http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15632318/we-act-gods-miracle-of-love
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Fathers, Aim at Trusting, Obedient, Happy Children: Ephesians 6:1–4, Part 2
http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15168932/fathers-aim-at-trusting-obedient-happy-children
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My Bible Reading Feels Flat — What Can I Do?
Audio Transcript
We’re past Christmas and quickly marching toward the new year of 2024, and a new year means a new Bible-reading plan for many of us. Two Mondays ago, we were encouraged to make Bible reading a part of our everyday routine. We looked at that in episode 2003. But obviously, as we embark on our reading plan, the goal isn’t to check off a box each day. I think we all know this. Even in the grammar of the New Testament, in its five hundred “therefores,” we see that the Bible “intends to have a practical, emotional, intellectual, behavioral effect on our lives today.” That was two weeks ago, in episode 2002.
Bible reading is about engaging with God’s precious word in a profound, heart-stirring, life-changing way. And this poses a challenge in our Bible reading, because as we get into our daily rhythm, over the course of time we find — even as we read about the most precious things in the universe — that we feel nothing. Our hearts grow dull. Our spiritual affections grow flat. So how do we break out of this dull rut and jump-start our heart’s engagement with God’s word?
Many have asked that exact question, including one anonymous listener who writes this: “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. My question is, What if I read my Bible, but I don’t feel anything in my affections that resonates with the worth, the value, the preciousness, the beauty, the pleasures of what those words are supposed to communicate to my soul? Is there anything I can do next, or do I just have to wait until the experience sort of just happens to me at some point in the future?”
Well, I am so glad for the question because it is something that I’ve been thinking about recently so much as I’ve been meditating on a section of the book of Proverbs. I think this section of the book of Proverbs is introduced by the inspired writer precisely to answer that question. The section is Proverbs 22:17–24:22. Push pause if you want to go and get your Bible because I’m going to get everything I have to say from about three lines in Proverbs 22:17–18.
Okay, now you’ve got your Bible, and the section runs from Proverbs 22:17 to Proverbs 24:22. If you look at the end of Proverbs 22:20, it says, “Have I not written for you thirty sayings?” Now, those thirty sayings are found in Proverbs 22:17–24:22 in groupings. Some Bibles break up the groupings for you. Every time a new theme starts, there’s a new saying, and there are thirty of them in the unit.
“This text is God’s word to you: Apply your heart.”
Verse 17 is where the sayings start, and it says, “Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise.” So, these sayings are usually entitled the “Words of the Wise.” What’s so important about this is that I think the first two verses, or the first three verses perhaps, in this new section of thirty sayings are written precisely to answer the question that we’ve just been given — namely, how do you hear and how do you feel these words appropriately?
Inspired Answer
So, let me read verses 17 and 18: “Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge, for it will be pleasant if you keep them [these words of the wise, communicating that knowledge] within you, if all of them are ready on your lips.” So, two things.
The first line says, “Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise.” Clearly the point there is this: words are being spoken, and you should lean in — literally “incline your ear.” What do we do when we can’t hear? We kind of lean in. We press in closer.
We do that with our attention as well. If you’re reading words or if you’re hearing words, and the words are just going by, he’s saying, “Don’t let them go by. Don’t let any of the words go by. Attend meticulously, carefully, attentively to the words themselves, because the words” — next line — “are going to form knowledge in your mind.” The next line says this: “and apply your heart to my knowledge.”
Knowledge is what forms in the mind. It’s some idea, some communication of something valuable or precious or important or wise that he’s going to give you through the medium of words that hit your ear, go inside, and produce knowledge. And then — here it comes — he says to “apply your heart to my knowledge.” The effect? “It will be pleasant.” I take it that the heart is the organ of pleasantness, pleasure.
And that’s what the question is: How can I experience pleasure — an appropriate admiring and valuing and treasuring and loving and embracing and enjoyment and satisfaction — in what I’m perceiving through the words? And he says, “The way you do it is to apply your heart.”
Now, I’m going to talk for just a minute or two about what that means, but just know that this writer, this inspired writer, is answering your question. Is there something you can do to move from ears attending to words and minds grasping for knowledge to hearts experiencing pleasantness of what is within? Is there anything you can do? His answer is yes, and the words he uses go like this: “Apply your heart to what your ear has heard and the knowledge that’s forming in your mind.”
How to Push on the Heart
Now, what does that mean? I’ve got here, right in front of me on my screen, the word tā·šîṯ, which is Hebrew for the verb apply. The full phrase means “your heart apply,” or literally, “your heart put” or “set” or “stand” or “place.”
So you take your heart, and you put it, you place it, into what you’ve seen with your eyes or heard with your ears. You push the nose of your heart into the beauty of the knowledge. If the heart is not feeling anything, you say to your heart, “Heart, wake up.” And you take hold of the heart, and you apply it; you push it; you place it in the knowledge. You push on it. There is something you can do.
Here’s an analogy. Suppose you would like to taste a steak. You can hear it sizzling on the grill outside, so you go outside. Then your eyes see the steak sizzling on the grill. If you get close enough, your nose may smell the steak sizzling on the grill — but there’s still no taste in your mouth of that steak. Is there anything you can do?
That is the question. It really is the question. Is there anything you can do with the steak of God, with the steak of Christ, with the steak of salvation, with the steak of the word of God, the word of the infinite Creator God? Is there anything you can do to taste it? You know what the answer is. You take a knife, and you cut off a piece, and you put it in your mouth, and you chew and you chew. And then you swallow, and you taste. And you say to your heart, “Eat, heart. Eat, heart.”
Diamonds Hide in Plain Sight
Let me give some more examples. I’m walking to church. It’s October. The leaves on the trees in my neighborhood are unbelievably bright with yellow and orange, and the sun is shining. It has been a more mild October than usual, so it’s sixty degrees. The leaves are flickering, and it is absolutely stunning.
“Don’t say that you are beyond the capacity to feel the beauty of the knowledge of God in the Bible.”
But I’m walking to church, to a prayer meeting, and not noticing anything. My eyes are seeing it, and I’m not seeing it. What has to happen? I pause. God’s grace causes me to pause. This little podcast right here causes me to pause. And you look at it — you really look at it. You lean in, and you say, “Heart, that’s orange. That’s yellow. They were green, and now they’re orange and yellow and gold, and the sun is making them bright, and they are waving at you with the breeze, and God is trying to get your attention and to say, ‘The glory of God is shining here. Look hard.’” And you push the nose of the heart up into the tree.
When I came home, several days ago, there were two or three afternoons that were so stunning that I would look out my window and say, “Whoa.” And I’d get up and go downstairs, and I’d walk under the tree and look up. Then I walked across the street and looked back. Then I got out my camera and tried to get some different shots. Then I walked around the side of the house to see what it looked like from that angle. This is the pushing of the heart into the gold of natural revelation.
You do the same thing with the word of God. A diamond is offered to you. You see the diamond, but you don’t see the diamond. So you say to your heart, “Heart, move around this diamond. Look at the diamond from that side, and look at the diamond from that side.”
Heart-Talk as God-Talk
And when a born-again person is reading Proverbs 22:17 — “Apply your heart to this knowledge. Apply your heart. Apply your heart” — you can’t help but turn it into prayer. When you’re preaching to your heart, and you’re saying to your heart, “Come on, heart; wake up. Come on, heart; look at this. Come on, heart; feel this. This is beautiful. Wake up, heart,” instinctively you are praying. You’re not just talking to your heart — though you are talking to your heart, because that’s what the text says to do: “Apply your heart.” But you are also praying, “God, God, help me. God, open my eyes.”
So, may I suggest that even if you listen to this right now and say, “I’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work,” or, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about” — may I urge you? May I plead with you? You may be such a novice at this that you need practice. Please don’t give up. Don’t say that you are beyond the capacity to feel the beauty of the knowledge of God in the Bible and the knowledge of his ways. This text is God’s word to you: “Apply your heart.”
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The Birth of the ‘Born-Again’ Christian
In the early seventies, the Watergate scandal shocked the nation. One of the men involved was Chuck Colson, who later pled guilty and served time in federal prison. During this season, Colson came to faith in Jesus and converted to evangelical Christianity. In 1976, Colson published Born Again, which chronicles the events leading to his conversion and explains his radical life change. The book was an instant bestseller, making Colson one of the most influential evangelical leaders of his era.
Also in 1976, a dark-horse candidate from Georgia named Jimmy Carter won the Democratic presidential nomination, and then narrowly won the general election. Carter was barely known nationally, so his victory garnered even more attention. During his campaign, Carter professed to be a “born-again Christian.” Most political pundits and media outlets had no idea what that meant.
As the phrase grew in the public consciousness, many Americans assumed that born-again Christianity was a new Christian sect. However, as the media and pollsters investigated, they discovered the phrase “born again” was simply used by ordinary evangelical Christians to describe the supernatural transformation that people experience when they convert to Christianity.
Evangelical Christianity was certainly not new, but when the phrase entered mainstream America, it boosted evangelicalism’s profile. Evangelicalism’s enhanced notoriety and influence prompted Newsweek magazine to proclaim that 1976 was “the year of the evangelical.” The next year, world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham published How to Be Born Again. The book helped to reinforce the credibility of the phrase “born again” and, more importantly, it sent the message that genuine biblical Christianity was synonymous with “born-again Christianity.”
Modern or Ancient?
Some commentators asserted that the emphasis on born-again Christianity was an invention of the modern era. They claimed that the evangelical emphasis on the new birth was absent from most of church history. Evangelicals responded with Scripture.
Jesus said, “I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). The born-again experience is also known as regeneration. The apostle Peter asserts that this experience is made possible by the work of Christ (1 Peter 1:3). The apostle Paul also associates the new birth with salvation and the forgiveness of sins (Titus 3:4–7). Passages like these inspire an important question: How could detractors claim that born-again Christianity was a product of the modern era when the concept of the new birth so clearly comes from Scripture?
Most detractors would certainly agree that the concept of the new birth is indeed in the Bible, but they would also assert that the Christians of previous eras had a different understanding of the new birth than modern evangelicals do. They would argue that, for the bulk of church history, the moment of new birth was associated with infant baptism. In contrast, evangelicals associate the new birth with repentance and personal faith in Christ. Evangelicals believe that people are born again when they are converted to Christ.
New Birth in Church History
It’s true that new birth was associated with infant baptism for much of history. It’s not true, however, that everyone in the early church taught the new birth that way.
In fact, several influential early-church writers believed that the born-again experience was associated with repentance, confession, and salvific faith. This includes the Epistle of Barnabas, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and Hilary of Poitiers (see Gregg Allison, Historical Theology, 649–67). However, as infant baptism grew in popularity during the third and fourth centuries, the vital association between regeneration and faith was greatly de-emphasized. Many Christians during the Middle Ages presumed that they had already experienced regeneration as infants at their baptisms. Therefore, it seemed unnecessary to preach about the new birth in adulthood.
REFORMATION
The Protestant Reformation brought a renewed focus on individual people believing the gospel, not merely participating in religious duties. The German equivalent of the term evangelical was coined by Martin Luther to describe the Protestant churches that exhorted their congregants to exhibit genuine faith in the evangel (the gospel).
The evangelical emphasis upon the new birth was later greatly promoted by Johann Arndt, a Lutheran theologian who studied under Philip Melanchthon. In the early 1600s, Arndt penned True Christianity, which greatly emphasized the new birth and piety. The book was circulated across Europe extensively for more than a hundred years and was tremendously influential on many future preachers, including John Wesley and George Whitefield.
GREAT AWAKENINGS
In the mid-eighteenth century, a series of powerful revivals swept through America, led by the preaching of men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Their preaching emphasized the new birth and called people to repentance. These revivals gave birth to American evangelicalism, which would be an influential force in American society throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
However, by the end of the nineteenth century, a fracture emerged among professing evangelicals between modernists and fundamentalists. The modernists denied Christian orthodoxy and sought to reinvent Christianity in the light of modern science. The fundamentalists intensified their commitment to Christian orthodoxy, but they also developed a militant posture toward culture. By the 1920s, these two groups were worlds apart.
Birth of a Label
After the modernist-fundamentalist break, the modernists repudiated the evangelical emphasis on the born-again experience, but many fundamentalists doubled down on its importance. They began describing themselves as “born-again Christians.” While the phrase would not enter the mainstream for several more decades, it gained momentum within some conservative Protestant circles during the thirties and forties.
In the 1950s, a young evangelist named Bill Bright founded Campus Crusade for Christ, which became the most influential campus evangelism ministry in the nation. Bright embraced the label “born-again Christian,” and by the early sixties, the new converts in his ministry were embracing the label too.
Another notable segment of evangelicals that embraced the label were the young adults being converted to Christ as part of the Jesus People movement of the late sixties. Then, Billy Graham began using the phrase “born again” extensively. Graham had been preaching since the 1940s, and he would occasionally use the phrase, but in the 1960s the born-again vernacular became much more prominent in Graham’s ministry. The events of the sixties put the phrase “born again” on the radar of nearly every American Christian. And the events of 1976 then put the phrase on the radar of every American.
Born-Again Appropriation
Another interesting phrase that entered the lexicon, in time, was “born-again Catholic.” Being born again had typically been a marker of evangelical Protestantism, but soon even Catholics began reporting born-again experiences.
For various reasons, however, these people wanted to remain within their Catholic tradition. The number of self-proclaimed “born-again Catholics” has been modest since the 1960s, but the number nearly doubled from 2004 to 2016 (see Samuel Perry and Cyrus Schleifer’s “Understanding the Rise of Born-Again Catholics in the United States”). While it may appear that a genuinely born-again person can remain a devout member of the Catholic Church, there are some serious warnings to consider.
Also, by the late 1970s, the phrase “born-again” was being used (and misused) by Americans to describe any transformational experience, even if the experience was not directly related to Christ and Christianity. The phrase was so frequently used that when Bob Dylan described his own conversion to evangelical Christianity, he was reluctant to use the phrase “born again” because it was so “overused” (“John Lennon’s Born-Again Phase”). One prominent example of this was John Lennon calling himself a “born-again pagan.”
Fading Label, Crucial Doctrine
What, then, is a born-again Christian? Born-again Christians are those who believe the gospel, and so put faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, and have experienced the supernatural transformation often called regeneration. They have experienced a conversion from spiritual death to spiritual life. John Wesley described this experience as the “thorough change of heart and life from sin to holiness” (quoted in Thomas S. Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical?, 4).
This doctrine of the new birth took center stage in preaching among evangelicals and conservative Protestants in the modern era. This emphasis was not merely semantics. It inspired many to make the new birth essential in their lives and ministries, which in turn profoundly shaped the trajectory of American evangelicalism as it moved into the twenty-first century.
Over the last twenty years, the phrase has faded in popularity somewhat, but the doctrine of the new birth remains a crucial element of American evangelicalism’s history and legacy. Extra labels will come and go, but the doctrine — and more importantly, the experience, if genuine — will remain.