Faith is not a means by which we earn things from God through our own effort and force of will to believe. Faith is trusting in the Father to give us what Jesus has earned for us and what we could never earn for ourselves–including the strength to believe that the Holy Spirit supplies.
Tag: Jesus
From The Rare Jewel by Burroughs: Enjoying earthly blessings as children of God
I mentioned on the blog on Saturday that I read a book last week called The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by the Puritan pastor Jeremiah Burroughs. I want to quote a passage from that book which really struck me in how it encourages us to interpret our experience of temporal blessings on this earth in terms of the realities of eternal life and eternal death. This is from chapter 3:
“A godly man may very well be content, though he has only a little, for what he does have he has by right of Jesus Christ, by the purchase of Jesus Christ. He has a right to it, a different kind of right to that which a wicked man can have to what he has. Wicked men have certain outward things; I do not say they are usurpers of what they have; they have a right to it, and that before God, but how? It is a right by mere donation, that is, God by his free bounty gives it to them; but the right that the saints have is a right of purchase: it is paid for, and it is their own, and they may in a holy manner and holy way claim whatever they have need of.”
Unbelievers, he says, can own things in a sense. You can say of someone who doesn’t have Jesus, “this is his wife, this is his house,” etc. But these things aren’t properly his because his relationship with the giver of all good things is fundamentally broken. Whatever state of blessedness an lost person enjoys is doomed to fall away from him permanently one day. But there is something different in the relationship that a child of God has with God’s blessings.
Burroughs continues, “a child of God has not a right merely by donation; what he has is his own, through the purchase of Christ. Every bit of bread you eat, if you are a godly man or woman, Jesus Christ has bought it for you.
You go to market and buy your meat and drink with your money, but know that before you buy it, or pay money, Christ has bought it at the hand of God the Father with his blood. You have it at the hands of men for money, but Christ has bought it at the hand of his Father by his blood. Certainly it is a great deal better and sweeter now, though it is but a little.“What a thought, that the blessings we experience in this life are actually something which are ours by right in Jesus Christ! Here’s an idea that is rarely conveyed by modern preachers. Burroughs can say this because he understands two very important theological truths: one, that God is the author and giver of every good thing, and two, that those of us who are in Christ have a rightful claim on God’s blessing.
For some folks this sounds too proud of a way to talk about the blessing of God. They would say that everything God gives them is an unmerited gift of grace and not a response to any rightful claim of theirs. This would be true if we were all left to our own works, our own resumes, and our own reputation in our relationship to God. In and of ourselves, the only thing we have any right to claim for ourselves from God is the punishment that our sin deserves, which Paul calls “the wages of sin” in Romans 3:23.
So when Paul goes on in the early part of Romans chapter 4 to say that “to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation,” he is making a point about what attitude we should have toward God’s blessings. In this world, a person who does work under a contract can lay claim to his wages as one who has a right to them. The employer can’t act as though he’s doing anything generous or magnanimous by paying up; he’s just paying what he owes the worker. What Paul is saying is that the salvation that God offers us in Jesus doesn’t operate on these terms, because we are all already sinners who fall short of God’s glory. We haven’t earned our salvation. How, then, does it end up that we have any rightful claim upon God’s blessings?
It’s because of what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21 when he lays out for us the great legal exchange that has taken place between us and Jesus on the cross in these terms: “For our sake [God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus didn’t just become sin for us on the cross; we became His righteousness before God.
We know that Jesus lived a perfect life. He “knew no sin.” Because of Jesus’ perfect life, He has a claim on God’s blessings by way of right. Jesus deserves God’s blessing. But He willingly abandoned that condition on the cross so that we could have it, so that He could be punished in our place, and so that we, in His place, could claim God’s blessings as though we had all lived perfect lives. When we say that we are saved by grace, not works, lest any man should boast, what we mean is that we are saved by Jesus’ good works which are put to our account by God’s free grace instead of being saved by our works. We didn’t do anything to earn the rights of access to God and His blessings that we have, but they are absolutely ours, now and forever, by faith in Jesus. If salvation was just God being good to us in spite of no good we’ve done, there would be no firmness to our present and eternal hope.
And while we do not experience in this life the perfection of blessing which Jesus earned for us in His perfect life and gave to us on the cross, we do experience a kind of firstfruits of our eternal inheritance in Jesus. Even if we have less than the people around us who are not in Christ, we can actually get our hopes up and really get into and enjoy God’s blessings, because we know that for us, while earthly blessings may come and go, whatever we do have is (as Burroughs goes on to say) “an earnest penny for all the glory that is reserved” for us. That is to say, it’s a down payment on our eternal inheritance.
What a better way to look at music and marriage and good food and all the things we have to enjoy on earth than to a. try to find the ultimate fulfillment of our hopes in them or b. deny ourselves or despise what God has given us in this life because we are concerned with “heavenly” things! There is a “foretaste of glory divine” in earthly blessings, and we can consider them ours by right through the rights that grace has given us.
How does all of this help us in contentment? Should knowing that God’s blessings are ours by right in Jesus make us more demanding of immediate blessing? I would think not. If we can see our eternal inheritance not set up against but instead through the smallest of earthly blessings, how can we not be content, even though our earthly blessings may be small, as God has through them conveyed a sight, however dim, of what we will enjoy for eternity? (I want to explore these thoughts further both in comparison and contrast to so-called “prosperity Gospel” teachings, but that will have to wait for another time.)
Burroughs concludes:
“Just as every affliction that the wicked have here is but the beginning of sorrows, and forerunner of those eternal sorrows that they are likely to have hereafter in Hell, so every comfort you have is a forerunner of those eternal mercies you shall have with God in Heaven. Not only are the consolations of God’s Spirit the forerunners of those eternal comforts you shall have in Heaven, but when you sit at your table, and rejoice with your wife and children and friends, you may look upon every one of those but as a forerunner, yea the very earnest penny of eternal life to you. Now if this is so, it is no marvel that a Christian is contented, but this is a mystery to the wicked. I have what I have from the love of God, and I have it sanctified to me by God, and I have it free of cost from God by the purchase of the blood of Jesus Christ, and I have it as a forerunner of those eternal mercies that are reserved for me; and in this my soul rejoices. There is a secret dew of God’s goodness and blessing upon him in his estate that others have not.”
~Andrew
Notice: Scripture quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. May not copy or download more than 500 consecutive verses of the ESV Bible or more than one half of any book of the ESV Bible.
An encouraging word from the trenches
In the midst of temptation and trial we are often tempted to complain to God, “I’m only human.” We have a high priest, it is true, who can sympathize with our human weakness. He was tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). It is also true that God knows our frame, and remembers that we are made of dust (Psalm 103:14). But the other thing, and what I want to highlight right now, is that we are not “only human” in the sense of being left to only fallen human* resources in the fight against sin and Satan and circumstances. Paul tells us in Colossians 1:29 that he strives “with all HIS energy that HE powerfully works within me.” When we are tempted to say “I can’t do this,” the reality is that we CAN, but only through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13). God wants us to know, not just intellectually, but experientially, “what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead” (Eph. 1:19-20, ESV).
~Andrew
*I also want to point out as a side note that it really isn’t quite correct to say “I’m only human” when talking about our tendency to sin. Human does not equal sinful. God’s original intention and design for humanness was to represent Him, to bear His image. The human race has become sinful, but there is nothing human, really, about sin. Sin is the opposite of true humanness, because it’s the undoing of God’s image in us.
Songs of His Pursuit: This Man
I blogged yesterday about how music plays a huge part in the story of God’s grace in my life so far and about my desire to tell that story by sharing about some of the songs that God has used to get through to me the reality of who He is and what He has done, is doing, and will do for me in and through Jesus Christ. Today I’m going to talk about Jeremy Camp’s This Man. This song was a single from his 2004 release Restored. It was a #1 single in early 2006, but to me, it seemed like the song was never played enough. It was one of the handful of songs that I was always searching for when I flipped through the four Christian music radio stations I had access to.
When I was a confused and lonely pre-teen, I really didn’t have a good grasp on the cross of Jesus and what it means for people who put their hope in it. I had some idea that what Jesus did on the cross was supposed to mean something for me in the way of atonement, but I didn’t really understand how. I’ve always been susceptible to being moved emotionally by music, and I remember that this song had a big emotional impact on me. There was something in the words, “Would you take the place of this Man / Would you take the nails from His hands?” sung in this way with this melody that made me realize that there could be hope and beauty and even glory in the midst of suffering, and not just in spite of the suffering, but because of what the suffering meant. It made me feel all the same longings I felt when I read about Narnia (and I lied in Narnia for a few years). Maybe that was the beginning of my hope that a desire for otherworldly love and meaning could be in some way fulfilled in this world instead of being shunted off into fantasies of another world that didn’t really exist. All of this came at me in a mystical sort of way, instead of being anchored in concrete propositional truths about Jesus, who He is, and what He has done. But I can say that it made me feel the sort of things that a person should feel about those truths, and made me suspect that there was a beauty to be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself that was deeper than the music and the poetry, a beauty which I might somehow be able to find my way into.
Fast forward ten years, and a more perfect realization of what the Gospel is and what it means has only made this song more precious to me. When we really understand the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, all of our efforts at do-it-yourself atonement have to come to an end. This Man, hanging on a cross, rejected by men and carrying the wrath of God, has done something for us that we could never do for ourselves. He has put our sin to death, carried the wrath of God we deserved, and made a way for us to be welcomed into the fullness of God’s presence. And sometimes we simply have to stop ourselves in our efforts of making our way with God through our efforts at being good and our efforts at making up to Him for our failures to be good, and ask ourselves, “How can I ever think that I can take the place of this Man? How could I ever do for myself what He has done for me? Why am I trying to carry for myself a burden that He has taken for me?” I ask myself that question a little more frequently because of this song’s presence in my life, and it’s so good for my heart and my walk with Jesus.
~Andrew
Puddleglum’s Wager
I made a reference in my last post to someone named Puddleglum. I’m having a hard time falling asleep at the moment and looking for a good use of my time, so I suppose I’ll put to page some thoughts concerning Puddleglum and his statement of faith upon which I have been ruminating for some time.
First of all, who is Puddleglum? For those who don’t know, he is one of the main characters in C. S. Lewis’s fantasy novel The Silver Chair, which was the fourth to be published of the seven Chronicles of Narnia (although, according to the chronology of Lewis’ Narnia fantasy, it is the sixth book to take place). Puddleglum is a Narnian Marsh-wiggle, which is to say that he is a lanky marsh-dwelling humanoid with an overall greenish complexion and webbed feet and hands. Puddleglum, like all Marsh-wiggles, constantly gives voice to a very gloomy and pessimistic outlook on life, as though he were expecting the worst possible outcome in any given situation. In spite of this, in the course of events he paradoxically reveals himself to be the one person most to be relied upon for holding on to hope when hope is hardest to get hold of.
(spoiler alert! the following includes a revelation of some of the most significant plot points and dialogue from The Silver Chair.)
When we come to chapter 12 of The Silver Chair, our friend Puddleglum has, along with two children from our world (named Eustace and Jill), been for some time engaged in a difficult and troubled expedition in search of Rilian, the lost prince of Narnia. At long last, Puddleglum, Eustace, and Jill have succeeded in discovering the lost prince, who is held captive in the underground kingdom of an evil enchantress styled the Lady of the Green Kirtle, but more properly known as Queen Jadis. No sooner have they set Prince Rilian free from the enchantments which have been used to make him a captive and a slave than they are confronted by Jadis, who attempts by her powerful spell to make them all slaves together. Her spell is so powerful that she is able to lull the Prince and the two children from our world into forgetting that there is any real world other than her bleak underground kingdom of evil. In this moment of crisis, it is Puddleglum who rises to the occasion. He puts out the Witch’s enchanted fire with his bare foot (giving off a very disenchanting smell) and proceeds to give her defiance with this speech:
“‘One word, Ma’am,’ he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. ‘One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you’ve said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies making up a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if here isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court a once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.'”
I have found in these words something very helpful to stiffen the backbone of my faith in times of trial (which is, no doubt, what their author intended). Puddleglum’s argument is simple. If God and His world isn’t what really is, life without Him is miserable and meaningless by comparison. It’s odd enough that we’d have longings for something that never was or is or will be, but even that aside, if there is no God, no meaning, no reality, then what have we lost by pretending that there is? I’ll wager you, says Puddleglum. If you’re right and I’m wrong, I still haven’t lost anything by pretending; and if indeed you are right, to give up my pretending would be to give up the only thing that makes my life worth living.
This is, I think, a much better wager than Pascal’s. (see Pascal’s Wager at wikipedia.org) Whereas Pascal’s wager is an entirely self-centered bet, Puddleglum comes at us from a very different direction. He says, in effect, “I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. What is it to me if you say that the Lord does not exist? I would rather go on believing Him and living as one of His, because without Him, life is so miserable and empty that there’s no point to it at all. Just look how lame your version of ‘truth’ is,” Puddleglum says. “It’s so useless that I might as well not believe it, because even if it’s true, believing it won’t better my life at all.”
He can say all this, of course, because deep down in his heart, Puddleglum knows not only that Aslan and Narnia are real, but also that Aslan and Narnia are the only thing that matters. He takes the power (and ultimately his friends) out of his enemy’s hands by showing that, even if the Witch isn’t lying, they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by giving in; and if she is indeed telling the truth, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by carrying on as though she is lying. At which point the Witch shows her true colors and turns into the serpent she is. There’s not a lot you can do to someone who says, at heart,
“Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength[b] of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:25-26)
Those who follow Jesus are constantly being pressured by the world around us to compromise our obedience to Him. Why do we trouble our souls for a fantasy? And while we know that Jesus is so much better than a fantasy, I think sometimes it would do us good to challenge the Enemy’s false version of truth not just on its falsehood, but its uselessness, because Jesus is so much that much better than what they want us to give Him up for that it would hardly matter if He wasn’t real at all. Of course, He is. It just wouldn’t matter if He wasn’t–not enough to make us give Him up. The Lord is our portion. He’s all we have in Heaven and all we have in Earth, and all we really want for all that. As William Cowper wrote:
“But O! Thou bounteous giver of all good,
Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown;
Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.”
The substance of Christian devotion is to be able to say that sort of thing with an honest heart. If we can, nothing is going to pull us away from Jesus. If we can’t, something invariably will.
So hurrah for good old Puddleglum! And may God give us the strength to persevere in love like his, which is better than mere faith (I Corinthians 13:13).
Songs of His Pursuit, introduction
Tonight I was dwelling on a song that was one of my earliest favorites and remains a favorite of mine, “This Man” by Jeremy Camp. As I was thinking about it, and attempting to put into words how it made me feel when I was eleven and twelve years old, and how it makes me feel now, I had the thought of doing a series of posts discussing some of my most favorite songs, why they are my favorite songs, and how God has pursued my heart through them. I’ll be talking about “This Man” in a future post, but for now, I want to say some introductory things to set the stage for what will follow. (Note: these posts will carry on sporadically with no definite end. They will not be an uninterrupted series, but will be interspersed with writings on other subjects.)
When that song was released to radio in 2005, I didn’t have access to an iPod or a high-speed internet connection. Spotify didn’t exist, Youtube was brand new, and our modem connection would, of course, hardly support anything requiring much in the way of data transfer. (I recall how, in the few times a week I was allowed to use our dial-up internet, I would wait patiently for several minutes at a time to load the MLB.com site). Nor did I have much in the way of discretionary income that could be spent on CDs. Add to all of this my parents’ disagreements between themselves about what sort of music they wanted their children to listen to, and my desire to stay out of that conflict, which led me to be secretive about giving too many honest indications to either parent what I really enjoyed or wanted to listen to. The result was that during my pre-teen and early teen years my free experience of the music that resonated with me most was limited mostly to evening hours when one or both parents were out and I could make free use of one of the radios in the house.
At that time I had no personal interest in the popular secular music, and indeed very little experience from which such an interest might arise. What I did enjoy (although at time with some reserve and a nagging sense of guilt, inspired mostly by my mother’s discomfort and general opposition to it) was the mainstream contemporary Christian music which was broadcast on four different FM stations in the suburbs of Chicago where I lived (and still live to the present). Probably in part because it was so much of the all that I had, I connected very deeply with the music. Not that I embraced all of it without any distinction in my preferences. Some songs I liked better than others, and a few songs I found to be annoying. But a few of the Christian songs that were popular on the radio from 2004 or 2005, when I really began paying attention, to 2009 or 2010, when my tastes (due in part to somewhat misguided moral impulses) began to turn in a different direction, provided the real soundtrack of those turbulent, conflicted years of my life (about which more will be written in future).
I had always, to some extent, known that I was a sinner, and also known that the only hope for my redemption was somehow to be found in the cross of Jesus Christ. God, however, seemed for almost all of the time to be very distant to me. This was partly because of brokenness and conflict in my own family that I did not know how to reconcile with the things we all said we believed, which brokenness and conflict led to distance in my relationship with both of my parents (although the distance was more pronounced and more honest in my relationship with my father). I really believe it was these crises, and an attempt to somehow escape the pain of them, which led to battles with ideas like solipsism and atheism in my pre-teen and teen years (about which I may write more later). If my experience is any indicator–and indeed, I think there is more than just my experience or even the experiences of others that speaks to the reality of this–there is no such thing as an honest atheist, or an honest solipsist. Ideas like these, as I understand, are simply ideological compensations for the pain of life in whatever form it comes–guilt, disappointment, grief over our own losses or sympathetic anger about the losses and hardships of others, and so forth. In saying this, I do not in any way mean to ridicule or belittle those who consider themselves atheists or solipsists. If you leave a man on his own (which is where all of us are without Christ), the pain of the world we live in and the life we live in it is a weight that will crush him. There are many, many kinds of suicide, only one of which stops a beating heart. Cutting all sense of connection to God or reality is something that a person might do as deliberately to bring an end to the pain of this life as cutting his own veins. In saying all this, my point is that while there is really no such thing as an honest atheist or an honest solipsist, there are honestly broken people who have chosen to not be honest with themselves and others about what they instinctively know to be true because, for reasons that are not entirely personally their own fault, what they know to be true is more than they can bear. I think those of us who are secure in the knowledge of the love of God should have compassion on them because God has compassion on them. I also think those of us who are not secure in the knowledge of God or His love must look to Jesus, and realize that in Him God has revealed His compassion for us, and having realized this, learn to have for ourselves some of the pity that He has for us.
At any rate, if I can point to any one factor in my life that, more than any other, kept me from letting myself go headlong into the spiritual hypothermia of those doubts about God and reality, it was music made by God’s people. There was something in the songs that tethered me to Hope. There was a love that echoed in the music and the words which, although no lengths of reassurance seemed to be able to convince me that it was really mine for the taking, I still could not let go of (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it would not let go of me). I didn’t know at all how to draw near, or even that I could; but at the same time I dared not forget it and pass it by, or let it pass me by. The moment I began to forget, I felt myself slipping into a nameless lostness in which there was no meaning, no point of reference, and no hope; and with all that I could muster of Puddleglum‘s defiant good sense and resolution, I raged against it, day after day, year after year. It wasn’t until my 16th year that I really for the first time came to understand myself as fully accepted with God through what Jesus did in His death and resurrection. For some people, that understanding (and of course the conviction of sin that must precede it) crashes in while they are going their way without much conscious pursuit of knowing God. For others like me, it comes after a lot of grappling and seeking and getting lost in one’s head and ultimately finding one’s way out into the wide reality of the love of God outside of us in which He beckons us to lose ourselves. Either way, whether we realize it or not, it is God pursuing us.
In the same way that human affection is inclined to attach itself to any place or object or thing which is associated in memory with the fondest experiences of every kind of love (whether it be familial or romantic love, or the love of friendship), my love of music is due in large part to the way that God pursued me through music. To talk about the songs I love is to talk about how God has loved me, and how I have become who I am through that love. There will as a result be some fragments of autobiography in the posts that follow in this series, and I hope those who read them will find in them something of interest that they can connect with and that may help them reflect on their own experiences.
~Andrew
Jesus Was a Carpenter
I recently became acquainted with a song called “Jesus was a Carpenter” by Johnny Cash. I am something of a Cash fan (I am wearing a Cash t-shirt as I write), and so when an older friend of mine mentioned this song casually in the course of conversation a few weeks ago, I made a mental note to look it up online. It has a really simple, poetic, thought-provoking lyric that honors the true narrative of Christ, and ponders how He would be received in our world today. That lyric is not really the subject of my post this morning, but its opening phrases did induce a question that will serve as an introduction to the ideas I want to flesh out in the paragraphs that follow.
The song begins with the lines:
Jesus was a carpenter and He worked with a saw and hammer / And His hands could build a table true enough to stand forever
As I was driving home on Wednesday night from the youth group where I lead worship every week, I was struck by that second line, albeit in a negative way. What follows is not a criticism of the song; in fact, I would be very pleased if in response to this post you go and listen to “Jesus Was a Carpenter” and, as you listen, ponder what it has to say to you about your need for Christ.
However, on this particular listening of the song, the words “true enough to stand forever” caught my attention as not being strictly correct. This is no criticism of the song or the writer. The writer did not intend to argue, I am sure, that whatever piece of carpentry came from the hands of Jesus would in fact last forever. He simply meant to say that Jesus, being faithful as He was in everything He applied Himself to, must have been a very diligent and careful carpenter from whom the best kind of work would be expected. This is no doubt true. Being ethically perfect in his humanity as he was, we can be sure that our Lord Jesus was diligent in his craft and so attained the excellence in it that comes from diligence. His works as a carpenter would no doubt have been beautiful in their symmetry and functionality. None of those works remain to the present day, and it is doubtful that great lengths taken by those devoted to Christ could have ensured their preservation. Jesus did not go about his work as a carpenter intent on creating things that would last forever on earth; if He did, He would not have made them from perishable wood. His works as a carpenter were made with an eye to the transient blessings of rest and refreshment and fellowship his works would facilitate for everyone who made use of them.
This is a fact which can bring some encouragement to us as craftsmen, artists, tradespeople and so forth. As children of eternity stranded in time (to borrow a phrase from Michael Card) we humans have a strong impulse to reach beyond the transience of our temporary existence and make in our work an eternal monument to ourselves. We want more for ourselves than to be forgotten, because we want more for ourselves than to be forgettable. We want to make something permanent with our lives in the hope of making ourselves permanent. But the fact is for most of us that when our lives are well past, we will not be remembered, or at least not all that much. The passage of time will carry us and our works away.
As a songwriter this could be difficult for me to come to terms with. There is little I would love more than to compose something of such transcendent, unforgettable beauty that it would be remembered long, long after I am gone. This is certainly a possibility, by no means unattainable, but also not to be expected. Of those who have attempted to achieve such permanence in human memory through their artistic works, many more have failed than have succeeded. I have one precious life, so I might as well try, not for the earthly crown itself, but for the love of the excellence that its achievement signifies (which distinction of values is a subject deserving of its own discussion in another post). I have no desire to bury my talent or sell myself short on my potential through fear of not realizing my artistic ambitions.
But even if I succeed write a song that is sung five hundred years after I am gone, there will still be an intransience to it. The same thoughts and feelings that gave birth to the song will not be passed on perfectly to all who hear or sing it. And what about all of my other works that don’t survive? Must the knowledge that the song I am writing at a given moment will one day be forgotten discourage me from completing it?
The answer is, absolutely not. I believe that a moment of praise, of reverent thought toward God or reverent appreciation for and delight in His works, or of simply enjoying any good gift of His from a pure heart, is a moment of eternal worth and quality; that even if it is only a moment, it is something precious and irreplaceable to God.
And I think that it was because Jesus knew and believed this that he was able to apply himself to constructing transient things for transient purposes without frustration. His carpentry, done as a service to God, has an eternal reward in the moments of thanksgiving around a family table or quiet reflection and rest in a chair that His carpentry made possible or somehow enriched. It is only in the course of working and crafting with this kind of a perspective that we really honor God’s creation for what it is as sub-creators instead of making it a tool for elevating ourselves. God remembers every good thought and every feeling of hope that my songs may have inspired, and they are valuable to Him, even if I or others have forgotten them.
In our temporary lives we are always in the course of moving on. If we didn’t not move on from the past and leave some things in the past we would have no room in our minds for present works and thoughts. When a song I have written has run its course and been sung by the last pair of lips to the last pair of ears that will hear it on earth, it will not cease to be valuable in eternity; it is still a part of the great story of God’s creation, and hopefully a noble and honorable part, however small in the grand scheme of things. I like to think that Jesus thought the same things of His chairs and tables as He worked long and unremembered hours for thirty years in His earthly father’s shop, forever dignifying every honest labor of those who would follow in His footsteps. He could have skipped over that part of life, but He didn’t, and considering that He is the perfect image of the invisible God, I think we can learn something from this aspect of His life about what kind of a God we serve. When our desire for greatness in our works loses an appreciation for the goodness of humble things and the humility of most good things that we see reflected in the life story that Jesus chose for Himself, it has ceased to be Godly ambition and has actually become Satanic. Jesus was fit to begin the work of new creation because He loved creation in ways that Satan never did or could. He has the name above all names because He loved God and His works for their own sake, and He displayed that love by confining himself to a very humble aspect of sub-creation for most of His earthly life.
-Andrew
Fear and love
I volunteered this week on the worship team for a youth camp hosted by a church that some good friends of mine go to (Redeemer Community Church, Oswego, IL). Last night was the last night of the camp. The topical focus of the week was how we look at our emotions in the light of faith in Christ. Pastor Josh Anderson from Redeemer shared a thought last night that struck me. He said that when our lives are dominated by fear of others–whether or not they will accept us, what they will think of us, and so forth, it’s impossible for us to really love others. There is, I think, a measure of truth in the saying that you can’t love others until you learn to love yourself. I would rephrase that to say that you can’t love others until you learn to see yourself in terms of God’s love for you.
I think it’s also true that we can’t love God until we learn to see ourselves in terms of God’s love for us. Not JUST because His love for us is the reason we love Him. Because that’s not the only reason. We’re called to love God because God is good and just and holy, because He wields His infinite power with perfect integrity of character. We’re called to love God for the glory of His infinite creativity which is the source of all good things. But we are unable to love Him unless we are established in a secure relationship of love with Him through what He has done because if we do not have that kind of relationship with Him, He is a threat. He is good, and we are not. He is holy, and we are impure. He is also all-powerful, and He is so perfect that nothing impure can stand in His sight. If we really understand who He is we will be too busy protecting ourselves to worship Him. Which is why we need Jesus, the perfect lamb who was destroyed and brought back from destruction for us. We can’t grow in knowing and understanding God and bearing fruit for Him until we have learned to simply rest in Jesus.
If we can get our hearts and minds around the fact that the most infinitely terrifying being of all loves us beyond description and has sacrificed Himself for us to give us the victory against everything evil and destructive inside and outside of us, we will know what courage is. It’s like taking shelter in the eye of the storm. It’s the safest place of all. Nobody is gonna get to you there. That’s what Proverbs 14:26 means when it says that there is STRONG CONFIDENCE in the fear of the Lord. So long as I am securely in Christ by faith, the more that I learn to appreciate and become aware of God’s infinite, immanent, terrifying power, the less I will fear. Fearing God is about understanding that He is the only thing that you should really be scared of. Trusting Christ is understanding that He has taken away all reason for you to be scared. Even when God corrects us, it’s in love, to get our attention about the seriousness of sin and to help us understand how passionate He is for our holiness. It’s not to inspire dread in us; that would destroy the very relationship He is trying to create by grace in Jesus Christ.
Andrew Micah 