Tag: perspective

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.

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

An encouraging word from the trenches

by Andrew Micah, posted in encouragement, exhortation, spiritual warfare, Uncategorized

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.

Sin is always a personal issue

by Andrew Micah, posted in philosophy, theology, Uncategorized

I saw John Mark McMillan and Kings Kaleidoscope in concert this past Saturday, and I want to share a little bit about that. Tomorrow is also Friday, which means that I will have a roundup of all the new music to do, so the concert review may have to wait until Saturday. At any rate. For now I want to spend a few moments on the subject of how God’s personal

God’s word doesn’t teach us that goodness and justice are abstract concepts out there in the universe to which God is accountable. The view of God that we get from Scripture is that goodness and justice and are attributes of His character, that they come from Him and originate from Him. If there was no God, there would be no goodness. If there was no God, there would be no such thing as justice. Moral goodness and justice are personal rather than abstract. All that we will ever experience of goodness and truth and beauty depends on the reality of God, and as a result, God Himself is the standard of what is good and true and beautiful. Goodness, truth, and beauty are because God is, because I AM is I AM. (This is not a doctrine I’m going to explain or defend in detail at the moment, although I probably will attempt to do so at some point.)

Now the most common objection that is thrown up against this is that it makes goodness arbitrary in its contingency on the will of a person, i.e. that God could do whatever He wanted, or expect of us whatever He wanted, and we would be under an obligation to think of it as good, even if it were to go against what we know to be good. But this is actually faulty for two reasons. One, it involves a subtle error of begging the question, re-asserting the very premise that is being challenged (that goodness is an impersonal absolute abstract “out there” to which God is accountable) in order to attempt to prove that premise. Everyone has presuppositions–indeed, it is impossible to begin thinking without them–but we can’t think that restating our presuppositions is the same thing as an argument. But the second and bigger mistake is that it involves a misunderstanding of what Christians are saying when they say that God is the standard of goodness. We are not saying that God decrees what is good, and that good and evil are contingent upon His say-so. We are saying that God is what is good, that goodness is His character, that everything He decrees is consistent with His character, and that one of the other important attributes of His character is that it is immutable, i.e., it never changes. That is very different than setting up the world as contingent upon the say-so of a capricious being that might say or think anything. It does, however, mean that God is accountable ultimately to Himself, and not to us. (Hebrews 6:13) For God to be good is simply for God to be true to Himself, because He is good. However, we are creatures, and on top of that, sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God, which means that we need something more than merely to be true to ourselves in order to be good. We need redemption, and we need to be true to the one who has created and redeemed us.

Where I am going with all of this is to make the point that sin is always a personal issue. When God confronts us about our sin, He is not confronting us about violating a law out there that He has the responsibility of protecting. He’s not coming to us saying, “Hey, I wish this wasn’t necessary, I really hate to break it to you, but I’m responsible to uphold the law here and you’ve blown it.” On the contrary, He is confronting us about the way we have personally violated Him. Every sin is a personal violation of God and that is what makes it wrong. It is precisely because He is immutable goodness that He must punish sin. He could either punish it or go along with it, and He cannot and will not go along with it. Repentance, also, is not about us making things up to a standard of goodness. Repentance is about us leaving sin for God, because to move toward God is to move away from sin. When God disciplines us (which is a very different thing from punishing us, as we will explore some other time), He’s not dealing with us about the way we have gone astray from some standard out there. He’s dealing with us about the way we have gone astray from Him, to urge us and help us to see the need to come back to Him, because He wants us to live with His goodness flowing through us.

~Andrew

Puddleglum’s Wager

by Andrew Micah, posted in fantasy literature, imagination, philosophy, Uncategorized

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).

Roll with it

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized

Something I am constantly learning and re-learning is the ability to look on disruptions of my plan for the day (and, as requires greater effort, my life at large) with the expectation of something serendipitous in those disruptions. A great deal of the cranky attitudes, short tempers, and frayed nerves in the world come from an inability to trust that God has unexpected good for us in the countless little and large redirections that take place in our lives. Sometimes this crankiness goes so far as to make us pridefully loath to even listen/look out for, accept, and give thanks for the good that comes our way when we are out of our way, but I am hopeful that I am seeing this fault in myself less and less. I believe, and am learning to believe, that God is always bringing disruptions of various shapes and sizes into our lives so as to teach us to trust His control rather than ours.

The specific events that provoked today’s ponderings were these: I made a trip today during my lunch hour to check out some books from the library, but when I got back, noticed that I couldn’t find the reading list that I brought with me to the library. I had spent probably a couple of hours compiling that reading list last week, and to lose it would be the loss of those couple hours which are right now very precious to me. So when it seemed that the list was lost I was very frustrated with myself. (Is it just me or do all creative people habitually lose things? Bono confesses this as a problem of his in the book I am reading this afternoon…) I cursed in euphemisms as I made my way back to the car to see if I could find the list at the library. 

As I got into the car, I settled myself down for the little drive to the library and made myself determined to keep an eye open for whatever serendipity might come my way. It came in the form of a song on the radio called “Castle On the Hill” by Ed Sheeran. This is a song I have on iTunes and have heard many times, but I was struck in a new way by the joy that comes through it, and how fortunate I am to live in a time when an artist can shamelessly let himself go like Ed does in that song and it’s okay. I think if I didn’t live in such times I would feel terribly smothered. I even found myself offering a prayer of thanks to God for this goodness as I got out of the car at the library.

As it turns out, the notepad on which my reading list was written was not in the library; it was obscured in one of the stacks of forty-five library books which are lying in my room at present. But even my haste in not looking thoroughly through my room turned out for a good purpose, or at least did not keep that good from getting through to me.

As Paul Brandt says, “Talk about time / and it’s flown away before you’re done.” So it’s back to reading for me. Gonna try to finish the Bono book today, start in and something new, and perhaps read a few more chapters of my first real Dickens (a Tale of Two Cities) this evening.