Audio Transcript

On Wednesday we were in Holland. Today we are in Brazil. We are blessed with many friends in Brazil, and today’s email comes from one of them, a man named Cauã. Cauã lives in Rio de Janeiro. “Hello, Pastor John! I have been debating the following question in my head for a while. Does God command our praise because it glorifies him, or does he command our praise because he wants us to be happy? Does he command our worship for himself, or for our good? Or for both? Can you help me understand, please?”

Well, I will do my best, because this is what I’ve been trying to do for more or less fifty years. I think the answer to this question is just about the best news in all the world. At least in my own experience, to see the relationship between God’s command for praise and my experience of happiness was one of the most important discoveries that I ever made in my life. So I hope I can bring some clarity to it.

Glory at the Center

I don’t think there was any biblical text that my parents spoke to me or wrote to me after I left home more frequently than 1 Corinthians 10:31: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” That command, that duty, was imprinted on my soul from as early as I can remember, and I am so thankful that it was. It was a wonderful thing. Whether you’re young, whether you’re old, to have a short, pithy summary of the purpose of human existence — what a gift! To know why you exist, to know why you are on this planet, indeed, to know why there is anything at all in existence — what a gift! What a privilege!

“God is committed to glorifying God.”

And it became obvious over time that this wasn’t simply my duty — to glorify God in everything I do — but this was God’s design for his own action. All of it. He does everything — he does everything he does — to the glory of God.

He predestines to the glory of God (Ephesians 1:5–6).
He creates to the glory of God (Isaiah 43:6–7; Psalm 19:1).
He guides history to the glory of God (Romans 11:33–36).
He sends Jesus to live and die for the glory of God (John 12:27–28; Philippians 2:9–11).
He sanctifies his church to the glory of God (Philippians 1:9–11).
Jesus is coming back to be marveled at and glorified among his people (2 Thessalonians 1:10).

Everywhere in the Bible, God is glorifying God. He does what he does to make God himself look as beautiful and glorious and great and wise and just and good and loving and gracious as he really is. So the duty that I grew up with expanded into a full-blown view of the universe. I think that’s really there in 1 Corinthians 10:31, because text after text pointed to the ultimate purpose of all things; namely, God is committed to glorifying God.

All to His Praise

And I remember seeing (this was in, I think, 1976 or so) for the first time those three verses in Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14 — all three of them saying, “unto the praise of his glory,” “unto the praise of his glory,” “unto the praise of his glory,” as if Paul were to say, “Hey, did you get it the third time, if not the second, if not the first time?” God does everything — and he saves especially — unto the praise of his glory.

So there’s absolutely no question how to answer the first part of Cauã’s question. Does God command our praise because it glorifies him? Yes. You are chosen, destined, adopted, redeemed unto the praise of the glory of God’s grace (Ephesians 1:6). God plans for our praise, creates for our praise, rules the world for our praise, saves us through the death of Jesus for his praise. And that praise is, specifically, praise ultimately for the glory of God’s grace.

“You are chosen, destined, adopted, redeemed unto the praise of the glory of God’s grace.”

Now that vision of God’s God-centeredness in creation and redemption, salvation, all of history, — that God-centeredness of God himself — left me for a long time perplexed about the place of my happiness in this overarching divine purpose. My perplexity was compounded when I heard preachers — for example, during a call to missions — say things like, “Seek God’s will, not your own. Seek to please God, not yourself.” And I knew there were texts in the Bible that said things like that. But it left me wondering, “Well, will it always be the case that when I’m acting in obedience, I’m acting against my will and against my pleasure?” That seemed hopeless to me — as if you were to grow in your obedience and be condemned to unhappiness the rest of your days, or even for eternity.

Completion of Joy

Then came the great discovery. It came from several sides, but the most shocking and compelling statement of the discovery was in C.S. Lewis’s book Reflections on the Psalms. He not only nailed my confusion, my perplexity, but in doing so, he gave the answer to it. So I want you to hear what I heard. So I’m going to read the whole section, a couple of paragraphs. And remember that what he’s dealing with here is that parts of the Bible, especially the Psalms, sounded to him, when God commanded his own praise, like an old woman seeking compliments, and that really bothered him. So here’s what he wrote. And this was life-changing for me.

The most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. . . .

The world rings with praise — lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game — praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . .

I think he’s laughing.

I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.

Here’s the nub of the matter:

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. (109–11, emphasis added)

Glory and Gladness Bound

Do you see where that led me? Every time God commanded me to praise him for his glory, he was commanding me to bring my pleasure in him to its fullest delight. That’s what he was commanding. My pleasure in God is not complete unless it overflows in praise. And my praise of
God is not glorifying to God unless it is the overflow of pleasure in God. God is not an egomaniac when he commands me to praise him. He’s acting in love, because my praising him is the apex of my pleasure in him. What a discovery!

So, the answer to the question is this: We should not, we dare not, choose between praising God as an expression of the glory of God and praising God as an overflow of our pleasure in God. We dare not choose between those or separate those. And after fifty years of pondering this, I don’t know any better way to say it than God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. If we try to choose between glorifying God and being glad in God, we will fail at both. The great discovery is that God has bound them together in his children forever.

Audio Transcript

God is our refuge and our fortress. And in that great refuge psalm of Psalm 91, we are given this glorious promise: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1). Such a high promise prompted APJ listener Anna to write in. Anna lives in Atlanta. “Pastor John, hello, and thank you for your faithful labors,” she writes. “My question comes from Psalm 91:1. What does it mean to ‘dwell in the shelter of the Most High’ and to ‘abide in the shadow of the Almighty?’ Is there a New Testament equivalent to this for believers in Christ? And is the practice of daily Scripture reading part of it?” Pastor John, what would you say to Anna?

Yes, there is a New Testament equivalent, and yes, Scripture reading is certainly part of the way you keep dwelling in the shelter of the Most High. But to get at the actual meaning, let’s quote the psalm, Psalm 91, and then look at an event from the life of a martyred missionary, Jim Elliot, whose biography is titled, by his wife, Shadow of the Almighty.

Safe in His Shelter

The phrase comes from Psalm 91, which begins like this:

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High     will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,     my God, in whom I trust.”

And then it continues in verse 7 with these amazing words:

A thousand [arrows] may fall at your side,     ten thousand at your right hand,     but it will not come near you.You will only look with your eyes     and see the recompense of the wicked.Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place . . .

So, it sounds like to dwell in the shadow of the Almighty and in the shelter of the Most High means that if someone throws a spear at you, it will not hit you.

For the Sake of Gain

So was Elizabeth Elliot naive, unbiblical, when she titled her husband’s biography Shadow of the Almighty, even though he and four others were speared to death by the Huaorani Indians on January 8, 1956, in Ecuador, while they were trying to evangelize them? She’s been asked that question. She’s with the Lord now, but she was asked that question, and I personally spoke to her many times. Most people considered her confidence in God’s sovereignty to be a little bit misplaced. Here was her answer at the end of the book. You can read it on the last pages of that biography:

The world did not recognize the truth of the second clause in Jim Elliot’s credo: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

“They trusted implicitly in the blood of the Lamb, that it had absolutely secured their future happiness forever.”

Now, what did he mean by that? What did she mean when she quoted it? Well, they both meant this: if God sees fit to let the arrow that flies by day or the spear of a Huaorani Indian to kill one of God’s children, God has done it for the sake of gain. Jim Elliot said “to gain what he cannot lose.” God has done it for gain, not loss. And I think she’s right. I think he was right. That’s a right interpretation of Psalm 91.

Here’s why I think that: Satan tried to use Psalm 91 in Matthew 4:6 to tempt Jesus to jump off the temple, because Psalm 91 promises that the angels are going to catch you. But Jesus won’t use Psalm 91 that way. Neither did Stephen when he was stoned to death. Neither did James when he was beheaded. Neither did Paul when he was beaten repeatedly with rods. Neither did Jesus as he bent down over the cross. None of them understood Psalm 91 to mean that God’s children will never suffer at the hands of their enemies.

Everything You Need

So what does it mean? I mean, Satan was trying to get them to think it meant that. What does it mean to abide in the shadow of the Almighty if you can be killed in the shadow of the Almighty? Well, let’s go to the New Testament counterpart of this text. So Anna asks, “Is there a New Testament counterpart?” There are several. For example,

Jude 21 says, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” I think that is virtually the same as “Keep yourselves in the shadow of the Almighty.”
Or Jesus says in John 15:9, “Abide in my love,” which I think is the same as “Abide in the shelter of the Most High.”

In other words, dwelling in the shadow of the Almighty and abiding in the shelter of the Most High means trusting implicitly in the love of God, the power of God, to give you everything you need to do his will and glorify his name, whether you live or die. Or to say it another way: dwelling in the shadow of the Most High and keeping yourself in the love of God means trusting the love of God and the wisdom of God and the power of God to protect you from everything that could destroy you utterly.

Never Defeated

Now, why do I say that? One of the clearest reasons for saying that is found in Romans 8:32–39, maybe the greatest paragraph in the Bible. Paul argues that God’s love for his elect, his adopted children, proven in the death of his Son Jesus, means that he will, with absolute certainty, “graciously give us all things.”

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

“If we are in the shadow of the Almighty, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.”

Answer: he will. But what does that mean — all things? And he goes on to explain, and he even uses the Psalms to explain it. He argues that if we are in the love of Christ, in the shadow of the Almighty, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Then he throws out a few possibilities of what might separate us, and it shows he’s really quite aware of Psalm 91. He says, “Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (Romans 8:35) — or he might have added, “or a Huaorani Indian spear?”

And then he quotes Psalm 44:22: “As it is written, ‘For your sake [not sin’s sake; your sake] we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered’” (Romans 8:36). So even the Psalms knew God’s people die while doing good. Then he shouts the answer: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

So Paul is saying Christians can keep themselves in the love of God and in the shadow of the Almighty and still be slaughtered like sheep, and yet be more than conquerors. So if the arrow that flies by day goes straight into your chest, and you drop dead in the cause of Christ, it does not defeat you. You are more than a conqueror.

Step into Everlasting Presence

How are you more than a conqueror? Because the very arrow that seemed to get the victory becomes your servant and accomplishes God’s sovereign purpose in the world. And God’s saving purpose for your life is everlasting presence. Here’s how the book of Revelation says it: “And they conquered [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death” (Revelation 12:11).

So they die in persecution, but they conquer Satan. How? This is the answer to Anna’s question. How do you dwell in the shelter of the Most High? They trusted implicitly in the blood of the Lamb, that it had absolutely secured for them their future happiness forever. And they opened their mouth and gave testimony. And the fear of death did not stop them. And in that moment, they were safe in the shadow of the Almighty, and they conquered the devil and they entered paradise. I think that’s the kind of triumphant safety that God is calling us to in Psalm 91.

“I’m just not feeling it today.”

How often have you reached for that excuse? Many of us can be quick to cast ourselves as the victim of a sluggish heart.

Now, making peace with a pokey heart is a very strange phenomenon, even as it now is a widespread assumption and typically goes unquestioned. It may be no big deal if we’re talking about whether you want peanut butter on your breakfast toast. But far more is at stake when this becomes an excuse for neglecting God, whether in his word, prayer, or Christian fellowship.

Specifically, this excuse has served to undermine habits of spiritual health related to beginning each day with the voice of God in Scripture. Some of us are gaunt, frail Christians because we’ve learned, like our world, to cater to the whims of our own fickle hearts rather than direct them and determine to reshape them.

Your Pliable Affections

In what may be his most insightful and deeply spiritual book, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (2014), the late Tim Keller introduces us to a side of the great English theologian John Owen (1616–1683) that is especially out of step with modern assumptions. Owen, according to Keller, would not be so quick to grant the excuse, “I’m just not feeling it today.” In fact, he likely would respond forcefully — and many of us might be better for it.

Owen would at least challenge whether our initial feelings determined anything significant at all. He surely wouldn’t say to skip God’s word (or prayer or church) to cater to whatever unspiritual inclination you woke up feeling. Rather, he might say, as Keller summarizes, “Meditate to the point of delight.” Don’t give in to your heart’s first inclinations. Rather, take hold of them, and direct them. Open the Bible, and turn your attention to the one who is supremely worthy, and keep your nose in the Book, and your mind on Jesus, until your sluggish heart begins to respond like it should.

That’s striking counsel for a generation conditioned to “follow your heart” and, in time, presume to reshape our external, objective world based on the subjectivity and flightiness of our own desires.

How often do we hear even Christians concede, as a veiled excuse, to be “wired” a certain way? Indeed, God has wired us in certain ways. But how often do we resign ourselves to being hardwired in ways we’re actually far more pliable? And the world’s not helping us with this. Our society has come to feign plasticity in precisely the places we’re hardwired (like biological sex) and to pretend hard-wiring in the places we’re actually plastic (desires and delights).

Long before anyone talked about neuroplasticity, Owen believed in what we might call “affectional plasticity” — that is, your desires and delights are not hardwired. They are pliable. You can reshape and recondition them. You can retrain them. You may be unable to simply turn them with full effect in the moment to make yourself feel something, but you can reshape your heart over time. Oh, can you. Your desires, good and bad, are not simple givens. Stretched out over time, as the composite of countless decisions, they are wonderfully (and hauntingly) chosens.

Recondition Your Heart

In chapter 10 of Prayer, Keller adds his commentary to Owen’s premodern insights for a much-needed perspective on the wedding of God’s word with our prayers through meditation. It’s a perspective on forming and reforming our pliant hearts that will challenge readers today. It will frustrate many, but certainly inspire a few.

In general, we are far too easy on our minds and hearts. We grant we can train the body. In fact, you’re always training the body, whether for the better or the worse. And most will agree that you can train the mind — “the mind is a muscle,” so to speak. You can set it on a particular object and learn to keep it there. It will take practice. Such training is vital for engaging with God’s word as we ought, and few skills are more difficult or important to cultivate.

And far more controversial, you can train your heart— not just in sinful emotions to avoid but also in righteous emotions to entertain. With a Bible open in front of you, you can learn, as Keller summarizes Owen, to “meditate to the point of delight.”

Three Stages of Meditation

Some well-meaning Christians set out to read their Bibles, don’t feel much (if anything), move on swiftly to pray a few quick, shallow petitions, and then embark on their day. Owen would say, with C.S. Lewis, you are far too easily pleased — that is, if you’re even pleased at all. Rather, Owen would have us wrestle like Jacob across the Jabbok, until light dawns. Wrestle with your own sluggish soul. Direct it. Turn it. Grapple with it until it does what it’s supposed to do, and feels more like it’s supposed to feel about the wonders and horrors of the word of God. Say, in effect, to the God of the word, “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” and discipline your heart to receive the joy for which God made it.

Now, a few clarifications are in order to recover this lost art of meditation. Owen distinguished between study, meditation, and prayer. Meditation is the bridge between receiving God’s word (in reading and study) and responding back to him (in prayer). Meditation, says Owen,

is distinguished from the study of the word, wherein our principal aim is to learn the truth, or to declare it unto others; and so also from prayer, whereof God himself is the immediate object. But . . . meditation . . . is the affecting of our own hearts and minds with love, delight, and [humility]. (quoted in Keller, Prayer, 152)

Meditation, then — distinct from study and prayer, though overlapping with them — might be parsed into three sequential stages.

1) Fix Your Mind

Begin with Bible intake, through reading, and rereading — the slower the better. And as we encounter various knowledge gaps in what the passage says and means, we might turn briefly to some “study” to “learn the truth” or rightly understand the text. Beginners will have more questions and need to navigate how frequently to stop and study or just keep reading and pick up clues as they go. But the main point is that meditation begins with immersion in the words of God.

Unlike Eastern “meditation,” which seeks to empty the mind, biblical meditation requires the filling of the mind with the truth of God’s self-revelation in his Son and Scripture. We don’t just up and meditate — not in the deliberate sense. We begin with Bible, fixing our thoughts on God and his Son through the content of his word.

2) Incline Your Heart

Fixing our thoughts can be difficult enough, but inclining the heart is imponderable for many. Not because it can’t be done, but because we have been socialized to assume it can’t. So, this is where Owen (and Keller) seems forceful, and surprising. But Owen counsels us, having fixed our minds on God’s word, to “persist in spiritual thoughts unto your refreshment” (Works of John Owen, volume 7, 393). That is, meditate until you begin to feel the word. Preach to yourself until you begin to feel more like you ought. Does the word declare God’s majesty? Feel awe. Does it warn sinners? Feel fear. Does it announce good news? Feel joy.

The goal is not to meditate for a particular duration of time, but to meditate until the point of delight, to persist “unto your refreshment.” The apostle Peter speaks of the present, not merely the future — of joy the Christian experiences now, in this age, not only in the one to come — when he says, “Though you do not now see [Jesus with your physical eyes], you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). Inexpressible, glorified joy is offered even now, and by no better means than fixing our minds on the word of God himself and meditating until he smiles on us, and warms our souls, with some real measure of delight.

Owen offers hope for those who think this is impossible: “Constancy in [this] duty will give ability for it. Those who conscientiously abide in its performance shall increase in light, wisdom, and experience until they are able to manage it with great success.” Keller then comments, leaning on Psalm 1, “Trees don’t grow overnight. Meditation is a sustained process like a tree growing its roots down toward the water source. The effects are cumulative. You must stick with it. We must meditate ‘day and night’ — regularly, steadily” (161–162).

Questions arise not only because of our sin but our humanity. Owen knew this every bit as much as we do, if not far better. Anticipating our objection, Keller writes,

Owen is quite realistic. He admits that sometimes, no matter what we do, we simply cannot concentrate, or we find our thoughts do not become big and affecting, but rather we feel bored, hard, and distracted. Then, Owen says, simply turn to God and make brief, intense appeals for help. Sometimes that is all you will do the rest of your scheduled time, and sometimes the very cries for help serve to concentrate the mind and soften the heart. (Prayer, 161)

A huge difference lies between occasional realism and a daily pattern of resignation. There’s a world of difference between a lazy beginner and the wise veteran, who has learned the lost art and come to experience the third stage with regularity, despite the “sometimes” of dryness and distraction.

3) Enjoy Your God

In the final stage, we give vent, or give space, to the enjoyment (or crying out) begun in the second. We fan the flame of fitting affection for the truth in view. This is the high point of meditation — enjoying God in Christ — which fills our souls with “an answering response.” As Keller comments, we “listen, study, think, reflect, and ponder the Scriptures until there is an answering response in our hearts and minds” (55, emphasis added) — which leads us to prayer. According to Keller,

meditation before prayer consists of thinking, then inclining, and, finally, either enjoying the presence or admitting the absence and asking for his mercy and help. Meditation is thinking a truth out and then thinking a truth in until its ideas become “big” and “sweet,” moving and affecting, and until the reality of God is sensed upon the heart. (162)

And this “sensing of God on the heart,” through meditating on his word, issues in our response of prayer.

Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality. We may be responding not to the real God but to what we wish God and life to be like. Indeed, if left to themselves our hearts will tend to create a God who doesn’t exist. . . . Without prayer that answers the God of the Bible, we will only be talking to ourselves. (62)

So, we want our prayers to be prompted by and tethered to the intake of God’s word. “We would never produce the full range of biblical prayer if we were initiating prayer according to our own inner needs and psychology. It can only be produced if we are responding in prayer according to who God is as revealed in the Scripture” (60).

Not Just Truth but Jesus

Keller ends this blessed tenth chapter with Jesus himself as the chief focus of our meditation. Not only did the God-man delight in the word of God like the happy man of Psalm 1, but he himself is “the one to whom all the Scripture points” (163). As Christians, we learn to meditate both with him and on him.

In our reading and rereading and study and lingering over Scripture, we persist to know and enjoy not just truth but the Truth himself. For Christians, the final focus of our meditation is personal, and both perfectly human and fully divine in the person of Jesus Christ.