Merry Christmas!

"Christmas is the end of thinking you are better than someone else, because Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come to you."

--Tim Keller

Prayer Paves the Way for Seeing

It bears repeating that we aren't going to see Jesus if God does not open our eyes. I am so quick to rely on my own strength and so slow to learn that I must humbly ask for help. So today I'm reminding myself how critical prayer is by reflecting on this analysis of the gospel of Luke, from David Helm's excellent book One to One Bible Reading: A Simple Guide for Every Christian:

"Luke doesn't want us to miss the fact that prayer is the instrument God uses to ready us for His revelation. ...as a consequence of prayer, people will come to recognize Jesus for who He is, they will learn what it is to be his disciple, and they will be equipped to serve him well."

Luke 3:21-22 - "The curious but not-yet-believing crowds were first told that Jesus was God's 'beloved Son' at a time when Jesus 'was praying'."

Luke 6:12-16 - "His new followers were called to him the morning after he 'went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God'."

Luke 9:28-36 - "...those whom Jesus was training for expanded roles of gospel service--Peter, James and John--caught a glimpse of his full glory at a time when Jesus had pulled them aside 'to pray'."

Luke 9:18-20 - "...when it began to fully dawn on Peter that Jesus was the Christ...that famous encounter began with these often-forgotten words: 'Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him. And he asked them...'"

"One could almost argue that in Luke's Gospel, whenever the gospel is seen to be taking root and growing, it does so in the soil of previous prayer."

--David Helm, One to One Bible Reading, p. 21-23

Let's keep asking, friends! Keep seeking and knocking, believing that God delights to open blind eyes and display the beauty of His beloved Son. 


[This post is part of the series "31 Days of Seeing Jesus"--click here for a list of all posts.]

Back Up the Sunbeam [Multitude Monday, Take 301]

I debated whether or not to continue my typical Monday gratitude lists during this month's 31 Days of Seeing Jesus series, but I think it fits. It fits, that is, if I do not focus on the gifts as ends in and of themselves, but if I receive them as pointers to the Giver of all good gifts.

This is a challenge, of course. Counting gifts can so easily become a practice of merely "writing down things I enjoy" rather than "recognizing God's kindness and generosity and practicing gratitude for the good things He blesses me with."

So as I keep counting this month, I'm asking God to help me see Jesus in these lists by drawing my attention "back up the sunbeam to the sun." 

"…I have tried to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different… Gratitude exclaims, very properly, ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says, ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!’ One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun."
–C.S. Lewis, "Reflections in a Toolshed," from Letters to Malcolm 

With that in mind, this week I have experienced countless pleasures; here are a few I am trying to "make...into a channel of adoration": 

5678. fifteen-minute power naps
5679. a lesson in art appreciation
5680. Elijah scoring a goal at his soccer game!
5681. the joy and excitement on his face
5682. oldies station on Pandora

5683. the Book-It program at Elijah's school = accountability to keep reading to him
5684. fond memories of my own personal pan pizzas with that little blue ticket
5685. cross-references in my study Bible
5686. the way I feel more alive when I am writing
5687. enjoyment of God's Word and hunger to study more

5688. the ability to take a family vacation and enjoy fun activities
5689. the beauty of creation, high on a mountain and hundreds of feet underground
5690. safety on rails, roads, water
5691. sunset on the river
5692. pizza on a train car

5693. warm water in a swimming pool
5694. the founder of Ruby Falls witnessing to the glory and goodness of God
5695. digital photography
5696. the boys' faces aboard a REAL train
5697. gospel conversations with Steve in the car

5698. the awesome inheritance that awaits us, far better than the best vacation, never ending like every vacation must

Keep Asking

Whenever I have a realization about how I need to ASK GOD to work in my heart--ask Him to show His power in my weakness; ask Him to help me be the mom my kids need; ask Him to soften my heart and cause me to be moved by His glory--typically it goes something like this: 

1. Conviction that I need to be asking. "Oh yeah! This is HIS work! I have to ASK Him. Duh."
2. A couple of days of earnest prayers along this line. Maybe a week. Two weeks, tops.
3. Forgetfulness. Discouragement. Faithlessness. Return to old patterns.

I am a product of our 21st-century instant-gratification culture. I want results, and I want them yesterday. When God doesn't transform me on my timetable, I'm sorry to say that I am incredibly quick to lose heart.

But as Dr. David Powlison has said, "Change is incremental. The actual process is usually slow. God seems content to work on a scale of centuries with the church, and a scale of decades with individuals. ...The unfolding process is invariably messy."

DECADES! No wonder I get impatient!

I have seen Jesus this week, and He has been beautiful. This in itself is a sighting of Him: If He were not at work in my heart, if His Spirit was not active in me, I would not have eyes to see Him or a taste for His goodness at all. I would not have a hunger for His Word. So the fact that I have experienced these things in some measure over the last few days encourages me; it helps me see Him even more.

But I am not suddenly, magically a new person. I am still so often shortsighted, still easily discouraged when change doesn't come quickly enough. So I am reminding myself (and you) again: Keep asking. Just as the apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesian church--not once but continually

"I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe."  (Ephesians 1:17-19 NIV, emphasis added)

 The power at work in the hearts of those who know Him is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, Paul goes on to say. And we can be certain that God will use that power to enlighten the eyes of our hearts, because He longs for us to see and love the glory of His name even more than we want to see!


 [This post is part of the series "31 Days of Seeing Jesus"--click here for a list of all posts.]

Not Obvious, But Astounding

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).

I have grown up always knowing the story (praise God!) and thus often taking it for granted--thinking it obvious and normal that God took on flesh and lived among us. Heaven forbid! Nothing could be more astounding: "the eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, infinitely holy Son of God took on a human nature and lived among humanity as one who was both God and man at the same time, in one person...This is the most amazing event in all of history!"*

In case I've never mentioned it here, my very favorite music for stirring my heart to worship the Word made flesh at Christmastime:

Behold the Lamb of God: The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ

You can download it here for a last-minute gift or your own Christmas Day listening :) 

The album goes through the old, old story, from the Passover to Jesus' birth, telling the familiar stories that point to Christ. It begins with this beautiful quote from Sally Lloyd-Jones:

No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne – everything – to rescue the ones he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life!

It takes the whole Bible to tell this story. And at the center of the story, there is a baby. Every story in the Bible whispers his name. He is like the missing piece in the puzzle – the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture.

May God fill you with joy and wonder as you celebrate the Savior's birth!


[*quote from ESV Study Bible notes on John 1]

Fight for Your Marriage: Give Thanks

Back in July, when I blogged about Steve in my annual anniversary post, I raved about the book Sacred Influence and how I believe it changed our marriage. I had far too many good quotes from the book to use in that post, so I've been meaning to do a follow-up ever since. Four months later, here we are :)

I have an old journal in which I copied pages and pages of quotes from Sacred Influence, but I just wanted to bring out a few more highlights that spoke to me (if you missed the original post, start there!):

Gary Thomas quoted a woman who would later become a favorite author of mine, Elyse Fitzpatrick, who confessed:

“I scarcely ever extended to [my husband] the grace I enjoyed with the Lord. Instead, I was frequently more like the man in Jesus’ parable, who, after he was forgiven a great debt, went out and beat his fellow slave because he owed him some paltry sum.”

I am tempted to overlook this parable as irrelevant when Steve (or others) has not actually sinned against me. But it occurred to me that this parable is about so much more than just simple “forgiveness.”  It’s about GRACE, about my disposition toward my husband. God is so patient with me—yet I am impatient with Steve. God accepts me as I am and approves of me because of Christ’s blood—yet I show Steve disapproval rather than accepting him because he is my husband, a gift from God. On and on it goes. Thomas then brought out two more Scriptures that God really used to pierce my heart:

“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” (Romans 15:7 NIV).

Christ didn’t demand that I change before I came to Him. He didn’t put stipulations on His love. He claimed me as His own and loved me while I was still His enemy, while I was still dead in sin. And I respond by putting stipulations on my love for my husband? I demand that he act a certain way to earn my respect and acceptance? Forbid it, Lord.

“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (Hebrews 3:13).

Encouraging Steve *daily*—not once in a while—helps keep me from being hardened. When I do not focus on the good, Satan can more easily deceive me—he can blind me to Steve’s strengths, make me callous to grace, coax my critical spirit into overdrive. AND lack of encouragement can harden Steve—make him vulnerable to believing Satan’s lies that he isn’t good enough, that he can’t do it, that he might as well not try.

One of the most powerful pieces of advice I took away from the book was to shift my focus from criticism and complaint to gratitude and appreciation. Thomas exhorted:

“Practice praying positive prayers for your husband. Find the five or six things he does really well—or even just one or two!—and try to tire God out by thanking him for giving you a husband with these qualities.”

Isn’t it sad that I could be willing to try and “tire God out” with pleas about my husband’s weaknesses, but I do not bother to repeat again and again my thankfulness for his strengths? Thomas continued: 

“Prayers of thankfulness literally form our soul. They very effectively groom our affections.”

I can absolutely testify that this is the case. I believe this was a turning point in my life, when I began to understand this and made the choice to be thankful in my marriage. Yet Thomas warned me that it would be a battle, not automatic or easy:

“As soon as you begin offering prayers of thankfulness for your husband, be sure of this: the enemy of your soul and the would-be destroyer of your marriage will remind you of where your husband falls short. …You need to respond to this temptation with a healthy spiritual exercise: as soon as you recall  your husband’s weaknesses—the very second those poor qualities come to mind—start asking God to help you with specific weaknesses of your own. That’s right—as backward as it may sound, respond to temptations to judge your husband by praying for God to change you. Go into prayer armed with two lists: your husband’s strengths and your weaknesses.”

Yes. And so it was that God began weaving yet another strand of the ongoing lesson about gratitude. Even in my relationship with Steve, giving thanks would be critical. It's a way to reorient myself to God and trust Him, a way to fight for my marriage, a way to bless and honor my husband. Six years later, I am exponentially more thankful: for my amazing husband, and for the ways God has used thankfulness to "form [my] soul" and "groom [my] affections."


Related:
Seven Year Itch

Broken

Look who I got to see this weekend...

 

SQUEEEE!

When I found out a few months ago that Ann Voskamp was going to be in Nashville, OF COURSE I was going to be there. Duh. Even better: my beloved mentor came to attend with me...and my amazing husband kept the boys overnight and into the next day so that I had a wonderful getaway with her!

The event, called "Broken: An Evening with Ann Voskamp, Christa Wells, and Nicole Witt," began with music from Christa and Nicole. They led us in singing a couple of songs and then performed several of their own songs. I was only just a little bit familiar with Christa's music, so most of the songs were new to me. I especially appreciated "How Emptiness Sings." Christa explained that it was inspired by an old blog post of Ann's, in which Ann pondered the music a guitar makes:

The curves of a guitar holds emptiness, and in patient arms, emptiness can sing.

I watch how her fingers gracefully play up the long, slender neck. How she cradles the wood. How she embraces the void within it and listens to it.

The black space under the willing strings amplify sounds and a chamber of dark is a holy hollowness holding songs. This is profound. This is grace.

Scripture is the steel threads, holding the world together, and when we let the fingers pluck along these sacred strings, the lines of red letters, Christ plays in one thousand places and even our hollow emptiness is a beauty that reverberates with the refrain of Love.

 When Christa read that, inspiration came:

...Her bow is on the strings,
And the tune resonates in the open space
To show us how emptiness sings:
Glory to God, Glory to God!
In fullness of wisdom,
He writes my story into his song, 
My life for the glory of God.

After the music, Ann came out to speak. Most of what she said was familiar stories and thoughts from her blog and book, but she also showed pictures of and talked a bit about this striking sculpture in Philadelphia called "Freedom." You know it's going to be good when you grab your pen to capture a line from someone's *prayer*: Ann addressed God as "The God who appoints those who disappoint, in order that we may point to You who never disappoint."

As Ann talked about brokenness and how God uses it to bring beauty and show His grace, I scribbled down several more poignant quotes (these are as close as I could get them, but probably not exact):

"Do I really break my joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? ...The way of satan is more effective, more expedient?"

"Thy will be done" is the secret to joy.

To really get "receive," the "I" cannot come first.

"God renovates this fallen world with nails driven through His hands."

The sky breaks and waters the earth. Kernels break and feed our bodies. The earth breaks and seeds sprout up. "Why be afraid of being a broken thing?" "Maybe the love gets in more at the broken places."

"He is using all your brokenness to name you, shape you, give you a face and a form as glorious as His."

"This place is only part of the story--one of the stages of breaking free."

I'm pretty sure I speak for about 99% of the women there when I say we all would have liked to hear more from her--it was just over too soon!

We waited in line for a little while afterward to meet Ann, and instead of having her sign my copy of her book (which I'd lent to a friend and didn't have anyway), I had her sign MY book, since she was the one who inspired my visual journaling! So fun. 

After that lovely evening, I then got to spend the next 16ish hours with Diane. She drove over to go to the event with me, and we decided to get a hotel in Brentwood (a blissful night of uninterrupted sleep! waking up when my body decided it was done sleeping and not at the sounds of crying or an alarm! cranked a/c I did not have to pay the utility bill for! a hot tub! a maid to come in and clean up after me!).

You would think that between staying up until 1:00 AM and then talking nonstop from about 10-2 the following day, we'd have covered every imaginable topic and would be all caught up on everything. Oh, you would be so very wrong. How the hours passed so quickly, I do not know. But I am so thankful for this dear woman and the fact that I can be my realest, most broken self with her, and that she is willing to let me see her broken places. And I am thankful for the ways that both Ann (from a distance) and Diane (knowing and loving me up close) point me to Jesus, the Savior who loves and redeems messy, broken people.

Making a Map

If I hadn't already renamed my blog, I decided last week, I'd name it "Making a Map," after this lovely quote from the book I just finished: 

"The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment that God makes to us. Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God's faithfulness. We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God's will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance."
(Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, 128-129)

Oh, how thankful I am for this reality and my growing understanding of it. It's not about me. It doesn't depend on me. And that is good news!

In the end, I think that's what I'm trying to do when I sit down to write here in this space: I'm making a map. I write to deliberately shift my attention from my success or (more often) failures at righteousness to the perfect righteousness of Christ. I write to rein in my moods and motives and subject them to God's truth and ways. In order to steady my steps amid the rise and fall of my enthusiasms, I am making a map of His faithfulness.

Related:
New Name, Same Great Taste
Let the Gospel Rule
Who Gets the Last Word?
Learning Perspective from Paul

On Suffering and Asking Why

As I read through the Old Testament, I'm also reading through Mark Dever's immensely helpful book The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made. He has written a chapter (adapted from a sermon) on each book of the Bible, providing a bird's-eye view of the main themes and how they all fit together.

His explanation of the book of Job emphasizes three simple truths: "We often suffer. We sometimes understand. We can always trust." I found the following two quotes especially insightful. When we suffer, we always want to understand why. But is that really best, let alone possible? Dever writes:

"Demanding that suffering have a reason and meaning that fits within the narrow scope of our human understanding prejudices the explanation that can be given. As humans, we must see that, given our limited understanding, there are only a few types of solutions that are available to us. When we fail to recognize our limitations, it's like deciding that because our own car radio is not picking up any radio broadcasts, then there must be no radio stations sending out a broadcast anywhere. But why assume that? Is that the only possible explanation? And why assume that we must understand what God intends through suffering?" 

[snip] 

"At times, God does graciously allow us to see how He has used a difficult situation for our good. And surely we should thank Him for the consolation such moments of understanding afford. But there is danger in assuming that He must give us such understanding. What will follow is a counterfeit trust, a trust in our own abilities to figure out all of God's purposes within any particular trial, rather than a trust in God and in His character as He has finally revealed it in Jesus Christ on the cross. A counterfeit trust in God might work for some things, but it will not finally work. The only one who is worthy of our trust is not ourselves; nor is it our own clever ability to figure out life's knotty questions; it is God Himself." 

--Mark Dever, "Job: Wisdom for Losers," The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Kept, p. 474/478 

Rudeness Meets Patience

The phrase that comes out of my mouth more than any other these days (with the possible exception of "Gentle! You need to be kind to Jude!") is "Try again. You may not speak to Mama that way."

The four-year-old in our house is learning and testing the power of words, which means we're experiencing a lot of screaming and yelling, a lot of arguing, a lot of rude comments and demanding instead of requesting. It's aggravating, to say the least. So I spend a majority of my day correcting and scripting. But the tone of that correction varies dramatically--and I felt convicted about that last week when I read some insights from Tim Keller's book King's Cross. 

Keller explores the "Request of James and John" in Mark 10, where Jesus has just finished describing to the disciples how He will be tortured and killed. After this grim and sobering prophecy, the first words out of his closest disciples' mouths are startling. Keller writes:

"James and John say, 'Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.' That's a great way to start a prayer, don't you think? 'Oh Lord, I have a humble request, and I want you to do exactly what I say.' Jesus puts up with them graciously--that's the way he was. 'What do you want me to do?' he asks. He doesn't say, 'Um, would you care to start over?' Or 'How dare you talk to me like that? Don't you know who I am? Don't you know who you are?' He simply says, 'What do you want?'"

Now, obviously I need to correct Elijah when he speaks disrespectfully. My job as his mother is to teach him how to express his desires and emotions appropriately, without rudeness or screaming/whining. But there is a world of difference between a calm, matter-of-fact "You may not speak to me that way. Try again," and an angry, indignant "You may NOT speak to me that way!! TRY AGAIN!"

I can (should--must!) correct and teach Elijah without getting personally offended and outraged. The difference between Jesus and James/John was infinitely greater than the difference between me and Elijah! While Elijah is instructed to obey and honor me as his mother, I am more like him than not. We stand as peers before the holy God. And I am not inherently worthy of respect and honor in the way that Jesus is. So if He can respond patiently to James and John's (and my own!) ridiculous arrogance and petulant demands, how much more do I need to display that same patience as I interact with my four-year-old son (who IS a child, not just acting like one)?

Oh, how thankful I am for the way God is slow to anger, infinitely patient, abounding in love and compassion toward me. And oh, how I need His grace as a mother to enable me to reflect those qualities to my impressionable sons.

Something Better

On Monday I was supposed to take the boys to a friend's house for a playdate. I was SO looking forward to it, as this is a relatively new friend, and it seems we never can get enough time to talk. So you can imagine my dismay when I woke up early Monday morning with crusty, ouchy eyes. Pinkeye. AWESOME.

My first thought, in my grouchy six a.m. fog, was to be angry. I felt disappointed and resentful. I think it would be slightly melodramatic to be all "Why, God?" on the level of a response to a cancer diagnosis...but I'm not gonna lie, I was exhibiting a milder (and perhaps uglier) "Seriously, Lord? Seriously?"

My next thought was hopeful: Maybe God is making this fall through because He has something better in mind. I don't have my regular Tuesday night prayer with friends tomorrow, so maybe my friend and I can meet for coffee tomorrow night instead (we'd done that on a Tuesday night once before). That would be way better than a playdate today anyway, because we'd get a couple of hours for *uninterrupted* conversation, rather than trying to talk and also parent five small children!

I called my friend, and she agreed that she didn't really want me and my pinkeye at her house. And, as it turned out, we were in fact able to get together on Tuesday night instead. Toward the end of our time together, after about three wonderful hours of really great heart-level conversation on various topics, I was sharing all the above. My main question was, "Why am I so quick to assume the worst of God? Why am I so quick to assign negative intent, to jump to the conclusion that He is stingy, that He doesn't want to give me good gifts, etc.?"

But my friend nailed me with a more fundamental issue. As I replayed the scene of Monday morning, expressing my thought, "Maybe God has something better in store," she interrupted me: "He did."

No "maybe" about it. "He did, definitely, have something better in mind." For a split second, I assumed she was referring to the time we'd just shared that had proven the fact, thinking as I was: "He *did* have something better in store, because here we sit and tonight has been such a blessing!" But she pressed: "He definitely did have something better in mind--EVEN IF this hadn't worked out. What He brings is always best."

My reaction in the moment of being denied something I wanted revealed my heart. Sadly, it exposed unbelief and idolatry there: "God doesn't really love me, isn't really good, doesn't really want to give me good things." The original lie.

Worse, my idolatrous heart thought that the answer to that lie was God's providing what I wanted. He was vindicated in my mind when He gave me something that clearly, from my perspective, was better--a coffee date instead of a playdate. He is kind and gentle to do this sometimes in spite of me--but my friend's admonition was needed. His love and His goodness, the gospel truths that He is for me and gives me all things pertaining to life and godliness, mean that what He gives is best. However it looks to my limited perspective, these circumstances are best. If my plans fall through, it is always, always because He has something better in mind.

Funny thing, in the middle of writing this post I got distracted and popped over to look at Twitter. Scotty Smith's most recent tweet pretty well sums it up:

Related ("Other Times I Have Preached This Same Truth to Myself"):

Despising the Pleasant Land

My Portion

Hemmed In

Calling it Beautiful

Stubborn Grace

"Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way."

--Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way It's Supposed to Be
(quoted at Of First Importance)

Thankful Thursday, Take 137

"...gratitude that is pleasing to God is not first a delight in the benefits God gives (though that will be part of it). True gratitude must be rooted in something else that comes first--namely a delight in the beauty and excellency of God's character.

"...You would not be honored if I thanked you often for your gifts to me but had no deep and spontaneous regard for you as a person. You would feel insulted, no matter how much I thanked you for your gifts. If your character and personality do not attract me or give me joy in being around you, then you will just feel used, like a tool or a machine to produce the things I really love.

"So it is with God. If we are not captured by his personality and character, displayed in his saving work, then all our declarations of thanksgiving are like the gratitude of a wife to a husband for the money she gets from him to use in her affair with another man."

--John Piper, God is the Gospel (p. 136-137)

Seeking to corral this so-often-adulterous heart, I step back from the gifts this week and thank God for...

• His Spirit--not a gift for the prophets alone, for only some special category of pastors and holy people--but for ALL His children!
• breathing life into me when I was nothing but a pile of dry, dead bones
• keeping His promises
• giving His Spirit not just to the men, but to His daughters as well
• Jesus, whom my sins pierced, and whose death gave me life
• mercies new every morning (and throughout the afternoon and evening, too)
• His "Never-Stopping, Never-Giving-Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love"
• knowing that that love doesn't depend on my performance
• the privilege of calling Him "Father"
• His sovereign, wise control over all things
• reconciling me to Himself so that I could know a joy incomprehensible, incomparable: eternity with the One my soul was created to delight in and enjoy, the One who can satisfy me like none of His good gifts ever can

"May He grant us to delight in him for who he is, so that all our gratitude for his gifts will be the echo of our joy in the excellency of the Giver!" (Piper, p. 138)

Wanting What's Best

"Many people seem to embrace the good news without embracing God. There is no sure evidence that we have a new heart just because we want to escape hell. That's a perfectly natural desire, not a supernatural one. It doesn't take a new heart to want the psychological relief of forgiveness, or the removal of God's wrath, or the inheritance of God's world. All these things are understandable without any spiritual change. You don't need to be born again to want these things. The devils want them.

"It is not wrong to want them. Indeed it is folly not to. But the evidence that we have been changed is that we want these things because they bring us to the enjoyment of God. This is the greatest thing Christ died for. This is the greatest good in the good news. Why is that? Because we were made to experience full and lasting happiness from seeing and savoring the glory of God. If our best joy comes from something less, we are idolaters and God is dishonored. He created us in such a way that his glory is displayed through our joy in it. The gospel of Christ is the good news that at the cost of his Son's life, God has done everything necessary to enthrall us with what will make us eternally and ever-increasingly happy--namely, himself."

--John Piper, God is the Gospel

Thankful Thursday, Take 130

"Gratitude honors God. Gratitude is the echo of grace as it reverberates through the hollows of the human heart. Gratitude is the unashamed acceptance of a free gift and the heartfelt declaration that we cherish what we cannot buy. Therefore gratitude glorifies the free grace of God and signifies the humility of a needy and receptive heart."
(John Piper, "Proud People Don't Say Thanks")

This proud person is seeking to mortify pride by humbly thanking God for so many things she cannot buy, including:

• kisses from Elijah
• the delight of watching Elijah exuberantly greet Steve when he comes home from work
• gorgeous late-summer weather
• the privilege of interceding for others
• millions of nerve endings on the skin
• the blessing of sleeping through the night...I SO do not miss the newborn stage...
• the fact that I do not serve an angry, capricious god; or a cold, aloof, indifferent god; or a morose and brooding, not-in-total-control god...but a HAPPY God who invites me to share in His joy!
• giving John Piper that insight to write about, and giving me the ability to read and understand and celebrate it
• mercifully receiving my dish-scrubbing and diaper-changing and blog-writing and laundry-folding and book-reading as spiritual acts of worship

Only Two, Only One Viable

"...there are only two religions in the world--a true and a false. We distinguish between many, many religions: Christianity, Buddhism, [Islam], etc.; and we divide Christianity into Presbyterian, Baptist, Reformed, Lutheran, Episcopalian, etc. But these are merely human classifications. With God there are only two: (1) a religion of works; and (2) a salvation by grace. Every church or denomination or religious group which teaches that man has anything at all to do with obtaining or earning or meriting his salvation is a false religion, regardless of its denominational or sectarian name. It is the religion of fig leaves and the offering of Cain.

"On the other hand, those who teach that men are totally lost, completely impotent to save themselves, and therefore must look to the work of God exclusively, are the recipients of true salvation under whatever name they may be known. Satan deceived Adam and Cain, making them feel they could do something to be saved, or at least help God a little bit in the work. But God refused to recognize it and provided salvation by grace.

"Satan has not changed his method since then, but is still deceiving and causing people to believe they can please God by human works and efforts. Salvation by grace is a humiliating message to bring. Man will admit he is sick and needs some help, but tell him he is 'dead' in trespasses and in sins and totally depraved and he will be insulted. Yet, until a person is willing to admit that he cannot do anything, but must rely completely on the grace of God, he cannot be saved."

--M.R. DeHaan, Portraits of Christ in Genesis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel, 1995), 75.

Immeasurable Riches Forever

"[God] raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6-7).

"There are two astonishing things here. One is that the purpose of our salvation is for God to lavish the riches of His grace on us. The other is that it will take Him forever to do it."
(John Piper, Future Grace)

Fear is an Opportunity

"Fear is an occasion to turn to Christ

and trust Him in new ways."

--Ed Welch, "Help and Hope" (CCEF podcast)

It Takes a Village...to Know a Person?

I think as a married couple, it is easy to fall into wanting "just the two of us" time. It isn't that I'd deny Steve "guy time" with friends or "me time" doing something alone (I know how much I cherish both girl time and solitude!), but rather, when we do have evenings or weekends together, I sometimes want to cling tightly to quiet times alone with him. In other words, if he wants to go off without me occasionally and do his own thing, great; I think that's healthy. But when we are going to spend time together, it's easy to default to curling up with a movie or having a date night, rather than making the effort to serve others together, to bring others into our world (or enter theirs).

As I try to articulate this, it seems clear that there are other issues at play besides simply my relationship with my husband, but I'm thinking about it in that specific context because of a C.S. Lewis quote I heard recently. I was struck by the idea that by wanting more of Steve to myself, I may actually be getting less of him. Lewis writes:

"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles [Williams] is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's [Tolkien's] reaction to a specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him 'to myself' now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald..."

--C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (quoted by Tim Keller in The Prodigal God)

In other words, I alone cannot call forth all the sides of who Steve is. I should have already realized this: Elijah brings out different parts of him, of course, and this has been beautiful to see. But if we were to take our eyes off each other and our own private world in our own home, how much more of each other might we enjoy and experience (in addition to all the other benefits that would bring, to us and to others)? What new facets of my husband might be revealed as I serve beside him in some form of ministry, or as we open our home to others and practice hospitality? How much more of Steve might I have to enjoy, respect and appreciate if I saw him in the varied light that others cast?

It occurs to me that in looking out for my own interests, I actually end up robbing myself of what's best. Which is somehow unsurprising. And I am reminded of the quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward in the same direction."

(I feel like I'm not writing very coherently here...forgive me. It's something I've been mulling over since we heard Tim Keller speak last week [that's where I heard the quote]. Feel free to jump in with your thoughts, or ask for clarification if I've been too unclear.)

Answering Unasked Questions

On Wednesday night, I had the privilege of hearing Tim Keller speak on his book The Prodigal God. Fantastic. As Steve put it afterwards, "I felt like a very small sponge in a very big ocean." LOTS to ponder and chew on. We bought the book, and I'm about halfway through it already--really, really great stuff.

One thing that stood out to me was not at all Keller's main theme; it was from the Q&A that followed, when Keller offered this definition of contextualization: "using Jesus to answer the questions these people are asking--not the questions other people are asking."

I know people who think that "contextualization" is a dirty word. They see it as watering down the gospel, focusing on people's "felt needs" instead of their real needs, polluting the purity of the message of the cross with worldliness. And while all of these things would certainly be wrong if that's what you were doing, I think Keller's definition is a fantastic response to this mindset.

The cross is going to be offensive, yes--it is foolishness to the world, and so offense at some points is unavoidable. We must not compromise on the truth of the message; we must not remove what's essential. But why not remove what's unnecessarily offensive? Why not meet people where they are instead of making them start where YOU are?

You've probably heard the slogan "Jesus is the Answer"--maybe you've also heard the snarky response: "But what's the question?" If you haven't taken the time to find out what people are asking, you're trying to slap a one-size-fits-all, bumper-sticker-platitude solution on their problems. And that's insensitive and rude.

I believe Jesus does answer any question people can ask; Life and Truth are found in Him alone. But only by really hearing others' questions and seeing their hurts can we even begin to bring them the Life-Giving Answer, to love and care for them by showing them how He truly is sufficient to meet all their needs.