Love, Sex & Mammon
Hard Times, Hard Truths & the Economics of the Christian Family
by Russell D. Moore, Dean of Theology, Senior Editor, Teaching Pastor
We are not, we pray, on the verge of another Great Depression. Still, we see signs of economic failure all around us. Stores in the strip malls we drive past every day advertise “going out of business” sales. Those of us who are pastors know church members who have lost jobs, and we weekly see the faces of others who fear that the next pink slip belongs to them.
Some Christians, on the Left and on the Right, would tell us that economic matters are of paramount concern right now. They would assert that we’ve no time for the “luxury” of “culture war” discussions about “abstinence” or divorce or “gender roles” or other such matters. Instead, they tell us, we should concentrate on tax cuts or economic stimulus projects or Wall Street bailouts or home ownership.
They’re wrong.
They’re wrong not only because the family is, ultimately, more important than the marketplace, but also because the two are interconnected. They’re wrong also because, as Marxists and hyper-capitalists both correctly grasp (though wrongly apply), man as an economic being cannot be abstracted from other aspects of life.
A time of economic crisis is, therefore, a time for the Church to reconsider—and re-imagine—her priorities. The first step is to recognize that one of the roots of the family crisis all around us—in the pews we sit in or preach to every week—is the wallet in our own back pocket.
Consuming Ourselves to Death
It is no accident, after all, that our Ancient Foe first appears in Holy Scripture as a snake—imagery that follows the devil all through the canon to the closing vision of the Revelation to St. John. As philosopher Leon Kass puts it, “For the serpent is a mobile digestive tract that swallows its prey whole; in this sense the serpent stands for pure appetite.” Indeed he does—and the whole of Scripture and of Christian tradition warns the Church against the way of the appetites, the way of consuming oneself to death.
We are commanded away from the path of Esau, who sells his inheritance for a pile of red stew (Heb. 12:16–17). We’re directed away from the god of the belly (Phil. 3:19). From the Tree in the garden to the wilderness beyond the Jordan to the present hour, the people of God are tempted to turn their digestive or reproductive tracts away from the mystery of Christ and toward the self as god.
This is true in any era, but there is a special danger, it seems, for those of us living in an era of unparalleled affluence. We have become the people Jesus warned us about. Whether Irish Catholics or Appalachian Baptists or Armenian Orthodox, too many of us want desperately to distance ourselves from our blue-collar, economically impoverished roots, and more and more wish to be seen as affluent, upwardly mobile, and politically influential. But this has come with a cost.
Too many of our churches, too many of us, have made peace with the sexual revolution and the familial chaos left in its wake precisely because we made peace, long before, with the love of money. We wish to live with the same standard of living as the culture around us (there is no sin in that), but we are willing to get there by any means necessary.
Why does the seemingly godly church member in one of our congregations or parishes drive his pregnant teenage daughter to the nearest city under cover of darkness to obtain an abortion? Because, no matter how much he “votes his values,” when crisis hits, he wants his daughter to have a “normal” life. He is “pro-life,” with, as one feminist leader put it, three exceptions: rape, incest, and my situation.
Why do Christian parents, contra St. Paul’s clear admonition in 1 Corinthians 7, encourage their young adult children to delay marriage, sometimes for years past the time it would take to discern whether this union would be of the Lord? Why do we smilingly tell them to wait until they can “afford” it? It is because, to our shame, we deem fornication a less awful reality than financial hardship.
Why do our pastors and church leaders speak bluntly about homosexuality but not about divorce? Because, in many cases, they know the faces of the divorced people in the pews before them—and they fear losing the membership statistics or the revenue those faces represent.
Why do we speak endlessly about marital communication and “love languages” but never address the question of whether institutionalized day care is good for children, or for their parents? It’s because pastors know that couples would reply that they could never afford to live on the provision of the husband alone. And they’re almost always right—if living means living in the neighborhoods in which they now live with the technologies they now have. Why do we never ask whether it might be better to live in a one-bedroom apartment or a trailer park than to outsource the rearing of one’s children? It’s because the American way of life seems so normal to us that such things do not even seem to be options at all.
More Than Acquisition
Perhaps it’s time to ask whether Ralph Nader (yes, that Ralph Nader) is right that television advertising is a threat to the family order, since “corporations have decided that kids under twelve are a lucrative market, and they sell directly to them, subverting parental authority.” Could it be that Ronald McDonald and digitalized talking “Christian” vegetable cartoons are as erosive of the family as the cultural rot we are accustomed to denouncing? Could it be that the consumer culture we mimic in our own churches and denominational programs is, in reality, just as hedonistic as a truck-stop peep show?
Perhaps the economic crisis is momentary. Perhaps jobs will return more quickly than we assume, foreclosures will stall, investment portfolios will bounce back. We hope so. A time of economic shaking, however, offers the Church the opportunity to call us away from captivity to the appetites, to reconsider some of our hidden assumptions.
Maybe it will teach us to teach our people to live within their means, to stand by their words, to love their families, and to be content with lives of godliness and dignity. As extended families come together, as churches band together to care for those “reduced in force” from their jobs, perhaps we’ll be forced to abandon the illusions of ourselves as self-contained units of production and consumption.
Perhaps we’ll see that life is about more than acquisition—acquisition of possessions or orgasms or acclaim. Perhaps these times will cause us, like our Lord Jesus in his wilderness temptations, to turn away from momentary satisfaction—whether of our consumer or sexual “needs”—and toward the more permanent things.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
E-Note 8/20: Dispatches
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Hats off to the brave soul who visited me this week to say, "Hey, are we losing our grip on these worship services?" Yes, I think we are. We've been running 15-minutes over time much too frequently. But be of good cheer, there have been meetings and phone calls this week to remedy the situation. I even made a visit to the woodshed myself. We hope to get the announcements and the sermons back on the wagon and come in under 90-minutes. Thank you, friend, for your courage and concern. Enough said. Now for some miscellaneous dispatches from around here.
You'll remember that on Sunday we announced a new three-point prayer initiative from the Christian Education committee: (1) Lord, please add three-to-five new families to TBC so we can teach them about Jesus and your redeeming love; (2) Lord, please give the families who attend TBC more grace to attend Christian Education classes; we want to see young people and old built up in the knowledge of God; and (3) Lord, please show us how to launch a Pioneer Club at TBC this Fall. We want to see deep friendships between our own children and extend Christ's friendship to children in the surrounding towns. Well, you might not believe this, but just yesterday our own Chris Berger showed up on our doorstep with a family who had just moved to Lyme. They have three children (14, 5, 3) and are looking for a church. Do you think they got an invitation to TBC? You bet! I wish you could of have seen the wide-eyed faces on my girls. We had prayed these new prayers a few times already, and just like our Faith Promise, we saw God at work right before our eyes. I am so thankful that God is building by daughter's faith through prayer! I don't know what will come of this new family, but I do know the Lord knows how to cheer those who pray.
Another story of good cheer. Yesterday, out of the blue, a young woman walked into the church. She needed to complete 20-hours of community service for the Orange County courts. Of course Judy and I put her right to work, taking her as a gift from the Lord. But the Lord has been at work too. These past two days Judy has been lovingly mentoring this young woman who will be deployed to Afghanistan this December with the Reserves. As they worked together I could hear them laughing and sharing important stories. Who knows how much God repairs a soul through such graces before He converts it. We hope to see our new friend in worship this Sunday.
One more dispatch worth dispatching. This Saturday I have a phone appointment with Mr. Bruce Kirby. Bruce is a very thoughtful man with a huge heart and a huge vision for young people. He is Director of an exciting ministry in Lakeland, FL (not far from my mom's house) that trains adults and high school students to think Christianly about, well, everything. The Cambridge Study Center has developed all kinds of wonderful and engaging content for teens who want to learn how Jesus reigns over everything. I want to ask Bruce how we might transfer some of his work to TBC and the Upper Valley. I'd appreciate your prayers for this call and this budding relationship with the Cambridge Study Center. Check them out at http://www.cambridgestudycenter.com
May Jesus Christ be praised! John
Hats off to the brave soul who visited me this week to say, "Hey, are we losing our grip on these worship services?" Yes, I think we are. We've been running 15-minutes over time much too frequently. But be of good cheer, there have been meetings and phone calls this week to remedy the situation. I even made a visit to the woodshed myself. We hope to get the announcements and the sermons back on the wagon and come in under 90-minutes. Thank you, friend, for your courage and concern. Enough said. Now for some miscellaneous dispatches from around here.
You'll remember that on Sunday we announced a new three-point prayer initiative from the Christian Education committee: (1) Lord, please add three-to-five new families to TBC so we can teach them about Jesus and your redeeming love; (2) Lord, please give the families who attend TBC more grace to attend Christian Education classes; we want to see young people and old built up in the knowledge of God; and (3) Lord, please show us how to launch a Pioneer Club at TBC this Fall. We want to see deep friendships between our own children and extend Christ's friendship to children in the surrounding towns. Well, you might not believe this, but just yesterday our own Chris Berger showed up on our doorstep with a family who had just moved to Lyme. They have three children (14, 5, 3) and are looking for a church. Do you think they got an invitation to TBC? You bet! I wish you could of have seen the wide-eyed faces on my girls. We had prayed these new prayers a few times already, and just like our Faith Promise, we saw God at work right before our eyes. I am so thankful that God is building by daughter's faith through prayer! I don't know what will come of this new family, but I do know the Lord knows how to cheer those who pray.
Another story of good cheer. Yesterday, out of the blue, a young woman walked into the church. She needed to complete 20-hours of community service for the Orange County courts. Of course Judy and I put her right to work, taking her as a gift from the Lord. But the Lord has been at work too. These past two days Judy has been lovingly mentoring this young woman who will be deployed to Afghanistan this December with the Reserves. As they worked together I could hear them laughing and sharing important stories. Who knows how much God repairs a soul through such graces before He converts it. We hope to see our new friend in worship this Sunday.
One more dispatch worth dispatching. This Saturday I have a phone appointment with Mr. Bruce Kirby. Bruce is a very thoughtful man with a huge heart and a huge vision for young people. He is Director of an exciting ministry in Lakeland, FL (not far from my mom's house) that trains adults and high school students to think Christianly about, well, everything. The Cambridge Study Center has developed all kinds of wonderful and engaging content for teens who want to learn how Jesus reigns over everything. I want to ask Bruce how we might transfer some of his work to TBC and the Upper Valley. I'd appreciate your prayers for this call and this budding relationship with the Cambridge Study Center. Check them out at http://www.cambridgestudycenter.com
May Jesus Christ be praised! John
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
What do you think?
WHAT DO YOU THINK about how we disciple young Christians?
By Rob Craig, Youth Ministries Director, Evangelical Presbyterian Church
The following quote comes from Walt Mueller's blog at CPYU where he interviewed author David Wells. Dr. David Wells is Distinguished Senior Research Professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and the author of many books, including his latest, The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World.
CPYU: If you were to address a room full of youth workers and you had the opportunity to communicate one message to them, what one message would you communicate?
DW: It is time to get brave. Let’s stop the pandering. Kids see right through it. Let’s give them the real thing. They are looking for it. No one has demanded anything of them; let us tell them that if they come to Christ, he bids them die. No one has told them that they can know truth as something other than their own private perspectives; let us tell them there is Truth and those who know it, lose their lives. No one has told them that there is a different way of life. What many churches have done has been to run after the kids fearing that they will be lost irretrievably to MTV, rock, sex, and drugs. So, better to give them small, undemanding doses of Christianity that won’t interfere too much with their lives and which they will be willing to accept, than none at all, we think to ourselves. Wrong! If we tell them that they can have Christ on their own terms, we are selling them down the river. They instinctively know that. So, let us not make fools of ourselves anymore.
Last week the New York Times ran a feature in their Education Life section called Your Story. They invited students to "tell us their experiences in their own words and pictures." They received 800 contributions, from freshmen to Ph.D. candidates. The Times published several that stood out, including some about spiritual issues. It's fascinating reading. One submission was particularly relevant to church youth workers in light of Dr. Wells quote above. It was written by Dustin Junkert, a student at George Fox University, in a piece entitled What My Faith in God Looks Like.
Dustin's story is like so many other college students who leave the security of youth ministry after graduation and enter into the lectures halls of the college campus. He begins to ask questions that deconstruct his superficial faith. Dustin's opening sentence in his story is a killer, "I grew up quietly and without thought." As he unpacks this, it leaves you wondering, "Who or what was the catalyst for spiritual thought in his life and who were his mentors to help him ask/answer questions and ponder propositional truth?"
Dustin literally sets out on a journey to find truth. Sadly, his encounter with his former high school Sunday School teacher is a example of how the church can fail students while we have them in our youth ministry. The time to start these conversations is well before our students graduate.
This is a great article to read and discuss with your leadership team. A portion of the article follows: "Eager to continue my spiritual journey, I went to a private Christian college in Oregon complete with a lifestyle contract. Freshman year, I met Frank, a lifelong philosopher. He was a couple rooms down from me. He asked me all sorts of wild questions I had never thought about before, like, ‘Well, why do you believe that?’ Everything I said that year, Frank would ask me that question. Then I started asking myself that question about every thought I had. It was a sort of game…
The game generally started with a question, cycled through my beliefs, and ended with ‘because. . . .’
I took a class called ‘The Problem of Religious Diversity’ that quickly had me believing that just about any belief system could be true and that no one could prove anything. It never occurred to me until then that people who believed something other than Christianity had the same reason for believing their faith as I did for believing mine."
Dustin's journey from his doubts back towards faith is engaging reading and a worthy discussion point with your student ministry team. You can read the entire piece by clicking here.
By Rob Craig, Youth Ministries Director, Evangelical Presbyterian Church
The following quote comes from Walt Mueller's blog at CPYU where he interviewed author David Wells. Dr. David Wells is Distinguished Senior Research Professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and the author of many books, including his latest, The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World.
CPYU: If you were to address a room full of youth workers and you had the opportunity to communicate one message to them, what one message would you communicate?
DW: It is time to get brave. Let’s stop the pandering. Kids see right through it. Let’s give them the real thing. They are looking for it. No one has demanded anything of them; let us tell them that if they come to Christ, he bids them die. No one has told them that they can know truth as something other than their own private perspectives; let us tell them there is Truth and those who know it, lose their lives. No one has told them that there is a different way of life. What many churches have done has been to run after the kids fearing that they will be lost irretrievably to MTV, rock, sex, and drugs. So, better to give them small, undemanding doses of Christianity that won’t interfere too much with their lives and which they will be willing to accept, than none at all, we think to ourselves. Wrong! If we tell them that they can have Christ on their own terms, we are selling them down the river. They instinctively know that. So, let us not make fools of ourselves anymore.
Last week the New York Times ran a feature in their Education Life section called Your Story. They invited students to "tell us their experiences in their own words and pictures." They received 800 contributions, from freshmen to Ph.D. candidates. The Times published several that stood out, including some about spiritual issues. It's fascinating reading. One submission was particularly relevant to church youth workers in light of Dr. Wells quote above. It was written by Dustin Junkert, a student at George Fox University, in a piece entitled What My Faith in God Looks Like.
Dustin's story is like so many other college students who leave the security of youth ministry after graduation and enter into the lectures halls of the college campus. He begins to ask questions that deconstruct his superficial faith. Dustin's opening sentence in his story is a killer, "I grew up quietly and without thought." As he unpacks this, it leaves you wondering, "Who or what was the catalyst for spiritual thought in his life and who were his mentors to help him ask/answer questions and ponder propositional truth?"
Dustin literally sets out on a journey to find truth. Sadly, his encounter with his former high school Sunday School teacher is a example of how the church can fail students while we have them in our youth ministry. The time to start these conversations is well before our students graduate.
This is a great article to read and discuss with your leadership team. A portion of the article follows: "Eager to continue my spiritual journey, I went to a private Christian college in Oregon complete with a lifestyle contract. Freshman year, I met Frank, a lifelong philosopher. He was a couple rooms down from me. He asked me all sorts of wild questions I had never thought about before, like, ‘Well, why do you believe that?’ Everything I said that year, Frank would ask me that question. Then I started asking myself that question about every thought I had. It was a sort of game…
The game generally started with a question, cycled through my beliefs, and ended with ‘because. . . .’
I took a class called ‘The Problem of Religious Diversity’ that quickly had me believing that just about any belief system could be true and that no one could prove anything. It never occurred to me until then that people who believed something other than Christianity had the same reason for believing their faith as I did for believing mine."
Dustin's journey from his doubts back towards faith is engaging reading and a worthy discussion point with your student ministry team. You can read the entire piece by clicking here.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
E-Note 8/13: The Hope of Prayer
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
It is really amazing how prayer can change the horizon of your life. I'm not talking about answered prayer, I'm talking about prayers begun but unanswered. Think about it: Because of the Gospel, this radical grace where God's enemies become his friends, Jesus commands us to pray for our own enemies. And what happens to those who obey? They become filled with more hope for their enemies in and through prayer than they could every possibly have been through avoidance, anger, or fear. When followers of Jesus pray for their enemies, they pray not that they would be destroyed, but that they would be redeemed, converted, overwhelmed by grace. Such prayers spawn godly hope. Why? Because that which is being prayed for an enemy has already happened to the one praying - redemption, conversion, overwhelmed by grace. God's kindness in their own salvation gives them reason to hope for those they pray for! But there is more: the one praying begins to interact with their enemy - maybe even the whole rebellious world - from a place in the soul called hope instead of from those places called avoidance, anger and fear. Engaging the whole world, or even one enemy, from a budding place in the soul called hope is one way we are filled with the grace and truth of Jesus.
Last night at the monthly Christian Education Committee meeting, we came away with a fresh prayer agenda. It had the same effect on me as prayer for enemies, it changed large patches of the horizon for me simply because earnest prayers begun but unanswered immediately generate real hope, real because God is our God and we are his people. Here is our fresh prayer agenda. Join us and see what the Lord can do. (1) Lord, please add 3 to 5 new families to your flock at TBC. We want to teach more children about Jesus and your Redeeming love. (2) Lord, please give the families who attend TBC more grace to attend Christian Education classes. We want to see young people and old built up in the knowledge of God. (3) Lord, please show us how to launch a Pioneer Clubs chapter at TBC this Fall. We want to see deep friendships between our own children and extend Christ’s friendship to children in the surrounding towns.
May Jesus Christ be praised! John
It is really amazing how prayer can change the horizon of your life. I'm not talking about answered prayer, I'm talking about prayers begun but unanswered. Think about it: Because of the Gospel, this radical grace where God's enemies become his friends, Jesus commands us to pray for our own enemies. And what happens to those who obey? They become filled with more hope for their enemies in and through prayer than they could every possibly have been through avoidance, anger, or fear. When followers of Jesus pray for their enemies, they pray not that they would be destroyed, but that they would be redeemed, converted, overwhelmed by grace. Such prayers spawn godly hope. Why? Because that which is being prayed for an enemy has already happened to the one praying - redemption, conversion, overwhelmed by grace. God's kindness in their own salvation gives them reason to hope for those they pray for! But there is more: the one praying begins to interact with their enemy - maybe even the whole rebellious world - from a place in the soul called hope instead of from those places called avoidance, anger and fear. Engaging the whole world, or even one enemy, from a budding place in the soul called hope is one way we are filled with the grace and truth of Jesus.
Last night at the monthly Christian Education Committee meeting, we came away with a fresh prayer agenda. It had the same effect on me as prayer for enemies, it changed large patches of the horizon for me simply because earnest prayers begun but unanswered immediately generate real hope, real because God is our God and we are his people. Here is our fresh prayer agenda. Join us and see what the Lord can do. (1) Lord, please add 3 to 5 new families to your flock at TBC. We want to teach more children about Jesus and your Redeeming love. (2) Lord, please give the families who attend TBC more grace to attend Christian Education classes. We want to see young people and old built up in the knowledge of God. (3) Lord, please show us how to launch a Pioneer Clubs chapter at TBC this Fall. We want to see deep friendships between our own children and extend Christ’s friendship to children in the surrounding towns.
May Jesus Christ be praised! John
Friday, August 7, 2009
E-Note 8/7: Fully Committed to Him
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I've been thinking about this week's Fighter Verse: "For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him" (2 Chronicles 16:9). The first thought that comes to mind is how pleased the Father must have been with His Son, Jesus. No one on earth was more fully committed to the LORD than Jesus, the divine Son. And so how happy must the eyes of the Father have been as He looked upon the Son and how strengthened must the Son have been by divine power, full of grace and truth! The Fighter Verse is a verse about the persons of heaven longing for harmony with the persons of earth, a longing and a harmony ultimately fulfilled through Jesus Christ and in all who share His life through His Spirit.
The second thought that comes to mind is how humbled I am by one word in the verse: "fully". I prefer commitments much less exhaustive and deep than "fully committed" implies. "Fully committed" describes the energy and interest I give my own concerns more than it describes the energy and interest I give God's concerns. This verse gives me little hope that the eyes of the Lord will find me upon the earth. But that is exactly the verse's ministry to my heart, isn't it? These words are meant to simultaneously break my heart from its addiction to self and to elate my heart in the availability of God. I must not trade-in the adverb "fully" for a word like "occasionally" or "lightly" or "marginally" or even "religiously". If I make any such trades to dull the edge of divine expectation, to remain intact, then the eyes of the Lord will pass me by. Instead of finding in me a contrite heart, the Lord will only find a proud one and I will remain lost to Him.
My third thought then lingers on the question of what does it mean to be "fully committed to him"? It must mean that I put nothing in my life out of reach from submission to the will of God. Large categories become helpful in applying this truth. THINKING: Am I making every effort to fully commit my thinking to the LORD? Or does my rebellion against him continue as I rely on my own hunches of what is true about me, the world, and God? RELATING: Am I making every effort to fully commit the way I relate to other people to the LORD? Or does my rebellion continue as I excuse myself from God's will for my relationships on the authority of my personality? SUFFERING: Am I making every effort to wait on the LORD in joyful obedience when disappointments and pain dominate my experience? Or does my rebellion continue as I take my complaints to men instead of to God in prayer. WORSHIPPING: Am I making every effort to put the LORD first in my life on Sunday and every day. Or does my rebellion continue as I consider that God just doesn't understand the complexities of the modern world?
Such a "full commitment" to the Lord is, of course, impossible, but only for those whose don't desire it. Those whose hearts are broken under the weight of God's word will receive a strengthening grace and a nearby Savior to carry them forward into the depths of the will of God. They will rejoice to hear the LORD say something like this, as put by C.S. Lewis in his book, Mere Christianity: "I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked - the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours." May Jesus Christ be praised! John
I've been thinking about this week's Fighter Verse: "For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him" (2 Chronicles 16:9). The first thought that comes to mind is how pleased the Father must have been with His Son, Jesus. No one on earth was more fully committed to the LORD than Jesus, the divine Son. And so how happy must the eyes of the Father have been as He looked upon the Son and how strengthened must the Son have been by divine power, full of grace and truth! The Fighter Verse is a verse about the persons of heaven longing for harmony with the persons of earth, a longing and a harmony ultimately fulfilled through Jesus Christ and in all who share His life through His Spirit.
The second thought that comes to mind is how humbled I am by one word in the verse: "fully". I prefer commitments much less exhaustive and deep than "fully committed" implies. "Fully committed" describes the energy and interest I give my own concerns more than it describes the energy and interest I give God's concerns. This verse gives me little hope that the eyes of the Lord will find me upon the earth. But that is exactly the verse's ministry to my heart, isn't it? These words are meant to simultaneously break my heart from its addiction to self and to elate my heart in the availability of God. I must not trade-in the adverb "fully" for a word like "occasionally" or "lightly" or "marginally" or even "religiously". If I make any such trades to dull the edge of divine expectation, to remain intact, then the eyes of the Lord will pass me by. Instead of finding in me a contrite heart, the Lord will only find a proud one and I will remain lost to Him.
My third thought then lingers on the question of what does it mean to be "fully committed to him"? It must mean that I put nothing in my life out of reach from submission to the will of God. Large categories become helpful in applying this truth. THINKING: Am I making every effort to fully commit my thinking to the LORD? Or does my rebellion against him continue as I rely on my own hunches of what is true about me, the world, and God? RELATING: Am I making every effort to fully commit the way I relate to other people to the LORD? Or does my rebellion continue as I excuse myself from God's will for my relationships on the authority of my personality? SUFFERING: Am I making every effort to wait on the LORD in joyful obedience when disappointments and pain dominate my experience? Or does my rebellion continue as I take my complaints to men instead of to God in prayer. WORSHIPPING: Am I making every effort to put the LORD first in my life on Sunday and every day. Or does my rebellion continue as I consider that God just doesn't understand the complexities of the modern world?
Such a "full commitment" to the Lord is, of course, impossible, but only for those whose don't desire it. Those whose hearts are broken under the weight of God's word will receive a strengthening grace and a nearby Savior to carry them forward into the depths of the will of God. They will rejoice to hear the LORD say something like this, as put by C.S. Lewis in his book, Mere Christianity: "I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked - the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours." May Jesus Christ be praised! John
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
