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What transforms life from being relegated to a series of menial tasks, duties, and daily responsibilities into something exciting, joy-filled, and meaningful? We work, come home, play, go to bed, arise, back to work and so the cycle continues. But weren’t we made for more? There indeed is an itch that every heart wants scratched and yet we all continue to lust for more pleasures, acquire more security/comfort/riches or attempt to spend our days more effectively and wisely so as to feel even better about our existence. I believe that same itch in every human being’s heart will continue to be unscratched as long as we are not living for what we are created for; namely, the Glory of the Holy and Almighty LORD.

As believers, we know that there is so much more to which God has called us. He made us and then redeemed us for his own possession (Titus 2:14) and for His own pleasure and especially for His own Glory. We as believers may realize this theoretically but are we allowing a growing desire, birthed in us by the Holy Spirit, to propel us to a God Glorifying life that fully awakens the joy God has designed us to attain? I confess, and I repent because in fact so often and sadly I have to answer “no”, I do not live all out for God’s Glory in every aspect of my life or sometimes in very few aspects at all.
So the first question would have to be, “What do I love more than the Glory of God?” And then I will have to follow up with “Have I repented for making this thing that is not God’s Glory my first love?” In other words, (and maybe more harshly) have I come to Christ in repentance for hating God’s Glory and loving whatever else it is I have elevated above Him? Ouch! It hurts to even type that!

If so, then I will realize that, by Grace alive in me, I can indeed be propelled to live with every fiber of my being for God’s Glory though it may be a process that takes the rest of my life to complete. And so, the last question I ask myself would be “Will I then allow God’s Grace to work in me and answer the calling to live a life devoted to bringing Him glory?”

Christ came to deliver us from our sins but He also came to free us from the present evil age (Gal. 1:4) and thus He has given us the right to live for the age to come, granting us an exclusive citizenship in Heaven. Meaning, we belong solely to the Kingdom of God. And if I am to live as a subject of this Kingdom then in every aspect of my life, even in the common things, I should live to bring Glory to the Kingdom of which I am a part and no longer to myself.

Yet, somehow many of us Kingdom-dwellers have allowed our citizenship to morph into something that falls far short of the calling for which Christ has freed us. As Steve put it this past Sunday, we live for “moralistic, therapeutic deism”. We’ve allowed our calling to devolve from living in the joy giving, blazing center of God’s glory only to settle on being a people who put a Christian wrapper on our moral “do-gooder” lives by refusing to allow anything to impinge on our routine or bring us any discomfort. I say “our” and “we” not to indict the Church as a whole but to include myself and my family in these realizations and also to identify what we’ve observed in most American churches of today.

But let me close with a point Steve made in the same sermon. God ordained the suffering, mockery, crucifixion and death of Christ. And so, we may then rationalize that the same God who is always good and yet delivered up His own Son to suffer and die while not sparing Him from pain and suffering may not deliver us from every pain or suffering that comes our way if it brings Him all the more glory. Meaning, God’s glory and that glory radiating from His people is far more important than our comfort or our moralistic lives. But overcoming the tendency to elevate our own comfort, feelings, emotions, or dread of pain above God’s Glory is about allowing God’s Glory to be our chief end and primary aim. Only a heart freed through Christ’s redemption and empowered with the Holy Spirit can live in this way. But a heart made alive in Christ would propel us through every hurt, every circumstance, every suffering, denying every comfort, conforming every aspect of ordinary life in order to live purposefully and to see God worshipped and glorified with our very lives.

I have a feeling that living with this aim at the center would directly affect the nature of a believer’s prayers, actions, thoughts, intentions, and lifestyle.

Revelation, not Instinct

It won’t mean much to most people, but for me it serves as a reminder of a truth that staggered me today. I’m reading David Powilison’s Seeing with New Eyes and he said the following almost as a passing comment:

When we think about God according to instinct, and not according to revelation, we ask the wrong questions.

Now, by “asking the wrong questions” he’s talking about counseling situations, but it generalizes to our most basic existence as human beings. And when I considered the implications, I tottered a little. What he’s saying is that our instincts, being fallen, oppose God Almighty. God’s revelation (in Scripture), on the other hand, tells us the truth about God and who we are.

So my instinct tells me I’m a pretty decent guy. Scripture tells me I’m a scoundrel. Someone else’s instinct might tell them they are worthless. Scripture tells them they are made in the image of God and uniquely remarkable in God’s sight.

Some people call this “preaching the truth to yourself” and that’s surely what it is. But when you put it in terms of “thinking” you see it new—I think about a hundred things every minute, and most of those thoughts follow my instincts. But if, by God’s grace, I can preach the truth to myself and think according to revelation, change begins.

So next time you come to my house, you’ll know what the sign on my fridge means…

But Job said this:”The LORD has given and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (1:21). In other words, if I believe God made me, I shouldn’t be mad if God kills me.

“What do you have,” Paul wrote, “that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7). I don’t know of a more difficult truth to grasp. My car feels like its mine. My life feels like it belongs to me – I command my own fate, thank you very much. That’s what I speak from one side of my mouth and yet from the other side I confess, “God made me; everything is from him, to him and through him; all belongs to God.”

All I’m saying is that if I really believe God owns everything, it shouldn’t ruffle me when He takes some of it away – after all, I own nothing. And if I really believe God made me, then I won’t be mad if God kills me – after all, I’m not my own, I was bought with a price, right?

This morning I read a passage from Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret and I saw a different kind of disposition. Dr. Taylor was a missionary to China in the nineteenth century and determined early on that he would trust in no man for his provision, but God alone. In trial after trial he had seen God keep His promises, and he understood what Peter meant when he told the exiled Christians to rejoice in trials because they test the genuineness of faith, which is more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:6-7). 

Here’s the context. Dr. Taylor had been asked to manage a large Chinese hospital. The previous director, and the man who built the hospital, had to leave the country suddenly to care for his wife and children, but all the funding came through his private practice. Therefore, once he left, the funding left as well. Not intimidated by the test, Hudson Taylor accepted the position and though he had no means to keep the hospital running, he took the matter to God in prayer. Day after day he and his staff called to their Father, asking Him to provide for their needs. Day after day, they waited. Then:

At length one morning Kuei-hua the cook appeared with serious news for [Dr. Taylor]. The very last bag of rice had been opened, and was disappearing rapidly.

” Then,” replied Hudson Taylor, ” the Lord’s time for helping us must be close at hand.”

The cook opens the last bag of rice and Taylor’s first disposition isn’t panic, it’s trust – God must be coming to help us soon. When I open the last bag of rice, my first thought is usually, God has forgotten me, because, let’s be honest, if He really loved me He would have provided before now. But I’m discovering that my Father isn’t so much interested in keeping me insulated from need, He wants me to know Him and trust His promises, and there isn’t any way I know to learn trust than to open the last bag of rice and let God prove Himself.

A man gave me that advice years ago and I keep it in my pocket because it explains nearly everything about living a life of faith. Knowing God is about appetite, and if I want to stop sinning (don’t we all), the worst thing I can do is try to suppress my sinful behavior. That’s not the gospel–it’s Law. To really kill sin I have to look below the stupid and rebellious things I do and determine what appetite is driving the behaviors.

If I dig deep enough I’ll find that at the core of my being I really do desire God. That’s what it means to have the Spirit of God within us crying out, “Abba! Father!” (Gal. 4:6). It means that below every rebellion and sinful urge, at the core of my being, I really desire to know God and please Him, and His Spirit is crying out from within me to make that a reality. But everyday I smother that appetite with a thousand meager scraps from my flesh until it seems like my evil desires are the truest things about me. But they never are. 

So I if I want to stop sinning I don’t need a strategy for curbing my behavior–I need a stronger appetite for God. To do that I need to feed my spiritual appetites (see Gal. 5:16-18) and starve my sinful appetites. But I’ve learned it doesn’t happen instantly. If I feed my body good food today it won’t reverse years of nutritional neglect. Growth through feeding only helps if it’s consistent and nourishing over a long period of time. I think Eugene Peterson is right to describe discipleship as, “a long obedience in the same direction.”

And that’s the gospel. Not that we can do anything to fix our own wickedness, but that God in his infinite mercy and grace, through his Spirit, consistently applies the redemptive work of Jesus to our weaknesses. The more I understand the gospel, the more I will grow in grace. Not that I have already attained all this, but knowing what to starve and what to feed is so necessary for sanctification.

The content is the same in both versions, but it’s the old one that I love. I think it’s because there’s something weighty to an old book, something firm and permanent. If a book outlives its author, it’s worth reading; and if it outlives its author by hundreds or thousands of years, it’s worth more.

There’s a lot of chaff in bookstores today, and there’s more in Christian bookstores. All things being equal, if employees at Barnes and Noble winnowed down the books that would be around in a hundred years, I’d bet the Christian/Inspiration section would be meager compared to the others. I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling.

If I’m investing time reading a book, it ought to have lasting value. So I read dead authors first, or I at least read as many dead guys as living guys. That way I know what I’m reading is valuable, that its truth transcends generations. Someone might argue saying John Bunyan published Pilgrim’s Progress when he was alive and by my argument we shouldn’t have read it since we didn’t know it would last. That’s not what I’m saying. Not all living authors write chaff, just most of them. It doesn’t mean they’re not helpful or right but it does mean there are a few John Bunyans in every generation and if we can find them while they’re alive we ought to read their books.

Reading words of lasting value feels more like redeeming the time than reading words I know will be gone tomorrow. I’m not saying I sit around all day smoking a pipe, reading old books, and judging everyone walking around with a copy of Max Lucado under their arm. I do read new stuff. I’m only saying I try to balance new words with old words because the old words help me know which new words are worth my time.

I haven’t figured out a formula to determine which books are worth my time. But I can usually tell by the first pages whether a book will be on someone’s floor in a hundred years, or whether it’ll be on a stand in a library intimidating five guys that want to open it but don’t.

A couple mornings ago Isaiah 2 came up in my daily readings and toward the end of the chapter Isaiah talks about the day when the Lord will judge the earth. Three times he says the day will be terrible, that no human being will be able to withstand the awful majesty and glory of God. They’ll run into caves and dig holes in the ground to shelter themselves from the horrible weight of it all. And then Isaiah finishes with this:

Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he? Is. 2:22

Once I considered the implications, that did it. God is coming on the clouds, robed in majesty, terrible in glory, bringing judgment to the earth. The glory and majesty is so formidable people would rather dig holes to hide themselves than see it face to face.

And then I think about myself, why I do what I do. Mostly I’m concerned that people think well of me, and that’s foolish: people’s opinions ought not frighten me more than a God like that.

Meditating on that portrait of God cured me of any desire to please people. It freed me to say no to everything that’s not profitable. I don’t care if my no hurts people’s feelings: if I shouldn’t do it, I’m not going to do it. Of course, I might unnecessarily offend people, and if I do it sinfully I ought to repent. But if I’m doing it in submission to Christ and the life he’s called me to, then the offense is their problem and I have to let them carry the weight of it.

For now, this makes a ton of sense to me.