Tag: faith

What is Spiritual Discipline?

by Andrew Micah, posted in calling, christian leadership, Uncategorized

I’m currently reading through Disciplines of a Godly Man by R. Kent Hughes. (I’ve only just started, so I’ll withhold a recommendation or a review until I’ve finished.) Yesterday I sat down to answer the study questions for chapter 1. I found the first of those questions, which concerns the definition of spiritual discipline, an appropriate subject of contemplation not just for myself but for many of my friends who have more than usual solitary free time in the midst of the COVID-19 quarantine. What follows is the fruit of my own contemplation, and I hope it offers helpful perspective and guidance to those of you who are perhaps giving an unusual degree of attention to the state of spiritual discipline in your lives in this unique time. In this article I attempt to provide a thorough definition of what spiritual discipline is in a way that will help us engage in spiritual disciplines more worshipfully and fruitfully. I’d like to start by giving you my own definition, and then show you step-by-step how I arrive at that definition.

I would define spiritual discipline as the God-centered, gospel-enabled, Spirit-empowered, conscious and deliberate training of one’s whole heart, soul, mind, and strength to be set apart for the praise and enjoyment of God through obedience to His commandments, in anticipation of eternity spent with Him. Spiritual discipline is driven by delight in God that is stirred up by the perfection of who He is and His love for and delight in us.

To better understand what spiritual discipline is, let’s break this definition down by considering five essential components. These five components are the orientation (who it’s for) the motive force (what’s the power source), the subject (what it happens to), the action (what it does), and the objective (or the end goal) of spiritual discipline.

First, the orientation of spiritual discipline is God-centered, not self-centered. It’s not about self-promotion, but about the revelation of God’s glory in us as we become progressively more and more conformed to the image of Christ (cf. Ephesians 4:23-24, Colossians 3:10), for the sake of His name and His praise. All-consuming delight in who God is and in His love for us is a prerequisite for growth in godliness. When we delight in God for who He is, spiritual discipline becomes a means and an invitation by which we pursue fellowship with God in the sweetness of His perfect character. But if we only love God for what He can do or has done for us, then it’s impossible for our attempts at spiritual discipline to be anything more than self-centered bargaining with God for our own glory and pleasure in ourselves. At the same time, it’s possible to have some conception of the greatness and majesty of God without a deep assurance of His love for us. When this is true, spiritual discipline quickly devolves into a self-centered attempt to obtain for ourselves from God or from other people what God has already richly provided for us in Jesus Christ. When we try to earn love by spiritual discipline, it’s as if we are kicking down a door to the Father’s house that has already been opened by the blood of Jesus. It’s as though we are trying to steal from the pantry what has already been set before us on the Father’s table. It’s a sad, lonely, foolish, and pointless way to live. But when we humble ourselves to receive the Father’s love freely given to us in Jesus Christ, we come to understand that there is nothing we can do to diminish God’s pleasure in us as His children, or to seal us off from the welcome we have to His love through Jesus Christ. Our sin will never bolt God’s door or fold His arms toward us. His unchangeable welcome for and delight in us is the very reason for His discipline of us (cf. Hebrews 12:6) and His call for us to discipline ourselves (cf. Ephesians 5:1-2).

Because spiritual discipline is God-centered, it directs us to be others-centered through Him. One of the essential ways that we increase God’s praise and the enjoyment of our fellowship with Him is displaying His love in serving others. The flesh has nothing to give to other people; all the rivers of the will of the flesh run into the sea of its own self-promotion and praise. But when the Spirit turns our hearts to God, we are able to love others out of the abundant overflow of the satisfying love we have found in God.

The God-centered nature of spiritual discipline excludes any ambitious pursuit of self-actualization. Our goal in spiritual discipline is not to actualize ourselves or realize our own potential, but to actualize and realize the potential of Christ in us (cf. Ephesians 4:13) through His power (cf. John 15:5) for the praise of God (cf. Matthew 5:16, John 15:8). Self-actualization leads to boasting and idolatry. The actualization of Christ is only possible through humility, through the discipline of confessing our sins and believing the promises of God. From beginning to end the work of Christ-actualization in us glorifies His love and power and leaves no room for boasting in ourselves.

Second, the motive force of spiritual discipline is the power of the Holy Spirit through ongoing faith in the gospel. Spiritual discipline is gospel-enabled. Because Jesus took on the punishment for our sin on the cross and endured the wrath of God, we know that there is no condemnation left for us to face. Jesus has already clothed us in His righteous reputation, and we have access through Him to the infinite resources of a Father who loves us and is infinitely for us! If all this wasn’t true, spiritual discipline would be an endless effort to win a battle for perfection that we have already lost. But because of the cross, spiritual discipline isn’t an effort to obtain or increase God’s love. It’s an effort to enter more fully into the day-to-day experience of God’s love through agreement with what He says about our identity–that we are the free and holy children of God set apart from sin by the work of Christ and called to live in His likeness.

Because spiritual discipline is Gospel-enabled, it is also Spirit-empowered. One of the most hopeful and life-giving realities of the Gospel is freedom from the power of our sinful nature. In Galatians 5:16, God commands us through the words of the apostle Paul to “walk by the Spirit,” with the promise that if we do so we “will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Without the Gospel, this would be impossible! Earlier in Galatians, Paul rhetorically asks, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” (Gal. 3:2) We don’t receive the Holy Spirit through our efforts to obey God’s commandments. Without the Holy Spirit, all we have to work with in living for God is our fallen sinful nature, which is only capable of producing all of the things that disqualify us from entering God’s kingdom on our own merits (Galatians 5:19-21). So if it was up to us to obtain the Holy Spirit by our good works, living for God would be impossible! We’d be left to our resources of our flesh, which is unable to please God (Romans 8:8). But through faith in Christ, we have access to the “Spirit of His Son” (Galatians 4:6) that assures us of our place in God’s family and enables us to walk out our union with Christ. As we abide in Him through the kind of gospel faith that produces obedience, we participate in His spiritual life and bear the fruit through Him that brings praise to God (John 15:3-8).

Third, the subject of spiritual discipline is the heart, soul, mind and strength of the child of God. This encompasses all that we are as living people; it is concerned with our thoughts, our desires, our beliefs, our affections, our words, and our actions. Spiritual discipline is concerned with the whole person because the jealous claims of God extended to every aspect of our personhood as people created in the image of God and redeemed by the blood of His son (cf. I Corinthians 6:19-20). It is the direction of “all my being’s ransomed powers” (to borrow a phrase from the hymn-writer) to the service of God’s purposes of my life. Therefore, spiritual discipline is not just concerned with our actions. It is not just concerned with what other people can see. Nor is it just concerned with our souls, with the inner life. It is concerned with establishing God’s rule in our whole lives from the inside out: our thoughts, our perspectives, our values, our work, our recreation, our relationships, our sexuality, our private life, and our public worship. The blood of Christ, which redeems us from sin, transfers of the ownership of our whole lives into the hands of God, our Father. Spiritual discipline is how God’s beloved children respond to that transfer by learning to walk in love (cf. Ephesians 5:1-2).

Fourth, the action of spiritual discipline is the conscious and deliberate training of the whole person to obey God’s commandments. Because the motive force of spiritual discipline is ongoing faith in the Gospel that accesses the power of the Holy Spirit, the first and most essential discipline that we must practice as believers in Christ is to hold fast to hope of the Gospel (cf. Hebrews 10:23) and the second is to plead without ceasing for the power of the Holy Spirit (cf. Luke 11:5-13). But spiritual discipline does not stop there. We don’t simply believe, pray, and wait for holiness to happen. No, we are to engage every area of our lives with the confidence that God is supplying the strength and energy of Christ to our souls, and then struggle with all his energy that he powerfully works within us (cf. Colossians 1:29). The fact that it is the power of God that enables us to discipline ourselves for godliness does not exempt us from toil, labor, hardship and struggle in the pursuit of godliness. The Christian life is a life of rigorous effort and steadfast striving (cf. 2 Timothy 2:3). It is not a life of striving for love but a life of striving from love. But we are foolish to think that we can obtain excellence in godliness if we are unwilling to suffer for it. In order to grow in Christ, we must persistently engage the hostility of our own flesh (cf. I Corinthians 9:27), the hostility of Satan (cf. Eph. 6:12), and the hostility of a sinful world (cf. Hebrews 12:2). This engagement involves blood (cf. Hebrews 12:3), sweat (cf. I Timothy 4:7), and tears (cf. Acts 20:31). We cannot coast our way into the likeness of Christ. There’s no middle ground. Either we are being built up in Christ or we are allowing our gains in godliness to erode (cf. Proverbs 19:8).

So how do we discipline ourselves for godliness? Should we create a system of rewards and punishments for good and bad behaviors, and gather accountability partners around us to enforce these rules? Do we take vows of asceticism and join the monastery? If we trust in God as a good and present Father, we can see that we don’t need to resort to self-made religion (cf. Colossians 3:23); all of the direction that we need for spiritual discipline is given to us in His commandments (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16-17). Remembering and obeying our Father’s family rules will help us learn and grow into maturity. All of God’s commandments are an invitation for us to experience fellowship with Him in the goodness of His character, and to allow Him to lead us into the fullest possible experience of His love. We don’t need to invent a harsh regimen for our lives to help us be holy; we simply need to find out what God wants us to be about, and carefully budget our time and energy for the things that He calls us to prioritize and put into practice. Then we need to follow through and actually form habits that reflect God’s priorities.

For me, this means setting a reasonable bedtime and wake-up time so that I’m not losing hours to excessive sleep that really should be spent working or studying or investing in my relationship with God and others. It means setting my alarm on my phone and putting it away at least half an hour before I go to bed so that I get quality sleep and wake up rested and ready for the next day. It means subscribing to an app and making a plan so that I can memorize and engage deeply with longer portions of Scripture. It means keeping a prayer list through another app on my phone. It means buying a little journal and writing down the works of the LORD in my life so I don’t forget them. It means buying another little journal and writing down God’s commandments so that I don’t miss His invitation to a life of fellowship with Him in the midst of pursuing my own agenda. It means setting aside a certain amount of time every morning and evening to be alone with God so that I can hear from Him, process the cares and concerns of life, and just enjoy His presence. It means consistently participating in worship at my church and fellowship with my small group, even when those activities are impacted by quarantine restrictions! These are some of the disciplines in my life (some of them very new to me) that are helping me live a focused and fruitful way.

But the real substance of spiritual discipline isn’t in practicing these kinds of habits. It’s in the moment-by-moment decisions we make to turn to, engage with, listen to, obey, and seek God–or not. No amount of memorizing Scripture will help me if I don’t seek God to understand His word and allow it to examine my heart. No amount of studying and remembering God’s commandments will be profitable to me if I’m not willing to obey right away, even when it costs me. Setting aside time to pray won’t help me if I don’t engage my mind and heart in passionately seeking God. Just showing up for worship and small group is pointless if I’m not willing to be fully present with my gifts, receive care through the gifts of others, and work hard at my relationships. Spiritual discipline is much more about applying ourselves to godliness in the moment than it is about structures and schedules. Habits are helpful and can be used by God to fashion our lives for His glory, but they can’t help a hard heart or a mind that’s checked out. What they can do is help us routinely confront ourselves with the need to engage our whole selves in the hard work of seeking and serving Christ, and that’s where their true value lies.

Fifth, the objective of spiritual discipline is that we would fulfill our created purpose in this life, which, in the oft-quoted words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.“ We glorify God by proclaiming His praise, by putting on display the power of His redeeming grace through faith in the finished work of Christ, by declaring His worth in the devotion of our whole lives to Him, and by revealing the beauty of His character and personality in the way that we live so that His praise in the lives of others increases. Spiritual discipline, then, is concerned with all these things, with striving for the greatest glory of God and the greatest enjoyment of Him that is possible in a human life. Understanding this protects us from engaging in spiritual disciplines simply as a reaction against the sin in our lives and the world around us. Life in Christ is not about reacting against sin; it’s about responding to the revelation of God’s glory in the person and work of Jesus Christ by turning from our idols to love and serve the true and living God (I Thessalonians 1:9). Until we have learned to engage our whole person in loving and delighting in God and HIs praise, we have not repented of our sin, because at its core sin is enthroning created things, and ultimately self, against God.

But in its pursuit of the maximum glory of God and the maximum enjoyment of Him in the present moment, spiritual discipline is not preoccupied with this earthly life but is instead driven by the anticipation of eternity with God in Christ (cf. Philippians 3:20, I Peter 1:13, Hebrews 9:28). It is the consecration of an engaged bride yearning for her groom, who feels that she is not at home in her own life as long as she is not married to her beloved, and who lives in anticipation of that day. The more we increase in glorifying God and enjoying Him in this life, the more we will long for the day when our glorifying of Him and our enjoyment of Him is perfected. When Jesus appears from Heaven to claim His bride and bring us into perfect eternal union with Him in the new creation, then and only then will the glory of God be perfected in us, for we will be perfect in the image of God even as our Lord Jesus Christ is perfect, and we will see Him as He is, and there will be no clouds in our vision of Him to restrain us from complete abandonment to His praise. We enjoy God as we experience His goodness to us and the glory of who He is through the intimate fellowship that is made possible in this age by the gift of the Holy Spirit. But there will come a day when the sweetness of our union and fellowship with Jesus in this life will be eclipsed by the all-satisfying ecstasy of being in His presence face-to-face, in a same way that a young bride and groom forget the restless and constrained intimacy of their engagement in the consummate intimacy of their marriage. For marriage is in the world to prophesy to us about just this thing–the love of God for His people and their love for Him–and when that love is perfected, the shadow will pass away before the surpassing glory of what it was given to the world to be a picture of.

Even so come, our precious Lord Jesus.

~Andrew

The Father Turns His Face Away

by Andrew Micah, posted in reflection, theology, worship

One of my favorite worship songs is “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” by Stuart Townend. Over the course of the few years that I’ve been leading worship, I’ve heard some objections to this song, particularly to one line of lyrics. At the end of the first verse, we sing,

“How great the pain of searing loss

The Father turns His face away

As wounds which mar the Chosen One

Bring many sons to glory.”

The line “the Father turns His face away” as a description of what happened on the cross is the line that’s drawn objections, typically from people who are very, very confident that this line implies something that theologically false about the atoning work of Jesus. Today I would like to show why that isn’t true.

First, let’s consider the way that Scripture speaks about God’s face. God prescribed a very specific blessing that was to be spoken over the covenant people of Israel by the priests. In Numbers 6:22-27, we read:

“The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus shall you bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,

The LORD bless you and keep you;

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give you peace.

‘So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.'”

It makes sense to consider the way God speaks to Israel when we’re considering Jesus because Jesus is ultimately the servant of God “born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Jesus is the one who fulfills God’s covenant law given to Israel perfectly, and as such, receives all the covenant blessings that the rest of Abraham’s children are unable to merit by their works. He has willed these blessings to all who call on Him by faith, Jew and Gentile, and that will took effect when He died on the cross (Hebrews 9:15-22), becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13-14) so that we could inherit a blessing. What we need to see here is that the core metaphor for God’s blessing and favor that was repeated to His people over and over again was this idea of the light of God’s face. He “makes His face to shine” and “lifts up the light of His countenance” on those whom He is blessing. This idea continues throughout Scripture. In Psalm 105, David exhorts God’s people, “Seek the LORD and His strength; seek His presence continually!” (Psalm 105:4) The word translated “presence” in the ESV is the Hebrew word that literally means “face.” David is not calling God’s people to pursue judgment, but blessing! The light of God’s face is praised and appealed to all throughout the book of Psalms as an expression for God’s blessing (Psalm 4:6, 31:16, 67:1, 80:19, 119:135). When God “hides His face,” it means that He has withdrawn His blessing from His people (Psalm 13:1, 27:9, 44:24, 69:17, 88:14, 102:2, 143:7). This is such a core idea in the way that God expresses Himself to His people. The light of God’s face is His blessing; the hiding of His face is judgment.

There are two objections that I’ve heard to the line “the Father turns His face away” as a description of what happened at the cross. The first is that God never really turned His face away from Jesus, but that it only seemed that way. This objection is rooted in a failure to really grasp either the holiness of God, or the substitutionary work of Jesus. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul simply couldn’t make the matter any clearer: “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” On the cross, Jesus took on the identity of “sinner” for us so that we could receive from him the identity of “righteous man” that he earned by His flawless human life. He became sin. What does God do with sin?

Psalm 5 reads: “For You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with You. The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.” (v. 4-6) When Jesus went to the cross for us, He didn’t go there to appease God for our failures to be nice. He went there to represent us as hateful, deceitful, proud, selfish, wicked people, and to be crushed for us by God’s uncompromising justice so that we wouldn’t have to be. That’s why we have access to God by faith in Jesus. Either Jesus made full atonement, or He didn’t, and if He didn’t, we are still debtors and slaves to the law. In order for the man Christ Jesus to make full atonement, He had to endure God’s righteous judgment of sin. The Father had to really and truly hide His face, because sin cannot stand before His eyes. Jesus had to be crushed without sympathy, without apology, without hesitation, without reservation, in the exact same way that we deserve to be for our sin. He was. It says, “The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” (Isaiah 52:6), and “it was the will of the LORD to crush Him.” (52:10) It is “out of the anguish of His soul” that Jesus has received the prize for which He pursued the cross: “by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my Servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” (v. 11)

The language,

“How great the pain of searing loss

The Father turns His face away

As wounds which mar the Chosen One

Bring many sons to glory

captures these truths beautifully and with biblical integrity.

There is another criticism from another angle. Some have argued that God’s judgment is not the absence of His presence but the presence of His justice. We can debate those technicalities of systematic theology (and I think there is an element of truth in that objection) but the reality is that Scripture repeatedly speaks of God’s judgment as a withdrawal of His presence and a hiding of His face. If God speaks this way about Himself, surely it is not incorrect to speak this way about Him. God, as we long to know Him, is the God whose face shines upon us, the God who fellowships with us. When sin has broken that fellowship, we feel alienation, forsakenness, and rejection. That is what Jesus endured for us. It was real, as real as the life we have in Him.

-Andy

What Acts 1-9 teaches about the gift of healing

by Andrew Micah, posted in reflection, theology

In my morning times with God I’m working through the book of Acts (among other passages). I’m only through chapter 9 as of this morning. I’ve been looking forward to ask because I’m hungry right now to understand better what the Bible teaches regarding signs and wonders. I’m a continuationist, which means that I believe all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for today. But I also want to understand and pursue those gifts in the way that the Holy Spirit guides and commands through the faithful written word of God which was given to us by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What follows here is a few thoughts, centered mostly around healing miracles, that I’m gleaning from my time in the book of Acts. All scripture references are from the book of Acts unless otherwise noted.

1. Healing miracles depend on the power and authority of Jesus operating through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The disciples began healing people through the power of Christ after the Spirit was poured out in Acts chapter 2. Stephen was a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and it’s because of this that he did many signs and wonders (6:3,5,8)

2. Signs and wonders aren’t limited to the twelve apostles. While it’s true that the twelve apostles of the early church were involved in the ground-floor building up of God’s people to an extent that no-one today is or needs to be, that doesn’t mean that they accessed the power of the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ in a way that’s not available to the rest of us. In Acts 6:9, we’re told that “Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.” Stephen was one of seven deacons appointed by the apostles to look after the ministry to widows and settle the dispute between the Hebrews and the Hellenists. He was a man “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” even before the apostles prayed for and laid hands on him (6:5). And it seems that when the apostles prayed for him, they weren’t praying that he’d be used by God to perform great signs and wonders, but rather that he would be enabled by the Holy Spirit to carry out the specific ministry that he was being appointed to. Stephen didn’t receive his “anointing” through the laying on of hands by super-spiritual giants. He received power through faith and the indwelling Holy Spirit. No doubt, the example of Peter and John inspired him to pursue God by faith for the performing of signs and wonders. But it’s not at all as though Stephen received his gift of signs and wonders through the apostles. He got it from Jesus through Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit. Another example is Ananias, who laid hands on Paul to restore Paul’s sight (Acts 9:10-19). Ananias was singled out by God to do this, even though he was not one of the apostles. So it’s not really biblical at all to say that signs and wonders were limited to the first-century apostles because of their foundational role in the establishing of the church. It’s better to say that their involvement on the ground floor of God’s new temple (His people) meant that it was important for them to be especially active in signs and wonders. But part of the foundational role they play is in exemplifying to us how to be vessels of God’s power for God’s glory. Not to make much of ourselves, but to worship Jesus and help others see Him as He is. Which leads to the next point:

3. Healing miracles are a powerful tool of God to provoke people to hunger for the message of redemption in Jesus, and to establish the faith of those who are hungry. This is clear even in the example of Paul’s healing from blindness at the hands of Ananias. But it’s even more obvious from the healing of Aeneas and Dorcas (for which see the conclusion of Acts 9). We are told that “all the residents of Lydda and Sharon…turned to the Lord” and that in Joppa “many believed in the Lord” as a result of these healings. The evangelistic value of the sign gift of healing should not be minimized or discounted. There are many people who are in heaven now because God drew them to Himself through a healing miracle.

4. On the flip side, healing miracles reveal the hard-heartedness of those who refuse to come to Jesus, and provoke more forceful opposition. The message of Jesus preached by Peter and John was perceived as such a threat by the religious leaders because it was backed up by undeniable signs and wonders. (Acts 4:16) The rulers, elders, and scribes were forced to act because there was no room for reasonable doubt that authentic miracles had taken place. For the religious leaders to deny those miracles, they would have to destroy their own credibility. But instead of being moved to repentance and faith, they were filled with jealousy which led to the imprisonment and beating of Peter and John (5:17,23,40). A similar series of events led to the murder of Stephen. Authentic miracles may lead to intensified persecution. How is a powerless word going to provoke anyone? But when the power of Christ is demonstrated through the preaching of the Word, those who wish to preserve their own satanic social and religious power have to act decisively against Him. That power is often demonstrated in the book of Acts through signs and miracles that set the stage for the preaching of the Gospel. All the miracles and signs we read about in the book of Acts were beyond reasonable disputing to those who witnessed them, to establish the Gospel as a truth beyond reasonable dispute. If we’re going to seek after miracles, let’s seek after miracles that leave no room for doubt.

5. God doesn’t give us healing miracles to rescue us here and now from a world of suffering and hardship, but to point us all to the coming salvation so that we’ll put our trust in Him and give our lives to Him. When Peter and John were beaten, and when Stephen was stoned, no attempt was made by any of the followers of Jesus to reverse injury and death through the performing of further miracles. Following Jesus means submitting to the realities of a broken world, and specifically to the suffering of persecution. It means embracing suffering as a gift and an honor if through suffering we are able to experience union with Jesus and put Him on display. There is room for grief in the midst of victorious hope (8:2). While there is a time and place for raising the dead (9:36-43), ultimately we lay to rest those that have died in the Lord until He returns to make all things new. The purpose of signs & wonders, then, is not establish heaven here on earth right now, but to give a foretaste of heaven. It is not to usher in the recreation of all things, but to signify that such a recreation is coming, and to allow believers and unbelievers to experience it in whatever temporary extent permitted by the Holy Spirit, so that we would all put our confidence fully in Jesus and persevere in this broken and sinful world in the hope of a coming inheritance. Future hope is the center of our faith and supplies the necessary context for miracles. Why should those who have been raised with Christ submit to death and suffering, unless there is an even better resurrection to come?

6. Signs and wonders are for the glory of God! Those who performed miracles through the Holy Spirit’s power gave all the credit and the honor to Jesus. (3:12-16, 4:10, 4:30) It was a desire for His glory that moved them to seek miracles in the first place. When those who witnessed their miracles began to make much of them, they jealously defended the preeminence of Jesus, saying “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His servant Jesus…and His name–by faith in His name–has made this man strong” (3:12-16). Even though we are to some extent filled with the same Holy Spirit that indwelled and empowered Jesus, there’s a difference between the miracles that He performed and those that we can perform through Him. The miracles He performed were for His glory, to display both His divinity and His identity as the human mediator, prophet, and King over all God’s people. Jesus’ miracles were done for His glory because He is God. The miracles that we do in the name of Jesus are for the same purpose: to display the power and authority Jesus has received from the Father for the glory of God. It’s not wrong to speak of miracles being “done” or “performed” by a person (5:12, 6:8) but even in using that language we should be careful to give all the glory to God and to not insult Him by promoting people for the things they do in God’s power. Even when we “do” miracles, it’s really Jesus doing them through us, the members of His body united to Him by faith (2:43, 4:16, 4:30).

7. Signs and wonders are for the promotion of the Gospel of repentance and reconciliation through the blood of Jesus. Often in today’s “signs and wonders” movement, alleged signs and wonders are used not to point people to the redeeming work of Christ, but to offer power to people as a means for them to gain immediate transcendence over difficult circumstances in their lives and the lives of their friends. People are told, “receive the Holy Spirit and you can do miracles just like us–just like Jesus!” This way of talking about signs and wonders is misleading because it obscures their true purpose. Signs and wonders are not given to us so that we can experience here-and-now transcendence over pain, sickness, financial hardship, or difficult people. The purpose of signs and wonders is to add power to the preaching of the Gospel of deliverance from power of sin and from the punishment that sin deserves through the finished work of Jesus, so that we become children of God who live our whole lives in the hope of the coming restoration of all things. It’s not so that we can be magicians of some kind. There was a magician named Simon who was fascinated with signs and wonders as a means to self-promotion. (8:9-24) He even wanted to help other people! (v. 19) But because the gospel hadn’t registered with Simon’s heart (v. 23), he could only see God’s power as a means to his power. He wanted to separate signs and wonders from their God-intended purpose, to comfort the hearts of believers and rescue the lost. Whenever Peter, John, and Stephen performed miracles, they followed it up with the preaching of repentance from sin and faith in the redeeming and reconciling work of Jesus (3:17-26, 4:8-12, 5:29-32, 7:2-53). The power to perform miracles was never offered to the lost as a reason to come over to Jesus’s side.

8. Miracles are not just for unbelievers, but also for believers! While the book of Acts really seems to emphasize the evangelistic value of healing miracles, we also see that healing miracles can bless and edify the church. For example, the resurrection of Dorcas (9:36-42) gave back to the church at Joppa one of its most valuable servants, bringing great comfort to the widows who were blessed by her ministry. God not only provides real blessings to the church through the gift of healing, but helps make the future healing we’ll experience at the return of Jesus real to us by allowing us to experience that healing in a momentary, temporary way. God doesn’t serve our unbelief by performing miracles on demand, but He does perform miracles to strengthen, encourage, and guide a faith that’s already alive.

Thanks for reading! Hope this helps you as you seek to discern God’s will and be full of the Holy Spirit.

-Andy

The Fear of the Lord and the Comfort of the Holy Spirit

by Andrew Micah, posted in family of God, grace, reflection, theology

“So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria has peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.” (Acts 9:31)

As John Newton wrote in his timeless hymn, “’twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.” At the foundation of the Christian life is a composite awareness of two realities. The first is that God is great and terrible and holy, that He is more fearful than anyone or anything else. His present goodness and His present power should make us tremble to do anything that displeases Him or is against His character. The second reality is that God in His great love has redeemed us and rescued us from all ungodliness, not first by transforming our character, but by changing our identity from “sinner” to “set apart” through the finished work of Jesus. We’ve become members of His family. We are unconditionally loved by Him. All this is made real to us by the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit helps us to trust. The Spirit calms our fears. The Spirit makes the bed on which the believer rests securely.

The fear of God, without the cross of Christ, would certainly crush our spirits and make us miserable. But in light of the cross, what we know of God’s dangerous goodness, awesome dignity, and unmatched power inspires us to deeper love and worship, because we understand what an act of grace it is for God to redeem us, and because we can trust that whenever He appears to come against us in our sin, He is simply breaking down our pride so that we’ll be humble enough to receive His goodness and power in our hearts so that we can grow in His likeness. Without the fear of God, the comfort of the Holy Spirit doesn’t mean much. But without the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the fear of God can’t do accomplish anything good in our hearts. “‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.”

Two thoughts from this morning’s time with God

by Andrew Micah, posted in encouragement, reflection, theology

John 17:18 says, “As You sent Me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” God sent Jesus into the world to put the heart and character of the Father on display; to seek and save the lost; to work towards the ultimate restoring of all things; to do great works testifying to the coming hope of salvation in Him; to prophesy; to seek out the cross; to suffer and give of Himself, so that through His suffering many would be made whole, and through His poverty many would be made rich. As the Father sent Jesus, so Jesus has sent us.

The next verse says, “And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” Literally, “And for their sake I set myself apart, that they also may be set apart in truth.” (John 17:19) It was never in us to consecrate ourselves or set ourselves apart to God. The life that Jesus lived in the flesh He lived to make us holy, to consecrate us, to set us apart by His perfect obedience. It was all for us that He lived a holy life, so that we could be called holy, not by works that we have done, but by works that He has done, which He willed to us when He gave His life as an offering for sin on the cross. We are God’s holy people, and through the acceptance provided by the finished work of Jesus, we are transformed so that our character aligns with our identity.

Some thoughts about God’s passion for our goodness

by Andrew Micah, posted in encouragement, exhortation, family of God, grace

“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart.” (Proverbs 21:2)

As people with a propensity to sin, we spend a great deal of time and mental/emotional energy trying to protect ourselves from being found out as sinners. We fall short of God’s glory every day in the words we say and the things we do. And even though as believers in Jesus we know that our failures to do and be good have been completely covered by His blood, so often we try to stand in our own righteousness instead of just giving it up for the better covering we receive from God by the finished work of the cross.

One of the ways that we do this is by legalistic self-justification. We treat God’s commandments like an arbitrary set of technical rules that prescribe exactly how much goodness we need to get by, or how little goodness we can get away with. And the tragedy in this is that we trade God’s invitation to know Him deeply and share in His passionately good nature for a program by which we can get something out of God that we want–respect, vindication, and the right to be blessed.

God’s reason for giving us rules for life is not that He has some pet peeves that He doesn’t want to be bothered with. It’s not that He’s trying to shore up His reputation as a certain kind of God by establishing blessings for good behavior and consequences for bad behavior. He’s not carrying out some drudgery on behalf of the universe. God made people because He wanted (not needed) to share His glory and goodness with creatures. He created us in His image so that our lives could reflect the beauty of His infinitely good character, and so that we could experience the deep satisfaction and joy in being like Him. And His rules reveal to us what it means to be like Him. They are intended to expose the ways that we fall short so that we’re humbled before God and come to Him for mercy and transforming grace so that we can be restored to that created purpose–to know Him in His passionate goodness, and to share in that goodness with Him.

God’s not looking for people who carefully navigate life according to a set of arbitrary rules. He’s not looking for people who color inside the lines. He’s looking for people who want to commune with Him in His goodness, with all that means. Faithfulness. Mercy. Beauty. Joy. Abundant generosity. Uncompromising justice. Long-suffering love. And who out of that passion for the goodness that is only found in Him, seek to know Him through obedience to His commandments. God’s question as He examines our lives is not “did you do all the things,” but “what are you seeking?”

So often in interpersonal conflicts we examine and debate the finer points of the law instead of readily admitting our obvious failure to love, to seek good, to truly forgive, to prioritize justice and mercy. But God is looking for people who, instead of saving up counterfeit goodness to buy our way into His love and the respect of other people, openly declare our bankruptcy of goodness so that we can receive His own goodness. (Matt. 5:3) He’s looking for people who, in response to a genuine awareness of the purity of God’s heart and ways, genuinely grieve their failures to live in His likeness. (5:4). He’s looking for people who don’t selfishly insist on their rights, but surrender them when they stand in the way of blessing others. (5:5) He’s looking for people whose lives are controlled by one ruling hunger, one burning thirst: to see, understand, and celebrate His goodness, and be transformed into the likeness of Him. (5:6) He doesn’t care if we’re able to explain our actions as outwardly conforming to His rules. He cares about what’s in our hearts. And He’s bursting with desire to fill us with His fullness through the gift of His Holy Spirit and supply what is lacking in our hearts. He’s so passionately committed to this relationship with us where we see how beautiful He is and that beauty lives in us that He pursues us with discipline, with hardships and trials that help us to see what’s really in our hearts so that we’ll cry out for transformation. He loves us. Why would God share His goodness and His likeness with us for any other reason than that He loves us? This is why He searches our hearts. This is why He doesn’t give us a pass for our technical rule-keeping.

There was once a rich young man who came to Jesus with the claim that he had perfectly kept the law. This man was as much a failure in living up to the glory of God as the rest of us. His legalistic self-justification blinded him to that reality. Jesus could have exposed him, as I think many of us would, by challenging his assertions about his own goodness. “Have you really never committed murder? Hatred is the same as murder. Have you always kept all your promises? Have you really never helped yourself to that which wasn’t yours? Have you really never bent the truth to satisfy your own desires at the expense of others?” But Jesus does not ask these questions. His reply might catch us, as it did this rich young man, completely off guard. “Go, sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” This was not a self-satisfied “gotcha” moment on Jesus’ part. The gospel says that “Jesus, looking on him, loved him.” Jesus was also not advocating self-denial as a way of buying eternal life. He was offering the young man an invitation to share in His own divine goodness. Before He took on flesh, Jesus had greater possessions than anyone. He had all the riches of Heaven. And He emptied Himself of all of it to seek and save the lost. What is more, He spent His entire earthly life saving up enough righteousness to buy our way into heaven. On the cross, He made Himself poor in terms of righteousness so that we could be rich. He exposed Himself to all the abandonment and suffering that was rightfully ours in our guilty, self-inflicted moral poverty so that we could receive the riches of His righteousness, and with them eternal life. Paul says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9) Jesus wasn’t asking the rich young man to do anything that He Himself hadn’t done. He was exposing how the young man’s heart was unlike the heart of God revealed in Himself, and offering him transformation. Thank God that when presented with the choice (speaking in human terms) to give up all that He had to purchase salvation for poor sinners, Jesus didn’t “go away sorrowful”! But this young man would not follow Jesus, because his righteousness was of an entirely different kind than the righteousness of Jesus. The righteousness of the young man was about measuring up. The righteousness of Jesus is about emptying self, about embracing emptiness and suffering to bring fullness and rest to someone else, about offering everything that He has to bless the unworthy with love. How can we not wonder to realize that the very things which God imposed upon us as the penalties for our failure to obey are the same things that He willingly took upon Himself to demonstrate His perfect love? Are we hearing what God is saying in this?

When God made us in His image, He made us to bear the weight of His glorious, self-giving goodness. Jesus is the “image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15) When we fell short of God’s likeness, He moved toward us in love. And the first thing He did was to get our picture of God straight. We were supposed to be the picture of God to ourselves, each other, and all creation. We failed. Jesus came to do that. And He did it by carrying a cross. He set the record straight about who God is. God doesn’t “measure up.” He pours Himself out. The character of God as revealed in the work of Christ is the “new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” that we are called and welcomed into by the finished work of Christ. Simply put, we’ve got to stop trying to figure out how little goodness we can get away with and start seeing every relationship, every gift, every situation, every moment as an opportunity and an invitation to be like Him. That’s what God is looking for. It’s not about a standard that we must live up to so much as it is an identity, a calling, and the burden of God’s desire which will either destroy or glorify us. And if by faith we take shelter in the finished work of Christ, we will certainly not be destroyed, but glorified. In the process, we will surely suffer loss of all that it is no loss to lose, all that is not like Him. And that also is a gift.

It is no light thing to be loved by God. It is no easy thing to be wanted by Him. It is a gentle yoke, yes, but it is a scourging gentleness. We have a name and an identity and a destiny to live up to, and all the resources of the Spirit sufficient to that calling. He has canceled all our debts, and He will never release us from His jealous longing for our glory in His goodness. And that is why, even though He has made peace with us, He makes war with our legalistic self-justification. He wants so much more for us, and that is why we’re not going to have it our way.

Remembering Cody Winton

by Andrew Micah, posted in autobiography, personal news, reflection, what's up

Sometimes there are people in your life that make it easier to imagine heaven. People who bring you in and are totally excited to see you even when you don’t have much to offer them. People who engage life with honor and wide-eyed wonder. People who are pure in heart, honest to the core, who give without thinking twice. Who love in truth. Who overflow with effortless joy. People whose simplicity makes you a little embarrassed for the times that you’ve tried too hard to be something that you’re not, but able to accept that with kindness and move into a more authentic experience of who God made you to be.

There are a few moments in the course of my friendship with Cody I remember most clearly, and through those moments I remember all these things that were so true about him.

I met Cody Winton at a bluegrass house concert in late 2010 (I believe) played by the family band that consisted of him, his brother, and his Dad. I wasn’t even really into bluegrass music at the time. My focus, personally and as a budding musician, was on the British-American folk music that to me was more poetic and grand. But I enjoyed the show, and Cody and I in particular experienced the beginnings of a friendship that night.

At that time in my life, I was living in a very broken family situation. As a result of some of the dynamics of that situation, it was very hard to make close in-person friends. There was a deep relational divide between my parents with fear and resentment on both sides, and because I was homeschooled and not involved in too many extra-curricular activities, I really only had the opportunity to make friends with young people from families who were to either part of my Mom’s circle of influence or my Dad’s. It was hard to be honest with people in those circles with what I was feeling. There was a risk of opening wounds and aggravating tensions. So any opportunity to connect and form friendships with people outside that network was something I seized on. Especially like-minded young guys who seemed to share the same enthusiasm, vigorous hope for life, masculine values and (tragically) code of dogmatic cultural externals as an attempt at following Christ that were so important to who I was and who I wanted to be.

Cody was one of those guys—kind of. We were a part of and connected in terms of the same Christian subculture, but it was less of an identity for him, which is why I think we didn’t hit it off as dramatically as was the case for some of the other friendships I had at the time. Cody had a personal grip on the gospel that I didn’t, and it led to him eventually having something of a subversive impact for good in my life. It was eight summers ago when I was roused by the sinking realization (which I believe was the work of the Holy Spirit) that my whole spiritual life up to that point had been a self-serving con intended to promote myself in the eyes of others. We all struggle with insincerity and impurity of motives at times. I’m not talking about that. I was a complete through-and-through hypocrite who was manipulating people with the false appearance of spirituality. I realized that if I was going to get to a place of freedom and life, I had to completely tear off the mask. I had to detonate the carefully constructed image of who I was if there was any hope of real connection and redemption in my life. So I chose to confess to my closest friends what was really going on. On August 1st, 2011, I sent out an email to the handful of guys that I considered my closest friends. There were eight of them. Most didn’t respond. I can’t even remember some of their names at this point. There were only a couple that clearly offered the Gospel, and Cody Winton was the one who really understood what was going on. He told me, in short, that it was quite possible I was right about myself, and that I had to wrestle with that concern. He also told me that having a relationship with God was not about what I did to try to reach God, but about what God had done to rescue me. That it wasn’t about my effort, but about receiving and being transformed by the love of Jesus. Instead of backing away, minimizing my crisis, or rejecting me for the way that I had been using him, he cared well for my soul in a way that made me feel my own worth. Of the people that were speaking into my life at that particular moment, he did more to set me on a track towards authentic engagement with the person and work of Jesus than any others.

A couple of months later, his family band came through to do another show, but this time I couldn’t go. I was still very much working through all of the doubts and questions about my standing with God and what it meant to really know Jesus. And as part of that process, I was emotionally processing the damage done by my broken family situation in a way that I hadn’t been able to up to that point. I had counselors, but I needed to know that I had friends who cared. And for some reason, because of the email he had written a couple of months before, I felt that Cody was someone I could really trust and open up to. I remember scrambling out a letter for one of my brothers to give to him at the concert, in which I poured out a (hopefully) brief history of what was happening in my family and asked for prayer. I got an email a couple of days later, saying that he had read the letter and was praying for me. He didn’t make any attempts to fix what was going on. He included a link to a song he’d been listening to. While that song didn’t speak to the exact details of my situation (and he knew that it didn’t), it created space in my heart for me to feel the feelings of grief and loss over my broken family that I was struggling to believe in as valid.

In the days and months to come I began to open up to other friends about the brokenness in my heart over the brokenness in my situation. Many people offered sympathy. But what astonishes me now, looking back, is the way that Cody offered something more—genuine empathy for and presence with someone that, at that point, he really didn’t know that well. He made himself fully available even though he knew he was unable to fix anything, which I now realize was a brave and unselfish thing to do.

I saw Cody in person only a few times over the course of our friendship, and it was through those meetings that our friendship grew in earnest. There was a conference here in the Chicago area the spring of 2012 hosted by a national Christian teaching & discipleship organization that we both followed. I think he was serving at the conference as an intern or something. And then he and his family band came through again in the fall of that year to play another concert at the same house I met him. There was peace in my heart in my walk with God at that point, and we had a connection that we didn’t have before. There was something totally unpretentious down-to-earth and deeply real in the way that he shared in the joy of my coming to know Jesus.

What amazes me looking back is just the gift of friendship that I had from Cody. Even within the subculture that we were a apart of, Cody had some very different passions than I did. He was three years older, and in terms of his personal and emotional maturity, he was more like seven or eight years older. He was in a very different stage of life: starting out in business, exploring relationships, moving out into life on his own. I was far away from those things. I guess I always felt that Cody was more my friend than I was his. What I mean is that he had a lot more to offer me than I had to offer him. There was no way that I was going to be able to relate to and share in the excitement that he had for life as it was coming together for him at that point, or help him process the burdens and anxieties he was working through. In some ways, I was emotionally crippled and preoccupied with my own mess, and it’s only now that I’m really beginning to enter the stage of life that he was in at that point. From this place I can see how easy it would have been for him to think of someone like me as mostly dead weight. But every time I saw Cody, he was brimming with excitement to see me. He understood that his role my life was that of an older brother, and he assumed that role with genuine enthusiasm and without the slightest hint of condescension. Never, not even once, did Cody make me feel like he looked down on me.

He had (in many ways) much healthier priorities than I did, and it was in part because of that better footing in life that we began to grow apart. I became very invested in long-distance friendships in a a way that sapped my own energy to engage my in-person life in the way I needed to. Cody was one of a couple of friends in my life who kindly and consistently challenged that tendency. I remember him quoting Jim Elliot to me: “wherever you are, be all there.” I was for the most part determined to learn the hard way, and I made myself available to people who enabled the same unhealthy escapist approach to life. Cody didn’t enable it, and we began to drift apart. He was there for me, always ready to be leaned on, but he was focused on his life and work and future, and I was unable to connect with his world and walk alongside him because I was spinning my wheels in distracted relationships and pursuits that didn’t hold real promise for my immediate growth and my future.

The last time I saw Cody in person was in January of 2015, at the wedding of mutual friends in Alabama. He was there with his wife Sarah, whom he had just married the previous fall. He was, as always, glad to see me in way that made so many of my nagging insecurities just vanish in the time I was with him. We talked briefly and sang a couple of songs. It was like picking up where we had left off in the very best way. I remember thinking that I was a different person around Cody, absent of any effort or pretense, and I liked that person.

In the spring of 2015, I moved to a new church, and that move triggered a whole series of huge changes in my life and perspective. I was being personally equipped and cared for by that church, and as a result I began to become fully focused on my own spiritual and personal growth, pursuing opportunities for in-person work and ministry. I began to drift from the subculture and the points of theology in which I had found so much of my identity. What was odd is that even though I was drifting from the context in which Cody and I had become friends, I never had the fear of losing him as a friend that I did with so many other people. And perhaps that’s because Cody had a much healthier identity in Christ than I did, and I felt that I was moving towards that identity. We had very sparse contact after that beyond now-and-then connection through social media. My energy was becoming fully focused on building my life, as it had been a long time coming. Meanwhile, his energy was being poured into his young family, his work with technology startups, and so forth. And although I was content with these realities I had always supposed that our paths would come together again, and that we would enjoy more fully the friendship that had in one sense only just begun.

I really don’t know very much of the shape that Cody’s life has taken over the past few years. I don’t know what we would argue about, what we would share on a personal level, what songs we would sing. I’ve wondered.

Twenty-four hours ago I received the news that Cody was killed in a car accident early on Wednesday morning.

At first, it felt strange and foreign. And then, a steady wave of memories came back to me, the ones that I’ve described here. And many moments that I couldn’t do justice to in describing for anyone that didn’t know him personally. His self-effacing corny wit, his blunt and welcoming presence, his effortless class, his way of engaging everyone and everything with perfect stubbornness and generosity. I can’t begin to think about it without breaking down into ugly crying as I write. He was my friend, and the moments I had with him felt like something stolen from a better world. Maybe that’s why it’s so much easier for me to think about and dream about and live for heaven as I mourn the fact that he’s gone. But I think it’s even more because he was a person who, as I knew him, lived for heaven.

I’ve always been a music guy. These last 24 hours I’ve been listening to a lot of Ben Rector and Josh Turner, two guys that he turned me on to. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Rascal Flatts and Maroon 5, bands that I openly hated but secretly grew to love because of the way that he loved them. But more than that, I’ve just been lost in worship. I’ve had “God and God Alone” by Chris Tomlin and “Jesus, Only Jesus” by Matt Redman on a constant loop as I’ve been driving from Geneva to Carol Stream to Sugar Grove and back home. These songs weren’t ever part of our friendship. But they are the songs that, right now, connect my heart to the future reality of surrounding the throne of God at the healing of all things.

The best thing that I can say about Cody is that even though I often find it terribly hard to imagine heaven, it’s easy right now because how easy it is to imagine him enjoying the assembling of God’s people to give Him praise. Perhaps it’s so easy to turn in the midst of a sense of grief and almost crushing loss to worship because it’s so easy to imagine Cody enjoying the presence of God, and as I imagine him in God’s presence, what I see in his face and hear in his voice reflects something to me of what it will mean to see God when my own time comes.

I love you, Cody. Thanks for everything.

Blessed is the Man

by Andrew Micah, posted in encouragement, reflection, theology

I had an epiphany a couple of weeks ago about Psalm 1. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately in the Psalms (which I feel is appropriate for a worship leader). It’s really important that the theology through which we interpret the Psalms is robust and biblical. The New Testament reads so much of the Psalms as prophetic about the person and work of Jesus Christ. I’ve been praying to be able see the Psalms through new eyes in light of this.

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

I came to Psalm 1 having just spent some time with John 15, and it hit me that the blessed man who is the subject of this Psalm isn’t just a godly person generally, but the Lord Jesus. Our acceptance with God and our assurance of blessing doesn’t come from our obedience. Instead, it comes from the obedience of Jesus, whose whole human life was lived in the pursuit of God’s righteousness. He is the true tree that bears good fruit, and we can’t bear good fruit unless we abide in Him–meaning, unless our hope of life and acceptance with God is His finished work for us. Our rootedness isn’t in our obedience (although obedience by faith strengthens our faith) but in our union with Jesus. He is the head, we are the body. We are one with Him spiritually. This is why Jesus considers things done for or against His people as things done for or against Him. (Matthew 25:31-45). This is why when Jesus confronted Saul on the Damascus road, he didn’t say, “Saul, why are you persecuting my people,” but, “Saul, why are you persecuting ME?” There is a legal covenantal union in heaven between us and Jesus. We are blessed in Him.

I am planted by streams of water and I am able to bear fruit not because I try really hard to listen and obey (although that’s important) but because Jesus planted me firmly in Him. I am rooted and grounded in love through my union with Jesus.

-Andy

Keening by the Cross of Christ: mourning with mother Mary and the Irish at the feet of Jesus

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized

This morning I was driven by a series of unexpected discoveries to write in a way that I haven’t written in almost a year, and what resulted was something that I feel compelled to share with whomever might wish to read. It’s been almost a year since I wrote anything for this blog; I can’t make any promises for the future, though I would like to write more. For now, I hope what follows will be enriching to those who take time with it.

The only way that I can begin is to say that I believe it is in some sense the calling of every human that we honestly tell our own story with all of its confusion and brokenness, and that in so doing we help others to fully experience their own confusion and brokenness. This general human calling is, in my mind, much of what dignifies the narrative arts. It’s in trying to come to terms with my own feelings of gratitude for artists like Bebo Norman who do this well that I’ve come to understand the important of giving voice to our own pain. But I think this calling is in no way limited to songwriters and painters and such. In directing each of us to “weep with those who weep,” (Romans 12:15), God is calling all of us to weep together. When we honestly cry out under the strain of the brokenness of this world, we help others to feel that their own sense of the brokenness within them and around them is real and valid. This is crucial because it’s only as we allow ourselves to fully experience these things that we can fully experience the redeeming and transforming presence of God in Christ. As C.S. Lewis once said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, but shouts in our pains.” Jesus, Immanuel, God-With-Us, draws near to us in our suffering. If we suppress the reality of our own suffering, we are refusing to enter into the very place where God draws near to us in Christ and reveals the depth of His love for us. “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18) Those who do not know how to mourn cannot know how to be comforted. Those who will not allow their own suffering to overtake them, who will not admit themselves to be crushed, cannot feel God draw near in Christ. There are holy places known only to Jesus and the mourners who meet Him there, kept secret from proud people who refuse to be taken into the full experience of their own weakness.

If you know me well, you know that I’ve long been a lover of Celtic traditional music. I think what’s always attracted me to Celtic music is the simple, raw emotional honesty of it. Covering the whole range of emotions, from the heights of shameless joy and exhilaration to the depths of undisguised grief and sorrow, from restless rowdiness and warlike anger to calm contentment and quiet longing, the music of Ireland and Scotland is honest. Experiencing that honesty has allowed me to become less afraid of my own emotions, and, in the end, has made a way for a fuller experience of the hope of the gospel.

In the quiet moments of my life there is often some melody or another semi-consciously flowing through my mind. On this particular cool, gray Aurora morning, as I rose to prepare for an early meeting with my pastor at a local coffee-shop, that melody was the tune of “Coaineadh na dTri Muire (Lament of the Three Marys)” as recorded by Cathie Ryan. I’d invite you to listen as you read on. It’s a traditional Irish Gaelic song that I’ve enjoyed many times for the profound longing expressed in the melody and brought out by the arrangement. Even though I had not looked into the meaning of its lyrics until this morning, there was something pulling at me every time I listened.

Perhaps it’s subjective, but I’ve always felt that the Gaelic languages possess a certain quality of musical beauty. I can listen to the sung or even spoken Gaelic word with enjoyment even when I possess little to no understanding of what’s actually being said. But on this morning, my curiosity was provoked, and I ran a quick internet search to learn more about the meaning and history of the song. What I did not expect is to find myself sitting in the parking lot of Java Plus twenty minutes later, wrecked and overwhelmed with emotion, scarcely able to pull myself together for the meeting with my pastor that had brought me out of bed at an earlier hour than usual, because I had been struck anew with the way that God draws near in our pain through the person of Christ and His suffering for us on the cross.

“Lament of the Three Marys” is, at first blush, a religious song. It opens with a phrase which, translated, is a question in the voice of Mary the mother of Christ to Peter the Apostle, as to where her Son has gone. The foreboding reply is the voice of Peter saying, “I saw him a while ago in the midst of his enemies.” Each line of the ensuing dialogue is punctuated with the exclamation, “Ochóne is ochóne ó,” an expression of grief which has no perfect translation but is best rendered, “alas and alack,” or “sorrow upon great sorrow.” We are then presented with a vision of Mary the mother of Christ at the foot of the cross, turning to her companions Mary Magdalene and Mary of Cleophas and inviting them to mourn with her the suffering and loss of her Son.

But in spite of its religious theme, this is no church-song. Songs of this sort were not used in services in the Catholic churches of Ireland. That is not how they were sung and heard. They were sung by the people at occasions of mourning the loss of loved ones in order to give voice to their own grief. These songs came into use as substitutes for a more primitive way of communal mourning that the religious authorities didn’t approve of.

The ancient grieving tradition of the Irish people, known as “keening,” was apparently a sort of semi-ceremonial, lyrical, half-musical wailing, often assisted by hired mourners, akin to what we see in the Gospels at the house of Jairus after the death of his daughter. This traditional mourning was suppressed by the Catholic church in Ireland, and with it was also suppressed the release of raw emotion it provided. Catholic ceremony was solemn, regulated, and presided over by a priest; “keening” was the domain of the female relatives of the deceased, and of perhaps some generally female member of the community whose own personal losses and griefs had enabled her to give voice to the grief of others (which service was offered for a generally rather cursory remuneration).  The trouble with the church’s way of mourning was not that it was ceremonial and liturgical, but that the ceremonies of the church made no room for and gave no expression to true depth of feeling. There was no provision for any moment’s loss of emotional control. But human grief consumes us if not given an honest voice, and thus “keening” survived in one form or another throughout the centuries in spite of its suppression. It really only passed from the Irish culture completely in the mid-1950s as a result of modernity.

There’s an episode of the BBC Radio 4 program Seriously? called “Songs for the Dead” which explores the history and the loss of the Irish keening tradition. I listened to it this morning through the podcasts app on my iPhone in the course of my research. It’s a good listen, not just for historical curiosity, but for the presenter Marie-Louise Muir’s insights into what the loss of authentic grieving has done not just for the emotional health of her Irish people but also for the modern world at large. Whether we discard it for the blank despair of modernity or allow it to be smothered by solemn religious ceremony, when we give up the full expression of our grief, we lose touch with our own humanity. For to be broken-hearted is not to give up hope. Only those who love can know loss, and in the same way it is only those who have hope that can be broken in heart. The Christian view of suffering is that all of the pain we ever feel is at root the pain of paradise lost. When we feel pain, we feel the fall. Where the awareness of a paradise past and a paradise future fades, there is no longer any reason or justification for pain and sorrow. Why should we hold out hope against what always has been, and always will be? If we lack the capacity to be fully alive with grief in this broken world, it is because we have forgotten that the world was once not broken, and will one day be healed. Hope amplifies our heartache as much as it soothes it. It is only a heart that is dead to hope, like a dead body, that feels no pain for itself or for others.

Wherever the keening tradition was effectively suppressed in the Irish past, the people found their own voice for heartache and loss in the fostering of a tradition of religious folk-song within their broader musical traditions. Hence, the “Lament of the Three Marys,” and others like it. These religious songs are distinguished from other religious folk-song traditions around the world in that they focus almost exclusively on the crucifixion, and are typically written in the voice of Mary, the mother of Christ. The Irish people subtly resisted the Church’s suppression of their native traditions of grieving by finding voice for their own inconsolable sense of loss at the death of loved ones in the voice of Mary, pierced with sorrow as she stood by the cross of her Son. Says Angela de Burca, a scholar on Irish religious song, on the songs that make up this tradition, “They depict the grieving Mary not as the stoical, silent woman of the Latin Stabat Mater Dolorosa, but as a furiously angry and eloquent Irish bean chaointe, or keening-woman, her hair streaming behind her as she runs barefoot through the desert to reach her son… Although invariably sung in a spirit of great devotion, the songs of Mary’s lament also contain a note of defiance, for their last lines often promise a blessing to anyone who will lament Christ’s death on the cross.” In this Mary there is no saintly transcendence, no dull and unfeeling resignation to the divine will. She is wide-eyed, torn, stricken, blindsided and bewildered by loss. Fully alive, and human enough to speak for us in our own bitter pain. 

What was it that gave to the Irish people this different vision of the mother of Jesus than what the Church taught them? What, but the Comforter Himself? This Mary is no quasi-divine who stands apart from our grief on a holy plateau of pious resignation. This is a Mary who, though she may be the holiest of all God’s people, reels with wild agony and disbelief just like us as she is pierced with a pain that passes understanding. Those who sang her story sang not of the Mary that was given them by the church, but of the Mary they needed, and the Christ they needed. No one could refuse them the right to hear their own pain in the holiest things. If they could not be allowed to open wide their throats to tell out their own grief, then they would tell out the grief of another whose voice no priest could claim the authority to silence, and feel their own grief fully told in hers.

I’m convinced that none but a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief, could lead the human heart to find such things in His story. For it is in Christ that we find ourselves known in the midst of our suffering. It is in Christ that we see God with us—not God present in some mystical sense, as though He sort of hangs about in the air around us when we are sad and hurting, but God indwelling our story, the Word spelled out in the midst of our pain, God on a cross sinking through our suffering and beyond into the emptiness of absolute death. Only the Spirit of God can reveal the presence of God to the human heart in this way. The natural mind does not know how to conceive of such a God. This divine kindness is the sort of thing we couldn’t dreamed up on our own.

Mary, in the words of this lament, this “coaineadh,” this keening, pleads in the wondering language of grief as she beholds her Beloved broken on the cross, “Is that my child who I weaned in my arms and nourished? Sorrow upon sorrow! My love, big is your burden, let your mother help you carry it.” And her Beloved replies, “Little mother, we each must carry our own cross.” One can hear in these words the consolation that Mary must have desperately needed as she was led away from the cross of Christ by her own son John, the brother of Jesus, at the Lord’s direction (John 19:26-27); torn from her Son, unwilling to leave Him while all others fled and even God began to turn His face. For if He was to be utterly forsaken on account of our sin, how could any who loved Him remain with Him in that dark hour? “Little mother,” He says, with the sins of whole world weighing on His titanic shoulders. “Here I must go on alone. On this cross we cannot suffer together. Of the weight that I carry you cannot lift a single gram. Do not try to carry my burden. I have come to carry Yours.” Only He can bear His cross, for only a heart so great and so broad and so perfect as His own could sustain wounds deep and wide enough to heal this whole broken, sin-sick world. But as He insists on bearing His cross alone, He gives Mary a word for her own grief that identifies her with Him, and Him with her. “Your suffering, too,” He says, “is a cross. I call it a cross, because your suffering has meaning in mine.” He who bore His cross alone as He did so took all the loneliness out of every cross that comes after, if we are willing to surrender our suffering to the power of His own. He invites us to present ourselves fully for our pain as He did, to show up completely for our own suffering, for there was no part of the mind and heart and soul and body of Christ that was not offered up on the cross. So it is that as we allow ourselves to be pierced, we know that there is no grief that He does not fully know, and in which we are not fully known. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

But let us beware lest we are too easily comforted. Let us beware lest our love and our mourning are so shallow that they need no forsaken Man on a cross and grief-stricken mother Mary standing by to make sense of them. It was these Irish that refused to surrender their inconsolable grief for the shallow piety of proud ceremony that saw Christ with them as He was and is. How easily we settle for so much less than this clear sight of Christ in our grief! “Time heals all wounds,” we say. We speak of grieving as learning to “let go” of what we have lost. But only those who refuse to be satisfied with anything less than the renewing of all things in Christ can learn how to live in the light of the hope that the Gospel offers us. True and godly grieving is not about letting go. It is learning to be like the trees that lay down their leaves in faith until the winter is gone and the spring returns. And so we rise like Mary from the foot of the cross, our own burden as glory-bound men and women in a broken world resting squarely on our shoulders. If we suffer with Him, we shall be glorified with Him; for inasmuch as we do not withhold ourselves from suffering in Him, He will not withhold the glory of His new creation from us.