance.

Then she met William.

There is a marked difference on the pages in the girl before William and the girl after him. Before him was the girl who never felt like she was enough, never liked what the mirror told her, never felt she measured up to her peers. After him, she stood with confidence, smiled widely, laughed freely, loved and knew she was loved.

Knowing she was loved changed her. Certainty of reciprocated affection was the piece of completion. It filled the gap between her shoulders and pushed out the feelings of inadequacy she had carried so long.

Fifteen years later, she is still better for being loved by him.

I barely recognize the girl in the journals. His love changed her; it made her better. Brought out the parts of her that were yearning to be seen. It is right that the one who opened her eyes to certainty is the husband who still washes her in the water of the Word. It glimmers with analogy, whispers as it should to the greater awakening of identity in Christ.

During my study of Ephesians, I’ve been moved by the metamorphosis of the dead man outlined in chapter 2. Phrases characterizing the before and after effects of grace through faith in Christ give a rich view of what happens to a person who is changed by the gospel. Addressing Gentiles specifically, Paul says we were children of wrath, far off, without hope, without the Messiah, without God, foreigners to the covenant of promise, dead in our sins, walking in our fleshly desires, excluded from the citizenship of Israel.

In other words, we’re doomed. And happy to be doomed. There’s no bleaker picture I could paint.

And there in the middle of the first paragraph are the two most beautiful words ever to be penned: But God.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!      Ephesians 2:4-5

I combed through chapter 2 over and over, taking copious notes. A distinctive flow emerged when my notes categorized themselves into three people (one named twice): man before salvation, God, Christ, man after salvation. I even drew out a chart.  The bleak picture of the unregenerate man stands out, resolutely shackled to sin. No hope, no Christ, no God.

BUT GOD

But God, and then there is so much that God does because of who He is. He is rich in mercy and full of great love for us, so He saves us by grace, makes us alive, raises us up, seats us with Christ, displays immeasurable kindness to us, gives us free access to Himself, sets us apart for good works, reconciles us to Himself and to one another, and builds us together into one body, the Church.

IN CHRIST

Christ is the agent of this startling metamorphosis. This quickening from dead man walking to breathing man believing happens through Jesus and His work at the cross. It is in Him and through Him that God does these things, these miraculous, old to new, dead to living, far-off to brought-near, splintered to unified, foreign to family, reconciliatory, resurrection things.

In this rebirth, wherein a rotting corpse rises from the grave a brand new person, bleakness gives up its seat to the hope of all hopes.

But God. In Christ.

This reconciling relationship changes everything. It breathes life into dry bones. We are more than better. We’re new. We are forever changed when we believe that we are loved by God, when we understand that the love He lavishes upon us is love that turns our affections away from our destructive fleshly desires and toward the beauty of His glory. His love calls us out of the grave, makes us new, changes who we are at our very core. His love does not allow us to continue to live under wrath, without Him, without Jesus, without hope.  Indeed, He is our hope.

Being loved by God awakens us to real life. We are incomparably better for being loved by Him.

Being loved by God awakens us to real life. We are incomparably better for being loved by Him. Share on X

 

 

 

Journal photo cred: Simson Petrol with Unsplash

Future Discipleship Part 2: God’s Part in Our Perseverance

When my husband and I first settled into rural church ministry twelve years ago, I was a little unprepared for the pace of life offered by the farming community where we had made our new home. We had left a much larger college town buzzing with traffic and commutes, a life where I’d had a job and goals and lots of church commitments. My first few months as a pastor’s wife in a small town surrounded by farmland was an education in listening and learning the rhythms of life in a small church in a small town.

Those days taste of summer in my memory. We moved into the church parsonage during the sweltering heat of July; a few neighbors and church members introduced themselves with offerings of local produce, sweet corn being the preeminent housewarming gift of choice.

My young pastor-husband chose to take our congregation through the prayers of the apostle Paul during mid-week prayer services that first summer in Southeast Missouri—a gesture of hope from a twenty-seven-year-old seminary graduate to his new flock. What has stayed with me from those warm summer evenings at church are the sincere prayers of the church members whose names we were just learning. Most significant at the time were plaintive petitions for rain, of all things. In the humility that comes from knowing one can do nothing about the weather was a significant sincerity in those requests for rain for the crops. These weren’t merely general blanket prayers for a reprieve from summer’s heat. These were genuine prayers stemming from love and concern for one another: there were farmers in the congregation. While I listened to the prayers of these people I barely knew, I began to understand what they believed about God. Our prayers offer an overview of our theology, and the habit of praying together is a disarming way to get to know someone.

 

He will do the work of perseverance while we do the work of persevering

 

I’ve been studying Ephesians 1 over the last couple of weeks, and surprisingly I got stuck in Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian church family in verses 15-19 (that’s not normally where people get stuck in chapter 1, by the way). I felt a pull to stay here for a few days:

This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray the that God our our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the perception of your mind may be enlightened so you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the glorious riches of His inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength.

Ephesians 1:15-19 (HCSB)

Paul prayed that God would enlighten the eyes of the believers in Ephesus so they would understand the richness of God and grasp the following:

1) the hope of God’s calling

2) the glorious riches of His inheritance

3) the immeasurable greatness of His power

Paul’s prayer teaches us a lot about God.

What kept me in this short pastoral prayer was the integral involvement of God in each layer of Paul’s petition. These gifts Paul prays for: hope of the calling, riches of inheritance, greatness of power all seem to be mentioned and prayed for in order to encourage the Ephesian believers to continue in the faith by remembering Who is behind it. They could function as Christians because of the hope they have in God’s calling on their lives unto salvation, they could set their eyes on things above when they remembered that they belong to God, and they would be able to persevere because of the immeasurable greatness of God’s power.

God’s calling, God’s inheritance, God’s power. But all bestowed upon His people by Him because He is faithful to persevere His children to completion. The hope of God’s calling them to faith in Christ (discussed earlier in chapter 1), the glorious riches of belonging to God as His inheritance with the guarantee of a future with Him forever (1:13), and God’s immeasurably great power on which the believer can lean according to the working of His vast strength. In his commentary on Ephesians, Peter T. O’Brien says that “the Christian growth of [Paul’s] readers, as well as the furtherance of [Paul’s] own ministry of the gospel, is wholly dependent upon the living God, who gives generously to His children when they call upon Him in prayer.”*

Paul’s prayer also tells us about God’s part in our perseverance.

In my last post I made the point that our daily Bible intake functions as a sort of deposit for our future discipleship. What our hearts are absorbing now from the Scriptures will equip us for the future. I believe that with all of my heart, and I’ve known it to be true in my own life. Equally true is the possibility that we will be ill prepared for suffering when we’ve ignored the call to spend time with the Lord, when we’ve avoided meeting Him in His Word. I believe that to be true because I’ve lived it, unfortunately.

That said, we shouldn’t approach personal Bible study as a formula with which to conquer all the hard knocks life may offer us. Delving into our sacred text is not done for the sake of acquiring knowledge to win an argument or for turning passages into some kind of scriptural talisman with which to shield ourselves from suffering. Our goal in opening our Bibles is always to know God and to make Him known. Perseverance is born from that. Hope is born from that. Security, assurance, help, healing, love, wisdom—these things come in time spent knowing our God, but they come under the umbrella of knowing Him first and foremost. They are fringe benefits, so to speak. Considerable, weighty, lavishly given fringe benefits that are necessary for our growth as believers, but ultimately they stem from first staring intently at the character of God.

He is the one who pulls our hearts to faith, who promises His presence continually (and keeps good on that promise continually). He is the one who holds up our chins and reminds us that He will do this thing. He’s already done it, really. He will do the work of perseverance while we do the work of persevering. It’s Him working in us, according to His vast, vast strength. It’s a kindness that He involves us at all. After all, what is man that He is mindful of him, the son of man that He looks after him? (Ps. 8:4)

He will do the work of perseverance while we do the work of persevering. Share on X

The Author and Sustainer of life has made sure to bend low with reliable regularity to persevere us through suffering, through trials, through temptations. He has guaranteed His work on the cross. Why wouldn’t we endeavor to know Him daily? Why wouldn’t we get up each morning to pile up reminders of His involvement in our sanctification for the days that dawn bleak with doubt? Why wouldn’t we dwell on His faithfulness now when we will always need to be reminded of it?

The pastoral prayers in the New Testament always remind me of those early days in ministry when we listened to Paul’s requests for the first century churches as a primer for praying together as a 21st century church. I thought we had a lot to teach our church, a lot of wisdom to share. I couldn’t imagine all I would have to learn. When I listen to my brothers and sisters pray now, some twelve years later, I’ve learned to listen for what I can learn about God. The pleas from my siblings for grace, for healing, for salvation of friends or family, for provision—these prayers teach me a lot about the character of God. He is as involved in our sanctification as much now as He was in the church at Ephesus in AD 61. Listening to the prayers of other believers encourages me to press on in faith. What they’ve soaked in from their own time with the Lord in Scripture comes pouring out in petitions and pleas that speak of the necessary involvement of God in every corner of our sanctification.

What a relief it is to know that perseverance is a community project.

 

*O’Brien, Peter T. The Letter to the Ephesians. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1999.

Photo Cred: Alexandre Godreau with Unsplash

Future Discipleship: Perseverance Now Means Perseverance Later

A few hot summers ago, the first week of August found me in the early stages of marathon training. For accountability’s sake, I had already signed up for the St. Jude Marathon in Memphis, Tennessee, and paid my registration fee. My financial investment was the impetus for faithful training.

Immersing myself in the Bible now is not only for today's benefit. It is for tomorrow and next week, next month and a year from now.

I’d spent the previous year working up my daily mileage, and I had (like many runners) become a bit obsessive about mile time and long runs. Running a marathon seemed to be the crowning achievement for any committed runner, and I was eager to have that 26.2 mile finisher’s medal hanging alongside my other 5K and 10K medals.

Every evening I scrutinized my training schedule for the next day’s mileage or cross-training activity. Before going to bed, I laid out my running clothes, filled my hand held water bottle and popped it in the freezer, packed my running belt with salted caramel flavored energy gel (the high point of every run), and charged my iPod and Garmin watch.

Running in the intense, humid summer heat began to take its toll on my long runs. Once I hit 7 and 8 mile runs, I routinely suffered blinding headaches for about 48 hours afterward. After doing some research, I discovered that low electrolytes and low sodium were the likely culprits. I began to change my approach to my long runs by preparing the day before. In addition to normal hydration, I added about three bottles of water spiked with electrolyte/sodium tablets on the days before a run longer than 6 miles. I began to notice a difference after my long runs immediately after making this change.  Gone were the headaches! I also noticed overall improvement in endurance and mile time.

It always felt odd to be drinking so much salty electrolyte water on a rest day, but it helped tremendously with my long runs. Each time I did this, I was making an investment in a future event. I was doing something today for my physical benefit tomorrow.

Spiritual disciplines work much like this. 

This hot, first week of August I’m not doing any marathon training, but I’m reminding myself that what I’m investing in my spiritual life now will aid me later when my reserves feel low. Immersing myself in the Bible now is not only for today’s benefit. It is for tomorrow and next week, next month and a year from now.

I’ve lived through seasons of trial where my spiritual tank was so low that the bucket I sent down for endurance kept coming back up empty. I had not prepared for trials–or even just normal life events–because I’d spent almost zero time nurturing my relationship with Christ the weeks, months, and even years prior. When sorrow struck, I scrambled for something solid to hold on to. I grasped for a promise from Scripture that would help me persevere, but the truth was I didn’t know the Scriptures well enough to be certain of any promise.

Now, this is not to say that the Holy Spirit can’t still encourage and prod you forward in perseverance when you’ve not spent time arming yourself with truth. God is greater than our hearts and is full of grace and kindness. He teaches us to trust Him while we waffle and scramble for surety. But if I had spent time loving the Lord by knowing Him in His Word I could have enjoyed His nearness in suffering rather than doing so much exhausting scrambling just for survival.

Paralyzed but Prepared

There are days when climbing out of bed before 6 am feels like war. It is war, in a manner of speaking. Our enemy would love to derail our efforts to commune with Christ, and he does it by whispering lies when the shrill ring of the alarm jolts us from restful sleep. You need your rest. You can skip today. You’re not really getting much from your study right now anyway. It doesn’t hurt to take a break now and then.

I’ve listened to some of those lies this summer. I’ve let the clock dictate my commitment to faithfulness, and I’ve felt it’s numbing effects. Trouble is, those “breaks” turn into seasons really fast. Feeding a dry spell with a break from spiritual disciplines may feel like the right answer, but it will never serve you well when pain and suffering show up on your doorstep unannounced. On a broken, fallen planet, suffering seems sure until Christ returns or takes us home. So, we can be paralyzed when the phone rings with devastating news, or we can paralyzed and prepared for the moment life seems to fall apart. I’ve found that the paralyzing feeling comes no matter what, but I’ve seen unbelievable differences in whether or not my heart has been primed with the truths of God’s good character and sovereign hand.

What helps me fight the allure of the snooze button is knowing that my bleary-eyed Scripture reading in the morning, even when it feels like work, is not just beneficial to me now. The prayerful conversation with the Lord, the outlines of Scripture passages, the asking of hard questions, the work of study is also beneficial for my future. It is a stockpiling of truth and strength for days of grief and loss that are as sure the rising sun on an earth that groans for reconciliation.

Perseverance now means perseverance later.

When you’re feeling like your time in the Word is dusty and dry and not worth the time you could have been getting some extra sleep, remember that now is when God is teaching you to trust Him with your future. Now is the time He’s given you to fill your well with belief that Jesus’ work on the cross was enough to save you, that God’s goodness doesn’t waver, that the one who follows Christ is secure in the palm of His hand. Eventually, dry seasons turn into flourishing spring times of the soul. But it might take a long view of perseverance to get there.

Stay the course, friends. Guard your time in the Word with protectiveness if you must. Every morning that you show up  to meet with the Lord, you can know with confidence that He meets you there. He is faithful and ever-present.

Together, you are investing in your future discipleship.

 

For more on working through a spiritual dry spell, read this.

 (*For those interested: I ended up falling on a run during my training, which resulted in an injury. Thinking it was a strained muscle, I unwisely continued to train and ran 200 painful miles before finding out I had been running on a stress fracture in my femur. [Insert facepalm emoji here.] I was ordered 3 months physical rest by my doctor and had to quit marathon training. I’m sure there is another spiritual analogy in there somewhere, but someday I hope to reclaim my training and add that finisher’s medal to my small collection!) 

Photo Cred: Arek Adeoye for Unsplash

I Prayed for Healing. He Answered with His Presence.

These are slow summer days, stretching long at the ends from first light to last. We drink them in deep swallows, savoring the absence of hurried schedules. We sleep later than normal and wear pajamas longer than we should. The hours unspool without our notice or care. It seems a luxury. I’ve not had such a peaceful summer in years, and I couldn’t put my finger on the reason until I remembered the shroud of pain that used to wrap me up tight with fear and misery. The familiar heaviness of July heat has settled over our low corner of Missouri, a wool blanket dipped in boiling water and hung out to steam and dry above our heads. It’s hard to get a good breath when the air is so hot and wet. In being well these past 12 months, I’ve nearly forgotten the summers past when I struggled to separate the heat of a southern summer with the fire that encased my spine. It was always hot, inside and out.

Two summers past, I was on the brink of a breakdown. My health had deteriorated to the point I was losing my hair, struggling to remember things, sleeping only an hour or two at night, wrestling with pain like it was my full-time job. Physically, I was wrecked. I was also losing my grip on faith. I wasn’t just sick, I was heartsick. My husband and I were walking through a season of doubt about our vocational ministry while also watching our fourth year in the adoption process come to a fruitless close–a lot of loose ends, frayed and pulling at my confidence.

I was sorely tempted to hold hands with bitterness. She’d been a longtime companion, bitterness. But she is a difficult root to kill, the kind of plant nobody wants in their garden, a tangle of vines that spreads with ferocity. Bitterness is the kudzu of discontentment. At its best, kudzu cloaks the world in greenery, turning trees into stooped giants with draping, viney arms. It kills everything underneath, but it’s not until winter when we see the degree of damage. Kudzu inhabits what it covers. And I know from a ten year contention with it that bitterness works the same, inhabiting the heart with tightly wound tendrils that suffocate life and light.

I was afraid of the kudzu effects of bitterness again in my life. Desperate for health, for relief, for purpose, for contentment, I turned with halting steps and faltering prayers to Christ. I hesitated because it seemed too much. My health. My complete inability to have another child, no matter what avenue I tried. My internal wrestling with a decade of failing church ministry. The dizzying effects of everything at once.

The believing part of me knew Jesus was the one to run to, but the doubting part of me couldn’t hold His gaze. I was Peter sinking in the Sea of Galilee, unable to take my eyes off the choppy, churning waves. But Jesus was Jesus, chastising my weak faith while also holding on to me. His grip was stronger than bitterness, His gaze steadier than mine.

His strength overrode my weakness.

He held on to me while the pain engulfed my spine, when every rejection email from the adoption agency landed arrived, when Sunday morning rolled around and I dreaded being the pastor’s wife, when doubt felt bigger than faith.

How did it happen, you ask. How did He hold on to you?

And I would answer that He did it by walking the floors with me in the middle of the night that summer of heat and pain. Pain was the word reverberating through my body, throbbing in time with my pulse. Pain, pain, pain. 

But there was also Christ. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Reminding me of the words He’d said, of the promises He’d made, reminding me until His words were louder than my pain.

I am with you always. (Mt. 28:20)

I will never leave or forsake you. (Dt. 31:6, Heb. 13:5)

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. (Is.43:2)

I will be with you in trouble. (Ps. 91:15)

Nothing can separate you from My love, not things present or things to come. (Rom. 8:35, 38)

While I waited long for healing, for a child, for some kind of purpose, He held fast to me. He did it in every turn of the page in my worn Bible. He did it when I struggled to pin down the words to pray. He was present. Visibly, no. But in every way I needed, He was present because He has promised to be, even (and maybe especially) in pain and doubt. In the white-fisted vise of pain, I learned that Christ could sustain me. He could hold my gaze and teach me to hold His. He could deepen my faith when He reminded me who He was. I could walk on water because He was with me.

  I remember the way I called out to the Lord to heal me and the way He responded by being with me instead.  

 I wasn’t healed that summer. My pain worsened, actually. It would be another year before I would begin to experience pain’s release. It slipped away slowly, hesitant to leave me, I guess. And then one morning at the beginning of last summer, I woke with a jolt and scrambled to name the startling absence I felt. It was nothing. I felt nothing. Instead of a body on fire, there was just a body. I turned to the clock in a room bathed in bright morning light and realized I’d slept all night for the first time in six years.

These past few weeks, I’ve let myself remember those days fogged up with heat and humidity and pain and doubt. I’ve had a bit of a flare-up, and while the ache settles into my joints, there’s a stifling muscle memory there, too. I feel those surges of anxiety that used to steal my breath when I tried to imagine a future shrouded in lifelong pain. I remember the dark, still nights and my splintering sanity. I remember the song I sang to keep me grounded.

I remember the way I called out to the Lord to heal me and the way He responded by being with me instead.  

I remember the words He spoke long ago that throb with truth in time with my pulse, whether there’s pain or just the memory of it. His words of promise and presence. Words I needed then, words I need now. Words that remind me that He is enough on these long, summer days that shimmer with the heat of pain and faithfulness.

My pain and God’s faithfulness. I am not sure I could know one without the other.

 

 Photo cred: Jake Givens with Unsplash

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Categories

Follow

Get the latest posts delivered to your mailbox: