Two things I enjoy reading: Desiring God (a daily devotional app by John Piper) and The Art of Manliness (specifically his Sunday Firesides). Today, they worked together to get my thoughts moving.
There is no easy way with life. If you take things like fast food, a hanging curveball, or pornography, things can be easy. But life itself is not easy. “There must be a way to make good money, without working hard; to lose weight, without cutting calories; to drink caffeine throughout the day, and still get a good nights sleep; to get ripped, without lifting heavy weights.”
We know this, but don’t want to believe it. If there are these things here-and-there that are quick, easy pleasures, then there must be a solution for making the harder things of life simpler.
Unfortunately, there are some rules to how the universe operates that cannot be undone. Gravity can be overcome, but not without major force. The sun cannot be stopped from setting unless you can travel around the world fast enough to avoid it. Weeds in my yard will continue to grow like the Amazon without tireless work and investment.
In observation of the world around me, and in my own life personally, I believe there are just some things that will take hard work, no matter how much I want to believe otherwise.
Paul, in II Corinthians 4:16 says “though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” Yet another rule of the universe that cannot be ignored: we all grow old, and eventually die.
But the good news in Paul’s words are that another rule of the universe cannot be ignored: we CAN be renewed internally day-by-day, and we CAN live eternally. (That may sound hokey to some, but hopefully worth looking into!)
Think about Paul’s life. If you aren’t familiar with Paul, I suggest you go check out his story. He endured a lot, yet didn’t lose heart. Think about being beaten... in Paul’s time, there were no antibiotics. It could take a while to recover from something like that, even without complications and infection. And as he aged, that would only get harder. His sight would diminish (and there were no glasses) and hearing get harder (and there were no hearing aids). He was a missionary, and spent most of his time walking between towns - which would also get harder with age. Paul’s life... and let’s face it, YOUR life... are wasting away. Your outer self, no matter how much work you put into it, will only last so long.
My hope isn’t to discourage you from working hard to take care of your temporary outer self. Physical training is of some value. So is working hard to earn more money. However, you will die someday, and you can’t take your money with you. That homer in you hit in high school is a memory lost. The pornography you immersed your brain in is left for some other poor chap to lose himself in. It’s all gone... the easy stuff with the hard stuff. BUT... the one thing worth the effort... your inner self... THAT is what I would hope you would being to put more emphasis on. Put in the hard work there, because effort toward knowing Christ, getting your heart changed, and living eternally after all the temporal crap has faded... that’s actually worth it.
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21) Where are you investing your treasure today? Is it in easy things? In harder things that don’t matter when your body is about ready to leave this world? Or is it in the eternal impact of who you actually are? Invest... because “small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:14) The rest are looking to the easy road... but that leads to destruction.
Find life. Invest.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Stopping the Swinging Pendulum
John Piper says “there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that... nullifies the threats of the Bible.”
I’ve been meditating on this in light of my own views of Christ, His Church, the world... and I think he’s right, especially here in America.
We love our freedom. We want to be able to do what we want, when we want, with whomever we want, with no repercussion. We want to be accepted for who we are, no matter the vice. Then, after to coming to know the Bible a little bit, and grasping a taste that God is loving, forgiving, and gracious, we take every evil thing inside us for granted. We dismiss, way into the back of our minds, the equally important qualities of God that are just and full of wrath, that our sin separates us from Him.
And so the pendulum swings...
But the opposite is also true. There are those that tend to emphasize God’s wrath and His being the Ultimate Judge to the point that His love and grace are essentially a footnote. So in these cases, we attempt to come up with rules and guidelines to how we approach our “faith”. God says so... so do it. If you’re outside of that, then you’re already condemned to hell.
You could make a enormously long list of things written simply in the Bible alone that God says not to do. You could extend that list by adding on the things He says TO do. After that, rank these things in terms of human importance. Then draw a horizontal list through your line. Place it where the things of most importance condemn a man if he violates them, and those with lesser importance do not. Must with understanding of this would agree that violation of any part of God’s word is sin, which condemns.
And so the pendulum swings...
If God is completely just / full of wrath, yet completely loving / full of grace, how do we know how to follow the Bible’s teachings? If everything he says “do” or “don’t do” has the power to condemn, yet He’s willing and ready to forgive us of any / all sin (He already sent Christ), what do I do with the list?
The pendulum needs to stop swinging, and we need to rest in the middle. We need to understand God is all of the scary stuff and all of the not-scary stuff, all at the same time. He’s given us ways to live, but which we should obey. We should fight as a warrior in battle against disobedience, but understand that He’s there as a patient and loving father, ready to help us back up to try again, with grace.
The bar is high. James 4 says if you know the good you ought to do, yet don’t do it... THAT’S sin. That list we came up with... those are just some good things we ought to do. There are so many others that aren’t written down (e.g., the Bible doesn’t say “don’t cut somebody off on the highway during rush hour”) - but we ought to do those. The bar is TOO high.
So let’s stop making rules we need to follow to reach heaven - that’s up to God. Follow Him. And let’s stop using His grace and / or our salvation as a means to justify our sin. Let’s rest in the middle. Let’s follow God out of faith in His ultimate sovereignty.
I’ve been meditating on this in light of my own views of Christ, His Church, the world... and I think he’s right, especially here in America.
We love our freedom. We want to be able to do what we want, when we want, with whomever we want, with no repercussion. We want to be accepted for who we are, no matter the vice. Then, after to coming to know the Bible a little bit, and grasping a taste that God is loving, forgiving, and gracious, we take every evil thing inside us for granted. We dismiss, way into the back of our minds, the equally important qualities of God that are just and full of wrath, that our sin separates us from Him.
And so the pendulum swings...
But the opposite is also true. There are those that tend to emphasize God’s wrath and His being the Ultimate Judge to the point that His love and grace are essentially a footnote. So in these cases, we attempt to come up with rules and guidelines to how we approach our “faith”. God says so... so do it. If you’re outside of that, then you’re already condemned to hell.
You could make a enormously long list of things written simply in the Bible alone that God says not to do. You could extend that list by adding on the things He says TO do. After that, rank these things in terms of human importance. Then draw a horizontal list through your line. Place it where the things of most importance condemn a man if he violates them, and those with lesser importance do not. Must with understanding of this would agree that violation of any part of God’s word is sin, which condemns.
And so the pendulum swings...
If God is completely just / full of wrath, yet completely loving / full of grace, how do we know how to follow the Bible’s teachings? If everything he says “do” or “don’t do” has the power to condemn, yet He’s willing and ready to forgive us of any / all sin (He already sent Christ), what do I do with the list?
The pendulum needs to stop swinging, and we need to rest in the middle. We need to understand God is all of the scary stuff and all of the not-scary stuff, all at the same time. He’s given us ways to live, but which we should obey. We should fight as a warrior in battle against disobedience, but understand that He’s there as a patient and loving father, ready to help us back up to try again, with grace.
The bar is high. James 4 says if you know the good you ought to do, yet don’t do it... THAT’S sin. That list we came up with... those are just some good things we ought to do. There are so many others that aren’t written down (e.g., the Bible doesn’t say “don’t cut somebody off on the highway during rush hour”) - but we ought to do those. The bar is TOO high.
So let’s stop making rules we need to follow to reach heaven - that’s up to God. Follow Him. And let’s stop using His grace and / or our salvation as a means to justify our sin. Let’s rest in the middle. Let’s follow God out of faith in His ultimate sovereignty.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
