Tag: Jesus

Let the Wicked Be No More

by Andrew Micah, posted in creation, reflection, theology

I was reading Psalm 104 in my daily devotions today, and was startled and provoked to reflection by the last verse. Psalm 104 is a hymn of celebration for God’s greatness and goodness displayed through his creation of the earth. It’s a poetic survey of all that is beautiful in earth and sky and sea, and how all these contribute to the praise and pleasure of God. God is revealed to us as we ponder with the Psalmist God’s care for creation.

But all this ends with a fierce declaration of desire that, at least to our contemporary sensibilities (I really can’t speak to the past in an informed way) seems completely out of place. We read these words: “Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more.” (Psalm 104:35) Put that up on the closing screen of your National Geographic featurette. If I wasn’t unconditionally committed to biblical inerrancy, I might question the inspiration of this line, simply on a poetic level. There is no leading up to this expression, no setting of the table for the challenging course of coming to terms with God’s consuming justice. It just appears, at a moment when we are completely caught off guard. But it is there for a reason, and in answer to my own prayers for understanding, I believe God has given me some insight into why a cry to God for the destruction of sinners was the only appropriate way for the Holy Spirit to conclude this Psalm.

Creation is in no need of redemption, at least, not in the sense that we typically use that word to speak of the restoration and reconciliation of a moral transgressor. There is nothing morally wrong with creation. Creation has not sinned; it was submitted to the dominion of man, and when man sinned, creation was cursed for his sake. Because of this, creation groans, waiting for rescue from the dominion of corrupt humanity that was the cause of the curse. Creation longs to be restored the freedom and liberty that will come when dominion is restored to people under God who receive power from Him to rule and restore. As we hear and see creation groaning, we should ourselves be groaning for the fullness of redemption that will be accomplished when Christ returns. (Romans 8:18-25) The fulfillment that we now experience as laborers in God’s creation doesn’t compare to that which is coming, and the sufferings imposed on us and on creation as a result of the curse of sin do not compare with the glory that is coming. What creation longs for, per Paul’s words in Romans 8, is for our full redemption, soul and body, so that creation herself can enjoy the freedom and fruitfulness of life under God’s perfect dominion through us. The longing of creation should inspire us to long for the second coming of Jesus where we will be set free forever from the body of sin and made fully alive in Him, not just for our sake, but for creation’s sake also.

With all this in mind, as I look back on Psalm 104 I’m surprised by the rosiness of the picture painted. It’s not the kind of rosy suggested by “nature red in tooth and claw.” There is an acknowledgement of the presence of death (Psalm 104:29), but on the whole, creation is set forth as good, bringing joy to its creator even in the fallen state (v. 31). Why in response to this does the Psalmist cry or for the destruction of the wicked?

I think the answer is clearly this: the sin of man is all that has defiled and desecrated God’s creation. We cannot love the beauty of God’s creation without hating the sin that has caused all the brokenness in the world. If we are led by creation in worship of a wise and loving Maker, we must also with creation groan and testify against the evil that has brought such a hurtful curse on God’s good creation–the sin of man, the sin that lives in us. Sinful mankind is the one foul thing that exists in the midst of all the fair works of God, and it is the one thing that mars His creation.

When we cry out for God to consume the wicked from the earth, we cry out against our own sin with hope in the redeeming work of Christ, for though we ourselves are spared by His death and resurrection, the effect and purpose of His work is to do away with sin. He took our sins on Himself; He took on the identity of our sin. And then He was cut off from the land of the living. (Isaiah 53:8) Because of him, our sin is consumed from the earth and our wickedness is no more. It has been definitely accomplished by the work of the cross, it is being progressively realized by the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, and it will be fully realized when Christ returns to fully redeem our bodies. This is the marvel of the work of Christ, that it reconciles God’s determination to save sinners and His determination to wipe out wickedness from the earth. He made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for all of us. To stand in the place of all the sinners and all the wicked people who would turn and put their hope in Him. He was crushed, He was cut off, He was consumed, He was no more. And when sin had been destroyed in His body, He rose from the grave, so that we might walk in a newness of life even now that is only a shadow of the newness to come. Because of this, we can lift our voices with the groans of all creation, crying out “let sinners be consumed from the earth.” If not for Christ, we could not speak these words without calling out for our own destruction. Because of Christ, it becomes a prayer for our salvation. Because of Christ, we can praise God for His justice. We bear witness with creation against our own sin that has subjected creation to the curse, and receive from Him transforming mercy instead of consuming judgment, because Jesus was consumed for us. Perhaps there is in this a fundamental idea about what repentance is–that it is taking the side of God and creation against our sin with hope in the redeeming work of Christ.

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.”

I have stilled and quieted my soul

by Andrew Micah, posted in encouragement, reflection, theology

“O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore.” (Psalm 131)

Sometimes, I have a hard time with the sovereignty of God.

Let me explain. I’m a Calvinist. Calvinism is, to me, something that you really can’t argue against from the word of God. Romans chapter 9 lays a forceful axe-blow to any attempt. I’m not a Calvinist because I want it to be true, or because I need it to be true, or because it satisfies any psychological or emotional demand of my heart. Quite the opposite. I know that there is comfort to be found in knowing that your relationship with God was meant to be, and that because it was meant to be you can trust that something even greater than your own unbelief is at work to save and redeem you. That should provide great comfort and rest to a believer, and it is for that purpose that the New Testament makes use of the doctrines of election and predestination. Maybe I’m not very spiritual, but there are times when I am much more troubled by these teachings of Scripture than I am comforted.

My fear is not that some people get to heaven and some don’t. My fear is not even that some people are chosen by God and some are not. My fear is that some people who want the love of God more than anything else will be turned away from it. My fear is that some of those who take hold of the Father-love of God, knowing that it is their only hope, will be disqualified because of some secret, arbitrary decision of God. These are the things that my mind worries over when I have questions about God. I am a child in desperate need of the Father. If I accomplish anything in my spiritual life, it will be because I have come to God as a broken and hungry person who deeply knew that only the love of the Father was able to redeem me, keep me safe, give me life, and show me the way to glory. And sometimes the sovereignty of God seems to cut against the security I’ve found instead of working towards it.

When we hear about the sovereignty of God, we are sometimes tempted to think of God as this post-traumatic Harvey Dent who delights in arbitrarily destroying or pardoning people as they cringe before Him. If we’re the wrong kind of “spiritual,” we’ll try accept that image of God without questioning in an effort to be good enough to win God’s favor. But the character of God as revealed in His word is not that of a cosmic Two-Face. He’s not on a power trip, He’s not trying to resolve any insecurities about His control of human events, and He has nothing to prove to Himself, to us, or to the angels. All that He does, He does in love towards those that He loves. And in order to form any kind of real attachment with God as our Father, we need to take this truth deeply into our hearts and souls.

Perhaps if I was a mature Christian, I wouldn’t worry about the sovereignty of God. Perhaps I would know, as I see more clearly in the light of day, that no-one is able to come to God and take hold of His Father-love by faith unless God has first awakened him from spiritual death and established that longing in his heart. Perhaps I would know that the offer of the Gospel is freely for all, that there is no need for me to know anything about the secret will of God, but only to answer honestly the question, “are you thirsty?” come to the living water, and drink my fill. “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out,” (John 6:37) Jesus says. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7). Peering into God’s secret will and knowing what He has chosen is not a precondition. That’s impossible for anyone. What is possible is to come the Father and take hold of His love. What is possible is to ask Him for redemption and adoption through the finished work of Jesus, and for the security of knowing that I belong to Him no matter what. The love of the Father is mine if I want it and that He will never say no to anyone who comes to Him in this way. That is His promise. But sometimes, like last night, I forget all of that. I get overwhelmed with things that are way over my head.

I’m preparing a teaching series on the subject of worship right now, which I will be sharing at a local young adults’ ministry. In the course of my preparations last night, I began pondering how to explain the sovereignty of God in the context of worship–how it is that we can be inspired to worship God by the truths of His sovereignty. And in part because of my prideful insistence on making sense of everything, and in part because of my compassion for people who I know struggle with the same questions–people I’ll be speaking to–I got a little out of my depth. At 10:30 last night my mind was racing. I said some very honest and very frightened things to God. And the passage of Scripture that He brought to mind was the one that I quoted at the beginning of this post.

Sometimes God is not just a Father. Sometimes He is exactly who I need Him to be: a mother who holds this little child on His lap, comforts me, reminds me what’s true, and doesn’t let me go until I’m ready to get up. That’s how I came to Him last night, and that’s who He was to me. His way isn’t just to settle me down, but to help me remember the things that I know are true so that I’m able to gain some strength and control over my own emotions. And this is what He spoke to me: “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat.” He reminded me that the wonder is not that He would make a “vessel of wrath” from the clay of human flesh, but that something so lost and depraved could be transformed into a vessel of mercy. He reminded me that He endures with great patience the “vessels of wrath,” that even in reprobation there is cost to Himself for the sake of those He loves. And today, I am not wavering in unbelief, but growing strong in faith. And I am beginning to understand how God’s sovereignty can provoke me to worship. Not as the cringing benefactor of a cosmic coin-flip, but as a desperately loved child of God. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and hell has no hallelujahs for His ears. There are no songs in the book of Psalms of tormented people adoring God for His justice. (Psalm 6:5, 30:9, 88:11, 115:9) But He delights in showing mercy to those He loves, and through His patience and His justice He makes it known to us who are being saved, so that we might rest and delight in His love.

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.

Encouragement for Pastors

by Andrew Micah, posted in encouragement, exhortation, reflection

God spoke to my heart today through Psalm 127: “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to His beloved sleep.” (v. 1-2) He specifically called my attention to pastors.

There are many pastors today who are overworked and under-rested in caring for the flock of God. There is an epidemic of pastoral burnout, exhaustion, and loneliness. But God is speaking to that through these words from Psalm 127. God is inviting those who care for His house, which is God’s church (I Timothy 3:5, I Peter 2:4-5) to rest in His promise: He is building His church! He says: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)

When those who labor in God’s house receive this promise, they can receive rest. If God is not working to build His church, then why are we working? How can we hope to accomplish anything if God is not laboring with us? But if God is working to build His church, we can participate with Him, trusting that He will make good use of our efforts. And if God is working to build His church, then when God tells us to rest, we can rest. There’s no reason, God says, to get up early and go to bed late on behalf of Him and His work. He is working, and you don’t have to overwork yourself. Whatever mindset we bring to ministry that doesn’t build on confidence in God’s work and doesn’t accept God’s provision of rest is not from God. Sometimes we need to repent of our unbelief and go to bed! “Faith without works is dead,” and sometimes you need to put your faith into action by getting a good night’s sleep, and by creating rhythms of rest and patterns of self-care.

God didn’t make a mistake when He ordered our lives so that we have to budget time and energy to take care of our own needs in order to be rested and healthy and clean and fed and cared for. He wants us to understand that we are important to Him too! Live for others, but accept God’s guidance towards rest. What if we believed God, and saw our work more as a gift from Him than a gift to Him? He blesses us by inviting us to share in the sacrificial work that He is doing. If you’re struggling to labor faithfully in ministry today, God loves your sacrificial heart! He also wants you to receive the rest He has provided for you. Ask Him today. “Father, help me to see the rest that You have provided for me.”

God bless and strengthen you in serving His people!

-Andy

Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (r) ), copyright (c) 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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