glenna marshall

Of Sharps Containers and Resurrections

I gathered up my sharps containers yesterday so I could dispose of them to make room for new ones. No matter how often I tell the specialty pharmacy that I don’t need a new sharps container, they send a new one with each shipment of medication. Every month, I unpack the Styrofoam container, pull out the ice packs, and find two injectable pens with life-altering medication in them. And a sharps container. Every time.

Curious, I pulled the sharps containers from beneath my kitchen sink and dumped them out to grasp what the last ten months of treatments look like.

black and white photo of syringes

The little syringes are for the B12 injections. And don’t let the syringe size fool you—those needles are huge. Twenty-five gauge, to be exact. The pens are big but hurt less. So here it all is. Ten months of medications, ten months of perpetual bruises on my legs (because I’m not so good with aim), ten months of tamping down my inflammation levels and leveling up my B12 since my blood cells were slipping down to a dangerous place. The two conditions are unrelated (we think) except for the autoimmune nature of them. My body can do many things, but what it does best is turn on itself.

When I looked at all the needles lined up neatly, I thought three things.

First is the most common response to someone with autoimmune disease: “But you don’t look sick!” No, I don’t, thankfully! If you were to meet me face to face, you’d never know there was anything wrong with me. You can’t see joint pain. You can’t see brain fog. You can’t see digestive issues. You can’t see misshapen red blood cells. My autoimmune diseases are completely invisible except for the patches of psoriasis I can’t hide with clothing. My pain is unseen by everyone but the Lord. Its effects are witnessed by my family, but only God sees the T-cells that misbehave and the spine stiffness that accompanies my morning alarm. He sees.

My second thought when I surveyed the stacks of needles was one of praise. Praise God for the common grace of medication. I avoided this route of treatment for almost ten years. And it was so unbelievably hard on my mind, body, and spirit. I know the side effects of the TNF-blockers. I read up on them for years before I tried them. I told myself, “Never say never.” And then I pursued every other functional and holistic path I could. It was expensive, but I’m glad I exhausted every other form of treatment first, because I learned a lot about my diseases and my body. I still use some of those holistic methods and know that some of my issues are helped by diet and supplements. But, to finally achieve a night of sleep without crippling pain, I had to try something else. And it worked. Praise God, it worked. It may not always work, but it works for now and I’m grateful. The human body is kind of amazing in its capacity to create pathways around drugs, so I sit with my doctor and reevaluate my condition and my treatment every six months. He listens patiently and checks every joint in my body for changes. I’m thankful for doctors who care, and I’m thankful for scientists who create medications that tell my body to stop with the dramatic T-cell response already.  

My third thought was also one of gratitude. I gathered up all the syringes and pens and loaded them back into their containers to take them for disposal, and I thanked the Lord for insurance. Pictured above is over $80,000 worth of medication. I will be on medications like these for the rest of my life, it seems. If I added in my Type 1 diabetic husband’s sharps and medication costs, this would truly be hard to grasp. I had weeks when I had to skip doses because insurance wasn’t behaving properly, but overall, I’ve been able to get what I need this year. I don’t know if that will always be the case, so I’m thankful for the ten months of pain-free sleep I have had. It’s the longest stretch of physical relief I’ve had in sixteen years.

But, there is one more thing I think of when I look at this pile of needles and it doesn’t have anything to do with insurance or needle size. When I look at the remains of the last ten months of treatment, I can’t wait for Resurrection Day!

When Jesus took on flesh and became a man, He stepped into human history to carry our sins and our sorrows to the cross. In so doing, He familiarized Himself with human suffering and subjected Himself to wear a human body for the rest of eternity. John describes Jesus in Revelation as the Lamb who looked as though He had been slain, so as best as I can understand Scripture, we will see Him in human form. When God raised Him from the dead, Jesus’ body was both recognizable and yet not. His resurrected body bore the scars from His sacrifice at the cross, but He has promised us new bodies that will be raised to live in a new world that has no room for sickness, sorrow, sin, or death. Those resurrected bodies will be made for eternity.

 

My resurrected body won’t have bruises from needle sticks or white blood counts that tank to dangerously low levels. It won’t have hands that throb with advanced arthritis or a spine that burns with inflammatory disease. There won’t be foods that make me sick or cloudy thoughts that make it hard to think. There won’t be chronic tonsilitis because there won’t be side effect from medications…because medications won’t be needed. The bodies we get when Christ returns won’t get sick or feel pain. And I just—well, I can’t really wrap my mind around that reality.

Nothing in this life has made me long for heaven like physical pain, and in that, I am thankful for the way God has used suffering to refine my faith. He has revealed my idols, deepened my trust in Him, and taught me how to pray in the middle of the night. He has helped me see that suffering and blessing are two sides of the same coin and that suffering will get me ready for what comes next.

But suffering is temporary. Oh, it feels long when the hours slip by on the clock and pain has kept you up for every dark moment. It feels long with the diagnosis is grim or the sharps containers are full of syringes whose medications stopped working. It feels long when pain gives you tunnel vision and leaves you on the outside of the things you used to enjoy. But still, your pain has an end date. All suffering and sorrow will expire when Jesus cracks the sky and our broken bodies rise to meet Him—and go home.  

When I look at the promises of Scripture about the resurrection, I know I will leave this body, this pain, and all these needles behind. This is just temporary. There’s a cure that’s coming. To quote Don Carson, “I’m not suffering from anything a good resurrection can’t fix.”

When I look at the promises of Scripture about the resurrection, I know I will leave this body, this pain, and all these needles behind. Share on X

Borrowing a Death

When I was fourteen, I attended the funeral of an acquaintance who had died in a car accident. She was just sixteen, and it was the first funeral I’d ever attended for someone close to my age. I remember how much I cried, how wrong it felt to bury a teenage girl, how unfair it was to die in a car wreck when you had just learned how to drive. Though I didn’t know her well, I thought about this girl’s death for weeks, troubled by how close mortality now seemed. Her death made me feel vulnerable. I’d felt invincible during my childhood up to that point. Not anymore. I thought of her from time to time throughout my teen years, a cautionary tale of what could happen if you didn’t stay alert. I borrowed the event of her death to think about my own life, what could happen, and how to stay alive. I should have wept for her short life lost, but honestly, I wept for myself and how her death made me feel. And fear.

We do that a lot. Borrow a death. When was the last time you were at a funeral when someone didn’t take the opportunity to talk about their own life when eulogizing the person who has died? We all do it. It’s nearly impossible not to. You’re standing in the aisle talking with an acquaintance about how close you were to the deceased, trying to get them to see that there’s a reason for your tears. You’re listening during the eulogy, trying to decide what you’d say if you got up to speak, what you would say if someone gave you the microphone, what you would share to let them know you should be there—because your life was connected to the person you lost.

We feel the ache of loss or the awakening of mortality and then we think about how it impacts us, our lives, our time, our emotions. No matter the importance of the person who died, we grieve for the way it makes us feel. It’s an appropriation of grief, of life, of emotions. The funeral is less about the person we lost and more about we who are left behind. And I’m not sure there’s any other way. If, one day, you are standing at my funeral mourning the way you feel in the wake of my passing, I am happy for you to appropriate my death. Borrow it. It will mean that my life meant something to you. That our lives were connected, that we have a right and a reason to be sad. I don’t think it’s wrong to live so tangled up in one another’s lives that we can’t process a lost life without mourning how it changes us who are left to grieve.

This is, of course, what we are invited to do with Jesus’ death. Appropriate it. “Do this in remembrance of me,” he said to the disciples gathered around the bread and the cup right before his crucifixion (Luke 22:19). Remember his death, believe that it is for your life, be changed by it. Proclaim it until he comes (1 Cor. 11:26). Identify with it like Paul, who wrote: “For I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,” (Gal. 2:20). I died when Jesus died, and I will never be the same. His death did something to me. His life did something for me.

But this is a death we don’t just borrow for our own benefit. We also celebrate it, which is not something we ordinarily do with death. Celebrate death? Death, the enemy? Why would we celebrate? Because Jesus’ death was the one to end the hopelessness of death for us. Paul is eulogizing Jesus a little: “the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). This is how Jesus’ death and life impacted Paul, how the life and death of a man from Galilee (and before that, heaven) touched, changed, meant something for Paul. Paul didn’t just need Jesus’ death to mean something for him. He knew it already had. And forever would. He borrowed Jesus’ death so that his life would have meaning, and that is the only time it ever works like that. We may, at many points in our lives, grab hold of a death and say, “This person made my life matter, made me who I am.” And it may be true to some extent. A father shapes, a mother prays, a best friend loves, a child teaches. But there is only one borrowed death that changes us at our very core. Only one borrowed death that creates new life. Only one borrowed death that stood on the neck of Death itself and came out alive on the other side.

We can think of Jesus’ death in terms of appropriation. We should. He meant for us to know him for his sacrifice. He wasn’t coerced, neither was he disgruntled. He laid down his life willingly as a ransom for many. That was his plan all along. His life for yours.

To appropriate means to take something for your own use or possession. So, appropriate Jesus’ death. Borrow it that you may live. One day we won’t need it anymore for we will live—live—with him forever. That’s what his death does when we take it for our own use. That’s why he died. And why he was raised.

To appropriate means to take something for your own use or possession. So, appropriate Jesus’ death. Borrow it that you may live. Share on X

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When Hope is a Distant Shore

“Hope” was our word. 

The friend who discipled me during my early twenties reminded me of hope often. We traded it back and forth like a sweater that fit us both perfectly. I borrowed hope when the pregnancy tests kept coming up negative. She took it back when loneliness and singleness chafed. Back and forth, we passed hope until I moved away. My friend had the word engraved on a piece of glass and sent it with me across the state line. Hope isn’t in changed circumstances, we reminded each other. Hope is in Jesus.  

I kept my infertility; she kept her singleness.
But, hope that Jesus would be enough anyway was our mainstay.  

Some years later, when my friend was struggling with depression, I mailed the hope-etched glass back to her. Another year passed and a box arrived on my doorstep carrying a small, white pillow embroidered with our favorite word. Hope. Softer than glass. 

Hope traveled the miles between us as we upheld one another in prayer that even with unchanged circumstances, Christ was enough for our longing hearts. And He always was. Always is. 

I hadn’t had the pillow very long when I passed it along to another friend who was walking through a broken marriage. Sleeping alone for the first time in decades, she curled around hope and stained it with tears and mascara. Two years later, she returned it to me, professionally cleaned and cleared of all the traces of sorrow. Her marriage had been restored, but Jesus had sustained her when hope was a far-off thing.  

Recently, I passed the hope pillow to another friend. I gave it to her while we sat in the cancer center where the chemotherapy drugs dripped through the port in her chest. “It’s just a pillow,” I told her. “But it’s a reminder that the Lord is with you. He keeps you. He loves you. He won’t waste your suffering.” I joked that the pillow was better than a pair of traveling pants. Hope in Christ is far more certain than a bunch of women trying to fit into the same pair of jeans, you know. 

When we’re sinking down in a sea of suffering, hope can seem a distant shore. You squint hard to see it. Can’t make it out, though you know it must be there. You want it to be there. Stake everything on it being there. But it’s a long way off with a view obstructed by waves and mist and seeing dimly. We bob in the whitecaps of uncertainty, grasping for a glimpse of what we long for as the waves swell and recede beneath us.  

Will the Lord leave us in our circumstances? 
Where is hope if he does? 

waves and distant shore

Over the years, I’ve mistaken hope for the outcome I desire. But hope like that can be washed away in a single wave. The things we long for can be found and lost in a moment. But Jesus is sure, certain, unchanging. His work at the cross can’t be undone. If we have been made alive in him, we don’t have to worry that the shore is too far off because our hope is securely anchored in Christ. Hope is a person, not a guaranteed change of circumstance this side of heaven. The author of Hebrews encourages us that God showed us his unchangeable character and has secured it with a promise,  

“so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Heb. 6:18-20)

When the sea of suffering tosses you around with its unpredictability, you have hope—real hope. When unfulfilled longings pummel you with doubt and cloud your vision with despair, you have hope—real hope. When you have fled to God for refuge, when he is your salvation, when you have been made alive in Christ, Jesus is the sure and steadfast anchor for your soul. Hope in him. Hold fast to the promise that he has reconciled you to God. Remember that though health and dreams and positions and titles and people may slip away from us, Jesus never will. Tether yourself to him. Sink all your hope in him. He is no distant shore but a firm, steady anchor for your soul which will far outlast your earthly sorrows.  

When I’ve had trouble remembering that hope is Christ, not a circumstance, I’ve had brothers and sisters in Christ remind me of what’s true. That’s why there was a piece of glass and then a pillow and a lot of praying. To help me remember. It’s why you’ll find me in the pew with my church family every Sunday and gathered around a little table at the local coffee shop for Bible study with a small group of ladies every Tuesday. To help me remember. It’s why I can’t stop reading the Bible, praying, or joining with the body of Christ. To help me remember. I see too dimly too often. 

I look forward to the day my friend will pass the pillow back to me. While we pray for a donor and better blood cell counts, I pray that she’ll know with certainty that Christ is with her. Maybe I’ll need the pillow, or maybe I’ll pass it on to another friend who’s trying to glimpse the shore. Sometimes we need to be reminded that hope isn’t a distant shore. Hope is an anchor. Hope is the one who promised to be with us always.

Hope is Jesus.  

 

Remember that though health and dreams and positions and titles and people may slip away from us, Jesus never will. Share on X  

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Are You a Flaky Christian?

During my first few months as a pastor’s wife, I signed up to make and take dinner to a family who had lost a grandparent to a prolonged illness. I wasn’t a great cook at the time. Twenty-four years old and married barely two years, I was still regularly burning chicken and under-cooking eggs. I planned something easy that I rarely messed up. Spaghetti seemed a safe option. On my fridge calendar, I noted the date and time I had committed to take a meal to the bereaved family, and then promptly forgot about it. And I do mean forgot about it. A week later, I was crossing the day off the fridge calendar at about 11 p.m. and noticed that I was supposed to have made and delivered a meal to that family about six hours earlier.  

I absolutely panicked. It was nearly midnight, and there was nothing I could do—it was too late at night to even call and apologize! I pictured the family waiting for the pastor’s wife to bring dinner, and then eventually having to scrounge up something themselves as the hours ticked by. I was mortified to have let them down and to have forgotten something so important. This was, in my opinion, the epitome of flakiness. I didn’t sleep at all that night. The next day I called the family and apologized profusely. I stopped by their house later and dropped off some baked goods that I’d hurriedly put together early that morning. They were kind and gracious, but fourteen years later, I’ve never forgotten the incident. What I would have given for a smartphone back then to remind me about such things! 

I’m slowly working my way through the Sermon on the Mount these days, and I thought about that forgotten dinner recently when I read Matthew 5:33-37. In the middle of his shocking talks through anger, lust, retaliation, and persecution, Jesus weirdly addresses the subject of oaths. It sort of feels out of place, right? I mean, the only times I have taken oaths were at my wedding and in court when we finalized our sons’ adoptions. In a culture where oath-taking is restricted to courtrooms and ceremonies, how can we apply Jesus’ words about keeping our word? 

Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.” But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply “Yes” or “No”; anything more than this comes from evil. (Matthew 5:33-37)

It’s important to note here that Jesus isn’t really referencing forgotten dinners. He is talking about swearing or using God’s name to garner belief in one’s words, especially when one doesn’t really plan on keeping those words. D.A. Carson notes that by the time Jesus was walking the earth, “the Jews had built up an entire legalistic system around the Old Testament teaching. In the Jewish code of law called the Mishnah, there is one whole tractate given over to the question of oaths, including detailed consideration of when they’re binding and when they’re not…These oaths no longer foster truthfulness, but weaken the cause of truth and promote deceit. Swearing evasively [became] justification for lying.1” Essentially, the Jews had given themselves loopholes for keeping their word. They could double-back to what they’d promised and say, “Well, now I swore by Jerusalem, which means I don’t have to do what I said I’d do. If I’d sworn toward Jerusalem, then I definitely would have followed through.” Using some fancy linguistic footwork, they could avoid being held to their word. “Swearing evasively [became] justification for lying.2” 

Jesus, ever aimed at uncovering sin at the heart level, simply did away with the possibility of deceitfulness by commanding that we give up oaths altogether. He told his disciples to simply say “yes” or “no” and to keep their word. Manipulating people with murky discourse is at odds with Christ-following. Truthfulness is what he requires at every level. So, if you’ve committed to something, follow through because you are a follower of Jesus.  

I think we make excuses to give ourselves a way out of something so we don’t lose face if we forget to show up, or when we simply choose not to because we don’t feel like it or have found something more enjoyable to occupy our time. Or, after so many occasions of not following through, we begin to heap up phrases like “I promise I’ll show up!” or “I swear on my mother’s grave that I’ll be there!” People never know for sure if you mean what you’re saying. I believe the layman’s term for this is flakiness.  

If I asked you to mentally tally the people you know you can depend on, you’d know exactly who not to put on that list. It’s the person who never shows up when they say they will (or at all), who cancels constantly, who can’t be trusted with important things because they’re more likely to flake on you than to follow through. And because we’re all blighted with sinful natures, we’ve likely been that flaky friend at one time or another.  

Following Christ, however, requires that we put that flaky nature to death and think of others as more important than ourselves. Practically that might mean not over-scheduling your life so that you can be sure to show up to do what you’ve said you’ll do for friends or church members. It means considering the needs of others more important than your desire to stay home and watch Netflix. It means seeking to be that dependable person others can count on for prayer and care and hospitality—being that person your church members know they can put on their “dependable” list. It means being who you say you are, and if you’re in Christ, being who you really are—not who you used to be.  

If you are in Christ, then you have been crucified with Christ and you–the old you–no longer live. The life you now live in the flesh, you live by faith in the Son of God who loves you and gave himself for you (see Gal. 2:20). A life of integrity—saying yes or no and meaning it and not hedging it with a bunch of caveats or linguistic loopholes—is possible because you belong to Christ. Just as Jesus pointed out the hypocrisy in the Pharisees for giving to the needy, praying, and fasting for public praise in Matthew 6, he was pointing out the hypocrisy in manipulating promises to look like you’re doing something impressive that you have no intention of actually doing.  

In all things, we should image Christ in our relationships with others. We should be dependable and kind, considering others as better than ourselves when it comes to whether or not we’ll follow through with what we’ve said we’ll do. I think some of our tendencies toward flakiness are rooted in selfishness rather than excessive busyness or over-scheduling. If we love others with love that is sacrificial and kind, that bears others up when they are suffering, then we will keep our word with integrity.  

You don’t need to make an oath to be believed. Your follow-through, or lack thereof, will speak louder than any promise you might make.  

When I catch myself piling up promises to be somewhere, do something for someone, or keep an appointment for a meeting, I can usually trace my oaths and excuses back to a series of broken commitments. That flakiness looks a lot more like a lack of love for others than an overbooked calendar. Thankfully, there is a lot of grace for things like forgotten dinners or emergencies or unforeseen changes in plans; that’s not really what Jesus seemed concerned about. Integrity is what he is focused here. As far as it depends upon us, we should be who we say we are, do what we said we’ll do for in truthfulness, we point others to a God who can be trusted. We can encouraged by Jesus’ words in Matthew 5  to be certain that our words and actions are in agreement.

You don’t need to make an oath to be believed. Your follow-through, or lack thereof, will speak louder than any promise you might make. Share on X 

1D.A. Carson. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and His Confrontation with the World: An Exposition of Matthew 5-10. (Grand Rapids, MI: Global Christian Publishers, 2001), 50. 

2Ibid.

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Women, Don’t Be Weak-Minded: A Call for Discernment

I was a junior in college when I realized she was a universalist.

My favorite author, whose lyrical style and captivating storytelling filled my bookshelves, had finally shown her cards in one of her non-fiction works. I had to read the paragraph three times to realize that she had departed from the gospel of Jesus Christ. No other writer to date had shaped my theology and love for the written word like she had. When I came face to face with her expression of eventual grace for those who reject Christ, I realized I had a lot of work to do to unravel truth from lie. This was 2001. The internet was still new, and I chose books based upon friends’ suggestions or a professor’s recommended reading list. Sometimes I just scanned shelves at the local bookstore looking for an interesting cover.

It’s easier these days to see what’s popular. Through social media, blogging, and the irresistible Facebook share button, we can know exactly which book is making the rounds, what article or Instagram post has gone viral, what podcast is most empowering, which speaker is most enlightening. Beautifully curated bookshelves are photographed and tagged #amreading and #givemejesus but are loaded with a wide and varying degree of “Christian” authors, many of whom never address issues like atonement, redemption, depravity.

No, the colorful book jackets and podcast logos of today’s Christian pop-culture don’t often bring up terms as antiquated and demoralizing as sin. No, it’s more like flaws, or the Christian favorite, struggles. If anything, the term must deflect fault to something else: society, upbringing, victimization, hypocrisy in the church. Someone else’s sin, but not yours. That’s the whole point of these books, sometimes: excusing our flaws by explaining them. Or hyper-focusing on one moral code that will lead to genuine happiness, no matter where you fall on the infallibility of Scripture.

I’m grieved every time I see another woman I care about succumb to the latest “Christian” bestseller which, more often than not, is feel-good psychology scantily clad in a few decontextualized Bible verses. Sometimes I feel like I’m watching Paul’s second letter to Timothy play out in front of me when people I love fall prey to vacuous teaching that holds to a form of godliness but denies its power. I’ve been deceived myself, and I have to fight against weak-mindedness.

Weak-Minded Women

“For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” (2 Tim. 3:6-7, ESV)

Weak women. In some translations it’s idle. In others, it’s weak-minded, and I think that explains the condition best. It “suggests a wandering into counterfeits, with no awareness that truth has been left behind.2”

I’m not immune. As illustrated above, it’s happened to me. I’ve been sucked in by writers and speakers who pull us up close to their stories with warm-hearted charisma and a finger that gently points elsewhere for blame. I’ve cast many an admiring glance towards teachings that free me from responsibility and let me “be me.” I’ve been tempted by books that promise to uncover God’s specific, secret words to me personally in case my Bible is feeling out of date or too non-specific. What warms our hearts with fuzzy feelings about God’s plans for our lives amounts to nothing more than treating the Almighty like a fortune teller while scraping off any culpability for sin off Jesus’ commands for us to be like Him. The section of the bookstore titled “Christian Living” is a buffet where we can stuff ourselves with forms of godliness while starving for the knowledge that really does lead to the truth. It means we’ll always be back looking for that next book that might fix us by denying there’s anything wrong with us.

I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush. This isn’t every book for Christian women by a clear, long shot. I’ve read some of the most encouraging, gospel-saturated books by women and for women in the last two years that were high and above anything else I’ve read in that genre in my adult life. But those books don’t often make it to the front page of Amazon or to the bestseller shelves at the book store. Be wary of the ones that do take the lead. If a book resonates with someone opposed to the gospel or its transformative effects, then that book probably shouldn’t be a source upon which you build your theology. Critical reading is one thing. But, trying to glean “something good” from an author who denies Christ’s supremacy, man’s depravity, or Scriptural inerrancy is entirely another thing altogether and should be avoided.

Hold Fast to the Gospel

As I’ve worked my way through 2 Timothy over the past month, the thick thread holding Paul’s letter together is his charge to Timothy to preach the Word faithfully, holding fast to the gospel of Christ Jesus. At the risk of repetition, Paul exhorts over and over to stay true to the message of Jesus and Jesus only. And I don’t mean exhorts like “this would be a really great thing for you to do,” but exhorts like “preach the gospel like your life depends on it.” Because you know Paul. He doesn’t play. From his jail cell where he was imprisoned for this very gospel, he had heard about the pervasiveness of false teaching that was capturing people weighed down by sin and led astray by various passions. His exhortations always carry urgency, and with good reason. This is life and death.

Paul’s urgency translates well to the 21st century for there is nothing new under the sun. We may be two-thousand years removed from Paul, but the creeping nature of false teaching is still one of the enemy’s greatest tools for leading people astray. A form of godliness will work just fine. It doesn’t have to be that far off from the truth. Just enough to carry a shadow of the truth but that doesn’t actually result in a life transformed by the death of Jesus and the repentance of our sins.

Pray for Discernment

Here’s the good news, sisters. “It is not God’s will that women be weak in their discernment, burdened with sin, and led astray by passions.1” God desires more than this for you. He created you! His will is that you hold fast to the message of the gospel which is Christ and Him crucified and resurrected. In James 1, we are encouraged to pray for wisdom if we lack it. Wisdom isn’t fortune-telling. It’s discernment. And I believe praying for wisdom in regard to what we read and hear is a prayer God is moved to answer.

The gospel is your measuring stick. If what you’re reading, hearing, or watching isn’t anchored to the truth that you were dead in your sins until Jesus gave you new life by paying for your sins at the cross, then what you’re engaging with is missing the mark. If, like my college epiphany, what you’re filling your mind with denies the damning effects of sin and rejection of Christ, it is missing the mark. It is, as Paul said in 2 Timothy 3:5, a form of godliness that denies the power of the gospel. If you are building your theology (what you believe about God) upon what other people think about the Bible without ever studying the living, active Word of God for yourself, you are missing the mark and opening yourself up for dangerous error.

Exercise Discernment

“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, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:14-17, HCSB)

We have been given the gift of God’s words to us in the Bible. If you want to know His will for you, take up and read. If you want to find freedom from sin, take up and read. If you want to know how to speak the gospel of hope to your unbelieving friend, take up and read. If you want to learn how to persevere through trials, take up and read. Study the Word of God as much as you can, and by it measure everything else you read. There is no other book that is infallible or breathed out from the Maker of the universe. He has loved you by revealing Himself to you through His Word. Take up and read. Know His Word inside and out, and in so doing, you will be protecting yourself from weak-mindedness because you will be learning the mind of Christ.

Study the Word of God as much as you can, and by it measure everything else you read. Share on X

I’m not telling you not to read books besides the Bible. I love to read a wide range of writers, and I encourage others to as well! Read old books, new books, commentaries, poetry, blogs, articles. But first and foremost, read your Bible. All of it. As much as you can. The only way to really know if a writer or speaker is worming their way into your heart with a knowledge that doesn’t lead to truth is if you really, really know the truth.

Notes:

1Piper, John. “When a Lover of Good Thinks About Evil.”

2Guthrie, Donald. The Pastoral Epistles: An Introduction and Commentary. (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press), 1990, 179.

*Are men excused from the need for discernment? Certainly not. Paul’s exhortations to Timothy are to hold fast to the gospel message so he can help others hold fast to it. I address women because Paul does, and because of the lack of discernment I’m seeing within my own gender. Additionally, most of my readers are women.

*Need a place to start? Check out the books I’ve loved and been profoundly shaped by here.

Photo by Sarah Noltner on Unsplash

Can I Trust God with My Child’s Suffering?

He was eating a waffle. Just sitting across the café table from me, all gangly arms and legs, eating a waffle that he’d covered in maple syrup. He’s just turned ten, and I’m increasingly aware of the mere three inches between our heights. I picked at my salad, trying to decide if a cup of coffee might soothe the pounding in my temples. The caffeine wouldn’t keep me up at night any more than the swirl of medical information I’d just absorbed. I listened to my son’s animated chatter about summer break and basketball, and then he stopped short and looked me in the eye and said, “Mom, I don’t want to do this.” I blinked hard and fast, not wanting him to see my tears. I didn’t want him to have to do it either.

It could be much worse. I’ve watched friends parent their children through cancer and chronic illnesses. My son is healthy in the ways that matter the most. But the future holds at least a decade of incredibly restrictive treatments that will further isolate an already timid child. He’s not in pain now, but he might be in the future.

My son’s words hung in the air for a moment too long. We’d been with doctors and specialists for hours. You’re the mom, I reminded myself. Jesus, help me be strong for my son. I offered some calming words while trying not to picture what the next ten years might look like. He’ll be twenty by then. I swallowed hard. He asked for a storytelling podcast on the two-hour trip home, and with the children’s hospital in our rear view mirror, we distracted ourselves with someone else’s imagination.

Hours later I allowed myself to buckle beneath the pressure of a brave face and a long uphill climb. I hid in the bathroom and cried. As much as I wanted to stay home, I knew I needed to drag myself to our mid-week church meeting that evening. I wept and shared the day’s news because I needed someone else to lift a corner of this burden so it’s not so heavy. It is one thing trust the Lord with your own suffering. I get that. I’ve been there more than once. I have a t-shirt. But it is an excruciating exercise of faith to trust the Lord with your child’s suffering.

It is one thing to trust the Lord with your own suffering. But it is an excruciating exercise of faith to trust Him with your child’s suffering. Share on X

I don’t want hard things for my kids. I want them to be happy and well-adjusted. I want them to know the sweetness of God’s goodness and the faithfulness of His presence. I want to protect them from evil and suffering and sadness. Basically, I want them to trust God like their life depends on it without their life actually depending on it. But I know in looking back on my own years of physical and emotional suffering that that’s not really an expectation I can logically hold on to. It is the hard stuff that teaches us about God’s faithfulness. It’s down in the valley of the shadow when we know that He is with us. We forget we need Him in the green pastures by the still waters. We are more inclined to call for Him when we’re scared and it’s dark and the road is uphill all the way.

“…we know that affliction produces endurance…” (Rom. 5:3)

The church prayed for us at the end of that long day of doctors and waffles and concern. They prayed for discernment, for more options, for wise parenting that comforts our son. I thought of Moses when his arms got tired. This is why you share your joys and your sorrows with the body of Christ: so your arms don’t get tired. When I tucked my son into bed that night, he whispered his fear into the dark. “Mom, I just want my old life back.”

His words knifed an actual pain in my chest. I felt it throb right next to my aorta. I curled up next to him and cupped my hand around his cheek so he’d look me in the eye. “This is hard stuff. No doubt about it, God is having you walk a hard road.” I paused. It would be a hard road for an adult, let alone a ten-year-old.

“Did you know that when your dad and I got married, we had a really hard road to walk, too? A doctor told me something was wrong with my body. She told me it was called infertility. It meant I couldn’t be a mom. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to have it. I just wanted my old life back. I was sad for a long time. But then one day, years later, your dad and I adopted you. And we love you so much. If I had gotten my old life back, I wouldn’t have you. In my really sad days, God was being good to me. He was teaching me to trust Him. So maybe, what we do is look for the ways God is being good to you with all this hard stuff. He’s really good at using our sadness for good because He loves us. Nobody can do that like God can.”

A small smile. “Okay, Mom.” He turned over to go to sleep.

“…endurance produces proven character…” (Rom 5:4)

I slipped from his room and closed the door quietly. I would trade places with him in an instant. I feel one-hundred percent out of control. Though I’ve spent the days since researching treatment options and second opinions, there is little I can do to stifle the blow of suffering my son will feel.

“..and proven character produces hope.” (Rom. 5:4)

And this is where I find myself staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night wondering if God is God enough to love my son through his suffering.

I know that He is.

How do I know? Well, to quote the most repeated song of my childhood, the Bible tells me so. If I’ve learned anything about suffering in Scripture over the past few years, it’s that God can use it to draw us close to Him. In James 1, Jesus’ brother tells us that maturity in Christ comes through the perseverance born of trials. You can’t really learn perseverance when life is easy and you don’t need to persevere. No, perseverance is learned in the refining fire of suffering, and as Peter says in his first epistle, the perseverance we learn in hardship brings praise, honor, and glory to Christ (1:7). Hope must be anchored in the grace of Christ, of His work for us at the cross—not in trouble-free lives marked by comfort or ease. Hope that is anchored in Christ doesn’t disappoint because it cannot be plucked from our hands the way that health, possessions, normalcy, and relationships can. Hope in Christ is eternally secure.

“This hope will not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Rom. 5:5)

Hope that is anchored in Christ doesn’t disappoint because it cannot be plucked from our hands the way that health, possessions, normalcy, and relationships can. Share on X

My son is a new believer in Jesus. We’ve taught him the gospel from infancy, but the blooming of general belief into real, fruit-bearing faith has been beautiful to behold. While he is learning to follow Jesus, we are still learning to follow Jesus when we wish we could have our old life back.

In the same way that we have walked through suffering of our own, we are trying to look for the ways God is being good to us. It’s difficult to look into the eyes of a child and explain why certain things happen when we don’t know the answers ourselves. But I believe that looking for the ways God is being good to us in suffering will ultimately point us to the cross where He was good to us in ways we cannot fully comprehend. At the bottom of all of this is the truth that God loves my son more than I do. He is the One who hung the stars in place and planned to send Jesus to carry our sins and our sorrows before He even put those stars in place. He has promised us that “affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Sprit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5).

He is trustworthy when it comes to your own suffering. And He’s trustworthy when it comes to your child’s suffering. It might be hard to see His goodness when your child hurts, but your child will learn to trust Jesus by watching you learn to trust Jesus. While He may not give us the physical healing we desire for our kids, His hope does not disappoint. Ever. And really, that’s the hope we want for our children, right?

 

 

 

 

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Look at Jesus Until You See Him

We were sitting in a circle on a Wednesday night in the part of the church building called the parlor. If you grew up in a Southern Baptist church there’s a good chance you know which room it is. It’s got mauve wallpaper and darker mauve carpet and chairs made to appear Victorian but that actually look like they were bought in the 60’s, which they absolutely were. This is the room where you have wedding showers and…well, I’m not sure what else. We use it for book studies and prayer meetings, those kinds of church events that are typically less attended by churchgoers across the country. You know what I mean.

It was not so long ago when we circled up in the mauve parlor around a book and a dialogue, and to be honest, these are some of my favorite parts of church life. Sitting on outdated furniture in a small room where the air conditioning sometimes works with the salt-of-the-earth folks that had the compulsion to show up on a Wednesday night in the summer, this is where some of the deeper work of fellowship and building up together happens. That night, the chapter in the book our little church is reading covered the topic of fighting sin, and I’ve been plagued by the author’s absence of actionable steps ever since. There wasn’t a plan for overcoming the things that rear their big, ugly heads in our ugly, little hearts. There was simply the encouragement to behold the glory of God.

We often want a three-step formula for fighting our sin. Do this + don’t do that = victory over sin. That seems reasonable. Tell me what to do to be better, Jesus. It makes my pharisaical little heart bloom with pride when I can fix something, when I can fix it. (Never mind that I broke it in the first place.) But, the absence of steps in the book reminded me of the absence of steps in Scripture. Certainly, there are Scriptural calls to be alert and to be faithful in prayer and in exposure to the Word. Making war on our sin is an absolute must. But unlike the things in life I can progressively conquer with bulleted steps like weightloss or increasing my savings account, I’m struggling to come up with an exact formula for killing my sin. The “doer” in me really wants a bulleted list.

But you know, these three-step plans aren’t what we need because they speak to our pride-bent nature for trying to work our way into God’s good graces. Like that’s ever worked for anyone. It’s what Paul said with an obvious note of incredulousness in his voice in Galatians 3, “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now going to be made complete by the flesh?” Essentially, it’s this: “Look here, dummy. You didn’t save yourself. You can’t sanctify yourself either. Stop trying!” (Maybe Paul wouldn’t call us dummies, but he was kind of salty like that sometimes.) We are as desperate for the Spirit’s work in our sanctification as we were for His work in our salvation. So, accumulating a pile of steps for conquering sin doesn’t really fit into the framework of the gospel. But filling up with the glory of Christ until there’s room for nothing else—that fits.

Accumulating a pile of steps for conquering sin doesn’t really fit into the framework of the gospel. But filling up with the glory of Christ until there’s room for nothing else—that fits. Share on X

For the sake of better arguments, I’m combining quotes from John Piper, Ray Ortlund, and Jared Wilson, but the point they all make (and the point we discussed at length that mauve night in the parlor) is that if you want to fight your sin, you don’t do it by trying really hard not to sin. You do it by looking hard at Jesus. Until you see Him. Beholding Him until He edges out the darkness and it hurts your eyes in a really good way because you can’t stop looking at Him.

Maybe that seems abstract, but it’s not when you break it down. It’s looking at the bigness of God when the siren’s voice of habitual sin calls your name. Rather than listen to her, lift up your eyes instead. Maybe even literally. To fight the sin of lust, John Piper says to go outside and look at the sky, and as weird as that sounds, there is something good and right about filling up your eyes with what cannot be tamed by your wicked heart.

If you want to fight your sin, you don’t do it by trying really hard not to sin. You do it by looking hard at Jesus. Share on X

I began reading the Bible for myself when I was a teenager, and I remember I used to get stuck in the more positive chapters of Job and Isaiah that expound upon God’s, well, His largeness, for lack of a better word. I learned that the size of the galaxy and the sheer vastness of the undiscovered areas of the universe are tiny dots in God’s big hands. That fascinated me. We lived way out in the country in West Tennessee in those days, and when it got dark, it got really dark. The stars were brighter than they are where I live now next to street lights and lots of neighborhood porches. At fifteen, I would go out into the backyard and lie on my back with my hands folded under my head. I’d stare at the sky until everything else in my life seemed inconsequential, until I could believe with my whole heart that God was bigger than me, until nothing mattered more than the One who spoke all that vastness into being like it was nothing.

These days I’m too busy scrolling on screens and typing on screens and being entertained by screens to step outside on a summer night and behold the bigness and glory of God through the things that He has made for His glory. What would change internally if I changed my habits externally, I wonder.

But more than looking at the sky, beholding God’s glory–looking at Him until we really see Him–means the age-old practice of beholding Him through His own words. This morning before the sun came up, I sat on my couch with bedhead and a half-drunk cup of coffee and read a good portion of Hebrews with tears in my eyes praying, “Lord, please kill this sin in me. This same old sin. Kill it dead.” It feels really helpless, but I know it’s the right thing to do. If I could reduce this sin-killing stuff down to one step, it’s this very act of looking at Jesus until I see Him, until I’m happier in Him than I am in my sin. It’s looking at Him when I feel like all I can see is the darkness of my own heart, when I fear I’ll never get past my anger, when the everydayness of my transgressions feels bigger than the One who paid for them at the cross. I just have to keep looking at Him until His bigness is bigger than my sin. He’s already bigger. I just need to practice seeing that He is. Part of sanctification is the everyday practice of looking at God. The other part is trusting Him to do the rest.

We kill our sin by sweeping the house clean and then filling it up with the goodness of Christ until it’s so jam packed with His glory there’s no room for the dark to creep back in so easily. It’s less of a formula and more of a dependency on the Lord to aid us in beholding Him. If you are despairing over the sin that calls your name with faithful regularity, turn your face away from the dark and stare at Jesus until He’s all there is. Look at Him until you really see Him, until your heart is happier in Him than it could ever be in your sin.

“…work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out His good purpose.” Philippians 2:12b-13

Part of sanctification is the everyday practice of looking at God. The other part is trusting Him to do the rest. Share on X
Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash

What is a Praying Life?

It was summertime when it happened. I remember that because my grandmother’s second story bedroom had a big window where warm summer sun poured into her room, making her collection of succulent plants happy, I’m sure. I used to break off a tiny piece of her aloe plant to squeeze out some of the sticky juice. She’d show me how to rub it into my hands. Nature’s lotion.

She had the greenest thumb of anyone I’ve known. Her two-story sunroom was filled from top to bottom with plants and small trees. Her elephant ear plant was nearly twenty feet tall. We lived with her for a year while my parents built a new home, and it was nearly like living in a greenhouse. Outside, she had acres and acres of canvas upon which to pull beauty from the earth. I remember summers spent filling up plastic gallon buckets of blueberries from the ten foot tall bushes next to the pond, and I’m certain there was a lot of complaining on my part about the heat, the chiggers, and the southern humidity. My grandmother worked circles around us all, and she reaped the rewards for her many hours of gardening with a bounty of fruit, vegetables, and an indoor flower garden.

But my grandmother was good at something else, and like the seasons of fruit picking and weeding, it was summer when I realized that more important to her than her gardening was prayer.

I was about nine years old that warm summer day we came for a visit. When my grandfather opened the front door alone, I ran to find my grandmother. I burst through her bedroom door to announce our arrival but stopped in my tracks when I discovered her kneeling in front of a small padded bench, her Bible fanned out in front of her. Her eyes were closed, her face a picture of intent determination, her lips moving silently. I tiptoed backwards out of the room and shut the door as delicately as I could. I stood in the hallway, hand on the door knob, uncertain of what to do next. I knew I’d interrupted something important, but it was years before I understood the significance of my grandmother’s powerful life of prayer.

“Devote yourselves to prayer. Stay alert in it with thanksgiving.” Colossians 4:2

A decade later I was rummaging through my grandmother’s attic searching for some random end tables and chairs to furnish my apartment, and my grandmother was pulling out odds and ends I might find useful while telling me to be safe living on my own.  She prayed for me every day, she said. Standing in the attic, I suddenly remembered her in the sunbathed bedroom with the bench and the Bible and the aloe vera plants, and I knew she wasn’t merely giving me a motherly platitude. She was telling the truth. She really did pray for me every single day. Fifteen years after that, I stood at her funeral with my husband and children and greeted people I didn’t know who clung to my hands and wept with gratitude at the ways my grandmother had given of her time, money, possessions, and most of all–prayer. More obvious than the bushels of blueberries we’ve eaten over the years or the number of times she had to cut back the elephant ear plant is the fruit of my grandmother’s many decades of intentional prayer.

“Pray constantly. Give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Don’t stifle the Spirit.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17-19

 

How Did She Do it?

I don’t think the path to a praying life happens accidentally. That humid Tennessee morning when I interrupted my grandmother’s prayer time wasn’t a one-time thing. It was an every day occurrence. My grandfather met me in the hall that morning and said, “She won’t come out until she’s done praying. Come eat some breakfast while you wait.” And I’d padded off to the kitchen with him where we ate sausage and biscuits and drank heavily sugared coffee under the skylight that warmed the kitchen counter with as much light as the bedroom full of aloe vera plants and intercessory prayer.

My grandmother’s morning ritual of prayer time was exactly that–a ritual she wouldn’t give up even if it meant missing a few minutes with her grandchildren. I remember feeling the weight of importance as I stood outside the bedroom door I’d closed gently. I remembered it when she insisted that she prayed for me daily. I felt the magnitude of it when I stood in the funeral line and listened to a stream of stories from strangers who’d been touched by my grandmother’s walk with Christ. She prayed every single day, and not just little sentence prayers sent up in moments of frustration throughout her day (although I’m sure there was plenty of that), but in regular, intentional hours of prayer carved out of her mornings. Those were her times for prayer and nothing else. She prayed with an open Bible and, I’m sure, a list.

“Pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert in this with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints.” Ephesians 6:18

 

Why Did She Do it?

My grandmother wasn’t perfect by any means. But she walked closely with Christ who was and is perfect, and she emulated her life after His. Jesus, who walked the earth as both man and God, deemed it entirely necessary to slip away from the crowds and His friends and everyone who wanted something from Him to spend time praying to the Father.

“Yet He often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.” (Luke 5:16)

“Very early in the morning while it was still dark, He got up, went out, and made His way to a deserted place. And He was praying there.” (Mark 1:35 

“After dismissing the crowds, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. When evening came, He was there alone.” (Matt. 14:23)

It was important to Jesus, who actually was and is God, to spend time praying alone. It should be important for those of us who are His followers to do so as well. If He who was God needed to pray, how much more do we who aren’t all-knowing and all-powerful? Our struggle with sin and forgetfulness necessitates a praying life.

Beyond emulating Christ’s example, prayer is an act of obedience to Him. Jesus gives us instructions on how to do it in Matthew 6:9-15 and gives us a beautiful example through His high priestly prayer in John 17. He also tells us how not to pray in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14. There doesn’t seem to be room for a question of whether or not we should pray. When Jesus address prayer, He tells and shows us how to do it. In the New Testament epistles, Paul gives us plenty of exhortations to be devoted to prayer (see 1 Thess. 5:17-18, Phil. 4:6, Eph. 6:18, Col. 4:2). It’s never a question of if but when you pray. In the Bible, the assumption is that followers of Christ will pray.

In the Bible, the assumption is that followers of Christ will pray. Share on X

After obedience, prayer is an act of faith, I think. It’s acknowledging that only God is sovereign and that we are powerless to do anything except plead with Him to move. It’s like the Israelites in the wilderness watching the tabernacle for the next step. If the cloud went up, they could pack up and move. If the cloud stayed hovering over the holy section of the tent, they stayed put. You move, we move. You stay, we stay. I think of prayer a bit like that. It’s waking up in the morning and saying, Lord, I can’t move until You do. I can’t do anything without Your Spirit leading the way. So I’ll open up this Bible and listen to Your voice, and I’ll ask You to help me obey it. I won’t take a step that’s outside the path You illuminate with Your Word. This is the way, help me to walk in it. 

“Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses every thought, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7

My grandmother taught me a lot about regular, intentional prayer. In addition to praying over the Scriptures, she prayed for others constantly. I’ve learned over the last several years that I cannot in good conscience tell someone I’m praying for them if I don’t have a plan to do so. For me, this looks like a handwritten list taped to the inside cover of my Bible. I have things I pray for every single day, and some things I pray for weekly. Working through the list keeps my mind focused in my early morning hour of prayer, and it ensures that I actually do pray for the people I’ve promised I’ll pray for.

Prayer is the way I work through my personal struggle with sin, it’s how I lay down my worries about my kids, my church, my finances, my work, my marriage. Prayer is like kneeling at a padded bench by the window and the aloe plant and saying, Lord, where else can I go? Only You have the words of life. Only You have the power to be sovereign over anything. Only You can work good from this tangled up mess in front of me. Please be here in the midst of it. Prayer helps me to walk away from my worries trusting that life won’t fall apart if I let go of it. Prayer is acknowledging that God is sovereign and I am not.

 

After All These Years

I took home exactly one plant from all the funeral flowers at my grandmother’s memorial service two years ago. It’s a peace lily plant, and though I’ve nearly killed it at least a dozen times, it’s still alive and puts out a white bloom at the oddest times of the year. I did not inherit my grandmother’s green thumb, and I’m okay with that. Far more important is the heritage of spiritual discipline she passed down to me that sometimes seems hard but in reality is the beautiful work of perseverance that is absolutely necessary to the Christian life.

Prayer does feel like work sometimes, I think. Like any spiritual discipline, it takes a while for prayer to become a habit, but also like the other spiritual disciplines, the rewards are worth every ounce of effort. A prayerful life doesn’t happen by accident; it happens by intention and affection for Christ. If you can’t muster up either of those things, pray for the discipline to pray! Be like Tozer who prayed, “I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still.”  Even a plea to desire to pray is the right prayer.

I’m a slow learner, but here’s what I know: there is freedom in laying down your burdens before the Lord each morning and saying, “I can’t. You can. Your will be done.” There is an unearthly gratitude that grips your heart when you cross off your list the name of a person you’ve prayed to come to Christ every day for ten years. There is blessed conviction that crawls its way out of your chest when you speak the ways you’ve sinned before God as you’ve read His words. Prayer is how we understand who we are in light of God’s sovereignty. Prayer is how He wants us to stay close to Him. Prayer is how we open our controlling, conniving little hands and say, “You are wise and I am not. Help me to walk in Your way.” It is, in every way, a gift of free access that Jesus made possible when He took on flesh and carried our sins and sorrows to the cross.

“Therefore, brothers, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way He has opened for us through the curtain (that is, His flesh), and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.” Hebrews 10:19-22

Jesus died to set us free from sin, so we should dive deep into that freedom by running through the flung-wide sanctuary doors to call out to the Father.

 

 

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

 

 

Ours is an Every Day Gospel

I tried to ignore the gospel this morning.

My alarm sounded rudely at 5 am, and I spent fifteen minutes trying to convince myself that the world might look a little brighter if I turned my back on it for another two hours. But the discouragement that weighed down my heart, my bones, my eyes could only be answered one way. In the kitchen the coffee brewed obediently, and I poured a cup before sitting down on the couch with my Bible and notebook. Peter has been speaking to me for weeks, and I can’t seem to leave his words alone.

I’ve picked at the phrases, inked them in my notebook repeatedly, rolled them around in my head over and over: phrases like “living stones” and “be holy, “temporary residence” and “kept in heaven for you.” They’re good words, true words. They’re words that speak of the person I was before the blood of Christ covered my sins and resurrected my dead heart. They’re words that remind me that I’m not that girl anymore, and that any hardship I face today can’t compare with my future with God in heaven. The words of the Lord given to us through Peter have shored up my confidence that the work of Jesus at the cross touches every corner of my sanctification. 

Really, it’s just the gospel. Just the gospel. The message of Christ crucified, risen, and victorious is one I’ve heard since infancy, and I’ve believed it nearly that long. So sometimes when I read the Bible, the familiar words don’t even register. Oh, this again. Jesus died for me. Jesus was raised from the dead. Jesus will return for His Church. Right. All good. Hallelujah. What’s next?

Sometimes I’m looking for something more. But, the message of the gospel isn’t one we come to for salvation and then advance from for sanctification. No, this gospel we have believed is for all of life. Ours is an every day gospel. We will never graduate to something better because there is nothing better. There is nothing that can compare with the gospel of Christ we’ve already been given. Peter tells us how blessed we are to know the full truth of it.

“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that would come to you searched and carefully investigated. They inquired into what time or what circumstances the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating when He testified in advance to the messianic sufferings and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you. These things have now been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Angels desire to look into these things.” 1 Peter 1:10-12

The Old Testament prophets longed to see it come to fruition; the angels long to understand it. And here we sit with our Bibles open (or maybe not) and a bored look on our face and we wonder what’s next. I thought I needed something else this morning. But thankfully, there’s just the gospel.

The message of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is the one we need every morning when the clock drags us from sleep. It’s the message we need to strap on to ourselves so we can faithfully scratch out our existence on an earth that groans for its Creator. It’s the message we need to remind us that our sin doesn’t have to win. It’s the message the people around us need to hear. It’s the message we need when discouragement hangs so heavy over us there seems to be no room for light. The gospel is the message we need when we don’t understand why we still need it.

The gospel is the message we need when we don't understand why we still need it. Share on X

Christian, Jesus died in your place. He who knew no sin carried your sin, became your sin, paid for your sin at the cross. Paid for it in full. And when death lost its grip on Jesus, God raised Him  from the dead to prove that the payment for your sins was accepted in full. The resurrected Christ guarantees that your death will only be temporary. He returned to heaven and sat down next to the Father because His work was done. This is the gospel message: His life for yours. He became sin so you could wear His righteousness and stand justly justified. He left heaven to suffer in your place so that you could be guaranteed an inheritance with Him in heaven forever.

“He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, uncorrupted, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. You are being protected by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” 1 Peter 1:3b-5

Perhaps you’re ready to scroll on to the next thing. You’ve heard this a thousand times. But, this is the message you need today. In every area of the Christian life, the gospel applies.

Fighting sin? Jesus died to free you from it. You are not a slave. You can “be holy as the One who called you is holy” because you can cry out to the One who nailed your sin to His cross. (1 Pet. 1:15)

Are you enduring suffering? God is sovereign over your every trial, and He has given Christ as your example for perseverance. “For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in His steps” (1 Pet. 2:21). You can put every care upon Him because He cares for you.

Do you struggle to believe that God loves you? He called you out of darkness and into His light in order to make you His own. You belong to Him! (1 Pet. 2: 9-10) Your identity is anchored in His faithfulness to save sinners who never deserve it.

Do you worry about the future? Don’t confuse certainty about earthly success with the source of our true hope: “Set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus” (1 Pet. 1:13). Our lives are temporary here; our real life is coming. Christ’s resurrection means your resurrection is sure.

Are you weighed down by guilt for past sin? Don’t be. This resurrected Savior I’ve been going on about is living proof that restitution has been made for your every ugly thought or deed. You’ve been given a new birth and a living hope (1 Pet. 13). You can walk in freedom because the Son has set you free.

You could break down each scenario further, but what it always involves is stopping your runaway thoughts with the unchanging truth of the gospel: Jesus died for me, and God says it is enough. The gospel message is one we need to hear on repeat every morning because we bend toward unbelief every morning. Maybe the message feels overly familiar sometimes, but what a gift to know, inside and out, the truth that you used to be dead, now you’re alive, and one day you’ll live forever with God because He loved you enough to sacrifice His own Son for you. This gospel may feel faded and frayed around the edges when we watch the never-ending reel of what’s new, exciting, “life-giving” on the morning news or in the social media feed. But only the gospel of Christ can stand through history and offer the same unfading, uncorrupted, imperishable message of hope for the walking dead.

And it goes beyond that because it isn’t just for salvation. It’s for every single day of living and breathing and walking the crooked path to the glory that awaits us in Him. We’ve not been saved and left to fend for ourselves. No, we’ve been armed with the power unto salvation and the power for sanctification. Tomorrow morning when you get up, resist your resistance and tell yourself again what Christ has done for you.

“He was chosen before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the times for you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.” 1 Peter 1:20-21 

Praise God, we have an every day gospel.

But only the gospel of Christ can stand through history and offer the same unfading, uncorrupted, imperishable message of hope for the walking dead. Share on X

 

 

 

Photo by Kiwihug on Unsplash

 

Good Friday’s Torn Curtain

“Suddenly, the curtain of the sanctuary was split in two from top to bottom;

the earth quakes and the rocks were split.” Matthew 27:51

“Then the curtain of the sanctuary was split in two from top to bottom.” Mark 15:38

“…The curtain of the sanctuary was split down the middle.” Luke 23:45

I remember the first time I understood the meaning behind the torn curtain. I was in college and taking an Old Testament survey class. I’ll admit, I’d never spent much time studying the instructions for the building of the tabernacle or the temple. I tended to skim the Old Testament books that are weighted with measurements and materials, spans and cubits. For years, I missed the significance of the temple structure and what it meant for how the people of God could–and could not–approach their God. In tandem with His instructions for the tabernacle’s construction in Exodus, God gave the Law which exposed man’s deep need for propitiation. The job of the priests was to make atonement for the people day in and day out through the offering of sacrifices within the structure where God would live. The priests’ work was perpetual for the sin of man was a beast that would not be tamed or quieted. Buried in the explanations of the tabernacle’s height and width and the placement of the furniture within is a description of a curtain, a veil, that would separate the main portion of the structure from its holiest square footage.

What was this curtain and why did its splitting in two come up thousands of years later in the crucifixion story? 

The curtain was put in place in the tabernacle after God delivered His people from slavery in Egypt. The Lord said to Moses, “They are to make a sanctuary for Me so that I may dwell among them. You must make it according to all that I show you–the pattern of the tabernacle as well as the pattern of all its furnishings” (Ex. 25:8-9). He had promised to dwell among His people, and He kept that promise. The construction of a dwelling place was His idea, and its blueprint was incredibly detailed. One of those details implied that a veil should be erected between the holiest portion of the sanctuary–where God’s presence would dwell–and the rest of the building. Tradition indicates that the curtain was sixty feet long and thirty feet wide, and the fabric was as thick as a man’s palm.

When God brought His people into the land He had promised to give them, the tabernacle was eventually exchanged for the more permanent structure of the temple. Again, God gave stipulations for its construction, this time to King Solomon. Rather than fabrics that could be folded up and moved throughout the wilderness during Israel’s wanderings, the temple was built with stones. The veil that separated the most holy place from the rest of the temple was ornate and colorful, a masterful work of art (2 Chron. 3:14). For hundreds of years, priests would pass through the veil to make offerings for the sins of the people, a process that was often less sincere than it should have been. God lived among His people as promised, but the sin of man was a constant wedge between man and Maker. Access to God was severely limited at best.

The curtain in the temple signified God’s complete holiness and offered protection for the people; they could not stand before Him in their dead and dark-hearted condition. His holiness was too bright, their sin too dark. The chasm was as wide and deep as the human heart is wicked and deceitful. Who could stand before God and live? No one.

Except for One. He was God and He was man, and He was never tainted by sin.

“Every priest stands day after day ministering and offering the same sacrifices time after time, which can never take away sins. But this man, after offering one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.” Hebrews 10:11-12

When Jesus made intercession for us at the cross by spilling His own blood, His work was complete. Until that point, the priests never ceased in their temple work. Atonement was an ongoing work until the sinless Savior died, exchanging His glory for our curse. He stepped into the chasm. He was the bridge, the mediator between God and man. Unlike the priests who continually made sacrifices for the continual sins of man, Jesus’ work was so effective, so accepted by God, so perfect and complete that He sat down at the right hand of God when He was finished. Priests never sat down because the sin of man could never be adequately covered. Until the Jesus. Until the cross. Until the perfect Lamb of God cried out, “It is finished!” Until the history-splitting moment when the One through whom all of creation was made did not take another breath. The earth groaned in response, the graves of the long dead broke open, and the curtain that had long ago separated sinful man from holy God was rent down the middle from top to bottom. The curtain didn’t tear because it was brittle with age or because some sneaky priest was tired of making intercession for the endless sins of man and himself. The curtain was torn because the priestly work of Jesus was finished and the gap was bridged. In the rending of holy fabric, the chasm between man and God was sealed up with the blood of Christ. The curtain was torn, but in Christ, man’s relationship with God was mended.

It was finished. The lifeless body of the hope of all mankind was the final sacrifice, the only one sufficient to take away sins. Jesus’ death bridged the chasm between God and man, but it wasn’t merely a heroic, last-ditch attempt at stepping in and fixing our problem. It was always God’s plan for Jesus to be our reconciliation. Before the first threads of the first curtain were woven together, God had planned to send Jesus. Before there was even a need for the curtain, God had planned to tear it down the middle.

Before the first threads of the first curtain were woven together, God had planned to send Jesus. Before there was even a need for the curtain, God had planned to tear it down the middle. Share on X

This is our God, who made a way for us to know Him in spite of our efforts to ignore Him. This is our hope, Jesus who went behind the curtain and did what no other priest could do. This is the way unto salvation, believing that Jesus’ death paid for our sins. This is our gift, free access to our Creator. There is no curtain because there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. You can stand before the Father on the blood of Jesus with the covering of His righteousness. No one can sew the curtain back together. Jesus’ resurrection was the proof of His victory over sin and the evidence that the curtain was no longer necessary. The temple which had once been built with stones has become the heart of God’s people, constructed with living stones built together upon the Cornerstone, who is Christ.

No more do we have to hope that the blood of animals and the intercession of mediators might be enough. Or, as contemporary thinking suggests, no longer do we have to depend upon our good works to be enough. None of that would ever be enough. Only Jesus’ work was enough, entirely enough, to secure our access to the Father and our right standing before Him. The tattered curtain in the temple and the broken body on the cross made a dark Friday outside Jerusalem a very Good Friday for us.

“We have this hope as an anchor for our lives, safe and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain. Jesus has entered there on our behalf…” Heb. 6:19-20

There is no curtain because there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Share on X

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

 

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