Why It's Worth It

Four years ago, I enrolled at a small Bible college with thirty or so other students that were eager to study God's Word and prepare them for ministry. I just began my senior year yesterday. Out of the original thirty or so students from my class, only 8 are left. 

Only 8 people out of 30 stuck it out to complete their four-year degree at Bible college. Now, I can't say for sure that everyone that left did so for the wrong reasons. But I am willing to bet that a lot of them left because to them, it just wasn't worth it anymore. Somewhere along the way, the idea of spending thousands of dollars to get a degree that would only profit them if they entered full-time vocational ministry stopped being appealing, so they quit. They threw in the towel. They gave up.  

Sadly, this doesn't only happen in Bible colleges and seminaries. This happens in the Christian walk. Most of us know a person or two who once professed the name of Christ but has since renounced that belief and entered into a lifestyle of sin and rebellion. They were once passionate for God's glory but now they are only passionate about themselves.

Why is that? Why is it that some believers persevere while others who professed the name of Christ eventually wander back into the ways of the world? Now, before we address this issue directly, we have to deal with a few preliminary issues.  

First, I want to be clear that the ultimate cause of a person's perseverance in the faith rests in the sovereignty of God. Jesus says in Matthew 10:27-29, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my hand." [ESV]

All that the Father chose from eternity past and gave to His Son will endure to the end and be saved. No one can prevent that.  

But second, God's sovereignty in salvation - including perseverance - does not negate the responsibility of man.  

What I mean is this: in this time between Christ's first and second coming - within the already and the not yet of our present existence - there exists a tension when it comes to perseverance. On one hand, God will see to it that all of His chosen persevere to the end, but there is a very real responsibility on our part to fight the fight of faith and to run the race to win!      

That's why the book of Hebrews is filled with warnings that tell us not to neglect so great a salvation. The simple fact of the matter is that people walk away from the faith all the time. Apostasy is a very real danger. 

Now, with those preliminary matters behind us - the fact that the ultimate cause of perseverance is the sovereignty of God but there is a real responsibility on our part to persevere - we can return to our initial question: why doesn't everybody make it? Why do some quit?  

On a human level (in other words, what causes men and women to personally renounce Christ), we can find one reason in II Corinthians. 

Paul says in II Corinthians 4 that we (Christians) are "afflicted in every way," that we are "perplexed" and "persecuted." [ESV] And then he says again in verse 8 that, "we who live are always being given over to death." [ESV] 

Basically, Paul says that the Christian walk is hard! That's why people walk away. I think we downplay this sometimes. While most of us won't experience physical suffering in which we are in danger of losing our lives, we face very real trials, turmoils, and tragedies in our walk with the Lord every single day. Look at what following God got Job!  

More recently, a group of well-known evangelical Christians released a statement on the Biblical view of sexuality and marriage and have faced enormous backlash because of it. We all, at some point or another, face pressure from the surrounding culture to give in to its sinful whims. 

Then, from another angle, take some of Christ's more difficult teachings. Christ literally tells us that it is our duty to take up our cross - to take up our torture device - every single day of our lives. Christ's message was one of complete denial of self and total submission to His Lordship in every aspect of life.

So Christianity is hard on one level because of its very nature and teaching and on another level because of the world's response to those tenets of faith. In other words: 

There's a reason people walk away from the faith. 

There's a reason only 8 of us stuck through 4 years of Bible college to receive degrees in ministry. There's a reason not everyone who professes Christ makes it to the end of their lives still boldly standing up for God's glory. The Christan life is a hard one. People walk away because they don't want to deal with the difficulty.

Now we turn to our next question. Why do we do it? Why do true believers stick it out? Simply put:

Because it's worth it.  

Look at what Paul says at the end of chapter 4. 

II Corinthians 4:16-18: "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." [ESV]

Paul says emphatically that the suffering we experience in this life - whether it's from an oppressive government or an atheist at our workplace or whatever form it may take - doesn't even compare to the glory that we will one day experience!

We can take heart in this one fact and endure whatever life throws our way! In the greatest loss, in the deepest pain, in the most troubling circumstances, we can say with confidence that it doesn't compare to the glory we will one day experience! In fact, Paul describes our affliction as "light" and "momentary," whereas out future glory as "eternal"! 

Christan, if you are struggling today, take heart! The fight is worth it! The race is winnable! And the prize is unimaginably more glorious than anything this world has to offer. Take Paul's advice and don't pay attention to the sufferings in your life - look not to them, but to the things that you can't see with your eyes but can only hope for in your heart! It's those things that really matter. It's those things that are eternal. 

That is why we do what we do. That is why we run. Because it's worth it. Those who fall away may think they are shedding the heavy burden of Christianity, but in reality, all they are doing is forfeiting an inheritance that is far beyond even their wildest dreams! Don't throw that inheritance away like they did! Hold on to it and make it your own! Press on and don't lose heart! 

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Don't Go Back to Egypt

With the Assyrian invasion looming over their heads, the nation of Israel was faced with two options. They could trust the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - the God who brought them out of Egypt and made them into a great nation - to deliver them from destruction or they could enlist the help of a floundering, weak nation to the South. 

Instead of relying on God and His promises, Israel turned to that little nation to the South: Egypt. Yes, Israel enlisted the help of the very nation that had only years before held them captive as slaves!  

As a result, Isaiah pronounces judgment on those who opted to trust in man rather than in the God of Israel. Listen to what he has to say here: 

Isaiah 31:1: "Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and who depend on horses! They trust in the abundance of chariots and in the large number of horsemen. They do not look to the Holy One of Israel and they do not seek the Lord." [CSB] 

When faced with danger, Israel chose to seek the safety of Egypt's military might rather than the God who had brought them out of slavery and made them into who they were as a nation in the first place. And this wasn't the first time they did this, either! 

Mere weeks after being delivered out of slavery, the Israelites grumble to Moses about their lack of food. In despair, they cry out: 

Exodus 16:3: "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat and ate all the bread we wanted. Instead, you brought us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of hunger."  

Ponder that for a moment. God had just delivered them from Egypt, miraculously parted the Red Sea to facilitate their flight from Pharoah, and was now leading them to the Promised Land. On the way, they get a little hungry and immediately begin lamenting that they left Egypt at all! 

Then again, years later, their knee-jerk response to danger is to run to Egypt, where they believe horses and chariots led by mere men will save them from the Assyrian invasion. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? 

But what if I told you that we are guilty of the same thing every single day?  

That might sound ridiculous, but I assure you - we are all guilty of returning to Egypt. Don't believe me? What is your gut response when faced with a difficult situation in life? What do you do when you find out a loved one has died, or you lose your job, or you learn that you are unable to have kids? Is it to seek the Lord in prayer? Or is it to lose yourself in a pool of fear and anxiety?  

Or what is your response to temptation? In moments when you are presented with sin, do you always say no? Or do you find yourself engaging in the viewing of pornography, or telling another lie, or burying your problems in excessive alcohol consumption, or yet again allowing your temper to get the best of you?  

It seems as if our default response to difficulty is to run back to the things that once controlled us. We all have our Egypts - our pet sins - that we run to time and time again to alleviate our stress, or our worry, or our anxiety, or our whatever it is that is ailing us. 

Whenever you do these things - whenever you choose sin over trusting God - you are going back to Egypt. You are returning to the things that Christ delivered you from when he saved you and forsaking the God who redeemed you in the first place. So I beg of you, Christian. 

Don't go back to Egypt. 

When you are faced with sin, don't allow yourself to be pulled back into its clutches. The Israelites trusted Egypt and Assyria walked all over them. The same thing will happen to us if we fail to trust God in our lives. Mere men cannot fulfill our needs. Sin will never truly satisfy us, no matter how appealing it may seem. 

God did not save you so you could return to your sinful ways. He didn't choose you from before the foundation of the world to merely return to the base ways of those who do not know God. No, Titus says that, 

Titus 2:14: "He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession, eager to do good works." [CSB]

And again in Ephesians 2:10 Paul explains that, "we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do." [CSB]

Christ redeemed us so that we would be a people His Father could possess. A people created for good works who are zealous for those good works. We weren't saved so we could go back to Egypt.

We were saved so that we could glorify God here on earth.  

So today, say no to Egypt in whatever form it presents itself to you and instead, say yes to God's purpose in your life. Say yes to the good works He created you for and, "Return to the one the Israelites have greatly rebelled against. For on that day, every one of you will reject the silver and gold idols that your own hands have sinfully made." [Isaiah 31:6-7 CSB]  

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Consider Your Ways

It's so easy to get into habits. If you don't believe me, ask the person who has spent some time trying to break a bad one. Odds are, they couldn't even tell you when it was that biting their nails or getting a candy bar from the office vending machine became second nature. Habits just kind of, happen. At least, the bad ones do. 

And sometimes, we form bad spiritual habits. Before long, we have developed a habit of skipping our daily Bible reading to watch an extra episode of our favorite Netflix show, or we have foregone prayer for a few more scrolls on Facebook or Twitter. Without even thinking, we settle into a routine of not giving God the time He deserves in our lives. We can go days, weeks, even months in ruts like these without giving a second thought. We have no idea where we are going and before long, we have ended up a thousand miles away from God. 

Which brings us to the passage I want to focus on today. It comes out of the Old Testament book of Haggai and it concerns the Israelites who had returned to Jerusalem to rebuild their nearly destroyed homeland. 

To give you a little bit of historical context, in the year 586 BC the Southern Kingdom of Judah was carried into captivity by the Babylonians. For years the Israelites lived in exile, dispersed throughout the Babylonian Empire. Then, when King Cyrus and the Persians come into the picture and take over, they make a decree that all of the dispersed Jewish people can return to Jerusalem to rebuild what the Babylonians had destroyed. That was in 538 BC. 

And for a while, the Jewish people do just that! Leaving the relative comfort and protection of the homes they had made for themselves during their captivity, some faithful Jews march back to Jerusalem to begin the rebuilding process, focusing especially on rebuilding God's house - the Temple.

But somewhere along the way, the foreign people groups that had moved into the land surrounding Jerusalem begin to persecute the Jews. Coupled with an unstable Persian throne and myriad political obstacles, just a few years into the building process the Israelites abandon their plans to rebuild the Temple. 

In steps Haggai. Sent by God to stir the Israelites back into action, he relays God's message to the Jews, which - when you boil it down - can be summarized by this statement in Haggai 1:7: 

"Thus says the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways." [ESV]

Consider your ways, God tells them. 

You see, the Jewish people had gotten sick of the persecution that came along with attempting to rebuild their hometown. It took work! They had to import materials from far away lands, deal with the pesky Persian government that always seemed to be butting into their affairs, and fight off attackers from the surrounding countryside. Eventually, they got sick of it and decided to stop what was causing all the persecution.  

Instead, they turned to themselves and began building houses and saving money and trying to make their lives in Jerusalem as comfortable as possible. In fact, it's even likely that they took the expensive cedar they had imported specifically for the Temple siding and used it to panel their own homes instead.  

They had lost their way and a people group that had once been eager to rebuild what the Babylonians had taken away from them was suddenly more interested in panel siding than in the glory of God. 

In response to their laziness and procrastination, God tells them these words through the prophet Haggai:

Haggai 1:5-6: "Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes." [ESV]  

He tells them that although they have been busy feeding and clothing themselves - and making their houses comfortable and beautiful - they have really just been putting all of their belongings into a bag filled with holes. Their labors were worthless and they were going nowhere!

In other words, the Israelites had fallen into a deadly rut of bad spiritual habits and as a result, had lost touch with what was really important. How often do we do the same thing? How often do we wake up each morning with the thought, "How can I make myself happy today?" rather than "How can I accomplish God's will in my life today?"

We are so concerned with our own little houses that we rarely give thought to doing the work of building God's house in our lives - and this is to our shame! 

So my challenge to you today is the same one God gave the Israelites back in Haggai's time.  

Consider your ways. 

Take some time today to evaluate your walk with God. Are you making time for His Word? Are you communicating with Him through prayer? Are you killing sin? Are there sins you are struggling with? Do you have a desire to accomplish God's purposes, or are you too busy working towards your own?  

Ask yourself these questions and be honest! If there are areas you need to work on, then work on them! The last thing God wants from you is for you to realize you have been failing in a few areas only to give up any hope of improving! With the Spirit's guidance, ask for Him to reveal to you areas you're struggling in and when He does reveal them, work on them!  

And take heart! Throughout Israel's history, they weren't known for listening to advice given to them by prophets. Jesus even laments in Matthew, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!" [ESV] 

However, this time in history, after continued exhortations from Haggai, the Israelites listen to God's proddings and get back to work. And you know what? They finished building God's house! I challenge you to do the same! Consider your ways and get busy building whatever house God has for you in your life!  

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So You Sinned Again...

So you sinned again. But not only did you sin, but you sinned that sin that you said you would never sin again. The same one that has been tripping you up for what seems like forever.  Now what do you do? 

For most of us, our gut reaction is to run away from God. We turn from Him and instead of seeking His face in prayer and confession, we bury ourselves in our Netflix queues, or an immersive book, or we spend the rest of the day scanning our social media feeds. We do anything to hide from God. Why?

I believe it's because, in our ignorance, we think, "Well certainly after I sinned, after I sinned the big one, the one I told Him I would never go back to, the last thing He wants is to hear from me. He would much rather I do my penance, wallow in my guilt for a little while, and then once I have cleaned myself up a bit, then come sulking back to Him."

And when we finally do come sulking back to God, maybe after a day of hiding or sometimes longer, we expect nothing from Him but a cold, "I told you so" and a slap on the wrist for good measure.   

I fall into this trap more often than I would like to admit. I found myself in it just the other day, in fact. But Christian, this line of thinking is so out of line with the Gospel that saved you and me!  

In the Gospel, Christ does not proclaim to us, "Come to me after you clean yourself up a bit!" No! With open arms, He exhorts us to come as we are! To lay our burdens down. To put all of our cards on the table. To reveal to Him who we really are, inside and out. To lay down all of our self-righteousness and self-effort and say to Him, "Jesus, I am a sinful mess. But you are the perfect Son of God and I'm banking on your righteousness and not my own."

That invitation does not stop after we get saved.  

So many of us fall into the trap that tells us we begin by grace and by faith, but as soon as the salvation ball gets rolling, it's up to us to keep it that way. It's up to us to keep ourselves in God's good graces, so He will smile down on us and not snatch our salvation away and taunt us with it like some kind of cosmic bully.  

Are you kidding me? Why do we allow ourselves to believe that? Do we have any idea the kind of God we serve? This is the God that let a murderer like Moses lead His chosen nation! This is a God that prospered an adulterous king! This is a God whose closest disciple denied Him three times when He was at His darkest moment. 

To really think that God loves you any less when you sin is absurd. It's an idea that goes against the entire storyline of the Bible and I am begging you, for the sake of your salvation and for the sake of God's glory, stop viewing God like this. He is not an angry pagan deity that needs to be satiated by blood every so often to keep him at bay. He is not in Heaven eagerly waiting for you to mess up so He can drop a lightning bolt on your head. He is a loving Father that chose you before you were born to be His child. And when He chose you, He was fully aware of every single sin you were ever going to commit. 

So next time you sin, resist the temptation to run. Resist the desire to hide away from God and instead, remember that in spite of all your failures and shortcomings, God chose you anyway. And let Him welcome you with open arms and let Him lavish you with grace and forgiveness and let Him be the Father that He truly is to you. That is the proper response to sin.  

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Embracing Your Valleys

When I was 18 years old, God revealed Himself to me through the Word in a huge way. After wandering from the faith during high school and indulging in all kinds of sin, God broke my heart and changed me from the inside out. I rode that spiritual wave through the last semester of my senior year, all through the summer, and into my Freshman year at a Bible college where I was beginning my preparation for a future in ministry.

But somewhere along the way, that wave crashed. And so did I. Suddenly, it wasn’t so easy to devour ten chapters of the Bible each day. It wasn’t such a simple task to sit down and pray for fifteen minutes. New truths weren’t being revealed to me each time I sat at my desk to study the Bible. The same sins that held me prisoner in high school picked up right where they had left off.   

What happened? I felt like I had fallen off the wagon, that God had abandoned me. And to be honest, there are days when I still feel like this. There are days that I long for that original mountaintop experience. But here’s the thing:

Most of our spiritual life is not spent on the mountaintop.

What does that mean? It means that for most of us, we don’t spend every day riding a spiritual high. Sure, there are times in life in which God reveals Himself to us in gigantic, neon sign ways and it’s awesome. We can’t wait to open our Bibles, we are always in communion with God, we are achieving victory over sin, and fellowship at church is refreshing! But I learned the hard way that we cannot, in fact, should not expect that most of our spiritual journey is going to be spent on top of the mountain!

I came falling from my mountain top at the end of my second semester at Bible college. And for a while, I tried climbing back up. I wanted that feeling again. That feeling of being close to God, that feeling of everything going right, that feeling of being an unstoppable force for Jesus’ glory. Have you been there before? Has there been a season of your life in which God showed Himself to you so clearly that for a while, it was easy to be a follower of Christ? Are you there right now?

If so, enjoy it while it lasts! It’s such a wonderful place to be. But Christian, don’t let your passion waver when you enter the valley. Don’t allow yourself to spend all your time in the valley searching for the mountain top experience like I did. Because, believe me, there will be valleys. More often than not, I’m afraid. But there’s a reason for that. And I’m convinced that:

if God let us live on the mountaintop long enough, we would eventually decide we didn’t need Him. That’s why there are valleys. 

So, next time you find yourself in a spiritual valley, don’t waste the experience by trying to climb back up the mountain. Instead, allow the valley experience to shape you and mold you into a better representation of Christ. Let the book of James be an exhortation to you today. 

James 1:2-4: “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”

In other words, don’t waste your valleys. Embrace them! Understand that God is allowing you to face trials to make you better and to bring glory to His name. Count them as joy, as impossible as that may sound.

Let me illustrate. I guide whitewater rapids on the New River, and even though you wouldn’t expect it, the entire day isn’t one big adrenaline rush. There are class five rapids, sure, but in between those pulse pounding rapids are large stretches of flat water – water that is barely moving and that you can’t just drift through. You have to paddle through it and by the end of the pools, your shoulders are burning. But it’s part of the same river that contains the rapids. So if you want to raft the big whitewater, you have to paddle through the slow flat water.

Our spiritual lives are a lot like the New River. Sometimes, we are rushing through huge waves of spiritual excitement, our adrenaline pumping and our hearts pounding, and it’s amazing. But other times, we are merely plodding through the slack water of life and, frankly, it isn’t that much fun. But it’s part of the journey!

So Christian, if you are struggling through spiritual flat water today, if you find yourself in the valley, embrace it! Keep plugging along, keep reading the Word, keep praying, keep fighting sin, and let the trial of the valley draw you closer to Christ.   

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Put Down the Rock

Before I got married, someone described marriage to me like popping a pimple. “Listen, Caleb,” they told me. “When you start living in the same house, it’s gonna start pushing things inside of you to the surface, whether you like it or not. And sometimes, you’re gonna pop!”  

If only I knew how right they were. I never considered myself an angry person – until I got married. I’ve only been married for a few months and already I’ve witnessed my anger come up in ways that I never imagined. Sometimes it’s the smallest inconvenience or annoyance that can set me off. Maybe it’s a sock left out on the floor, or a sink full of dirty dishes, or even a misunderstood word from my wife. But one moment I’m fine and the next, something boils up inside of me and – pop! I get angry at the woman I love.  

Have you ever been there? Maybe not with a spouse, but with a sibling? A parent? A friend? A coworker? We get angry at people every single day! And many of those people we get angry with are fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Church, this is a problem!

Let’s examine a passage of Scripture to see what the Word of God has to say about anger between believers. 

I John 3:11-15: "For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." 

In this passage of Scripture, John explains that first of all, we should love one another. That's a given. Christ Himself told the disciples that the world would know them by their love. It is to our shame as Christ's Church that we are often known for our judgmental, hypocritical attitude rather than for our love. How often are individual churches destroyed by the lack of love coming from within? This should break our hearts.  

But furthermore, John compares those who fail to love their brothers and sisters in Christ to the murderer, Cain, and describes the person who does not love his brother or sister as a murderer too. He even says that no murderer has eternal life abiding in them.  

So picture this scene, angry Christian. Cain and Abel, in the field, their offerings before God. Abel's, holy and accepted but Cain's, unholy and rejected. Abel is praised for his worthy offering, while Cain stands with his head down, dejected. His anger mounting, Cain notices a rock nearby. Something brews within him, then finally comes to a boil. He bends down and grasps the rock, weighing it in his hands. Anger spilling over, he raises the rock over his head and brings it down on his brother, slaying him. His brother falls to the ground, dead. Cain drops the rock, now stained with blood, to the ground with a thud of finality.  

When we allow ourselves to become angry with a fellow brother or sister in Christ, we are reenacting this scene, effectively slaughtering them as Cain slaughtered Abel. You might find that over the top, but John makes no distinction between Cain and the person who is angry with their brother or sister.  

So I leave you with this exhortation: the next time you find anger mounting up inside of you against a fellow brother or sister in Christ, put down the rock. Do not allow yourself to be given over to anger, fellow Christian. If you have been struggling with the sin of anger against a brother or sister in Christ, let it break your heart. Then repent and be made right with God. Be reconciled to that person if the situation requires it. Do not continue in this sin of murder.  

And the next time you feel your anger mounting inside of you, picture the bloody scene of Cain and Abel and put down the rock. For your sake, for your brother's sake, and for the sake of God's glory. 

You Can't Do It

“Be ye holy, for I am holy.” “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and mind.” You know the commandments and you know you should obey them. But here’s the thing: you can’t. I can’t, either. In fact, nobody can fulfill the Law the way God requires it to be fulfilled. And yet, we see exhortations like this all over the Bible. "What gives, God?" we find ourselves asking. “Why do you call me to obey like this when you know that I can’t?”

Most of us wrestle with that question at some point in our walk with God. Many of us wrestle with it almost every day. Maybe you wrestle with it every day. There’s a war inside of you that can oftentimes render you incapable of Bible reading, prayer, evangelism, or anything spiritual. This happens to me sometimes. There are some days when I am so aware of my guilt and inadequacy that I hide from God any way I can – in books, music, friends, outdoor activities, anything that can numb the feeling of just not being good enough.  

Have you been there? If you have – and I’m willing to bet that every Christian has been there at one time or another -  I want to tell you that you are desperately misunderstanding core truths about yourself, God and His Law, and the Gospel. I want to help you clear those misunderstandings up.

In honor of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, I am reading through John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. He has a helpful section on the Christian’s relationship to the Law that I will draw from today to help us understand what we must understand if we are to live our lives in proper relation to God, His Law, and the Gospel.  

First, you must understand a simple, albeit bitter truth about yourself: you are hopelessly unable to fulfill what God demands of you. Scripture is abundantly clear on this point. Everyone sins. (Romans 3:10, Psalm 143:2, Ecclesiastes 7:20). There is no one on the planet that is truly righteous. Any attempt to fulfill the command God gives to love the Lord with all of your heart, soul, and mind will fall short. No amount of good deeds can change that. If you are striving today to do just that, you are striving in vain. 

Second, a word about God and the Law He has prescribed. Is God in the wrong to have prescribed a level of holiness for his followers that he knows they are unable to keep? The answer is, of course, no. The Law serves a purpose: to humble you before God. Listen to Augustine, who Calvin quotes in his section on the Law: “The Law was given for this purpose: to make you, being great, little; to show that you do not have in yourself the strength to attain righteousness, and for you, thus helpless, unworthy, and destitute, to flee to grace.”* God knows that His Law cannot be perfectly obeyed. He gave it so that men would long after grace!

Now that you have grasped these two truths, that you are unable to fulfill the Law and that God prescribed the Law to humble you, you must grab onto one final truth with all of your heart. If you do not, you will be left only to despair. Listen to what Calvin says: “If we look only upon the law, we can only be despondent, confused, and despairing in mind, since from it all of us are condemned and accursed.”*

Read those words again: despondent, confused, despairing, condemned, accursed…have you felt any of those things lately? I have. What is the remedy, then?

The Gospel.  

In the Gospel, Christ fulfills the Law. In the Gospel, Christ does everything that God demands of you and lives the life that God requires. And in dying for you, Christ forgives all of your failures to uphold the Law. Therefore, the answer to your despair is to look to Christ. This is the only remedy to a guilty conscience, the only antidote to a broken and longing heart, the only solution to your conundrum. 

Today, if you are despairing, look to Christ. Don’t try to fulfill the Law on your own and don’t try to appease God with your good works and righteous deeds. Instead, throw yourself on Christ and rest in His work.

I leave you with this prayer from Augustine. “So act, O Lord; so act, O merciful Lord. Command what cannot be fulfilled. Rather, command what can be fulfilled only through thy grace so that, since men are unable to fulfill it through their own strength, every mouth may be stopped, and no one may seem great to himself. Let all be little ones, and let all the world be guilty before God.”*  

Understand your frailty as a sinful human being, let God be God, let the Law serve its purpose, and embrace the Gospel. Lean not on yourself, but on the grace of God! 

* All quotations taken from Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, Westminster Press 2006

Reading the Bible Even When You Don't Feel Like It

If you’re like me, you know a few people who always seem to be on top of their Bible reading plan. They wake up at 4 in the morning, spend an hour in prayer, read through Leviticus three times, and have the book of Psalms memorized by the time they commute to work. And if you’re even more like me, there’s a part of you deep down that harbors a little bit of resentment towards those people. How can they be so consistent? How do they read their Bibles that much? How are they even coherent that early in the morning? 

If you aren’t tracking with me and you’re one of those early morning devotions people, I applaud you. In fact, even if I resent you a little, I’m glad that you are so committed to reading God’s Word. I hope you stay consistent in your communion with God, even if you tend to annoy the rest of us sometimes. But for us run-of-the-mill, lucky-to-read-our-Bibles-a-few-times-a-week-but-we-want-to-do-more people, I have hope.

Because, let’s be real, it’s hard to read the Bible every day. Reading the Bible isn’t like skimming through Facebook at breakfast and it isn’t like devouring the latest James Patterson thriller in a beach chair. It takes effort. Which is why it’s so easy to push it aside some days. But look at some of these verses from Psalm 119.

Psalm 119:11 "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee."  

Psalm 119:97 “O how love I thy Law! It is my meditation all the day."

Psalm 119:105 “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."

Just listen to the reverence the Psalmist has for the written Word of God. It is his meditation all day long? Really? Most of us are lucky to meditate on a single verse we scribble on an index card on our way out the door. But I have no doubt that the Psalmist is pouring his heart out here – he really does treasure God’s Word, he really does meditate on it throughout the day, and he really does see the Word as a lamp for his feet and a light on his path. How can we come to a place where we can truly say those things about God’s Word?  

To begin with, cement this fact in your mind: it is not about my feelings. I fight this thought daily. Sometimes, I don’t feel like reading the Bible. But does that mean I shouldn’t? Of course not. The truths of God’s Word are not affected by my feelings. Neither are they affected by yours. So part of coming to a place where you love God’s Word is overcoming feelings. Don’t let your depression, or your anxiety, or even your anger, get in the way of reading the Bible. Go to it daily. Which leads into the next point.

To develop a love for God’s Word means we much engage in consistent reading of Scripture. We cannot develop a love for God’s Word unless we are reading it. Which means we need to work to develop the habit of reading his word. Below, I am going to suggest a few ways we can go from reading just a few days a week to opening God’s Word with consistency.

1.    Use a Bible reading plan

The church I attend has a church-wide Bible reading plan that we use together. I jumped on board late this year, but just having a scheduled Bible reading routine has helped in my personal devotions this Summer.

2.    Use a good translation  

Find a translation that is easy for you to read – try a translation that you haven’t used before so the words will ring fresh in your memory. A quick Google search will give you hundreds of translations to choose from. Be sure to research your translation before you use it to see if it fits your needs.

3.    Use an unmarked Bible

Oftentimes, using Bibles we have highlighted and scribbled notes in can be a bit of a distraction. Our eyes are immediately drawn to the things that have already stood out to us and it isn’t hard to pay more attention to those parts. Reading from an unmarked Bible can help eliminate this distraction and open our eyes to the entirety of the text.

4.    Listen

I have only just recently been introduced to the world of audiobooks, but I have quickly fallen in love with them. The Bible on audio is no different. Sometimes if my eyes are tired in the morning, or I am just having a hard time focusing, I turn to a good reading of the Bible to assist me in my reading.

5.    Pray

Sadly, this is probably my most overlooked Bible-reading help. We can’t learn to love God’s Word unless we ask Him to give us a love for His Word. John Calvin remarked in his Institutes that it is only through the work of the Holy Spirit that people truly change. We must humbly seek God in prayer to change our hearts, renew our minds, and cause us to love His Word.

These are just a few things that have helped me in my daily Bible reading. I hope and pray that they help you as well. If you have any questions, or comments, or you’d just like to chat about God and His Word, email or Facebook message me! 

Groaning

Two of the most popular Disney movies in recent memory is the strikingly original creation, Moana, and the live-action remake of the beloved classic, Beauty and the Beast. The two stories couldn't be any more different – one is about an island girl's adventures with a long-lost demigod while the other is about a plain-Jane village girl who falls in love with a cursed prince. 

            But having watched both of them, I couldn't help but notice a similarity that caught my attention. In both movies, the main characters – Moana and Belle – long for something…more. If you asked them what exactly they wanted, they probably couldn't tell you. They both long for something that is just beyond their reach, that is deeper and more profound than anything they could ever hope to experience in their average, habitual existence in their respective villages. But they can't quite get to it.

            They express their longing in song form. If you have children under the age of 10 (especially girls) no doubt you have heard them belt out Moana's passionate desire to "see the line where the sky meets the sea" or hear Belle ache for more than her "provincial life." Our two heroines are stuck in the humdrum of ordinary, day to day life and desire something that they can't quite get their fingers on. They are like Plato's cave dwellers – watching dancing shadows but acutely aware that there is something more lurking behind the shaky and shadowy projections – something more real than the not quite realities that they are currently watching.

 And for some reason, when those songs come on, I ache with them! When Moana is on the edge of the water, desperately longing to see what lies beyond the horizon, I'm right there with her! When Belle has her nose in a book, reading about great adventures and singing about life that goes beyond washing clothes and getting married – I groan with her! Why is that? Why do we love stories about people breaking through the humdrum of daily life and finding something more? 

            I think it's because deep down, we are searching too. Just like Belle reaches for her something more in books and Moana reaches for hers in the sea, we reach for our deeper meaning in a million and one things. Movies, music, social media, friends, jobs, hobbies, and so on and so forth. And while our search for that something in life expresses itself differently, I think we are all reaching for the same thing. We will get to what that is later, but first – why? Why are we all reaching? I think that it is because although Moana is an island native and Belle is a French farm-girl, and we are from myriad different walks of life, we are all inescapably human. And as humans, we long for something more – something beyond us. Beyond the sea for Moana and beyond the pages of a book for Belle. And for us, beyond the screen of a smart phone or the window of an office building.

            We long for something that reaches far past the habitual, daily routine of ordinary life and touches a deeper reality. But back to our other question – what exactly is that deeper reality? What is this not-quite-within-our-reach meaning that we long for? Well, I think we can find the answer to that in the 8th chapter of Romans.

            There, Paul tells us that all of creation is eagerly waiting for the appearing of the sons of God. He says in Romans 8:22 that, "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now." All of creation groans – longs – for something more! It longs for the unveiling of the sons of God and the appearance of the new creation.

So when Moana sings about the sea and Belle sings about the wonderful things she reads about in her books, and we are stuck in a cubicle screening phone calls all day while humming these tunes, we are all crying out for the same thing: redemption. We are crying out for eternity. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has "put eternity in their (us, human beings) hearts." We are eternal beings. And nothing can satisfy us except eternity. 

 These things – eternity and redemption – can only be found in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. At the end of the 8th chapter of Romans, Paul unveils the glorious climax of creation for those who love God. He says that we will be glorified. And that nothing will be able to separate us from the love that God has for us in Christ Jesus. In other words, we will be redeemed and we will enter eternity.

            We will finally see what is beyond the sea and we will finally get past our provincial lives. The something more we have been grappling for our whole lives will finally break through and we will be complete. But until now, we wait in the tension.

C.S. Lewis describes this tension we feel in the current creation like this: "At present, we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in."[1] 

I long for the day that the door opens and I am welcomed into the something more that I have desired for my entire life. Will you be there when that door swings open?

[1] C.S. Lewis – Weight of Glory