You want your life to matter. Maybe you look back with regret at years of trifling or lusting or swearing or drinking. You’ve wasted so much time dead in your trespasses and sins that now you awake anxious to make up for lost time. You’ve been asleep to great things for so long.

For as long as you have left to live, you want to live for Jesus. So many friends and family don’t know him. So much to do. So little time. You think you hear the Lord say, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Your heart cries, “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8). Holy ambitions fly high; practical knowledge runs low. What do you do now to make the best use of the time you have left?

My first word to young men, especially those with ministry aspirations, is to grow deep.

Grow Deep

Young man, you feel a keen ambition for holy usefulness. You wish to serve Jesus with a strength double that with which you formerly served evil. Good. True Christianity is no listless, small, insignificant call that demands nothing, risks nothing, toils for nothing, expects nothing. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Only by God’s power and grace will you sustain your race, complete your soldiery, arrive safely home — let alone bring others with you.

You dedicate your bow, your sword, your spear to his service. He doesn’t need them, but he accepts them. Wherever he points, you will ride. You are willing to be deployed now: What sermons need preaching, what neighbors need gospeling, what Bible study needs leading?

My aim is not to dissuade these actions, but to ensure their success. To this end, I offer one simple principle well-attested in Scripture: Relentlessly attend to what lies beneath the soil — your personal holiness and communion with the Lord. While many others focus great exertions on growing upward — on their visible, public ministry — you grow, and grow deep, in the unseen places.

I wish to channel your ambition ever downward into the soil, into secret communion with God. To the eyes of natural ambition, this seems like a detour. But it is the secret detour to real and sustained usefulness in the kingdom, just as the disciples went away and waited in the upper room for power from on high. Take opportunities to be used of God as they arise, immerse yourself in good works, fan your abilities into flame, but do not make your usefulness the greater priority. This secures not only greater effectiveness in the long run but greater joy and strength in the work.

Vine and Branches

One text that has checked me in the best ways over the years is John 15. When I stare outward too long, this text returns my eyes downward. The Spirit reminds me that my fruitfulness grows from depth with my Lord and personal holiness.

Jesus, using a slightly different metaphor than the tree imagery of Psalm 1, tells his disciples on the eve of his death: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). You and I are not the vine. We do not have life in ourselves. Our best ambitions, broken off from Christ, are powerless. We are the branches. We derive all life and fruit from the vine, who is Christ.

On several walks with unbelievers, I have stopped to pick up dead branches from the ground. They lay fruitless at the foot of the tree. I hold it up and say something like, “Jesus Christ makes a startling claim when he says that this is a man’s life apart from him — withering and soon to be cast into the fire and burned (John 15:6). But look at those branches up top, connected to the tree — healthy, vibrant, fruitful. This is a man’s life trusting, believing, and following him.”

So it is with you and me. The ground has seen many dry branches once named pastors who withered because they allowed their desire to do for God crowd out their desire to be with God. They stared at their branch, constantly assessing their productivity, and lost sight of the vine. The less fruit they saw, the more they strained to extend themselves out to benefit others instead of sending themselves deeper into the source, to get life for their own souls.

But whom does Jesus teach will bear much fruit? “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” Jesus wants you to be fruitful. As does the Father. Jesus tells his disciples, “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8). Go after much fruit, for much fruit brings much honor to your Father and proves you to be a disciple of Christ.

But how does Jesus teach you to go after this fruit? You go after him. You stay with him in prayer, in obedience, in hidden communion. “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). And what can you expect from abiding in him? Much fruit, and with it, much joy. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). Apart from him, what can you expect to accomplish? Nothing, except unhappiness and futility. We want the Vine because we love and find joy in the Vine. And the Vine bestows life and fruit because he loves the branches.

Need of the Hour

What does the world need? The world needs men who have grown deep and keep growing deeper.

The world does not need men whose zeal to teach outpaces their zeal to abide. It needs men with deep roots. Men who know their God, walk humbly with him, cry out to him, burn with his flame, warm with his love.

God’s men study hard and read great thoughts of other men, but they know that diligent study alone cannot make a man of God. These are spiritual men, men tarrying in God’s presence, men who spend much time upon the mountain with the Lord. Give us these men, men who grow deep before God makes them tall, for these men turn the world upside down.

So, young man, grow deep. While others clamor for the seat of honor, seek to assert themselves over planting themselves, let your Lord strengthen you, build you up, humble you, and call you to a higher seat as he sees fit and in his good timing.

To remind myself of this advice, I wrote this poem years ago.

The Master throws seed all over the groundThey hatch and mature without making a sound.In quiet depths while tired eyes sleep,You, small seed, grow and grow deep.

Let other plants dream of reaching the sky,Extending their arms to birds passing by,Of harboring nests adorned with green leaves,Of all they can do, but you must receive.

They shoot themselves up to stand as the oak,But you burrow down to drink and to soak.They straighten their backs where living things creep,But you, little seed, grow and grow deep.

They take great delight as they sprout from the earth.They spread forth their hands to show forth their worth.No time for that kingdom where low things abound;Their trusted way up is the quickest way down.

For they swayed above ground and lived among brutes;They had stem, they had leaf, but they never had roots.They only desired to dance tall in the breeze,Not knowing great oaks grow tall on their knees.

But you, little seed, cling to the Giver.Plant yourself deep, that your leaves never wither.Don’t rush to the high; rather sink to the low.Let Christ welcome up; let God make you grow.

A number of years ago, a counselor friend of mine introduced a simple and accessible concept that he regularly uses in his practice. He calls it “felt reality.”

Reality is reality. It’s objective. It’s what’s actually happening. Felt reality is what’s happening from my vantage point. It’s reality framed by my own thoughts, assumptions, and emotions.

Reality and felt reality aren’t the same. Sometimes they align — what I think and feel fits with what is actually happening. Other times, my felt reality is out of accord with reality. In such cases, I might be believing lies, or framing reality wrongly, or overreacting. My perspective might be distorted by my emotions or my sinful desires or my own limitations.

Once my friend gave me the category, I found it to be incredibly fruitful in my own life and marriage and parenting and ministry. It gave me a way to speak about human experiences of reality — whether mine or another’s — without necessarily validating those experiences. In other words, it enabled me to acknowledge that I think and feel a certain way, without affirming that such thoughts or emotions were necessarily true or right or good.

“Getting felt reality on the table can be the first step in seeking to steward and shepherd our thoughts and emotions.”

Getting felt reality on the table can be the first step in seeking to steward and shepherd our thoughts and emotions so that they more fully align with God’s.

‘Cut Off from Your Sight’

Even more than that, the concept (though not the term) seems present in the Scriptures. Consider the Psalms. In the middle of Psalm 31, David pleads with God to deliver him from his distress. In doing so, he vividly describes what it’s like to be in the pit:

His eyes are wasted from grief. They’re heavy from crying; they feel like lead. He just wants to rest, but there is no rest (verse 9).
His soul is wasted. His body is wasted. There is a weariness that reaches to every part of David’s existence (verse 9).
His life is spent with sorrow and his years with sighing (verse 10). This is how it feels: “I’ve been here forever, and I’ll be here forever.”
His strength fails (and he knows he partially deserves it because of his sin), and his bones just waste away (verse 10).

David’s powerful emotional and physical responses are influenced by his perception of reality, of what’s going on around him:

His adversaries have made him a reproach to his neighbors. Everyone runs from him because they think his suffering is contagious (verse 11). “Don’t stand too close to David. Don’t let him breathe on you. You don’t want to catch what he’s got.”
He’s forgotten like the dead. People remember the dead — for a little bit. Then they’re forgotten. That’s how David feels. Dead and useless, like a broken vessel (verse 12). “What good am I?”
He hears the whispering of his enemies around him — terror on every side. The other shoe could drop at any minute. Every rock and tree is ominous. Every bit of news produces fear. The future is filled with the almost certain prospect of bad surprise (verse 13).

This is David’s felt reality, and he gives explicit voice to it in verse 22:

I had said in my alarm, “I am cut off from your sight.”

‘I Shall Never Be Moved’

But these aren’t the only feelings David has had. In the previous psalm, David describes different circumstances and therefore a different felt reality:

As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.” (Psalm 30:6)

Notice the contrast. On the one hand: “In my alarm, I said, ‘I’m cut off.’” On the other hand: “In my prosperity, I said, ‘I’ll never be moved.’” In terms of content, these felt realities are exact opposites. But at another level, they display the power of felt reality in the exact same way.

Both circumstances of alarm and circumstances of prosperity led David to wrongfully exalt his felt reality. In Psalm 31, when he was alarmed, when all the walls were closing in, his felt reality was “It’s over. I’m done. God has abandoned me.” In Psalm 30, when he was living the high life, when he prospered and everything he touched turned to gold, his felt reality was “I’ve made it. I’m immovable and unshakable. God will never test me.”

These are two very different places, but they showcase the same confusion of felt reality and actual reality. In both cases, David was so overwhelmed by his felt reality that he made what he felt into what is. But it wasn’t. Felt reality is not the same as reality.

Facing Our Felt Reality

How then can we face our felt reality? Granting that our feelings and perceptions can be out of accord with what is truly the case, what can we do?

First, we can recognize the crucial connection between our felt reality and our self-talk. David didn’t just feel; he expressed his feelings in speech. And his words reinforced his felt reality.

Words are powerful. What we say shapes the way we view ourselves and our circumstances. Our feelings often reveal our unstated assumptions, our hidden beliefs, and the unrecognized stories by which we make sense of our lives. And then our words give voice to these feelings and reshape or reinforce — for good or ill — who we are and how we see ourselves.

Second, we see the importance of bringing our felt reality to God. David doesn’t muzzle his feelings; he lays them before the Lord in prayer. Whether or not his felt reality corresponds to actual reality, he eventually brings all of it before God, in hope that God will act and speak to him in his prosperity and in his pain.

So too with us. It does no good to hide our felt reality from God. He sees it already. Our task is to unveil before him, to take off the silly mask that we wear and be as honest as we can be in his presence. And the category of felt reality really helps us here. We can both be honest and humble. We can say, “I feel this way” while also saying, “But I don’t know if my feelings are right. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and then lead me in the way everlasting.”

“We not only can bring our felt reality to God, but we can submit our felt reality to the truth of God.”

Finally, bringing these together, we not only can bring our felt reality to God, but we can submit our felt reality to the truth of God. Recall again the two examples of felt reality from Psalms 30 and 31. “In my alarm, I said, ‘I’m cut off.’” “In my prosperity, I said, ‘I’ll never be moved.’”

Hear David’s words in Psalm 31:14, right after he describes his felt reality: “But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’” This is David submitting his felt reality to the truth of God. He brought his felt reality to God, and now he speaks to himself and reasserts the truth of who God is for him.

Speak Reality

With God’s help, we can learn to do the same. We can learn to be honest with God, to ask him to bring our hidden assumptions and unseen narratives to light.

In my alarm, I said, “I’m cut off from your sight.”
In my prosperity, “I’ll never be moved.”
In my grief, “God has forsaken me.”
In my pride, “I’m thankful that I’m not like other men.”
In my envy, “God doesn’t love me like he loves others.”
In my suffering, “No one understands what I’m going through.”
In my despair, “It will never end. It’s hopeless.”

These are the sorts of statements we make in the midst of our trials and our triumphs, out of our passions and our pain. Listen to them, and then bring those feelings and that speech to God, and learn to say something else.

“I trust in you; you are my God. I’m not cut off.”
“I’m not unshakable.”
“You’ve not abandoned me.”
“Have mercy on me, a sinner.”
“You do love me.”
“You do understand.”
“This trial will end. There is hope.”

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! (Psalm 150:6)

The first and last psalms tell us a great deal about what God wants us to see and hear in all the psalms. The first is quoted far more often than the last:

Blessed is the man     who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,nor stands in the way of sinners,     nor sits in the seat of scoffers;but his delight is in the law of the Lord,     and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:1–2)

Psalm 1 tells us that the happiest and most fruitful people, anywhere on earth and at any point in history, will be those who delight most in the words of God. The words of this book — and every other book in the Bible — are meant to be read slowly, wrestled with, and savored. And not just for a few minutes each day, but throughout the day. The psalm is an invitation into the rich and rewarding life of meditation.

If the first psalm tells us how to hear from God, though, the last psalm tells us how to respond. Humble, wise, happy souls let God have the first word, but encountering him eventually draws words out of them. Like the disciples, we “cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). How does God bring 150 psalms to an end? With a clear charge and refrain: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”

The Closing Psalm

Anyone can discern what the last psalm wants us to do in response to what God has said. All thirteen lines make the same point: “Praise the Lord!”

“God doesn’t minimize or neglect our suffering, but his goodness to us always outshines the trials he hands us.”

No matter where we are, and how bleak or difficult our life becomes, we always have reason to praise our God — to stop and worship him for who he is and what he is done. “Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness!” (Psalm 150:2). Our reasons for praising him — his mighty deeds and his glory over all — always eclipse and outweigh what we suffer, and all the more so now that Christ has come, died, and risen. God doesn’t minimize or neglect our suffering, but his goodness to us always outshines the trials he hands us. And so the psalmist can say to every one of us, at every moment of our lives, “Praise the Lord!”

The psalms, however, are not a simple chorus repeated over and over again, but a symphony, filled with as many experiences and emotions as humans endure and feel. The five books that make up Psalms really are a master class in human adversity.

Praise Through Heartache

When we think of the psalms, we might be tempted to think they’re simple, positive, and repetitive, but they give voice to the entire spectrum of sorrow and suffering.

Do you feel abandoned by God? The psalms know what you feel: “O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 88:14).

Is some fear threatening to consume you? The psalms know what you feel: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” (Psalm 56:3–4).

Has someone tried to make your life miserable? The psalms know what you feel: “More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause; mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies” (Psalm 69:4).

Do you need wisdom about a hard situation or decision? The psalms know what you feel: “Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart” (Psalm 119:33–34).

Have you ever been betrayed by someone you love? The psalms know what you feel: “It is not an enemy who taunts me — then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me — then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend” (Psalm 55:12–13).

And through mountains and valleys, through trials and triumphs, through ecstasy and agony, we hear one common, beautiful thread: praise. In the throes of fear, praise. In the vulnerability of uncertainty, praise. In the darkness of doubt, praise. Even in the heartache of betrayal, praise. The praise doesn’t always sound the same, but we still hear it, in each and every circumstance. And so the book ends, after every high and every low, with a call: “Praise him. . . . Praise him. . . . Praise him.” Can you praise him where you are right now?

With Whatever You Have

We might be tempted to overlook the verses in Psalm 150:3–5:

Praise him with trumpet sound;     praise him with lute and harp!Praise him with tambourine and dance;     praise him with strings and pipe!Praise him with sounding cymbals;     praise him with loud clashing cymbals!

There aren’t as many lutes and harps and tambourines in most modern worship. The specific instruments are not the point, however. The point is that God deserves more than our words.

“The purpose of breathing is praise.”

He does deserve our words: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” God made lungs and vocal cords and oxygen, ultimately, so that we could use them to worship him. The purpose of breathing is praise. But words fall short of his greatness. We feel this when we pray and sing, don’t we? It feels true, and yet so inadequate. We should feel that way. The inadequacy of our worship reminds us God is always better than we can grasp or express, and it drives us to find more creative ways to tell him so.

We might pick up a trumpet or lute or harp. We might shake a tambourine or break into dancing. We might slam a couple of cymbals together. Even more than instruments, though, we “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). We make praise with our lives — with our decisions, our conversations, our spending, our time.

So, in whatever circumstances God has given you, and with whatever energy and resources he has given you, praise the Lord for who he is and for all he’s done for you.