http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15042930/give-thanks-for-everything-really

There was a bucket of electric bouncy balls, not a baby, in my stomach. He just never stopped moving. Usually the jabs and kicks gave me comfort — “Call the doctor if you haven’t felt the baby move in a while,” they say. I had no reason to pick up the phone, so instead I came up with one that would keep me up all night.

“I wonder why he moves so much,” I said to my husband before bed. As he reached for the lights, I grabbed my phone. What does it mean if your baby moves a lot? I typed into Google. My stomach dropped as I read the first result: “High Fetal Movement Associated with Stillbirth.”

Like I said, I didn’t sleep that night.

Psalms and Search Engines

I wonder how many twenty-first-century tech-saturated Christian mothers, like myself, abide by their own translation of Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything let your requests be made known to Google.” When we remove prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, and — above all — God from the equation, we forfeit all chance of experiencing any lasting end to our motherly anxiety. We cannot type, scroll, click, and read our way to peace. There is no “peace of Google,” only the peace of God (Philippians 4:7). And for that, we must pray.

Which can be quite difficult for expectant mothers to do. Burdened for the children we cannot hold but deeply love, our minds tend to tumble down hypothetical rabbit holes: “How long has it been since the baby kicked? Shouldn’t the kicks be harder? Is the baby really growing? Am I eating enough? How much should I be eating?” Pounding heart, tight lips, it seems far easier to search, our fingers frantic, than to seek God in prayer.

That’s where the book of Psalms comes in. For millennia, restless saints have fled to its pages. When we lack our own words, enough calm, or even the desire to pray, the Psalms hand us hundreds of ways to talk to God. Consider, for example, how an anxious expectant mother might use Psalm 139 to pray for herself and her unborn child.

‘You See’

Because of the sheer fact that we cannot see our unborn babies, we often imagine what could be wrong. With the help of Psalm 139, we can turn from anxiety to adoration. King David’s words call us to wonder, rather than worry, over what man cannot see, as we praise God that his eyes keep watch over the children in our womb.

In the spirit of the psalm, we can begin by focusing on God’s omniscience over our blindness. “O Lord,” we might pray, “you have searched and known not only me, but also my child. You know when I sit; you know when my child stirs. You are acquainted with all our ways, from the words I will say soon, to the organ that will form next. In a word, your hand is upon us” (verses 1–5). What is dark to mothers — the womb, our unborn children, what lies ahead — is light to him (verse 12). Anxious about what we cannot see, we can adore the God who never stops seeing.

Nor has he ever not seen. His knowledge of our unborn children never began; it has always been: “Your eyes saw this child’s unformed substance an eternity before the pregnancy test came back positive. No part of this process has ever been hidden from your sight” (verses 15–16). As we say these words to our all-seeing God, we send them coursing through our unseeing selves. Wonder is a great antidote to worry.

‘You Are Sovereign’

Not only does God see what goes on within our stomachs and lives; he sovereignly oversees it all. We know we cannot watch our unborn babies grow, but that doesn’t stop us from thinking we can control our pregnancy, at least in some measure. That’s why we often flit from one search to the next — for control. We can praise God for so much access to life-sustaining information (it’s probably wise not to eat raw fish if every health institute says so), but we must not deceive ourselves. While we carry our children, God is in control of them.

Psalm 139 offers a fitting reminder, as David attributes action upon action, outcome upon outcome, to God alone. With David we declare, “You form this child’s inward parts; you knit this baby together in my womb. I praise you for the fearful and wonderful works of pregnancy. You are making and weaving this little person together” (verses 13–15). A pregnant mother can attend to the atoms in her unborn baby’s body no more than she can touch the moon — thankfully. We have not the power to form, to knit, to make, to weave. But our God does, and we have his ear.

What’s more, David affirms how God forms both bodies and days. Before the foundation of the world, God not only chose to create our children, but he determined the length of their lives. Through prayer we say to God and ourselves, “In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for this baby” (verse 16).

God didn’t pen our children’s stories into a dusty three-ring notebook, the kind that are always lying around, and then slam it shut. David says, “In your book were written.” Expectant mothers, our Father has a book! He is ever aware of its tales, of the lives of our unborn children (and everyone else). For what he has written, he will bring to pass. Whatever this trimester may hold, may our prayers lean into the sovereign God who holds it.

‘You Are There’

By this point, it’s easy to agree with David about the extent of God’s knowledge and power. His attributes are “too wonderful for [us],” too “high” to grasp and grip (verse 6). At the same time, Psalm 139 encourages mothers to rest assured that he is with us, in all his great and mysterious perfections.

David teaches us this lesson by taking us on a trip around the universe. He imagines himself up in heaven and down in Sheol (verse 8), east as the sunrise and west as the seas (verse 9). In each place, he finds God there. Amazingly, the Lord does not arrive after David, but leads David there himself (verse 10).

After David’s example, we can imagine ourselves walking through a hundred different high and low points of pregnancy (an exercise that may run our emotions through a pinball machine). Picture a doctor gesturing at a dot of flashing white, tears of joy springing to our eyes. There’s a heartbeat. A month later, that heartbeat seems too low, even inconsistent. We cry again, this time for fear.

Step back from each hypothetical. Turn to God and say, “During ultrasounds, you are there! Through worry-ridden nights, you are there! In the hospital room, you are there! Come what may, you are with me wherever I go, leading me, guiding me, holding me” (verse 8). As we praise his presence, his presence comforts us.

‘Protect This Child’

Toward the end of the psalm, after David has adored the all-seeing, sovereign God who is in his midst, he turns to petition, earnestly pleading for God to act (verses 19–22). Confident that God is over his life, he asks God to intervene in his life. In the same way, the more a mother recalls the power of God both to take and to give life, the more she will ask God to protect the child in her womb.

We pray confidently for God to protect our unborn children because we are confident that he can protect them. We ask him to decrease blood pressure, to increase growth, to remove hemorrhages, to induce labor — all because he can. And so we pray, with every mother’s blood-earnestness and a Christian mother’s confidence, “Oh that you would protect this child, O God!”

He delights in a mother’s pleas for her unborn child, which are themselves expressions of worship. We petition him because we know he is with us, listening to our cries. We petition him because we know that only an all-knowing, all-powerful God is able to sustain the babies in our bellies. We petition him because we know he loves those babies, more than we could understand.

Ought God’s thoughts about this pregnancy, then, be more precious to us than Google’s (verse 17)? A single search may produce 239,000,000 results (I just checked), but even that number has an end, a limit, a boundary. God’s knowledge is infinite, vaster than the sands on every shore (verse 18). His power, presence, and ability to protect likewise know no end. And — can you believe it? — this God is with us.

Audio Transcript

What future judgment will Christians face? The apostle Paul, writing to a church of believers, said to them, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10). To Christians he said that. And he included himself — “we must all appear”! In another place, he interrogated Christians by asking them, “Why do you despise your brother?” Despising other believers is ridiculous. Why? “For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God,” again speaking of believers and including himself here — “we will all” (Romans 14:10). Those pointed texts arrest our attention and cause us to think about a future judgment to come for Christians. So, no surprise, come loads of questions to us about these and other texts, like this email from a listener named Mae: “Pastor John, can you explain what kind of judgments Christians will face when Jesus returns?”

Well, let’s start with the absolutely glorious news about the judgment that we will not face. I mean, the accomplishment of Christ in dying for us and rising for us can be stated positively and negatively. Positively, he died to “bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). The enjoyment of the presence of God forever is the positive achievement of the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus.

No Longer Under Wrath

But the New Testament reminds us over and over again that we can state the good news negatively as well as positively — namely, we do not come under the wrath of God. He achieved a negative thing. This is not going to happen. Christ bore our sins. We won’t be punished for them. John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has [that’s now] eternal [that’s forever] life. He does not come into judgment” — whoa — “but has passed from death to life.” What a verse.

That doesn’t mean we don’t go to court in the last day. It means we won’t be condemned in court in the last day. We’re already acquitted, and the court will prove it. Romans 8:1: “There is . . . now” — and forever — “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Or Romans 8:33: “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.” There will be no successful charge against us at the judgment — none. First John 3:14: “We know that we have passed out of death into life.”

“If we are believing in Jesus, his death was our death. His punishment was our punishment.”

So, the judgment of wrath and punishment and final death are passed. They’re over for us. Jesus endured all of that for us if we are in Christ. If we are believing in him, united to him, his death was our death. His punishment was our punishment. God’s wrath was exhausted on him toward us. Therefore, Paul exults (with the verse I go to sleep on almost every night), “God has not destined us for wrath” — sweet — “but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.” I love those two verses. That’s 1 Thessalonians 5:9–10.

How God Judges Christians

So, if there is a judgment that will not condemn Christians, what other kind of judgment is there for us? That’s what’s being asked, I think. There is a dimension to the judgment that does not call into question our eternal life but determines what varieties of blessing or reward we will enjoy in the age to come.

And I know this can be disturbing to some people because “varieties of rewards” sounds like some people are going to be happy and others are not. But it’s plain from the Bible: there will be no unhappiness in heaven — none — no unhappiness in the age to come. Everyone will be as happy as he can be — all tears wiped away in the presence of the all-satisfying God (Revelation 21:4). But some people will evidently have greater capacities for happiness or greater avenues of happiness. Now, why do we think that? Why do we talk like that? We talk like that because the Bible teaches that we will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and we will be rewarded differently, yet everybody will be perfectly happy. That’s why we talk like that.

Remember Jesus’s parable? For example, the king goes away and then he returns, and he gives different rewards to those who invested his money differently. This is Luke 19:16–19. The first servant came to him, saying, “Lord, your mina . . .” Now, a mina is one hundred drachmas, and a drachma is about the price of a sheep. “Your mina has made ten minas more.” And he said to him, “Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.” And a second came to him saying, “‘Lord, your mina has made five minas.’ And he said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’” Now, that’s a picture, I think, of differing rewards in the last day of how we stewarded our lives for Christ in this world.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4:5, “Do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.” So, the judgment will take into account our heart motivations, not just our outward deeds themselves.

In Ephesians 6:8, Paul says one of the most amazing things about the final judgment for believers. He says, “Whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.” In other words, every single large or tiny good thing you have ever done as a Christian, whether any other human knows about it or not, will come back to you for good at the last day. “Whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord.” What a great incentive not to worry about who sees us in what we do or what rewards we get in this life. Everything’s written down, and God will make sure that any good deed we’ve ever done, seen or unseen, will be properly rewarded.

God’s Response to Our Evil

Then in 2 Corinthians 5:10, Paul says, “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” And that last word, “evil” — whoa! What does that mean? The new question that text raises is, What does Paul mean when he talks about us receiving what is due for evil things we’ve done? Now, if our sins are forgiven, which they are, and we’re acquitted in the court of heaven, which we are, does this mean there will be punishment to Christians for sins they’ve done? That doesn’t make sense, right? No, it doesn’t mean that.

I think Paul explains what he means in 1 Corinthians 3:11–15. It’s a very familiar text, but let me suggest this angle on it.

No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw — each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day [that is, the day of judgment] will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

What I think Paul meant when he said in 2 Corinthians 5:10, “each one [will] receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” — what he meant was that the way one receives evil is by having his bad deeds burned up, meaning, he loses the reward he would have received if he had acted otherwise. This is not viewed by Paul as punishment but as loss of reward. It’s not owing to God’s wrath against his child. Mark that: It’s not owing to God’s wrath against his child. It is simply a fact that it would be unfitting for God to reward the sins of his children. They know that, we know that, Paul knew that.

Now, mark this: True Christians, when that happens — when some of their life is burned up because it was worthless — when that happens, true Christians will not begrudge God for this loss. They will rejoice in the grace that they do receive, and their cup of blessing will be full.

So, that’s my sketch of the coming judgment. We will not enter into condemnation or punishment, but we will receive varieties of blessing, varieties of reward, different avenues of joy, different sizes of cups — but every cup full.