Jimmy Young

The Last Two Years: On Being Broken and Being Blessed

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It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply – A.W. Tozer.

This has been my lived experience of the past two years. Two long, hard, years of being broken and being rebuilt, being bruised and being cared for, being humbled and relearning what it means to be truly human.

As a young Christian leader, I had a clear picture of how God would use me in His service and what a Jesus-shaped life would look like. Naturally, he would use the same traits and giftings that others so readily encouraged in me. What brought ‘success’ and glorifying God went hand-in-hand.

This picture of the Christian life served me adequately for nigh-on eighteen years until the moment that Sarah was diagnosed with cancer. Then it started fraying at the edges. Then I started fraying at the edges.

Fraying at the edges seems to be a good description of my interior life these last two years. Unravelled, picked and pulled apart at the seams. Sarah was the one with cancer and yet in the two years since her diagnosis, in the midst of her healing, I have often felt like the one still broken.

More than anything, this has led to an absence of writing. What do you write about on a site dedicated to stirring your affections for God when in fact your affections feel stagnant, slowed, profoundly unstirred?

I still love Jesus. It’s still Jesus. I’m still a consistent, faithful member and pastor of my church. It’s just that my faith looks less cocksure bravado and more like a concerted clinging onto Jesus, more like a deep-rooted and deeply-planted faith than one easily swayed by day-to-day emotions.

Jesus starts the Beatitudes with one of the most confronting lines imaginable to the lift-yourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps style faith I had crafted for myself as a young Christian:

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven‘. (Matt 5:2)

Blessed are the poor in Spirit.
Blessed are the broken.
Blessed are the weak.
Blessed are those who do not rely on their own strength.

Being frank, prior to breaking, I had no real need of being poor in Spirit. How terrible does that sound? How frankly un-Christian?

Thank God that God desired far more for me than I desired for myself. The mercy of God is that He would lead me down the path of brokenness in order to secure something I did not desire for myself.

The opening poem in the Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan prayers has become somewhat of a guiding light for me in these past two years:

‘Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,
That to be low is to be high,
That the broken heart is the healed heart,
That the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
That the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
That to have nothing is to possess all,
That to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
That to give is to receive,
That the valley is the place of vision.

This is the rambling, lengthy story of how I was broken and how God has made me new.

In the months after chemotherapy ended lots of people started asking a revealing question: ‘So, like, Sarah’s healed now isn’t she?‘

It’s a question with an expectant one-word answer, ‘yes’.

Life is rarely that simple.

Has the tumour and cancer gone? Yes.
Has the unnatural feeling that chaos is normal left? No.
Has the chemotherapy and frequent hospital visits slowed? Yes.
Has the emotional scars from having your life turned upside down healed? No.
Has the ambient sadness and anxiety that intermittently invades your day left? No.
Has the stress built up over months and months left our bodies? No.

What does healing look like when the sickness is gone but there is still so much to process and work through?

I remember attending the Single Minded Conference in Sydney with a friend and listening to a recently-divorced woman in her late thirties lamenting that she would never have children. I cried, and cried, and cried, not yet knowing whether we would ever be able to have children.

I remember burying myself into my work until the natural consequence of burnout took hold. Taking a test with a counsellor, he informed me that I scored highly on something called ‘depersonalisation’.

Depersonalisation is what happens when you stop seeing people as people, but rather as objects. Sounds rather horrid for a pastor, right? ‘No, I don’t think you see other people as objects. I think you see yourself that way’ says the counsellor. Excellent.

I remember the moments texting friends bailing on events or rides or class last minute because I couldn’t bring myself out of bed, racked with anxiety and sadness.

I remember bailing out of haircuts because I couldn’t stand being in the barber, alone.

I remember the many, many times I said to Sarah, ‘I don’t feel like myself anymore’.

I remember being afraid to tell anyone.

In March 2019, I participated in one of the hardest one-day cycling events in the world: 3 Peaks Falls Creek Challenge.

Starting at the top of Falls Creek, it follows a 240km circuit around Alpine Victoria, taking in the (three) peaks of Tawonga Gap, Mt. Hotham and the back end of Falls Creek in an excruciating route. It was also the moment where the carefully curated inner life I spent the last 18 months holding together fell apart.

Climbing up Mt. Hotham was close to the worst experience of my life. In the midst of a close-to three-hour ascent, I had near to a mental breakdown. The physical exhaustion of my body broke down the mental walls that had allowed my mind to focus on other things.

If you ask any real cyclist what the best part of cycling, they’ll tell you honestly, it’s the suffering. There is a clear space in the midst of pain that is free of distraction, where the only company is the rhythm of your (rapid) heartbeat and breath.

This was the opposite of that.

There was no pure space, no distillation of thought but rather a constant experience of imagining every single significant person in my life describing what an utter, abject, complete failure I was.

That was when the defences finally came down. Not only was I physically broken, but emotionally, I was done.

It was time to listen.

I started to open up to people. I invited a coach into my ‘stuff’. I started seeing a psychologist. I felt naked a lot. Seen for the first time, really.

John Calvin starts the Institutes of Christian Religion with an opening sentence I contemplated a lot: ‘Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.’

I had to come to terms with the fact I didn’t know myself very well at all and perhaps I did not know God as well as I would like. Suffering tends to reveal not only what you worship and treasure but who you really are beneath the surface.

Calvin goes on to write that knowing ourselves is vital because from of the feelings of ‘ignorance, vanity, poverty and infirmity’ we can recognise that the ‘full abundance of every good and purity of righteousness rests in the Lord alone’.

Knowing ourselves is important because we only begin to seek after God when we ‘begin to become displeased with ourselves’.

I had spent so many years being ‘pleased’ with myself that this was a rather horrid experience.

When I was nineteen years, a mentor instructed me that it would be helpful for my walk with Jesus if I could learn as much as I could about one faithful Christian from history. I chose Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

There are many reasons to fill my life with much of Spurgeon, many of them to do with his success. He possessed a spirit-filled zeal, endlessly quotable, a successful pastor at a young age where hundreds became faithful Christians under his preaching and leadership.

What I discovered along the way was that Spurgeon was a man who knew what it was to be brought low, to be broken. One of the most helpful things he wrote, ‘The Ministers Fainting Fits‘, he wrote about spiritual sadness. He writes:

I thought it might be consolatory to some of my brethren if I gave my thoughts thereon, that younger men might not fancy that some strange thing had happened to them when they became for a season possessed by melancholy; and that sadder men might know that one upon whom the sun has shone right joyously did not always walk in the light.

Spurgeon came to the conclusion that those who never have to push through waves of difficulty never grow in strength and maturity like those who do. He writes again:

The scouring of the vessel has fitted it for the Master’s use.. The wilderness is the way to Canaan. The low valley leads to the towering mountain. Defeat prepares for victory. The raven is sent forth before the dove. The darkest hour of the night precedes the day-dawn.

The scouring of this vessel has fitted it for the Master’s use.

These words have been of immeasurable comfort.

The last two years have changed me, but if I was being honest, it was needed change.

The most devastating revelation that I’ve had to come to terms with is that in part this has occurred because there are significant ways that I have tried to progress without the presence of God.

I was content moving forward without a spiritual hunger, content moving forward with a lack of prayerfulness, content moving forward with a lack of meditation, content moving forward with addiction to social media, content with a lifestyle where Jesus was important but not the only thing of importance and content moving forward without being poor in spirit.

What cancer and the subsequent two years has done was shine a light onto all the ways that I am content to progress without God himself. These years have been more evidence of grace to me that even in pain and difficulty and brokenness that he will not let me progress without his presence.

It has made me appreciate God’s grace, that much more.
It made me lean less on my own strength, that much more
It killed off the pride in my performance, that much more.
It created less of a desire to perform for others and instead be with others, that much more.
It built a desire to be honest rather than liked, that much more.
It called me to take off the masks I had made for myself, that much more.

I’ve become slower to speak, quicker to listen. Starting to slow down rather than view out-of-control pace as the only option. Seeing that God broke me apart only to bring me more in line with his Kingdom.

I’ve reflected a lot on some words that Stephen McAlpine wrote upon finishing up as a senior pastor last year:

‘The opposite of a broken leader is not a whole leader, but a brittle leader.  Broken leaders are broken down by God and built back up again, first in order to be humbled from their pride, but second, to make them safe people for the flock of Christ to be around.  A brittle leader is a nightmare.  Having never been broken, a brittle leader works the angles, avoids the self-examination, gets chippy with opposition, either fears what others think, or steamrollers over the top of what others think.  Why?  Because they fear being broken.  Hence they remain brittle.

And again, this week

‘It’s good to be a broken leader. It means you won’t break other people. Jesus came for the sick, not the well, and perhaps I was sicker than I had ever thought, even before I became ill’.

This has been true for me. Although Sarah was the one with cancer, I too, was sick. God cared enough for me that he not only broke me but cared for me in my breaking.

‘Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,
That to be low is to be high,
That the broken heart is the healed heart,
That the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
That the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
That to have nothing is to possess all,
That to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
That to give is to receive,
That the valley is the place of vision.

Five Simple Lessons Learnt from Reading 63 Books in 2017

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The earliest memories I have of my parents involve my mum reading over me through illness or my dad making up hilarious stories on the fly, filled with so many memorable characters that even as teenagers, my friends begged him for a retelling. Either way, since the very beginning I was given a love for reading and a love for stories that has only grown over the years.

It was late this year when I read a paragraph that explained the exact reason why my love for reading has flourished as much as it has. This is an excerpt from William D. Mounce’s essay on ‘The Pastor and his Study:’

At the 1998 national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Orlando, Florida, John Piper was invited to speak on the topic “Preparing the Next Generation of Preachers and Missionaries’. At that point in time, many in the audience – about fourteen hundred college and seminary professors, graduate school students, and some pastors – did not know who John was.

John’s opening message was this: ‘The greatest need of every pastor and every missionary is to know God better than they know anything and to enjoy God more than they enjoy anything. 

This is the fuel behind a love for reading: that my greatest need and your greatest need is to know God more than we know anything and to enjoy God more than we enjoy anything.  More than intellectual curiosity or a drive for self-improvement, the impetus behind reading deeply and widely is to harvest insights from men and women far wiser and experienced than I may ever be in order that I may know God more than I know anything and to enjoy God more than I enjoy anything.

The list below of assorted advice and titles have been important lessons that have both aided my reading and stirred my affections for God.  I hope that the lessons learnt and re-learnt are helpful tools in driving you to know and enjoy God more and more, to His glory.

Avail Yourself of History

One of the greatest gifts I was ever given is the challenge to read outside my own time period.  It is absurd how often the struggles we most readily identify are experiences our friends from centuries earlier not only knew extensively about but wrote from deep wells of experience and wisdom on.

From the Catholic G. K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy, 1908), Puritans John Owen (Mortification of Sin, 1656), Richard Sibbes (The Bruised Reed, 1630), John Bunyan (The Pilgrims Progress, 1678) and Jonathan Edwards (Religious Affections) to the founder of the China Inland Mission Society, Hudson Taylor (The Spiritual Secrets of Hudson Taylor, 1937), 2017 has been about being filled up with the spiritual insights of those who have gone before me.

Learn the lessons from those who have taken the same journey as ourselves and gleaned insights from their experiences, even when it is difficult and uncomfortable to be diagnosed from someone outside your own century. Don’t fall into the trap that we know more than those who went before us – it’s nothing more than chronological snobbery. 

Read What You Enjoy – But Finish What You Don’t

In the month of August, the only thing I read was Matt Reilly or Jeffrey Archer – action adventure and political drama – neither of which are particularly heavy or difficult reads. They aren’t intellectual juggernauts, they’re just fun to read.

There’s an unwritten mental rule for many of us that the only kinds of books we can read are heavy theological tomes or literary classics that other people determine worth reading. Find what you enjoy reading and enjoy it more and more to the glory of God.

But let me add one caveat. If you begin a book that you do not enjoy, please try to finish it.

That is not to defend every book – some are not very good – or to encourage you to read something obscene.  But, if you give up on a book the moment you don’t like a plot development, the unpacking of an idea or the path where the story is headed, you are simply going to miss out.  The highest calibre of writing is an immersive experience, demanding of time and patience.  Let us respect those who write well by finishing bad books in the hope that we discover they are goods books with bad beginnings.

Read Widely and Outside Your Comfort Zone

The list below is littered with theological titles (37 of them, to be exact) but a focus this year has been not only to read those whose work I have already come to appreciate but those who fall outside my own tribe.  From the works of Orthodox Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on confronting religious violence, Attractional Church experts in Bobby Harington and Jim Putman to Mark Greenwood and his advancement of Wesleyan Perfectionism theology, 2017 has been a journey in reading books outside what I would consider my own tribe.

Read books that fall outside your favourite theological and cultural palate even if only to be challenged in blind spots you never knew you had. The only thing to be feared from a good thought is the loss of our own bad thoughts.

Read, Re-Read, Repeat

The essence of quality writing is that the words have not only been written from a place of deep thought but experienced to an extent worth writing on the page.  There is simply not enough time in one reading to absorb everything a writer pours out onto the canvas and therefore it is important to re-read and deep dive into quality books.

A well-written book will age with us as we learn more and more about the world and bounce new ideas off old thoughts until the create something far greater than the sum of their individual line of thinking.  From re-reading Desiring God (John Piper) to the Weight of Glory (C.S. Lewis), Radical (David Platt) to Orthodoxy (G.K. Chesterton) there is great worth in re-reading the fondest of books.

Make Reading an Enjoyable Habit

Reading has been a favourite habit of mine from the time I was young and I’ve been lucky enough to have that passed one by my parents. I can’t remember a time in my life where I didn’t have a book in my hand – from Harry Potter to J.R. Tolkien to John Piper – they have all been faithful companions.  That’s part of what makes reading so enjoyable though, it has been not a task from the beginning but a sort of lived history, in which the writers have become a part of what makes me, me.

It was never a dreary task or book report that led me to read widely but for the love of reading. That’s what I wish I could pass on to people – that the secret to reading more and more is simply to enjoy reading more and more. Don’t chase novels because you want to keep up with the latest intellectual fad but to enjoy them and in turn, enjoy the God who made them. Find whatever helps you most enjoy reading and dive in.

Top Five Reads of 2017

Hudson Taylors Spiritual Secrets – Frederick Taylor (1937)

“His love is unfailing, His Word unchangeable, His power ever the same; therefore the heart that trusts Him is kept in “perfect peace.” … I know He tries me only to increase my faith, and that it is all in love. Well, if He is glorified, I am content.”

“It doesn’t matter, really, how great the pressure is,” he used to say; “it only matters where the pressure lies. See that it never comes between you and the Lord—then, the greater the pressure, the more it presses you to His breast.”

Old Paths, New Powers: Awakening Your Church through Prayer and the Ministry of the Word – Daniel Henderson (2016)

“He is worthy. I am needy.” I have concluded that the more we seek the Lord, with a passion for His worthiness, the more we are gripped with our neediness. Adoration cultivates desperation.”

“In an awakening, the Spirit of God does not typically do a ‘new’ thing: he simply pours greater power upon the ‘normal’ things faithful Christians are already doing. Prayers become more intense; worship becomes more joyous; repentence becoems more sorrowful; and the preached word yields greater effect. The Spirit of God multiplies the effectiveness of our ‘normal work’ of seed-planting, bringing a bountiful harvest. And he does more in a moment then we can in a lifetime. 

You Are What You Love – James K. Smith (2016)

“Thus Scripture counsels, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Prov. 4:23). Discipleship, we might say, is a way to curate your heart, to be attentive to and intentional about what you love. So discipleship is more a matter of hungering and thirsting than of knowing and believing. Jesus’s command to follow him is a command to align our loves and longings with his—to want what God wants, to desire what God desires, to hunger and thirst after God and crave a world where he is all in all—a vision encapsulated by the shorthand “the kingdom of God.”

Mortification of Sin – John Owen (1656)

“The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.”

“Try yourself by this also: when you are by sin driven to make a stand so that you must either serve it and rush at the command of it into folly, like the horse into battle, or make head against it to suppress it, what do you say to your soul? Is this all – “Hell will be the end of this course; vengeance will meet with me and find me out”? It is time for you to look about you; evil lies at the door (Genesis 4:7).

Paul’s main argument to convince that sin shall not have dominion over believers is that they are ‘not under the law, but under grace’ (Romans 6:14). If your contendings against sin are all on legal accounts from legal principles and motives, what assurance can you attain to that sin shall not have dominion over you, which will be your ruin.

Yea, know that this reserve will not hold long. If your lust has driven you from gospel forts, it will speedily prevail against this also. Do not suppose that such considerations will deliver you when you have voluntarily given up to your enemy those means of preservation which have a thousand times their strength. Rest assuredly in this, that unless you recover yourself with speed from this condition, the thing that you fear most will come upon you. What gospel principles do not, legal motives cannot do!”

The Rider – Tim Krabbe (1978)

“In interviews with riders that I’ve read and in conversations that I’ve had with them, the same thing always comes up: the best part was the suffering. In Amsterdam, I once trained with a Canadian rider who was living in Holland. A notorious creampuff: in the sterile art of track racing he was Canadian champion in at least six disciplines, but when it came to toughing it out on the road he didn’t have the character.
The sky turned black, the water in the ditch rippled, a heavy storm broke loose. The Canadian sat up straight, raised his arms to heaven and shouted: ‘Rain! Soak me! Ooh, rain, soak me, make me wet!’
How can that be: suffering is suffering, isn’t it?
In 1910, Milan—San Remo was won by a rider who spent half an hour in a mountain hut, hiding from a snowstorm. Man, did he suffer!
In 1919, Brussels—Amiens was won by a rider who rode the last forty kilometres with a flat front tire. Talk about suffering! He arrived at 11.30 at night, with a ninety-minute lead on the only other two riders who finished the race. The day had been like night, trees had whipped back and forth, farmers were blown back into their barns, there were hailstones, bomb craters from the war, crossroads where the gendarmes had run away, and riders had to climb onto one another’s shoulders to wipe clean the muddied road signs.
Oh, to have been a rider then. Because after the finish all the suffering turns into memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature’s payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses: people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. ‘Good for you.’ Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lay with few suitors these days and those who wish to make use of her charms she rewards passionately. 
That’s why there are riders.
Suffering you need; literature is baloney.” 

The List of 2017

  • Erasing Hell (Francis Chan, 2011)
  • Honour Amongst Thieves (Jeffrey Archer, 1993)
  • The Weight of Glory (C.S Lewis, 1943)
  • Brothers, We Are Not Professionals (John Piper, 2002)
  • Orthodoxy (G. K Chesterton, 1908)
  • 7 Ancient Wonders (Matt Reilly, 2005)
  • People To Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue (Preston Sprinkle, 2015)
  • Hudson Taylors Spiritual Secret (Frederick Howard Taylor, 1937)
  • Discipleshift: Five Steps to Help Your Church Make Disciples (Bobby Harrington, Jim Putman, 2013)
  • Reformation Thought: An Introduction (Alastair McGrath, 1988)
  • Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition (James K. Smith, 2010)
  • Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem (Kevin DeYoung, 2013)
  • Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (Matthew Reilly, 2011)
  • Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream (David Platt, 2010)
  • Life on Life: 15 Principles To Get Started as a Disciplemaker (Harold Harper, Luke Harper, 2014)
  • The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy (Bill Simmons, 2010)
  • Old Paths, New Power: Awakening Your Church through Prayer and the Ministry of the Word (Daniel Henderson, 2016)
  • Humilitas: A Lost Key to Life, Love, and Leadership (John Dickson, 2011)
  • The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (Sinclair Ferguson, 2016)
  • Is God Anti‑Gay? And Other Questions about Homosexuality and the Bible (Sam Alberry, 2013)
  • The Plausibility Problem: The Church and Same-Sex Attraction (Ed Shaw, 2015)
  • The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith  (Rosario Butterfield, 2012)
  • A Lamp Unto My Feet (Elisabeth Elliot, 2004)
  • You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (James K. Smith, 2016)
  • Signs of the Spirit: An Interpretation of Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections (Sam Storms, 2013)
  • Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Chip Heath, Dan Heath, 2006)
  • Scarecrow (Matthew Reilly, 2003)
  • A Prisoner of Birth (Jeffrey Archer, 2008)
  • Prayers for the Assassin (Robert Ferrigno, 2006)
  • The Four Legendary Kingdoms (Matthew Reilly, 2016)
  • Ice Station (Matthew Reilly, 1998)
  • Mindhunter: Inside the FBI Elite Serial Crime Unit (John E. Douglas, 1995)
  • Ask a Pro: Deep Thoughts and Unreliable Advice from America’s Foremost Cycling Sage (Phil Gaimon, 2017)
  • The Rap Year Book (Shea Serrano, 2015)
  • Pro Cycling on $10 a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro (Phil Gaimon, 2014)
  • The Rider (Tim Krabbe, 1978)
  • Humpty Dumpty: The Fate of Regime Change (William R. Polk, 2013)
  • The Pilgrims Progress (John Bunyan, 1678)
  • When I Don’t Desire God: How To Fight For Joy (John Piper, 2004)
  • The Mortification of Sin (John Owen, 1656)
  • In the Heart of the Sea (Nathaniel Philbrick, 2000)
  • When Santa Learned the Gospel (Simon Camalieri, 2017)
  • Not In God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence (Jonathan Sacks, 2015)
  • The Bruised Reed (Richard Sibbes, 1630)
  • Gospel Fluency: Speaking the Truths of Jesus Into the Everyday Stuff of Life (Jeff Vandersteldt, 2017)
  • Contest (Matthew Reilly, 1996)
  • None Like Him: 10 Ways God Is Different from Us and Why That’s a Good Thing (Jen Wilkin, 2016)
  • Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry (Paul Tripp, 2012)
  • For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper (Sam Storms and Justin Taylor, 2010)
  • Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever (Michael Horton, 2014)
  • Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do (Paul Tripp, 2015)
  • Perfect Sinners (Matt Fuller, 2017)
  • Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Carol Dweck, 2006)
  • The European Reformations (Carter Lindberg, 1996)
  • Extreme You: Step Up. Stand Out. Kick Ass. Repeat (Sarah Robb O’Haggen, 2017)
  • The Glue: Relationship As The Connection For Effective Youth Ministry (Mike Stevens, 2017)
  • Martyn Lloyd-Jones: His Life and Relevance for the 21st Century (Christopher Cartwood, 2015)
  • Loving Jesus More (Phillip Ryken, 2015)
  • A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918 
  • Awake to Righteousness (Mark Greenwood, 2017)
  • Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (John Piper, 1986)
  • Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus Through the Spiritual Disciplines (David Mathis, 2016)

The Importance of Being Faithful

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This November, I have been able to celebrate four years of loving and serving the community of Caroline Springs and Red Door Church. 

The last four years have been some of the most grace-immersed, God-glorifying, spirit-filled experiences of our young lives. God has been stretching and conforming us to the image of Christ and blessing us abundantly in ways we would not have thought possible.

It’s only natural that I take the time to look over the last four years and reminisce about what God has done. And God has done monumental things.

When we moved to Caroline Springs to start a youth ministry, we had five youth in the church. We now have relationships with around forty young people and have baptised nine of them in the last year. The rattiest kid in the first year of our ministry has now been faithfully serving Jesus as a youth leader for the past three years.

I’ve been able to witness young people come to faith, grow in faith and encourage others in faith. On Friday, four of them are going to preach their very first sermons. I have the joy of encouraging, investing into and leading 18 mature leaders across our youth, childrens and young adults ministry. I somehow have four interns, two of whom are either already at or headed to bible college to pursue vocational ministry.

It’s easy to rest on these encouraging images.  Yet, the journey of the last five and a half years has often broken me in pieces and at times, led to an overwhelming desire to quit, run away from everything we had felt like God had called us to and move to somewhere easier.

The Unseen Side of Ministry

Despite feeling a deep love, compassion and calling towards Caroline Springs and the church there, it took over a year and a half between the calling that I felt and the reality to line up. 18 months of trusting God when it seemed like I had been mistaken.

In our first year of ministry, there was a private disagreement between members of the church board that almost overnight removed more than half of the young people I’d been building relationships with and left a mark of spiritual sadness upon our church that took over six months to ease. It was also the first year of Sarah and my marriage, and in October, I was diagnosed with chronic gastritis, dropped out of bible college for a year and spent every waking moment that I was not working in bed recovering. Sarah once remarked to me that it felt like ‘I had lost the man I had married overnight‘.

In our second year of ministry, our lead pastor and one of my closest friends went through a debilitating season of depression that left an indelible mark on our church and our leadership together. All of the plans that we had made together had to be curtailed and left for another time as we supported one another.  We had moved more an hour away from everyone we knew and loved to learn under and serve with someone who was not capable of leading us in the way that he had hoped in this season. He is still one of the most faithful pastors I know and it has been, is, and will be a great personal joy to serve with and under Him for as long as God will allow us.

In our third year of ministry, we were involved in a private year-long matter that exhausted us physically, emotionally and spiritually. There was probably enormous swathes of the year spent on the brink of burnout.

Then, in our fourth year, Sarah was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer that required immediate treatment. Everything we had planned was immediately thrown out the window and the future had become numbed to us.  We still await final results that the aggressive treatment has worked, despite good initial results. We still don’t know whether this will come back.  We pray endlessly for healing and God’s hand over this but it has often seemed overwhelming.

Throughout the entire four years, I have never known such an intensified spiritual attack on leaders within a church. Satan has roared around like a lion, looking for someone to devour. There have been numerous things happen for unseen reasons that I can only put down to the influence of the enemy in opposition to a faithful church.

The Importance of God’s Faithfulness

God’s sovereignty is often seen as one of the more colder doctrines.

The idea that God organizes and orders everything in this world according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1:11) may give the false impression that God is a detached puppet-master, playing with his creation.  Yet, for me, over the past four years, it has been a sure anchor to hold onto in the middle of the storm. Without knowing that God is sovereign, I fear that I would have drowned in my own fearfulness.

God’s providence is not just a lofty doctrine to be affirmed but a precious lifeline we can cling to in adversity. It is precisely because God organises and ordains everything according to his will that I can cling onto and trust the promises of God will come true because His sovereignty ensures that he will keep every single promise he makes.

  • God promised Israel to be their God and make them His people (Leviticus 26:12–13). Old Testament history is teeming with examples of God fulfilling this promise.
  • God promised that if we search for Him we will find Him (Deuteronomy 4:29). He is not playing hard-to-get. “Our God is near us whenever we pray to him” (Deuteronomy 4:7).
  • God promised that His love will never fail (1 Chronicles 16:34). He is faithful in every way.
  • God promised salvation to all who believe in His Son (Romans 1:16–17). There is no greater blessing than the free gift of God’s salvation.
  • God promised that all things will work out for good for His children (Romans 8:28). This is the broader picture that keeps us from being dismayed by present circumstances.
  • God promised comfort in our trials (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). He has a plan, and one day we will be able to share the comfort we receive.
  • God promised to finish the work He started in us (Philippians 1:6). God does nothing in half measures. He started the work in us, and He will be sure to complete it.

I can cling to God in the middle of horrible trials because I know He is both a promise-making and a promise-keeping God. He has no restrains on his ability to finish what he started.  It’s this that leads Charles Spurgeon to remark that:

“Cheer up, Christian!  Things are not left to chance: no blind fate rules the world.  God has purposes, and those purposes are fulfilled.  God has plans, and those plans are wise, and never can be dislocated.”

The Importance of Being Faithful

When the church board splits, when your ministry is cut in half, when your leader is cut down by depression, when you’re diagnosed with cancer, you need to know and believe that God is faithful to finish what he started. 

In those moments when I have considered leaving everything behind, it is God’s faithfulness towards me that has encouraged me to persevere in my own faithfulness towards Him. When I consider the weight of the challenge, the inadequacy of my skill-set and the seeming lack of apparent hope on the horizon, like Peter walking towards Jesus when his eye was on the storm around him, I sunk.

In these moments, if I had been persuaded by my own lack of faithfulness to forego trusting God, I would have missed out on the incredible blessings that God has bestowed upon our church and the growth in character and Christlikeness in myself. I would have missed out seeing young people believe in God. I would have missed out on the joy of serving alongside and beneath my pastor. I would have missed on the deep work that God was doing in me. I would have missed out on bringing God glory.

Therefore, here is my encouragement after four years of difficult but fruitful ministry:

It’s when we remember God’s abundant faithfulness to us through life, death, resurrection and eternity that our hearts can be stilled despite the roaring waves of adversity around us. God has promised to see us through this (Philippians 1:6). God has promised that this will turn out for our good and conform us to the image of Jesus (Romans 8:28-29). God has promised us that he will never leave us or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6)

God has promised these things and therefore, let us run the race set out for us with great endurance, remembering to finish the race and eagerly awaiting the day when an ever-faithful God looks upon our face and says:

‘Well done, good and faithful servant’. (Matthew 25:23) 

An Unhurried Life: Reflections on Rest and Sabbath

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Prominent theologian and pastor Dallas Willard once asked a friend this question:

“If you had one word to describe Jesus, what would it be?” 

Many fit well.  Courageous and loving, patient and kind. He did the miraculous, loved the unlovable, stood up to the powerful and spoke truth to the influential. He was courageous and strong-willed, yet had a heart for those others moved past quickly. He died on a cross and conquered death. He rose again and reigns in glory.

Willard offers his own word though:

Jesus was relaxed.

There is a part of me that doesn’t like the word relaxed. It sounds far too much like lazy and selfish. Relaxed sounds inadequate and unhelpful to describe who Jesus was, yet others such as Alan Fadling describe Jesus as the unhurried saviour. The more that I think about it though, the more it rings true.

After waiting thirty years for his ministry to begin, his first act was to follow the Spirit into the wilderness. He seems frustratingly unhurried on his way to heal the synagogue officials daughter (Mk 5:22-43) and to visit his sick friend Lazarus, who died during Jesus two-day delay (John 11:1-43). On several occasions, Jesus retreated from the crowds and the attention to spend time one on one with His Father, to the point that the disciples even left him behind one day (John 6:16-21).  His sense of timing often seems strange by our standards.

CULTURAL ADDICTION TO HURRY

“Our grandchildren”, wrote John Maynard Keynes in 1930, would work around “three hours a day” – and probably only by choice. Economic progress and technological advances had already shrunk working hours considerably by his day, and there was no reason to believe that this trend would not continue.  Social psychologists began to fret: whatever would people do with all their free time?

That sounds like a dream compared to what most of us experience in every life. Ours is a culture that values the hustle, the overzealous achiever and the omnipresent email. We boast about how busy we have been, how fast our pace of life is and how little free time we have now that we are all grown up.  We dream about long holidays and winning the lottery to escape the sapping drudgery of our hurried lives yet we rarely stop to ask if what we are getting is even what we most deeply desire. 

Many of us have been so conditioned to be efficient that times of slowing down and relenting seem unproductive, irresponsible, lazy and even selfish.  We know that we need rest but can no longer see the value of it as an end in itself. It is only worthwhile if it helps us recharge our batteries so that we can be even more efficient in the next period of productivity.

There are many times where hurry is the best response, such as an emergency. People get injured or sick and need to be hurried to the hospital. Urgent issues arise that need immediate attention and quick action. The problem is that when we find ourselves living with a constant sense of urgency, we get stuck here. Every situation feels like an emergency, whether it is or not.  Our bodies weren’t designed to live with the constant adrenaline shot that hurry brings, and our souls don’t function well when we live there.

Overwork is heart-hardening, literally. People who are driven and work long hours are more prone to developing atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). Thomas Merton, a Trappist prophet in the early twentieth century had this to say about the effects of overwork:

“The fact that our works are done in the service of God, is not, by itself, enough to prevent us from losing our interior life if we let them devour all our time and all our strength. Work is good and necessary, but too much of it renders the soul insensitive to spiritual values, hardens the heart against prayer and divine things. It requires serious effort and courageous sacrifice to resist this hardening of the heart.”

Many of us are permanently stuck in deadline mode, hurrying and hustling ourselves to the next task and leaving little time to ease off and recharge. The things that need slowness – friendship, laughter, creative thought, loving and planning – get lost in the mad dash to keep up with the crowd.

HEART ISSUE

At the heart of our busyness is our heart. We are busy because we are working hard to meet the desires of our hearts. 

Tim Chester wrote one of the most helpful polemics on busyness, The Busy Christians Guide to Busyness.   Chester believes that a life of over-busyness is rooted in a false belief that God does not meet the desires of our heart, so we must meet them ourselves.  We believe the lies of the world such as “I need money” or “I need to prove myself”.  The great news for every Christian is that, in God, we have liberating truths that set us free from the slavery to our schedules.

Chester looks specifically at six lies that have captured our culture.

  • I’m busy because I need to prove myself
  • I’m busy because of other people’s expectations
  • I’m busy because otherwise, things get out of control
  • I’m busy because I prefer being under pressure
  • I’m busy because I need money
  • I’m busy because I want to make the most of life

These lies have become so all-encompassing that they have worked their way into almost every area of our lives.

SHABAT

Jesus laid out a radically different vision for his people. He says:

“Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:29-30)

There is something deeply appealing about those words.  God’s intention isn’t for us to be perpetually burnt out, rushing from one activity to the next in the hope that our next action will be so glorious it will complete us. God instead invites us to rest in Him, because he knows that is where we will find our satisfaction, our joy and true contentment.

He knows that our hearts are most satisfied when they are resting in Him, for it is there that we can discover how deeply God loves us and desires us for who we are, who He has created and who He has redeemed, and not for what we can bring Him. We can easily convince ourselves that God loves us because of what we do and what we can bring him in the middle of a busy season. Yet when we rest, we acknowledge that we have nothing to give God and He is what we truly, deeply need.

Rest has been important from the beginning of creation. God uses the example of His own resting on the seventh day of creation to establish the principle of Shabat,  which simply means ‘to cease, to end, to rest’. We call this Sabbath. One day out of every seven, Israel was to rest from their labour and remember the Sabbath.

The rest has become deeper and more satisfying now that Jesus has come.  Whilst Israel kept the Sabbath as a means to being made right with God (as part of the Law), Christians can trust in Jesus for their rest. They can rest in the knowledge that he has satisfied every need that we will ever have.

  • We can rest because we are accepted by God, and don’t need to prove ourselves.
  • We can rest because Jesus has met God’s expectations for us.
  • We can rest because Jesus is in full control.
  • We can rest because Jesus is our safe refuge in all circumstances.
  • We can rest because through Jesus, God has gifted us everything we need.
  • We can rest because through Jesus, we can have life and life to the full.

Every emotion and urging that fuels our over-busyness has been dealt with on the cross and the resurrection, through Jesus. Every fear that we have about ourselves before God has been matched by Jesus.  God now invites us to stop the busyness, to cease, to rest, to end, and to draw closer to Him and be filled with satisfaction and contentment.

PILLARS OF SABBATH

Having a weekly time of Sabbath has not been easy for me, and when I do so, I often felt more tired than before. Most of the time, I slept in and watched movies all day.  This is the image I had of a day of rest.  However, I was challenged when I heard Tony Miller speak on abiding in Jesus; when he said that ‘Sabbath is not about doing nothing, but about doing the right things with great intentions’. 

Miller suggested four ideas that we can use to guide us into Sabbath rest: relent, rest, rejoice and reflect.

1. Relent

Stop thinking about the workload you have to go back to. Stop working on the proposal that is due later this week. Stop reading endless articles on Facebook. Stop thinking about the people you need to call. Stop checking your emails on your phone. Stop, cease, relent.

Turn off your mobile phone for the day. Leave your work at work. Don’t check your emails. Whatever you need to do to let your mind free from the daily cycle, do it. Stop, cease, relent.

2. Rest

Everyone has activities that give them back more than they take. For some, it might be cycling or crocheting. For others it might be watching movies, sleeping in, enjoying a good coffee, surfing on the coast or going for a hike in the wilderness. Whatever it is that allows you to loosen your tense shoulders, and take a deep breathe out, go and do it.

3. Rejoice

Christians can rejoice in the Sabbath because we have a saviour who has accomplished everything we need.  Every desire that propels us towards perpetual hustle has been met and matched in Jesus and in this time, it can be so important to let that wash over us. If resting is a deep breath out, rejoicing is a deep breath in. It’s a filling of the spirit, of being reminded who Jesus is and how deeply he loves us. It’s a meditation on the grace that has saved us and a feasting on the word.

4. Reflect

One of my personal struggles is simply to stop long enough to consider where I am at personally with God. It’s all well and good doing work for God, but unless that work is with God, it will never be fruitful.  Doing noble things for God is not the same as spending time with Him.  Thinking great thoughts about Jesus is not the same as vital communion with Him. Helping others understand the gospel is not the same thing as drinking deeply from the wellspring of grace for myself.

I pray that this will help you treasure Jesus more as you trust Him in your rest. 

Still Jesus: Honest Reflections on Suffering and Cancer

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‘You guys are so brave and courageous’. 

My shoes shift uncomfortably from side to side as a mumbled thank you fumbles out. One more person lovingly telling us how brave we are.  I don’t feel brave anymore.

I feel afraid. I feel unsure. I feel like going back to bed.

From the outside looking in, it seems like we have spent a lifetime crafting deep wells of courage and fortitude to be drawn upon in times of trial and sorrow. The reality is that the well has become dry. Attempts to find a hidden vault of valour hardwired into our nature have only found it emptied months ago.

Yet, we still have hope. 

In the weeks before Sarah’s diagnosis of cancer, I stood in front of thirty teenagers that we have spent the last four years of our lives investing everything we have into.  We challenged them with a familiar refrain of treasuring Christ above all other things. We boast that everything compared to knowing Christ and being known by Christ is worthless. Then we opened up Philippians 3:8:

‘Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ’ 

Now, as I sit poring over my Bible with tears rolling down my face, I’m reminded of the years of searching and suffering that lead to boasting in the supremacy of Christ in all things.  Jesus has continually been a sweet release in torrid times before, but Lord, even in this?

Are you enough? If my deepest fears are realized, will you be sufficient? 

I know what I believe about these questions. I’ve had my intellectual appetite satiated in the weightiness of the scriptures, and I know what I would say to someone who came to me with similar questions.  Yet, when you are in the belly of the beast the nature of the fight becomes far messier. Sure footing becomes slippery in the bloodshed that follows from convictions facing off with reality.

If Sarah’s health spirals downward, and she never recovers, will God continue to be enough for me? If we never see the purposes of God’s hand in all of this, will Jesus be enough? If this extends past four months of treatment, will we still be able to trust in your plans?

I Am Personally Inadequate

I’ve never been a natural athlete.  That seems like a strange confession.  Yet, it is true.

Whenever athletic carnivals would roll around there was always someone who was quicker and stronger for the task, who possessed more endurance and trained harder than me. My body was too stout to be much use in feats of athleticism, too slow to be of use in races and too small to lift heavy things.  It was always too something.

I could have trained harder and paid more attention to what I ate, but the gap that existed between me and the best athletes at our school was so great that it led to a lack of confidence.  How often that has been the case.  Even now, it seems like what is required for the task at hand is so far beyond me.

The kind of person required to remain optimistic and buoyant in the belly of the beast feels so far removed from the powers I still possess. Cancer has shone a torch onto my character and found a chink in the armour that was really a chasm all along. It is a terrible task to discover your own inadequacies when you need them the least.

Although I deeply appreciate the words of encouragement, often what it does is remind me that it was never really true. It wasn’t true before cancer, and it isn’t true now. Cancer has highlighted the poverty of my own courage in the most horrible of ways.

This is not to say that we have not been brave. Sarah has been brave beyond measure. She is an Amazonian warrior born from the pits of adversity who inspires me daily to be more.  The issue is that the kind of bravery that really matters in matters like this is a very different kind of courage than that found in resolute inner steadfastness and stoicism in the face of great distress.

This is the kind of courage that finds its power in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). It’s not a bravery that we possess in our bones, it’s a bravery that has been given to us.

Still Jesus

One of my all time favourite lines comes from the pen of John Owen, a 17th-century Puritan. He writes:

‘The duties that God, in an ordinary way, requires at our hands are not proportioned to what strength we have in ourselves, but to what help and relief is laid up for us in Christ; and we are to address ourselves to the greatest performances with a settled persuasion that we have not ability in the least’.

This describes perfectly how I feel. When I consider the strength and vigour that I possess when faced with the enormousness of the task at hand, it is easy to become discouraged and despondent. There is simply not enough strength left within me to continually muster more courage up from out of thin air.

I am wholly and completely inadequate for the task at hand. I hold no encouragement left in myself and there is no hope left to hold in my hands outside of the help and relief laid up for me in Christ.

What then allows us to face tomorrow? What then possesses us to push forward in hope?

It’s still Jesus.

It’s always been Jesus.

It’s only when I consider the supremacy of Christ in all things and the abundant treasures laid up in Him, I find my courage not only restored but bolstered for the battle ahead.  He doesn’t cure my lack of courage but instead, gives me his very own.

It’s when I am reminded of a sovereign God who brings the dead back to life that I find my feet upon solid ground once more. He will not forfeit his hold on his promises. He will see us through this.

It’s when I dwell on the grace that has saved me, and the goodness of a God who dies for his enemies that I can rest at night knowing that he will never leave me or forsake me.  He hasn’t yet.

It’s when I contemplate that he knows what it is like to bear these burdens, that suffering is not foreign to Him that I can trust that he not only knows my fears and anxieties but that he will take care of me, even in this.

So please, continue to encourage us. 

But know that the most comforting words are those that speak of Jesus and in Him, we continue to be courageous and comforted beyond measure.

A Joy Deeper Than Cancer

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Hospitals are draining places. The endless beeping from a myriad of machines, room-upon-room of middling grey paint and the never-ending hours spent waiting in hard and uncomfortable furniture for answers which are far more uncomfortable and hard. The truth is that we have spent a lot of time in the hospital since last Thursday, when my wife, Sarah, was diagnosed with Mediastinal Large B-Cell Lymphoma, an aggressive form of cancer.

Meetings, surgeries and days seem to fly by until they fold into each other with disarming regularity.

In that time, every kind of emotion has come upon us alongside a deep foreboding sense that it wasn’t meant to be like this.  Tears upon tears have made their home with us.  We oscillate between a complete trust in God as the Sovereign Creator of all things, who is in control of every single one of Sarah’s cells and devastation at the loss before us.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? (Ps 22:1-2)

Psalm 22 and 23 running back-to-back has always intrigued me, even though I know the psalms are arranged thematically rather than in historical order. In one, David cries out to God in fear that God has abandoned him in his time of need, and yet, seemingly in the next breath, he declares that he shall not want, nor fear any evil for God is with him.

In the moments of his darkest anguish, the Psalmist reminds us that God accepts our rawest lament and cries, whilst also being the only one who can satisfy every longing of our soul.

‘My God, my God’. 

When he feels abandoned, the Psalmist brings his burden before God.  Only those who know they belong to God can present this kind of searching and longing line of questioning to God 1. God promises he will not abandon or forsake his people (Ps 94:14). It’s an act of the deepest kind of trust and hope to lament in this way – to remind God of this promise when things seem desolate, and when God’s promises seem to ring hollow to our ears 2.

This seems right.  Even in our longing, God has been so gracious to us throughout this entire process. He has surrounded us with family and community who have stocked our fridge, cleaned our house and sent wave after wave of deep spiritual encouragement and truths, rather than mere platitudes.  He has supplied us with shoulders to cry upon and food to eat when we feel weary.

More than even this, more than family and food, he has continued to give us hope beyond all comprehension in the person of Jesus.

The Kind of Truth You Need When Cancer Hits

Missionaries have always astounded me.

I often wonder where they discovered the kind of courage needed to face the spears of those they have loved and sacrificed greatly to reach, and not to use the firearms in their hands, but rather die. What drove missionaries like John G. Paton and Hudson Taylor who seemed, in opposition to the circumstances facing them, having lost wives, children and homes to be so deeply and abundantly satisfied in Christ.

John G. Paton

Paton, writing after the death of his wife and children: 

“Feeling immovably assured that my God and father was too wise and loving to err in anything that he does or permits, I looked up to the Lord for help, and struggled on in His work”

Paton, when surrounded by raging natives intent on killing him, and his native friend Abraham:

I realised that I was immortal till my Master’s work with me was done. The assurance came to me, as if a voice out of Heaven had spoken, that not a musket would be fired to wound us, not a club prevail to strike us, not a spear leave the hand in which it was held vibrating to be thrown, not an arrow leaves the bow, or a killing stone the fingers, without the permission of Jesus Christ, whose is all power in Heaven and on Earth.

Hudson Taylor

Hudson, on pain and affliction:

It doesn’t matter, really, how great the pressure is; it only matters where the pressure lies. See that it never comes between you and the Lord—then, the greater the pressure, the more it presses you to His breast.

The foreword to Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret: 

Hudson Taylor had many secrets, for he was always going on with God, yet they were but one—the simple, profound secret of drawing for every need, temporal or spiritual, upon “the fathomless wealth of Christ.”

This is the kind of confident trust in God that you need when cancer comes to your door. The kind of trust that when the Apostle Paul states, ‘He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things’ (Rom. 8:32),  he really meant it. That through the cross God has purchased and secured every possible blessing that could ever be needed to make us deeply and satisfied in him, forever. Everything we need to be satisfied in God, the cross has made certain.

Old Testament writer, Habbukuk writes:

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation (Habakkuk 3:17-18)

We do not put our trust in the blossoming trees, the fruit of the vines, the produce of the fields or the herds in the stalls.  We continue to rejoice and take joy in the God of our salvation.

Let me be clear: this situation has floored us. Never in a million years did we think that we would spend the last three weeks rushing to the hospital, or sitting in doctors wards, or contemplating the reality that cancer may spread or the seemingly endless loss before us. Yet in this, our theology has been tattooed onto our souls. We will continue to rejoice in the Lord, for He is good. 

A Joy Deeper Than Cancer

At the centre of God’s revelation is not a secret about how to live a lengthy, self-sufficient and secure life3.  The scriptures reveal to us the cross-shaped life of a Christian who abides in Jesus, trusts him above all things, worships him above all things, desires him above all things and rejoices in him through all things.  On this path, we do not seek out suffering for the sake of suffering, but we do expect Jesus to be active in the most unexpected of places.  This includes a cancer diagnosis.

Rather than soaking in self-satisfaction and pity in this season of sorrow, we find that our affections are being reshaped by God – our former delight in inferior satisfactions have been put in their proper place and God has been found to be an anchor for our soul, firm and secure (Hebrews 6:19). This is a joy that is deeper than cancer.

This is the kind of battle-soaked, cross-won, Spirit-secured kind of joy that leads us to sing worship songs in our pain, wear out our knee-joints in prayer and searching the scriptures daily to access the infinite mercies and comfort found in Jesus.  He is the source and security of our joy, even in this.

Charles Spurgeon, when preaching on the Immutability of God 4, delivered one of my favourite lines:

Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound! In musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief and in the influence of the Holy Spirit, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea—be lost in His immensity. And you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul, so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow—so speak peace to the winds of trial—as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.

Lord, let this be true.

Visual Theology Reading Challenge: May, 2017

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Christians throughout history have been avid readers and writers, and we should avail ourselves often of the best that God has on offer for us. This year I will be undertaking Tim Challies 2017 Reading Challenge. Below is the May update, which encompasses the previous four months worth of reading.

What follows are the books I have completed in January 2017, and in parentheses, the reading challenge categories that they fulfill. They are listed in the order in which I have completed them. Below that is the complete list of categories I need to cover.

  1. Life on Life: 15 Principles to Get Started as a Disciple Maker, by Harold & Luke Harper (A book about Christian living). Discipleship is one of the most important tasks that Christians can engage in, and this book by Harold and Luke Harper is filled with practical advice on how to encourage one another to treasure Christ in life on life ministry.  Helpful read.
  2. Signs of the Spirit: An Interpretation of Jonathan Edwards “Religious Affections”, by Sam Storms (A book about theology).  One of my favourite books of the last two years.  If you are the sort that happily moans about our feelings-laden services, then you should immerse yourself into Edwards and Storms book.  This interpretation of Edwards original work has shaped my thoughts and ministry on this to no end.
  3. Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition, by James K. Smith (A book about theology). Most Calvinists have not read Calvin, let alone anyone else.  James K. Smith’s book is a highly engaging read to anyone exploring Reformed theology for the first time and wanting to understand more than merely TULIP.
  4. The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy, by Bill Simmons (A book of your choice).  Mammoth read, enormously enjoyable.  Bill Simmons is one of my favourite sports authors and this is his magnum opus.  Anyone with a passing interest in basketball should do everything in their power to invest significant time into Simmons read.
  5. The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professors Journey into the Christian Faith, by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield (A memoir or autobiography).  There are good books, and there are good writers. Rosaria is both.  A highly engaging read from a former feminist, queer theory, lesbian tenured professor and her conversion to faith in Christ.
  6. The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism and the Gospel, by Sinclair B. Ferguson (A book by Sinclair B. Ferguson).  This came highly recommended but I never felt like I truly grasped the entirety of what Ferguson was talking about.  Perhaps the kind of book that requires more time to be pondered over.
  7. Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book About a (Really) Big Problem, by Kevin DeYoung (A book of 100 pages or less).  Having started a new role this year which involves more tasks to be achieved in less time, this was helpful.  I don’t think I will ever be one of those naturally inclined organised individuals but even I can put some of these practices into place.
  8. Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream, by Dave Platt (A book that won a prize).  I have a penchant for re-reading books. This gets a read every year, as one of the books that have continually pushed me towards faithfully pursuing Christ in all areas of my life.
  9. Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton (A book more than 100 years old).  Lewis and Tolkein are fondly remembered by many Christian, however, Chesterton is oft forgotten.  Full of wit and a master of words, Orthodoxy is a gem from years past.
  10. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, by James K. Smith (A book of your choice).  If you have talked to me in the last year, you would have heard me recommend this book or heard me repeat lines verbatim from it.  Please read this book.
  11. People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue, by Preston Sprinkle (A book about a current issue).  Helpful perspective.  Researching for a sermon on same-sex attraction, Sprinkle proved to be a helpful and challenging companion in articulating a helpful and loving response for those in our church who experience same-sex attraction and those within the church who need to have their perspective challenged.
  12. Is God Anti-Gay?, by Sam Alberry (A book by someone you have never read before).  Sam is a Church of England pastor from Maidenhead, England.  From as far back as he can remember, he has been same-sex attracted.  Many people want to shift their opinions on same-sex marriage because it conflicts with their opinion of a loving God.  Sam challenges that in gentle ways in this short, yet important book.
  13. Humilitas, by John Dickson (A book with a one-word title). Every single leader should read this book by John Dickson. Conventional wisdom has it that humility is the virtue of the beaten, but according to recent research, nothing could be further from the truth.  This book is a gem.
  14. The Plausibility Problem: The Church and Same-Sex Attraction, by Ed Shaw (A book about Christian living). The book that the church desperately needed about same-sex attraction. Ed Shaw delves into the question that most people are asking, ‘Is what the bible have to say about sex and marriage and attraction still good news’? Must-read.
  15. Reformation Thought: An Introduction, by Alastair McGrath (A book about history).  For any history aficionados, I thoroughly enjoyed this read about not only the incidents and issues that led to the Protestant Reformation throughout Germany, France and Switzerland but the thought as well behind Calvin, Luther, Zwingli and the Anabaptists.
  16. 7 Ancient Wonders, by Matt Reilly (A book of your choice). On the odd occasion that I pick up a fiction book, it’s inevitably one by Matthew Reilly. Fast-paced and read like an action thriller, I cannot wait to get my hand on the next couple of instalments.
  17. The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis (A book your pastor recommends).  No other book has been recommended more to me by other people than C.S. Lewis’ address ‘The Weight of Glory’ and the other assorted essays and addresses in this collection.  Does not disappoint.
  18. Scarecrow, by Matt Reilly (A book of your choice). My favourite fiction book of all time. Dog-eared, and now read over 15 times, never disappoints.
  19. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Stick and Others Die, Chip & Dan Heath (A self-improvement book). If part of your job involves persuasively talking in front of other people or convincing them that your idea is worthwhile, this book is a gem.  Well worth the read.

The Light Reader

_ 1. A biography
_ 2. A classic novel
_ 3. A book about history
_ 4. A book targeted at your gender
✔ 5. A book about theology – Erasing Hell
✔ 6. A book with at least 400 pages – Honour Amongst Thieves
✔ 7. A book your pastor recommends – The Weight of Glory
✔ 8. A book about Christian living – Brothers, We Are Not Professionals
✔ 9. A book more than 100 years old – Orthodoxy
_ 10. A book published in 2017
_ 11. A book for children or teens
✔ 12. A book of your choice – 7 Ancient Wonders
✔ 13. A book about a current issue – People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue

The Avid Reader

_ 14. A book written by a Puritan
✔ 15. A book by or about a missionary – Hudson Taylors Spiritual Secret
✔ 16. A book about Christian living – Discipleshift
_ 17. A commentary on a book of the Bible
✔ 18. A book about the Reformation – Reformation Thought: An Introduction
✔ 19. A book about theology – Letters to a Young Calvinist
_ 20. A book recommended by a family member
_ 21. A book with a great cover
_ 22. A book on the current New York Times list of bestsellers
_ 23. A book about church history
✔ 24. A book of 100 pages or less – Crazy Busy
✔ 25. A book of your choice – Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves
✔ 26. A book that won a prize – Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream

The Committed Reader

_ 27. A book from a theological viewpoint you disagree with
✔ 28. A book about Christian living – Life on Life
_ 29. A book about apologetics
✔ 30. A book of your choice – The Book of Basketball
_ 31. A humorous book
_ 32. A book based on a true story
✔ 33. A book about prayer – Old Paths, New Powers
_ 34. A book of poetry
✔ 35. A book with a one-word title – Humilitas
✔ 36. A book by Sinclair Ferguson – The Whole Christ
✔ 37. A novel by an author you have never read before – Is God Anti-Gay?
✔ 38. A book about Christian living – The Plausibility Problem: The Church and Same-Sex Attraction
✔ 39. A memoir or autobiography – The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert
_ 40. A play by William Shakespeare
✔ 41. A book of your choice – You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit
_42. A book written by an author with initials in their name –
_ 43. A book by a female author
✔ 44. A book about theology – Signs of the Spirit: An Interpretation of Jonathan Edwards “Religious Affections
_ 45. A book published by Crossway
✔ 46. A self-improvement book – Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Stick and Others Die
_ 47. A graphic novel
_ 48. A book you own but have never read
_ 49. A book targeted at the other gender
_ 50. A book about Christian living
✔ 51. A book of your choice – Scarecrow
_ 52. A book about race or racial issues

The Obsessed Reader

_ 53. A book you have started but never finished
_ 54. A book about church history
_ 55. A book about holiness or sanctification
_ 56. A book about science
_ 57. A book used as a seminary textbook
_ 58. A book on the ECPA bestseller list
_ 59. A book about productivity or time management
_ 60. A book of your choice
_ 61. A book about spiritual disciplines
_ 62. A book about parenting
_ 63. A book about Christian living
_ 64. A book by Iain Murray
_ 65. A book about business
_ 66. A book about theology
_ 67. A book about marriage
_ 68. A photo essay book
_ 69. A book of comics
_ 70. A book about the Second World War
_ 71. A book by a Puritan
_ 72. A book about preaching or public speaking
_ 73. A book of your choice
_ 74. A book about suffering
_ 75. A book about evangelism
_ 76. A book by your favorite author
_ 77. A book you have read before
_ 78. A Christian novel
_ 79. A biography of a Christian
_ 80. A book about the natural world
_ 81. A novel for young adults
_ 82. A novel longer than 400 pages
_ 83. A book about history
_ 84. A book about the Bible
_ 85. A book recommended by a friend
_ 86. A book published by P&R Publications
_ 87. A book with an ugly cover
_ 88. A book by or about a martyr
_ 89. A book of your choice
_ 90. A book about Christian living
_ 91. A book about church history
_ 92. A book about money or finance
_ 93. A book about leadership
_ 94. A book by John Piper
_ 95. A book about theology
_ 96. A book for children or teens
_ 97. A book about sexuality
_ 98. A book about writing
_ 99. A book about current events
_ 100. A biography of a world leader
_ 101. A book about the church
_ 102. A book of your choice
_ 103. A book about a hobby
_ 104. A book written in the twentieth century

What Does God Desire For My Life?

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What’s my purpose? What is God’s will for my life? How do I know that I’m currently on the right path? 

One of the trickiest areas of following Christ is knowing the will of God. It also tends to be one of the most common questions that we ask, with a wide variety of answers and experiences.  It’s a valid question: What does the Bible tell us about discovering God’s will for our lives? 

When we talk about knowing God’s will,  I think the heart of what we are asking is:

How will God guide me today in such a way that I can follow His will? What would it look like in this moment to do God’s will? 

In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul gives us perhaps the most helpful text for understanding the will of God and how it pertains to our life:

“I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect’  (Romans 12:1-2)

There are some massive takeaways from this passage:

Firstly, that presenting our bodies to God as a living sacrifice is spiritual worship. The aim of all human life is that Christ would be made to look as valuable as He is 5. Worship is, therefore, using our minds and hearts and bodies in such a way that we express the worth of God and all that he is for us in Christ2. There is a way to live your life in such a way that by what you say, what you think, what you feel, what you do with your arms and your lips and your eyes and your legs and your hands, that you can demonstrate the value of knowing Christ.3

Secondly, that discerning the will of God is intricately linked to our mind being transformed and renewed. How then do we turn all of our life into worship? We must be transformed. Not just our external behaviours, but the way that we feel and think – our mind.  When our mind has been transformed, we may be able to test and discern the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

John Piper notes:

‘I think he (Paul) means soak your mind, marinating our mind, saturating your mind with the Word of God. The Christian mind is shaped by the Word of God, all the while praying, praying, praying. O God, shape me. O God, make me. O god, bring me into the conformity to this Word from the depths of my being.’ 4

The Two Wills of God

God is sovereign over all things.  By this, I mean that God is our King, our Lord and that nothing happens outside of his knowledge and willing it to be. The Psalmist declares that ‘our God is in the heavens, he does whatever he pleases’ (Ps 115:3). 

In His sovereignty, he quietly directs everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in the entire universe. There is not one atom, not one cell in all of creation that God would not be able to outstretch his hand over and declare mine.  Yet at the same time, it is also clear that God’s will is somehow thwarted.  God wills us to be holy, yet I am often not. God wills us to be loving, yet I am often not.

For this reason, theologians tend to differ between God’s sovereign will and God’s revealed will:

  1. God’s sovereign will (or hidden will) which will always come to pass without fail.
  2. God’s revealed will (or moral will ) for us to do what is right, which is often disobeyed and doesn’t come to pass.

God’s Sovereign Will

God has decreed that some things will happen, and they will happen whether we wish them to or not. In Acts 4, the church is praying to God and prays like this:

“Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them,  who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,

“‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
    and the peoples plot in vain?
 The kings of the earth set themselves,
    and the rulers were gathered together,
    against the Lord and against his Anointed’

For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27-28)

Herod did what God had willed to take place. Pilate did what God had willed to take place. The shouting crowds – crucify him, crucify him – did what God had willed to take place and the soldiers, the Gentile soldiers who drive the nails through Jesus’ hands and feet did what God had willed to take place and the sovereign will of God was accomplished 5.

Importantly, God’s sovereign will is hidden to us. We cannot know it or understand it unless God has revealed it to us, and often, he does not.  It would seem impractical, illogical and incongruent from our perspective, but ‘his ways are not our ways’ (Isaiah 55:8).

God’s Revealed Will

God, however, has revealed much of his overall will to us.  For example, in Matthew 7:21, Jesus declares that ‘not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father’. 

What does that mean?  Simply, that some people will follow the will of the Father and some will not.  One more example is found in 1 Thessalonians 4:3 which says:

‘This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality’. 

Have you? No. 

Some of us have not abstained, which means that we have disobeyed the will of our Father. We disobeyed, contradicted or did not fulfil the will of God for our life.  The will of God for our life is sanctification and often has been ignored.  Therefore we have two particular meanings of the will in the Bible. One is his sovereign will and one is his revealed will.  One is always done – for he is sovereign, whilst the other can be contradicted.

How Can I Know The Will of God?

If you look to the scriptures to seek God’s will for your life, what will you find? 

You will find that God is speaking to you:

  • God’s will is for us to do the will of His Father (Matt 7:21)
  • God’s will is for us to watch over our lives and the lives of others (Acts 20:27)
  • God’s will is for us to trust him during persecution and suffering (Acts 21:13-14)
  • God’s will is for us to repent (2 Corinthians 7:9-10)
  • God’s will is for us to serve one another (1 Corinthians 8:5)
  • God’s will is for us to stand firm in the will of God (Colossians 4:12)
  • God’s will is for us to be sanctified, pure and holy (1 Thessalonians 4:3-6)
  • God’s will is for us to rejoice, to pray without ceasing and to give thanks (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18)
  • God’s will is for us to be faithful to God’s will (Hebrews 10:36)
  • God’s will is for you to trust him over your life (James 4:15)
  • God’s will is for you to do what is right (1 Peter 2:15)
  • God’s will is for you to live according to the Spirit (1 Peter 4:6)

When you open up the Word of God, you will find that God is speaking to you about his will for your life.  He wants you to be sanctified. He wants you to be holy. The constant message throughout the scriptures is that God’s will for your life is for you to live like a Christian, treasuring Christ and living as someone who has been transformed by his power6.  God’s will for your life is that you would seek to imitate Christ and that more and more and more you would serve as a greater reflection of Christ, prayerfully submitting yourself to God’s will 7

Following God’s will is not about discovering a secret road map that details the exact steps you should take in life, but about becoming the kind of person who treasures Christ, who values following Him, who obeys God faithfully and stands firm in affliction.

Will You Be Obedient? 

Elizabeth Elliot, best-selling author and missionary, writes that:

‘The will of God is not something that you add to your life. It’s a course that you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God .. or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world’ 

The question is not really whether we can know God’s will or not. Clearly, we can.  The far more important question that we can ask ourselves is whether we are prepared to do it.  Donald Barnhouse has said that ‘95% of knowing the will of God consists in being prepared to do it before you know what it is’.

Are you prepared to be holy? Are you prepared to be faithful? Are you prepared to trust him during persecution and suffering? Are you prepared to serve one another? Are you prepared to be sanctified? Are you prepared to rejoice, to pray without ceasing and to give thanks? Are you prepared to trust God? Are you prepared to do what is right? 

If you want to truly hear from the Lord, grow in your knowledge of his Word so that you can understand his character, you understand his will, you understand what God is about and understand his purposes.

John Stott had one of the best answers when asked once about how to know what God wants us to do with our lives:

‘Go wherever your gifts will be most exploited for the kingdom of God’.

For the glory of God, and for the good of others.

Millenials: You Need the Church and the Church Needs You

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I still remember the very first time that I was hurt by someone in a church that I attended. Even now, I can still remember how it felt people to have leave with hurtful words on their lips, when decisions have been made that felt like a knife being straddled in my back and when I have felt abandoned in times of need.

Most of the writing in the New Testament exists because the church has never been perfect. In fact, most of the New Testament letters and epistles were written specifically because there were significant pastoral issues in the church. 8

  • Galatians was written to combat legalism (Galatians 1:6-7, 3:1-3, 4:9, 5:1)
  • Colossians was written to fight heresy (Colossians 2:4, 8)
  • 2 Timothy was written to ease tension in pastoral succession (2 Timothy 4:9-16)
  • Philippians was written to resolve conflict and selfish ambition (Philippians 2:3-22)
  • 1 and 2 Corinthians were written to mediate a whole host of problems centred around the issues of human pride in gifting and speaking that led to arrogant and love-less religious activity.

That’s not even to mention the letters to the churches in Revelation (Ch. 2-3), one of which is so unhealthy, it makes Jesus want to vomit (Revelation 3:16).  Martin Luther King writes,

“I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion… Consequently, everyday I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust’ | 2

In light of these struggles, it’s understandable why those whose faith has been damaged by the church would want to leave it. Many victims of abusive and neglectful church cultures feel that the church has robbed them of faith. That experience is both traumatic and tragic, and perhaps to some degree, true. God himself has become too painful for them to behold in their mind; his face and words have been merged with the harmful faces and words of flawed and harmful people they know too well to be incomplete and shallow. 3

For those who find their faith mangled in a head-on collision with the church, is there the way forward?

The Often Untold Story

The only issue with the narrative above is the untold reality that I am a part of the problem. I have contributed to the pains and hurts of other people, as they have contributed to mine. I have not loved the church as Jesus has told me to.  I have not loved His people as Jesus has told me.  I have not treated my neighbour as myself.  I have taken my leaders for granted and let them bleed spiritually dry and then turned around and blamed them for not feeding the sheep well.  I have been part of the problem.

Christianity may be the only faith with a public, dramatic, open and honest declaration of our own incompleteness as the marker between those who follow Jesus and those who do not. To follow Jesus you must declare that you have fallen short of the glory of God, that you have not desired God as you ought and that your rebellion against God has not only defied your sovereign creator but resulted in the brokenness we see around us.

The narrative of pointing the church whilst turning a blind eye to our own inadequacies and shortcomings is unhelpful at best, and most likely far worse.  Yes, let us put to death the too-often polished veneer hiding rotting floorboards that has overcome the Church, and let us be truth-tellers filled with the courage and conviction of the scriptures, but let us not become white-washed tombs ourselves (Matt 23:13-15), outwardly appearing beautiful whilst inwardly full of dead bones.

The Flesh and Bones

Our experience of the church has too often shaped our theology of the church, leaving us with the assumption that any gathering of people who believe in Jesus and who do churchy things together resembles the church.  But if that’s all the church is, you don’t need the church at all. You can probably learn more about Jesus from your favourite podcasts and preachers than your local church, and there are many places to give to that do incredible work throughout the world.

You can get a meal with friends any day of the week, but the church is the one place you can publicly proclaim a transformation from death to life in front of a newly adopted family filled with brothers and sisters.  You can be captivated by the latest band, but church is the only place you can stand alongside the ‘cloud of witnesses’ and saints of old and affirm the creeds of centuries.  You can put on the latest threads and have the freshest cut, but the church is the only place you can be laid bare by the confession of sin as you are embraced by the church and a loving father who has sent His Son to redeem a lost humanity.

The Scriptures paint a picture that is far richer than a minimalist theology of church can describe.

The Church is not a dispensable footnote in God’s plan to repossess and redeem the world 4 . The church is filled with fishers of men (Matt 4:19), the salt of the earth (5:13), branches of the vine (John 15:5-10), ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:20), exiles in a foreign land (1 Peter 1:1) 5 .  It is a colony of the coming global reign of Christ (Eph 1:22-23) and a preview of what His kingdom will look like in the end (1 Cor 6:1-8).  The church is where Christ gets glory (Eph 3:21).

The Scriptures reveal to us what we would never discover on our own. The church – not an ideal congregation but the real one that you go to every week,  with the man who falls asleep, and the lady who talks too much about herself, and the kids who run around during the service and bang on the drums – is the flesh and bones of Jesus. It’s his body, he tells us – inseparable from Him as your heart and lungs and kidneys and fingers are from you (Eph 5:29-30; 1 Cor 12:12-31). 6

The Gospel and Church

When Christ died for the church, he made it his own. He identified it with himself. He put his name on it and uses the most intimate kind of language to describe how it is connected to him: His body, His people and His bride.  That’s why persecuting the church is persecuting Christ (Acts 9:5).

Think about what that means. It means that Christ has put his name on the immature Christians, and the Christians who speak too much, and the Christians who don’t sing during praise songs.  He put his name on the sleepers during sermons, and the grumpy sound desk guy, and the young person who can’t sit still for four consecutive minutes.   He puts his name on the drunk, and on the tattered, and on the rich and on the every week attender.

How wide, how long, how high and deep God’s love is for us in Christ Jesus! It covers a multitude of sins and embraces the sinner. Oh, what a saviour.  Yet, still, many people claim to love Jesus, but not His people.  We do not like His church. We do not like His bride.  Yet, it is our love for Jesus that should lead us to loving His people.  When we are reminded of who we are, stone-cold wretches, the foolish, the lepers and the sinners, it should be no small thing to embrace those who are just like us: saved solely by grace through faith.

It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said:

“If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognising my sinfulness at all. My sin is of necessity the worst, the most serious, the most objectionable.  Those who would serve others in the community must descend all the way down to this depth of humility. How could I possibly serve another in unfeigned humility if their sins appear to me to be seriously worse than my own” 7

If we see sin in our brothers and sisters, we should throw ourselves to the feet of the father. Quick, remember the gospel!

God’s Means of Stirring Our Affections

Church is the one time that God’s people gather together as one and combine multiple means of grace to not only stir our affections, but to stir the affections of those around us.  We were made to worship Jesus together. Amongst the multitude. With the great horde.  God didn’t fashion us to enjoy him as solitary individuals but as happy members of a countlessly large family of adopted orphans. 8

This is no chummy hobnob with drinks and a game on the TV. It is an all-in, life-or-death collective venture in the face of great evil and overwhelming opposition. 9 True fellowship is less like friends gathered together to watch the Super Bowl and more like players on the field in blood, sweat and tears, huddled together for the next down. 10

Hebrews 10:24-25 says:

‘And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,  not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near’

In the same way, the church is our greatest weapon in our fight for satisfaction in Christ, by gently encouraging us to stir our affections. When our hearts are cold and our ears are closed, God’s community sings to us, prays for us and reads with us as God himself opens our wooden hearts.  They stoke our affections when our fire grows low.

There is no room for believing that we can follow Jesus Monday through Saturday and then ignore meeting with His people on Sunday, without affecting our relationship. When attending Church matters to us less, eventually, our faith will matter less to us as well.  Our fire tends to dim and our light begins to flicker when we cut ourselves off from the people that Christ is crafting for himself.

Apostles, Prophets, Teachers

One final thought: In Ephesians 4:11-16, the Apostle Paul writes:

‘And He (Jesus) gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

It is very likely that God has gifted millennials in this generation to be prophets, apostles, teachers, shepherds and evangelists for building up the body of Christ into the fullness of Christ.  We should be those things for the church. We should start new things and new movements. We should be truth-tellers in church and lead people back to repentance.  Yet all of those things involve being party of the body. 

Friends, I pray that we could learn to love the church as much as Christ does.  That even when it is difficult, we could pray for our brothers and sisters, being honest truth-tellers and gentle in correction and rebuke, but never forgetting that when we critique the church, we do so as members of His body and His people, that Christ is sanctifying, justifying, redeeming and washing clean, day by day.

Abide in Me or Wither and Die

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One of my greatest joys over the summer months is spending more time than usual in very old books. Spurgeon, Owen, and Edwards have been my company this summer alongside more modern contemporaries. Reading has been a constant habit of mine since I was a small child, and it has provided a fountain of wisdom beyond which I could have ever hoped to have tapped into on my own strength.

The find of the summer for me has been a small book, Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, on the extraordinary missionary Hudson Taylor. Taylor was the founder of the China Inland Mission and in God’s strength and provision, was responsible in the mid 19th century for leading hundreds of missionaries into China’s inland for the first time. It was written by his son, Howard Taylor, that ‘the life that was to be exceptionally fruitful had to be rooted and grounded in God in no ordinary way‘.

Taylor was a man who drunk deeply at the fountain of Christ. It was written of him that ‘he overcame difficulties such as few men have ever had to encounter and left a work which long after his death is still growing in usefulness’. In the foreword to Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secrets, it was said that:

‘Hudson Taylor had many secrets, for he was always going on with God, yet they were but one – the simple, profound secret of drawing for every need, temporal or spiritual, upon “the fathomless wealth of Christ”

‘Here was a man almost sixty years of age, bearing tremendous burdens, yet absolutely calm and untroubled. Oh, the pile of letters! any one of which might contain news of death, of lack of funds, of riots or serious trouble. Yet all were opened, read and answered with the same tranquility — Christ his reason for peace, his power for calm. Dwelling in Christ, he drew upon His very being and resources. . . . And this he did by an attitude of faith as simple as it was continuous. Yet he was delightfully free and natural. I can find no words to describe it save the Scriptural expression “in God.” He was in God all the time and God in him. It was that true “abiding” of John fifteen’.

The simple secret that Hudson Taylor’s learned was that without Jesus, we can do nothing. For all our scurrying and scheming and planning and harrying, without Him, we are spiritually paralyzed. It is abundantly clear that if He were to leave us to ourselves, we would become completely impotent. We would produce nothing of worth, because, ‘without Me, you can do nothing’ (John 15:5).

Jesus has declared that our productivity and our faithfulness is directly linked to our abiding in Him. As Christians, we will bear fruit only if we abide in Christ. The closer we stay to Christ, the more fruit we shall bear.

Sailboats and Powerboats

There have been many times where I would prefer to be under my own power, dependent on no-one else for success. We set up our lives in such a way that even if God doesn’t move in powerful and mighty ways that we might yet move forward. We seek to be powerboats, cutting through the waters in high velocity, throttle on full with our eyes only on how fast we can move towards a destination of our own choosing.

Jesus reminds us that we created to be sailboats. The simple sailboat does not bring glory to itself, but to the power of an unseen force propelling it along. It is dependent upon the wind for its power. The work of a sailing crew is to align the sails with the wind that will blow it. It is dead in the water unless the wind wills it to move. Jesus talks often about the Spirit blowing around like the wind. Our role is to discern where the wind is at work, not how fast we can get there.

When you look at the language the Pharisees use in Acts 6 to describe Peter and John, you can see the Spirit at work:

‘Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognised that they had been with Jesus‘ 

The power of Peter and John did not come from refined skills of leadership won through sheer determination and hard work. They were uneducated, common men who had spent an inordinate amount of time abiding in Jesus and being filled with the Spirit. They were sailboats into whom, and through whom, the wind of the presence of Jesus moved in irrefutable fashion.

They had become ‘rooted and grounded in Christ in no ordinary way’.

Rooted and Grounded in Christ

Everyone has a rhythm to their lives. A particular bent in the way we live our lives. Some of us hit the gym regularly, whilst others have a rhythm of coffee and friends. Most of the time, we don’t even think about the rhythms that we have; it sort of just happens to us. For many, though, the rhythms involves noise, busyness, stress and isolation rather than life-giving, soul-stirring habits of grace.

Jesus advocates an entirely new rhythm of life:

‘Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing’ (John 15:4–5)

Abiding literally means to ‘remain, live or continue’; to abide in Christ means to live in Him and remain in Him.  It is both something we possess and something we participate in.  When we come to Christ, we are united to him by faith (John 14:2), we are in Christ (2nd Corinthians 5:17)  and sealed in Him by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13). This is a work that God has done in us.

However, abiding and remaining in Christ also means reorienting our lives and rhythms around Christ:

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this, my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.  As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love,  just as I have kept my Fathers commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. 

Having the words of Jesus abide in us, or as Paul echoes in Colossians 3:16, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’, is a key facet of abiding in Jesus. Meditation on His word to the extent that it fills our minds, directs our wills and transforms our affections for Him is crucial.  Our relationship with Christ is intimately tied to how we dwell on the ‘fathomless wealth of Christ’ and allow that to govern our lives.

Abiding in Jesus means dwelling often on the grace that saved us and the extravagant love of Christ. We must never allow ourselves to drift from the daily contemplation of what Christ has done for us on the cross, the great scandal of the King of Kings redeeming and rescuing ‘sons and daughters of disobedience’ (Ephesians 2:2). We rest our lives on the love of Christ.  This leads us to a place where the words, love, and joy of Christ fill us with great abandon and transform our hearts.

We abide through relationship and obedience. We pursue Christ as we have been pursued. We prune our lives until the noise and the business of life is drowned out by the word made flesh. We meditate on the words of Christ until it stirs our affections.  We build into our lives habits of grace, rhythms that bring us closer to the great I AM.

It was Charles Spurgeon who wrote that:

‘Sometimes we think we are too busy to pray. This is a great mistake, for praying is a saving of time. If we have no time we must make time, for if God has given us time for secondary duties, He must have given us time for primary ones, and to draw near to Him is a primary duty. We must let nothing set it on one side’

There is the good news for those who are finding this a tall order: We love Jesus because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). We didn’t choose him; he chose us and he chose us to walk out our faith in obedience to him (John 15:16). Apart from Christ, we cannot do anything (John 15:5). This is good news to the weary person who thinks he must muster up the strength to pursue and know Christ. He provides the grace and the strength. He provides the wind to power our sails.

Abide in him, and he will abide in you. He who began a good work in you will complete it (Philippians 1:6). He who called you is faithful; he will surely do it (1 Thessalonians 5:24).