http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16252836/love-unity-and-assurance-in-the-truth
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Stuck Between the World and God: How I Almost Died in Indecision
Some texts mark you for life. As Jacob, you grapple with them, and though you come away with a blessing, you leave with a limp. You think differently. You pray differently. You love, speak, and act differently. Life as it was before can be no more.
Elijah’s question to the wavering people of Israel has been such a text for me. As a young college student, alone in my dorm room with a Bible I had just started reading, I came to it:
How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. (1 Kings 18:21)
When I read it on my futon, it was as though I witnessed the scene unfold firsthand.
“Is it you, you troubler of Israel?” The wicked king addressed the prophet he had hunted like a deer in the forest. He sneered. Not often did the prey beckon the hunter or the fish, the fisherman. But here, weaponless and alone, the prophet emerged from his hiding place to challenge his pursuer, and all of his prophets, to a public showdown.
“I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals,” Elijah replied. “Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table” (1 Kings 18:18–19).
Ahab happily complied.
News spread quickly; the people of Israel clamored around to see the spectacle. I took my place among the masses. The excitement was palpable as prophets and their gods prepared for war. Baal’s king and his army of prophets stood in one corner; the Lord’s prophet approached alone, taking his position in the other.
Pierced Without a Weapon
Yet as the prophet advanced toward the mountain to face off with the hundreds of prophets, Elijah’s eyes of fire rested elsewhere. He gazed at us, drew near to us. The contestant walked over to the crowd, slowly looking us over, and lifted his voice for all to hear,
How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. (1 Kings 18:21)
Weaponless, he shot the first arrow. Swordless, he cut me to the heart. Alone, I trembled to hear another speaking.
As I read those words, a lifetime of spiritual indecision flashed before my eyes. It took shape before me. The amphibious creature, offspring of a hearty worldliness and brittle religiosity, reared its head. It bore the horrible beauty of a demon. This angel of light had pleased and soothed my half-waking conscience for a lifetime, while remaining false enough to damn my soul.
This god I followed took no issue with the lukewarmness — the starts and stops, the ins and outs of what I took to be Christian devotion. None of my prophets interrupted me, nor protested when I went my own way. For over a decade, my god was compliant, polite, civil. He did not ask for much, nor threaten me, nor ask me to do anything I did not already agree to. He sat in the corner of the world, just smiling at me, his beloved.
If He Be God
The prophet, however, served another God. A jealous God. One who would not endure the waffling another moment. And this prophet burned with his Master’s fire. Elijah decided that if he was walking headlong into his death, he would leave his half-hearted people with a simple question: How long, O faithless bird, will you go fluttering back and forth between two branches?
We, the people, were the only ones undecided before that mountain. The priests of Baal were decided, even to the point of shedding their blood. They cut themselves with swords to invoke an answer from Baal. King Ahab was also decided. He and his wicked wife Jezebel hunted down Yahweh’s prophets and feasted with Baal’s. Elijah was decided. He stood alone before a spiritual legion of darkness, sure that his God could swallow all these mighty minnows.
“A God, if he be God, must be totally followed. Any true God must be completely obeyed.”
At this, a nearly novel thought pressed against my mind: A God, if he be God, must be totally followed. Any true God must be completely obeyed. He demanded a decision. He must be the most important reality in one’s life. Then the amazing conclusion that I professed for years finally caught up with me: I believed God existed. An eternal being, an infinite Person, a supreme monarch.
Elijah looked me in the eyes and said, If the world or your flesh or you yourself be god — follow them. Eat, drink, for tomorrow you die. But if the God of Scripture is God, then reason, justice, and sanity itself cries aloud: If this Glorious, Mighty, and Beautiful God will have you, you must follow him — unreservedly, unquestionably, unhesitatingly.
How did I answer the prophet?
“And the people did not answer him a word” (1 Kings 18:21). I joined the crowds in solemn silence.
The most daring among us held their tongue. Tough guys didn’t protest. Not a chirp was heard before the mountain; all beaks were stopped. What could we say in our defense?
If Christ Be God
Before the sun beat upon the forsaken and bloodied prophets of Baal, before fire fell from heaven and gave the outmanned Elijah decisive victory, before the people rallied and slew the priests and Elijah ran for his life, the prophet’s question seared me: How long will you go on indecisive?
How many more days and months and years will pass while you still pretend to have made up your mind? “If Christ be God, follow him. If the world, follow it.”
Has Elijah’s question lost its edge? To others not refusing to associate with Jesus, yet simply adding him to a collection of other allegiances: “How long will you go on fluttering between two branches?” Between Christ and the love of money. Between Christ and this world. Between Christ and your favorite sin. Between Christ and your comfortable, uninterrupted life.
How long, professing Christian, will you too live halfhearted, half-bowed? How much longer will you persist with half-waking commitments to Christ? How long will you think to give him the loose change of your attention, the crumbled bills of your affections? “If Jesus is God, follow him; but if your girlfriend be god, your reputation be god, your earthly pleasures and career be god — then follow them.”
“I the Lord your God am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:5). “You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God)” (Exodus 34:13–14). One cannot play footsie with the consuming fire for long.
“One cannot play footsie with the consuming fire for long.”
The Christian God is God, and he will not sit idly by within a pantheon of other gods and pleasures. He entertains no rivals. Friendship with the world is adultery and enmity against him (James 4:4). This text, and this reality, God used to shake me awake and bring me to Jesus.
Dear reader, is your Jesus really God? If he is God — and the Jesus of the Bible is God — then follow him. I long for fire to fall again, pleading with Elijah, “Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back” (1 Kings 18:37).
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The Subtle Way to Waste Your Life: Confessions of a Sophisticated Sloth
If you were told you had five years to live, would you live more in those five years than in the decades you might have had left?
By “live” I cannot mean “lifespan,” or the question isn’t worth asking. I mean to live wide awake, live purposefully, live undistracted by empty pleasures. Could you imagine the quality of those five years becoming preferable? Could five years more alive to God, his world, and the faces around us outshine decades of business and bluster with little fullness?
Oh, to sail under the stars awake to life, feeling the breeze upon your face and hearing the music of waves crashing. How different from the dreary drift from one meal to the next, one episode to the next, one year to the next.
Do you feel the preciousness of time? Are you truly living? A hand hold with a spouse or a wait in line at the store can take on new significance when we consider it occurs within this shooting star we call “life.”
Good I Could Have Done
I perplex myself, then, to consider how many golden moments I let pass, wasted. Hours upon hours, gone without notice, lost without grief. So many silver coins squandered; exchanged for pebbles and bubbles.
While not leaving the good news behind — namely that this neglect will not have the last word, but his grace will — the healthy sting is still felt. And if we let it: still instructive. When I awake to the value of time, the sheer possibility held in any given span, I sigh at how many moments have fallen irretrievably between the cracks — and this sends me to God for more mercy and help to better steward the time I have left.
This is especially true when I consider time lost while at work — how much good that might have outlasted me has been forfeit by my laziness and inattention?
What hid this realization from me for so long is that I never thought of myself as slothful. I get things done. At times, I’ve worked very hard. No one would have looked at me and said I sleep too much, or that I neglected my studies, or that I put off difficult things indefinitely. But looking back, I have realized in my work life that I have lived too often as a sophisticated sloth. Here are a few characteristics.
1. Slow to Begin
The traditional sluggard does not begin tasks at all. We hear his voice crying out from his bed, “There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!” (Proverbs 22:13; 26:13). He would go to the work like the rest of us, he assures us, but for those killer cats.
He says they prevent him from traveling to work,
There is a lion stalking the square.Travel to work? — I couldn’t dare.I shall stay in and feast— Oh that irksome beast —This confinement is too much to bare!
He says they prevent him from going to church,
There is a lion purring the pews.Upon good men’s bones it chews.Surely none could find faultIn avoiding assault;I’ll wait till next week to hear the good news!
And while I do not make such foolish excuses, as a sophisticated sloth, I start my tasks, eventually. The lions roaring in the street do not indefinitely detain, but they do delay me. When I gaze ahead and see duties sloping uphill, I decide I need some stretching before the activity — maybe some social media, or checking email, or a quick snack. How many hours have I wasted “getting in the mood” to start something difficult?
2. Quick to Break
We are told the traditional sluggard “buries his hand in the dish and will not even bring it back to his mouth” (Proverbs 19:24). This image is his profile picture.
The sluggard started his task. His hand, as a crane maneuvering a construction site, lifts, steers sideways, and drops on the full bowl. Upon impact, some Cheese Puffs jump overboard. As we continue to watch him, anticipating the triumphant return, we wait, and we wait — and we wait. Gravity assisted him on the way down, but has now betrayed him. The way up proves too much for him.
He is again made to seem ridiculous. As activity swirls about him, he sits immobilized, his hand in a dish. His eyes are open, but in such a way as to be shut. His fingers plop into the dish and remain, reluctant to return at the half-hearted bidding of their master. He is alive, but not alive. A man, but not a man. John Foster gives him a sobering epitaph, “Here lies a person who has lost nothing by being buried; for he is just as good a man underground as he was above” (An Essay on the Improvement of Time, 189).
“The sloth is alive, but not alive. A man, but not a man.”
By God’s grace, I am not such a creature. My hand does return, just not right away. I have been quick to indulge breaks as a reward for doing what was only my duty to begin with. That’s good enough for now, I think, don’t want to overdo it. A harder working man could have completed the same task without interruptions in a fraction of the time. A harder working man might have accomplished another life’s work by simply redeeming the intervals.
3. Open to Interruptions
I have contributed my attention to the notable businesses that profit on the distracted. Every text message and Youtube video seems so much more interesting when I am in the middle of my labor. The path of each workday has offered me multiple rest stops.
The traditional sloth also knows the power of a minor detour from the path.
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest,and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man. (Proverbs 24:33–34)
The thief of time today is a tiny man. He specializes in little. Just a little sleep, a little slumber — just a little surfing the Internet, a little text-message conversation, a little checking of Facebook or ESPN.
He sells distractions during the workday, and though he will take large checks if he must, he prefers coins and small bills — ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes — you know, harmless folding-of-the-hands kind of costs.
I, as the sophisticated sloth, have started and stopped, started and stopped, as a teenager learning to drive a stick shift for the first time. And while the classic sloth may not wake until he is robbed of everything, I return home every day just missing a few dollars here and there. The total sum I cannot estimate.
4. Puts Off Harder Work
This is one the cleverest tricks of the sophisticated sloth: He works — to avoid doing harder work. He is the kid who sees dad coming and rushes to take out the trash so his brother is left to shovel instead. He chooses to work when he must — to spare himself more difficult work later.
The end result looks like the typical sloth:
I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense,and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns; the ground was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down. (Proverbs 24:30–31)
But the text doesn’t tell us about the sophisticated sloth inside his house, pointing to his mostly clean dishes, washed clothes, and bed with a comforter folded over bundled sheets. Too often, I have done the easier work indoors and left the harder work unattempted.
Missing Servant
Time is far too precious to let it so subtly slip away. Those pressed up against the grave more rightly estimate its value; blessed are we if we can waken before we near closer to that slumber. Jesus seeks to help us awake to the stewardship of our lives in the parable of the talents.
To the hardworking servant who trusts his Master, believes him, loves him, and knows the privilege of his service and thus invests and turns his five talents into five more, his master says to him,
Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. (Matthew 25:21)
The slothful servant, afraid of his Master and otherwise suspicious of his motives, buries his talent in the ground. He doesn’t lose it; but doesn’t improve it either. To this man, the Master says,
You wicked and slothful servant! . . . You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. . . . [C]ast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. (Matthew 25:26–27, 30)
“Time is precious. Now is the time to live and work and love.”
I, however, have been describing the man who did not make the parable. He is the servant to whom the Master gives five talents, and yet brings back just two more instead of the full five. He could have brought more — but he wasted so much time on lesser things.
Whether we have five years left or fifty, life is a most terrible thing to waste. To other such servants, consider with me what glory lies ahead for the faithful Christian servant. “Well done, my good and faithful servant” — the eternal commendation. “I will set you over much” — the everlasting stewardship. “Enter into the joy of your Master” — the undying bliss of life with our God.
Might this not help us toward faithful living in total reliance upon our Savior?
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Amusing Ourselves from Death
Audio Transcript
Amusing Ourselves to Death — that was the great title to a book written by Neil Postman and published in 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death. Maybe you’ve heard of it or even read it. It was a great title before the digital age. And it’s a great title for the digital age. And I’m borrowing it for this episode, with one change: amusing ourselves from death — today’s theme in a clip from a John Piper sermon preached in the summer of 1996.
Before we get into it, here’s a little context for the sermon, and why eternal realities were especially on the forefront of Pastor John’s mind at the time. Evangelist Billy Graham was in Minneapolis for a five-night rally. By then, Graham was 77 years old. He spoke for a week in the Metrodome, which was just steps away from Bethlehem Baptist Church. It was a huge gathering, well attended, and local reports put attendance for the final evening right around 100,000 people. All of that was happening the same week as this sermon from Pastor John. And that’s why he’ll mention the Dome in a little bit. With that, here’s Pastor John in June of 1996.
Death is sad — and death is terrifying if there’s a holy, just God who’s going to call everybody to account.
If you don’t believe in God — if there is no God, and death is simply the end of a long summer — it’s just sad. It’s sad. And the reason it’s sad is because life as we know it in this world is the basis of everything that makes us happy — family, friends, leisure, food, sex, job, work, meaning. If you don’t have life, you don’t have any of that. And to lose that feels sad, but it doesn’t feel terrifying. It’s not terrifying to fall asleep thinking you never wake up. It’s over — no consciousness ever again. That’s not terrifying. It’s sad to lose things that you know, but it’s not terrifying to go to sleep and never wake up again. Zero consciousness.
But if there’s a holy, just God of truth, who has a law, who has a glory, and we will one day give an account to that God for everything good or evil we’ve ever done, and he will render that to us, then death is terrifying if we’re not right with God.
Silent Slave Master
The existence of God in relationship to death is a terrifying thing. Hebrews 2:14–15 says it’s a slave master if you’re afraid of death. And it says in verse 15 that everybody has been held in bondage all their life long by the fear of death.
I thought about that. A lot of people would deny that. A lot of people who don’t believe in God would say, “We’re not afraid. We are not living a life of bondage. I mean, look at us: Do we look like we’re in bondage? We’re the freest of all people, doing what we want to do. What in the world do you mean that everybody is held in slavery and bondage by the fear of death? What are you talking about? Where’s this verse coming from?”
“Even people who don’t believe in God are subconsciously ruled by the fear of death, one way or the other.”
Here’s what I think it is implying. I think even people who don’t believe in God, and who on the surface are not feeling terrified, are subconsciously ruled by the fear of death, one way or the other. It’s a silent slave master. One of its main forms of slavery is by putting you in the dreamworld of denial. Now, you don’t experience it this way, but the way you can tell if you’re in it or not is by considering what you are willing to think much about. Denial of the death that terrifies manifests itself in all kinds of ways of escaping from having to think long or much about your mortality and about your death.
It’s one thing that Americans will not let themselves think long about, and therefore we surround ourselves with all kinds of distractions and narcotics to escape from what we know we’d be afraid of if we thought about it. And therefore, it is ruling us from underneath.
Cruising Toward Death
I thought of this analogy. It’s like the cruise control on our station wagon. It doesn’t work, but I know what cruise control is for. The fear of death is like a cruise control in the soul that is set roughly at 55 miles an hour of contentment and ease.
Now, if something begins to happen where your life begins to slow down to a pace of pensiveness and reflection and thoughtfulness, and big realities start to come into your consciousness so that you start to ask some big, significant questions, that cruise control is going to bump back up to 55 in a big hurry so that you don’t have to get into thinking about and dealing with those big thoughts that you can have when your life slows down to a restful pace. It’s late at night, it’s quiet, the stars are out, the kids are asleep — and you start to ask the big questions. The fear of death, not even consciously, says, “Quick — turn it on. Turn it on. Get the volume up. Get moving. Start doing something. You can’t deal with that.”
Then it works the other way. Sometimes God, in his common graces — and we’ve all experienced this — moves into your heart and begins to rev up your inquisitive motor, and you start to inquire and think, and it’s a kind of new day. You buy books, and you pursue, and you want to know how to solve mysteries. It’s not the same reflective atmosphere that I was talking about a minute ago. It’s energy, it’s inquiry, it’s pursuit, because you know there’s something vital out there, and at that 65 or 75 miles per hour you might in fact find it. And so, the cruise control takes the foot off the accelerator and brings you back down to the ease and comfort of 55. The TV is just right. The leisure is just right. The family is just right. The work is just right. You don’t need to ask any of those questions or make any of that pursuit.
Our Inner Law
This is what I think the writer here means when he says, “We are being held in bondage, all our life long, by the fear of death” (see Hebrews 2:15). There’s a slavery. Everybody who does not come to terms with reality — with God, with sin, with guilt, with punishment, with death, and with hell — if you don’t come to term with those realities, you must be in denial. You must be living a life governed subconsciously, or perhaps consciously, by the fear of death.
“If you’re not right with God, that law written on your heart is going to make you a slave to the fear of death.”
Some of you know what it’s like to live consciously in horrible anxieties all the time. So whether subconsciously or consciously, this is the case. Romans 2:15 says that the law of God is written on every human heart, your conscience bearing witness with that law, either condemning or affirming.
So I, on the authority of the Bible — the same Bible that Billy Graham holds up, and he seems to get a lot of approval — that same Bible says that everybody in this room, everybody that will go to the Dome tonight or has been there, has the law of God written across your heart, and it is damning you or affirming you, according to whether you are right with God. And if you’re not right with God, that law written there is going to make you a slave to the fear of death.