If I could go back and make myself read one article when I was 17, 18, or even 21, I think it might be this one. I would want to try to expand and reframe my naive ideas about dating, romance, and marriage. I would want to lay out a map for making wiser, more loving decisions about relationships. That’s how I think about this article: as a three-dimensional map for dating well.

But why would I choose this article for myself at that age? Well, for at least two big reasons. First, because nothing in my life and faith has been more confusing and spiritually hazardous than my pursuit of marriage was. My teenage years were a long string of relationships that were too serious for our age, went on too long, and therefore often ended badly and painfully. I hope that’s not your experience, but it was mine. And I’d love to save even of a few of you from the stupidity and heartache that plagued me (or lead those like me out of it).

The second reason is that I’ve been married for seven years, and I see it all — dating, romance, marriage — so much differently now. Eight years ago, I knew marriage a little like my 6-year-old knows Narnia. I knew a lot about marriage — from the Bible, from other books, from watching couples in my life — and I was enchanted by the idea of marriage. But I hadn’t stepped through the wardrobe yet. I hadn’t experienced the real thing. And the real thing is wilder, richer, and deeper than I imagined. If we could taste what covenant love is really like before we started dating, I believe we’d make far better decisions about when we date, whom we date, how we date, and when we marry.

I can’t give you that experience, but maybe something I say from the other side can help you see more than you have so far. If you desire to marry one day, I want you to experience the fullness of what God wants for and in a marriage. And to get there, we need wisdom from God. So consider this my letter from the forests of Narnia.

Dimensions of Healthy Clarity

As I look back on what I would have done differently in my journey to marriage, one of the main lessons I wish I had learned sooner would be to pursue clarity and postpone intimacy.

Now, I could say a lot more on the second half of that lesson (“postpone intimacy”) — and I have elsewhere — but here I want to press on the first half. What does it mean to pursue clarity in dating — and particularly as a Christian? What would clarity feel like if we found it? How do you know he (or she) is the one to marry? To answer those questions, I want to give you something of a three-dimensional map.

Most people today, even Christians, pursue clarity about dating by following their feelings. How do I feel about this person? Am I ready for this relationship to move forward? Do I want to marry this person? Those are good questions to ask. They’re just not the only questions. Wise people don’t dismiss their feelings, but they don’t wholly trust them either. They know we need more than feelings to make wise decisions and choices, and all the more so in dating relationships. They know there are at least two other dimensions to a healthy sense of clarity (think height, width, and depth): first, confirmation from our community. And then, often overlooked or at least taken for granted, the opportunity to actually pursue or marry a particular person. So we have three dimensions of healthy Christian clarity: desire, community, and opportunity.

Height: Clarity of Desire

First, consider clarity of desire. It’s good to want to be married. In fact, according to Scripture, the very desire itself is wisdom:

“He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22).
“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (Proverbs 31:10).

It’s good to look for a worthy spouse, and even better to find one. It’s good to want to be married. That doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of bad ways to pursue marriage (there are), or that the desire for marriage can’t be distorted and imbalanced (it can be). But God made most of us to want marriage.

Now, you don’t need to want marriage to follow Jesus. Some of the happiest, most godly people in the church never marry. The apostle Paul, for one, celebrated the goodness of lifelong singleness (1 Corinthians 7:7–8). But if you do want to be married, that desire isn’t something to hide or be ashamed of. God loves our longing to be married — to promise ourselves to one man or woman, to become one flesh, to bear and raise children if he wills.

Beyond that, we could say a lot about desire and feelings and attraction, but at its simplest, biblically speaking, we’re mainly looking for someone we can marry. We’re looking for someone with whom we can enjoy and live for Christ. Paul says to the widows in the church (and to all believers by extension), “You are free to be married to whom you wish, only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). Marriage, for Christians, is never simply about sex, or companionship, or children, or life efficiencies. We want to marry in the Lord.

We want to take in God’s word together, pray together, go to church together, serve together. We want our marriages to consistently and beautifully tell people what Jesus has done for us. We want our marriages to make us more like Christ, slowly but surely changing us into someone new, someone holy. That means that when we look for someone we can marry, we’re not looking first for something physical or financial or convenient or fun (though we will weigh some of these factors). We’re looking for God in one another and in our future together.

So, the first dimension of clarity is our own desire. Do I want to date or marry this person? And if so, am I convinced that my desire pleases God — that he wants a relationship like this for me? If we’re unsure what God might think about that, he often reveals his will in the other two dimensions of clarity.

The second dimension of clarity we need in dating comes through community. Of the three, this is my greatest burden for young believers today.

Dating often isolates us from other Christians in our lives. The closer we get to a boyfriend or girlfriend, the more removed we can get from other important relationships. Satan loves this, and encourages it at every turn. To resist him, we need to fight the impulse to date off in a corner by ourselves, and instead draw our dating relationships into those other important relationships.

Again, Proverbs is filled with wisdom along these lines:

“Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14).
“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice” (Proverbs 12:15).
“Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment” (Proverbs 18:1).

In other words, Lean hard on those who know you best, love you most, and are willing to tell you when you’re wrong. Through personal experience and counseling others, I have found that to be a golden rule in Christian dating, the rule that most often makes the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships.

“Lean hard on those who know you best, love you most, and are willing to tell you when you’re wrong.”

Only people who love Christ more than they love you will have the courage to lovingly tell you that you’re wrong in dating — wrong about a person, wrong about timing, wrong about whatever. Only they’ll be willing to say something hard, even when you’re so happily infatuated. Most peers will float along with you because they’re excited for you, but you’ll need a lot more than their excitement — you’ll have plenty of that yourself. You’ll need truth, and wisdom, and correction, and perspective. Lean hard on the people who know you best, love you most, and will tell you when you’re wrong.

Consider, then, three kinds of people who could be this kind of community for you in your pursuit of marriage (I’d even go as far as to say should be this kind of community for you). Which counselors would it be wise to involve in a meaningful way?

Church Family

First, avoid leaving your church family behind. We don’t usually think of our church family as part of our pursuit of marriage (maybe we even cringe at the idea), but as uncomfortable or inconvenient as it may sound, God gives the primary and final responsibility of our accountability to the local church (Matthew 18:15–20; Hebrews 13:17).

God means for the church to be the rough tread on the edge of the highway, making sure we stay awake and alert while driving in life, including in dating. If we don’t build our church families into our routines and our relationships, we’re likely to ride right off into a spiritual or relational ditch. The church, however, can surround a couple with structure, direction, and safety.

Now, this doesn’t mean you need to stand up during the announcements and give the whole church an update on your relationship or print a weekly update in the bulletin. But lean on fellow Christians, and especially some who are older and more mature than you. Let a few people you wouldn’t hang out with on the weekends into your thinking and decision-making in dating. Be accountable to a local church: plug in, get to know and be known by others, seek out people different from you, and draw them into what you’re thinking, wanting, and experiencing in dating. Don’t leave the church behind.

Mom and Dad

Second, lean into the love that made and raised you. “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12). It’s so simple, and yet it can often be challenging, and all the more so in dating. In our day, it’s increasingly unexpected to involve your parents at all. It seems old-fashioned and unnecessary. Parents are typically a formality once we’ve already made our own decisions — unless, of course, we want to listen to God and pursue marriage more wisely. Wisdom says, “Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old. . . . Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice” (Proverbs 23:22, 25).

Maybe we don’t see eye to eye with our parents. Maybe our parents aren’t even believers. Maybe our parents are divorced and disagree with each other about what we should do. Maybe one or both aren’t even interested in being involved in our relationship. We can’t force our parents to care or cooperate, but we can honor them, and we can think of creative ways to encourage them to be involved and to solicit their input and advice along the way. Our parents may be flat-out wrong, but most parents don’t intentionally want to harm us or keep us from being happy. They have known and loved us longer than anyone else, and genuinely want what they think is best for us.

What if we loved our parents more intentionally and more joyfully when we disagreed with them? What would that say — to them, to our significant other, to the rest of our friends and family — about our faith in Jesus? Lean into the love that made and raised you.

Real Friends

The next line of defense in dating will be the friends who know us best — and who love us and Jesus enough to hold us accountable. We don’t just need friends. Everybody has friends. We need real friends — friends who know us well, who are regularly and actively involved in our relationship, and who love us enough to ask hard questions or tell us when we’re wrong.

Even after God rescues us from our sin, pulls us out of the pit, and puts his Spirit inside of us, we still battle remaining sin, and we’re outmatched on our own. We need friends in the fight to help us see where we’re wrong or weak. Don’t wait for a friend to come ask you how things are going. Seek those few friends out, and share openly with them. You might ask each other questions like these:

What do the two of you talk about? What’s a typical conversation like?
How far have you gone physically, where will you draw the line, and in what situations do you experience the most temptation?
What are you learning about him (or her)? Are you moving toward or away from clarity about marriage?
How has your relationship affected your spiritual health, including prayer life, Bible reading, involvement in the local church, and ministry to others?

Does anyone ask you questions like these? Who are the friends who will go there with you? If you don’t have them, do you know anyone who could potentially become that kind of friend? Do you know anyone who might need you to be that friend for them? If you want to date well, do what it takes to have some real friends.

Depth: Clarity of Opportunity

We have the clarity of desire, the clarity of community, and now, finally, the clarity of opportunity. Our hearts and our community are not enough to give us the clarity we need. Our hearts will speak (through our desires), our friends will speak (through good community), and then God will speak (through opportunity). Really, God speaks in all three ways, but sometimes he speaks clearest in this last way. In other words, he speaks through his providence. The relationship works out, or it doesn’t. Circumstances line up, or they don’t. Feelings and timelines match up, or they don’t.

“If God withholds something good from us, it’s not because he wants to harm us. Ever.”

Sometimes, God gives the clarity we need in dating simply by doing something outside of our control. You might fall in love with someone, and your friends and family may think it’s a great idea, and marriage still may not happen. Maybe she doesn’t reciprocate; she prefers just being friends. Maybe he ends up dating and marrying someone else. Maybe she moves away for school or work, and the distance proves too far. God makes his will clear by clarifying our own desires, but he makes his will clear in other ways too.

Proverbs 16:33 says, “The lot is cast into the lap” — or the text, or the call, or the bouquet of flowers — “but its every decision is from the Lord.” Does that sound cruel? Why would God give us a good desire for something (or for someone), and then not give it to us? One of the most important lessons to learn about following Jesus is that there are a thousand good answers to that question.

If God withholds something good from us, it’s not because he wants to harm us. Ever. “We know,” Paul says, “that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). “No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11). No, God withholds good from his people when it’s not yet good enough — when he wants and has planned something better for us. So don’t assume that a good desire confirmed by good friends is good for you. Assume God knows what’s truly good for you.

As you pray and pursue marriage, trust God, in his all-knowing and unfailing love for you, to make his will for you clear in all three ways — desire, community, and opportunity.

September 10, 2021, was a day a father won’t forget. It wasn’t the day our eldest learned to walk. It wasn’t his first day of school (that actually came a few days later). It wasn’t the day he learned to ride a bike (“Dad, let go! Let go! I can do it!”). No, Friday, September 10, 2021, was the first time my son saw death.

And not just any death. This was “Grama Sally,” my wife’s grandmother. During trips to Los Angeles, our son had met Grama Sally, hugged her, talked with her, took pictures with her. He knew her. And yet there she was, lying strangely still — too still to be asleep — in a large, beautiful, wooden box, surrounded by flowers, pictures, and lots of tears. I remember his eyes — tiny vats swirling with confusion, curiosity, and fear. Looking around, he knew he should be sad, but he also didn’t understand enough to know why, which made the whole scene more unsettling. Whether you’re a father or a five-year-old, nothing can fully prepare you for moments like these.

I could write a dozen articles about that day, but for now, isn’t it interesting that my son could live five whole years and not be confronted with death?

Veiling Mortality

I started noticing how strangely absent death seems from everyday life when Ray Ortlund quoted a line about the Victorian era (roughly 1820 to 1914), when people talked more freely about death, but almost never about sex. And now, the opposite is true. The line sent me searching for days when death was a more visible member of society.

Grief in American society today is relatively discrete. We talk about “respecting the family’s privacy.” When someone dies, a group of loved ones put on some nicer clothes, attend a brief viewing, then a short service, and finally a burial, often with a reception afterward. All of this might take place in only half a day.

In the 1800s in Britain, however, people grieved very differently — and far more publicly. Widows, in particular, often wore elaborate gowns long after the funeral (sometimes for a year or even two). An entire fashion industry rose around death. This meant that, on any given day, it wasn’t strange to see someone grieving for all to see. Five-year-olds couldn’t avoid the dark clouds walking in and out of crowds. Their kindergartners were forced to ask questions our kids rarely think to ask.

Given how little time and attention (and fabric) we now give to death, should it surprise us that it blindsides us like it does? As a society tries to suppress and hide the reality of death, it inevitably becomes less prepared for it. I, for one, want to be ready when it comes for me — and it will come for me, and you, and everyone you know, unless Jesus returns first. As I help raise three young lives, one of my great burdens is to prepare them to die well.

Could Death Be Better?

When my own death draws near, I want to face it like the apostle Paul. I want to be as prepared for death as he was, so that I can live as fully as he did before he died. We could go to several passages, but Philippians 1 holds up the grave as boldly and beautifully as any other.

As he writes, he sits in a Roman prison, with no assurances that he’ll ever sit anywhere else again. His friends were afraid. After many scares before, this really could be it. “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). While others would have been consumed by worry, regretting all that would be lost and left undone, Paul embraced the prospect of the end, even a seemingly premature end.

A few verses later, he expresses confidence that God will deliver him from prison (verse 25), but that confidence doesn’t come from his circumstances. Everything he could see issued a different forecast. He knew he might die. And that haunting thought did not disturb him.

To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21)

When you read him, death doesn’t seem like death at all. Hope has somehow drained death of its shadows, of its bleakness. For Paul, death is like the demonized man in Mark 5, who broke through chains, cut himself ruthlessly, and cursed the sky for years — until he met Jesus. Then, people found him “sitting there, clothed and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15). Christ does that to death for all who live in him.

When he surveys what life and death offer him, Paul doesn’t merely tolerate and receive the latter; he prefers it. “Gain.” “Better.” “Reward.” He doesn’t despise his life in Christ on earth — “If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me” (verse 22). But he knew enough to gladly trade all he had now for what comes next.

Better Life by Far

Paul, like the rest of humanity, was born enslaved to the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15). Consciously or unconsciously, we grow up and live under the oppressive, terrifying reality that we will die. And that fear makes people do all manner of sinful and irrational things. Paul wasn’t immune to the dread that terrorizes millions. So what changed his perspective on death? What lens could he possibly put over the grave to see gain?

“Death is only better than life if death means getting closer to Jesus.”

He tells us just two verses later: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:23). Death is only better than life if death means living closer to Jesus. And it does for those, like Paul, who trust and follow him. As we step through the grave, “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). And he will be so stunning, so arresting, so satisfying, that seeing him will change us. “What we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Death will introduce us to a glory that will not only sweep us off our feet, but swallow and transform us.

One day, I’ll wake up in a better-by-far world, surrounded by better-by-far sights and tastes and opportunities, and I’ll experience it all as a better-by-far me. A better world, because Christ’s reign will be seen and felt in every inch and breath. Better adventures, because we’ll eat and work and travel and laugh and swim and reign with the one who made it all. A better me, because I will have never been more like him. That’s how death loses its sting. That’s how the prospect of losing all can grow to feel like gain.

Living to Die

This perspective doesn’t merely prepare us to die well, though. It also prepares us to live well until we die. And ironically, while dying well will mean living more fully than ever, living well will mean repeatedly dying to ourselves. Paul can say, “I die every day!” (1 Corinthians 15:31). What does he mean?

He tells us in Philippians 1. “If I am to live in the flesh,” verse 22, “that means fruitful labor for me.” And what would that fruitful labor be?

I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. (Philippians 1:25–26)

“While dying well will mean living more fully than ever, living well will mean repeatedly dying to self.”

Because he was prepared to die, Paul was freed to live, not for himself, but for others’ joy in God. In other words, he was freed to spend his life preparing people to die well, giving them reason after reason to live for Christ and long for heaven. He spent the little time he had on earth (even in prison!) looking for creative and costly ways to win and mature souls for the next world. He knew that dying well on his last day meant dying well every day.

And so if we want to live and die well, we die, as long as we have breath, so that others might finally and fully live in Christ.

The danger of drifting, spiritual or otherwise, is in just how subtle and comfortable drifting can feel. Often we don’t even notice it’s happening at all.

I grew up outside Cincinnati, Ohio, a far drive from any ocean. I can’t even remember a lake near our house. The largest body of water might have been the man-made pond next to the local golf course. So when I finally met the ocean, I would never forget it. I had never seen anything so large and alive and frightening — and yet my little brother and I could splash and wrestle in its wake.

I distinctly remember, on one of those early beach days, mustering up the courage to swim out a little farther, and then a little farther, floating over wave after wave, learning how they obediently march in rows and yet dance in their own way. And then, as happens to so many first-timers, I realized (with great fear) just how far I was from safety. Suddenly the waves were coming higher and faster, pulling me farther than I wanted to go. My feet searched frantically for the bottom. My arms and legs suddenly felt like logs, like they were somehow taking on water. I looked and looked along the beach, but couldn’t see my brother, my dad, my mom, anyone. Another wave crashed over my head.

In a panic, I swam frantically, and soon found my feet back on land, but I had learned just how easy and dangerous it is to drift away from shore. How much more dangerous, then, to drift away from Jesus — to realize, after weeks or months or years, that the waves of life have carried us farther away than we ever expected.

Focus or Drift

One mark of Christian maturity is learning that none of us passively drifts toward Christ, not even after we’ve followed him for years or even decades. The currents of the still-sinful soul, weathered by constant waves of temptation, still pull us out to sea. We can’t sluggishly float in place. We’re either swimming toward God or drifting somewhere else.

“None of us passively drifts toward Christ, not even after we’ve followed him for years or even decades.”

The writer of Hebrews had felt the undertow of sin battling our love for Jesus. After lifting up the supremacy of the Son in creation, in redemption, in authority, in glory, he writes, “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Hebrews 2:1). In other words, if we take our eyes off of this Christ, we’ll soon find ourselves further from him. In the life of faith, we either focus or drift.

For his immediate hearers, the tide threatened to pull them back into the Christ-less rituals of old-covenant Israel. Jewish persecution made following Jesus painful and costly, leaving some in prison (Hebrews 13:3). Many considered retreating from Christ to being mistreated with him. Our souls may drift along similar lines. We might drift because people we love hate the God we love, making belittling comments about our convictions or distancing themselves from us because of them. Or we might drift in other, very different directions.

We might drift after unrepentant sin, allowing some lust or bitterness or craving or envy to take hold and slowly drag our souls from safety. We might, like Demas, drift away into worldliness, slowly allowing our affections and imaginations to be absorbed with some distraction — deadlines and promotions, headline news, sports triumphs or losses, shopping trends and deals, social media controversies. We might even drift away because of a fixation on friends or family. Each of these loved ones is a gift of God meant to lead us to God, and yet how often do they instead become gods?

We might drift any number of ways to any number of places. The warning is that if we’re not currently swimming closer to Jesus, we cannot stay where we are. Paddling in place is not an option. And the tide will choose where we go — if we let it. The human soul is designed to wax or wane, to drive or drift. So do you know, in the moments of greater preoccupation and weaker resolve, where your soul tends to drift?

Greater Than Angels

Whatever ways our souls tend to drift, how do we counter the pull? By paying all the more attention to what we’ve heard about Jesus. The claim of the first chapter of Hebrews, that he’s greater than angels, may fall strangely flat on modern ears (like mine). We’re not awestruck by angels anymore. And so the argument’s largely lost on us — not at all because it’s a weak argument, but because we have weaker eyes, because we’ve grown ignorant to reality. Angels haven’t changed; we have.

We yawn when we should marvel (and often marvel when we should yawn). We scroll by when we should fall on our faces. We treat angels like puppies or kittens — adorable, desirable, cuddly, surely not wonderful and terrifying. That’s not how first-century Jews would have imagined angels. They might not have been comfortable printing them on children’s clothing.

If we could see angels, we would shudder and hide our faces. And Jesus, Hebrews tells us, is more frightening than a hurricane, more spectacular than a towering pillar of fire, more glorious even than the angels of heaven.

Because of Who He Is

Wholly apart from our tendency to drift, Jesus really is worthy of our whole attention. He really is endlessly fascinating. When my family visited Yellowstone, we came across two grizzly bears playfully wrestling in a field. We were far enough away to be completely safe, but close enough to see it all. I can still picture those enormous, furry brawlers running and tackling and rolling. No one had to convince us to pay attention or keep watching. Someone could have easily made off with our car, which we had left running.

“If we could catch a glimpse of who Jesus really is, we wouldn’t struggle to focus on him.”

Similarly, if we could catch a glimpse of who Jesus really is, we wouldn’t struggle to focus on him. In fact, we’d probably have a hard time noticing all the things that capture and consume so much of our attention now. When we read our Bibles and feel little, it’s like we’re scanning the field but can’t see the bears. Or we can, but they’re too far away and fuzzy. When we stop reading our Bibles, we’ve stopped even looking in the fields. We’re driving right by while we stream some series on our phones.

Hebrews 1 is a trailer to the glory we’re missing when our eyes drift away from the field. The boy born in Bethlehem is the heir of all things — in part because he made all things (Hebrews 1:2). This Jesus is the beauty of the universe — “the radiance of the glory of God” — and he upholds that universe with his all-powerful breath (Hebrews 1:3). And though he is the pure, spotless image of God, he stepped between the wrath of God and the enemies of God, to make his enemies his brothers. After dying on the cross, he proved even death was under his feet, rising from the grave and then ascending in even greater glory than he came.

And if you could see him as he now is, even mouth-stopping, sword-wielding armies of angels would grow dull by comparison. He’s always worthy of more attention, and he rewards whatever focus we give him.

Because of Who You Are

We pay exceedingly close attention to Jesus because he’s worthy of such attention, and because we know how easily we drift away from him. “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” We keep our eyes fixed on him because of who he is, and because of who we are — tempted, distracted, sometimes wandering.

Staying close to Jesus means steadily moving toward Jesus. Scripture’s language of “walking by faith” is a great encouragement here. There are times to run (or swim) hard, but most of the Christian life will be walking with Jesus against the drift, like the disciples who walked with Jesus during his ministry. In an age of driving, riding, flying, and hurrying, many of us have lost the art of walking. Resisting the tide often means just taking the next few steps — reading the next chapter, praying the next prayer, preparing for the next Sunday gathering. As we do, we’ll find, on some days and in some seasons, that the waves actually turn to serve us, to lift us higher and farther in the right direction. With the Spirit’s help, like surfers, we can actually tame and enjoy the currents we once feared.

As we fight the drift within us, we don’t have to try to finish our race today. We just need to go as far as we can in these few hours with our eyes on Jesus.

When suffering comes, we often stop and ask God to give us what we need to suffer well. Sometimes, the suffering itself unexpectedly becomes his answer to that prayer.

One experience of suffering — with the presence and help of God — can prepare us for some future experience of suffering. Scripture actually goes even further and says that when we receive and experience suffering in a certain way, we can actually begin to rejoice in our suffering. I haven’t suffered as much as many have, but I’ve suffered enough to want to know how that happens, how we can rejoice even while still in the midst of our sufferings. What miraculous filter could I put on my hardest days to make me respond like that? How could joy possibly take root and bloom in the dark and dry ground of suffering?

One of the clearest texts along these lines is Romans 5:3–4. If you’ve heard these words over and over before (like some of us have), read them again, but slow down enough to hear just how startling they are.

We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. (Romans 5:3–4)

Who in your life talks about suffering like that? We don’t merely receive and tolerate suffering when it comes; we rejoice in it. Our hope doesn’t merely survive suffering; suffering strangely makes our hope stronger. Suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope. Has your experience of heartache and loss felt like that?

Before Suffering Comes

Now, suffering in itself does not produce hope from scratch. Suffering will not create hope where there is none. But it can serve to strengthen and refine an already living hope. No matter what we suffer and for however long we suffer, no one suffers well without a real and abiding hope in God. Look at the verses immediately before:

We have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings. . . . (Romans 5:2–3)

“No one suffers well without a real and abiding hope in God.”

Before suffering can strengthen our hope, we first need to put our deepest, strongest hope in God. Those who can rejoice in the hope-building experience of suffering can only do so because they have some hope to build upon. They already rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

That means the first step to suffering well is to die to all our confidence in self and learn to rely instead on God. If suffering turns you inward (as it tends to do), you’re likely to fall into downward spirals of despair, like so many do. If, however, suffering lifts your eyes to someone above and beyond this pain or problem, then it can become a staircase into greater courage and joy. The staircase may be arduous and harrowing, but it can carry you onto firmer ground and into fairer fields — if you are not own your hope in suffering. Suffering will not stoop to serve you if you will not bend your knee before God.

Suffering Produces Endurance

We all can see how hope might help someone embrace and endure suffering, but the apostle Paul doesn’t settle for mere survival. He demands that suffering strengthen hope and serve joy. So how does that happen? First, by showing us how much God can do when we come to the end of what we can do.

Part of the suffering of suffering is the creeping suspicion that we won’t make it, that this will cost us more than we have to give, that tomorrow will be the last straw. If you’ve felt like that, Paul knows what you feel: “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death” (2 Corinthians 1:8). That doesn’t sound like hope rising. That doesn’t sound like rejoicing. How could God rewrite a death sentence and make it give life? Next line: “But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).

We find hope at, and beyond, the end of ourselves — at the end of all we can do and say and feel — if we find God there. Suffering produces hope because it shows us, like nothing else can, that we can handle more than we think — with God. In other words, suffering produces endurance. As we lean on God, he strengthens us with all power, “according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11).

Endurance Proves Character

Second, suffering strengthens hope by revealing and refining who we really are. We may not like what suffering reveals, but it unveils us. We thought we were patient, until the car died for the third time this year. We thought we were kind and gentle, until our child pitched another fit at bedtime. We thought our faith was firm and unshakeable, until our spouse got sick, and then more sick, and then more sick. Suffering shakes our souls, bringing sin to the surface, revealing the worst in us.

And, if God has begun his work in us, suffering also reveals and nurtures the God-wrought best in us. The apostle Peter describes the beauty and worth of this painful process:

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6–7)

The miracle of Spirit-filled patience shines brightest in moments that test patience. The miracle of kindness sparkles most where we expect to find irritation and rudeness. The miracle of love looks most miraculous when we have every painful reason to focus on self. Comfortable circumstances may draw a veil over these miracles, but suffering draws light to them, exposing the hidden work of God within us.

In other words, endurance produces proven character. Our patient perseverance through suffering, with joy, says we are real — that we are not the sin-enslaved soul we once were, but a new creation by God, one he promises to complete (Philippians 1:6).

Character Produces Hope

If we could see that we’re real in Christ, how would that make us feel about our future? If we’re real — if the King of heaven lives in us, and intercedes for us, and promises to come back for us — then our future is overwhelmingly bright and secure no matter how unbearable our present may feel for now. In other words, character produces hope.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2–4)

“Through suffering, we see that we are someone we could never have been without grace.”

Suffering demands endurance, allowing us to see what God can do when we come to the end of ourselves. Enduring hardship with God reveals what’s happening inside of us, as he conforms us degree by degree to the glory of his Son. As that happens, we get to see glimpses of the wonder of who we are in Christ. Through suffering, then, we see that we are someone we could never have been without grace.

Bigger Than Relief

So, instead of praying that God might preserve our hope through suffering, we might begin praying that God would build our hope through suffering — that this season of darkness actually might leave us nearer to and more confident in him. Instead of merely praying that God would heal us and restore us to where we were, we can pray that he would use suffering to grow us and lead us forward to where he wants us to be.

I’ve learned more about suffering well from Vaneetha Risner than from anyone else on earth. She’s suffered in more ways than most — diagnosed with post-polio (a painful and debilitating condition), lost an infant son because of a doctor’s mistake, and then in the midst of the hurricane of her pain and loss, was abandoned by her husband. And yet by God’s grace, she’s suffered more joyfully than most. When you meet her, you cannot explain her — but for God.

She says this about the transforming power of her trials:

I cried out asking God to help me to trust him, to reconnect, and to find hope in what seemed like impenetrable darkness. I needed peace and I couldn’t find it anywhere besides Christ. It was then that my faith radically changed. I found an inexplicable peace and hope that I had not experienced before — my easy trouble-free life had not yielded anything but an enjoyment of the present. But suffering was producing something unshakeable. Suffering is a catalyst that forces us to move in one direction or another. No one comes through suffering unchanged. (“Suffering Will Always Change You”)

Suffering will change us. The question is whether it will change us for the better, driving us nearer to Jesus and making us more like him. By all means, when suffering comes, pray that God would give what you need to receive it, to survive it, to endure it. But don’t stop there. Ask him to do what he has done again and again for Vaneetha. Ask him to make suffering a servant of your peace and hope and joy in him.

“I haven’t met anyone in a while, and I haven’t been on a date in a couple of years. I’ve thought about trying a dating site — what do you think?”

Having ministered among college and post-college men and women for more than a decade, I’ve heard some version of this question again and again. Each time, it’s clearer to me that Christians today are increasingly dating in a different world from the one I did (and I’ve been married only since 2015). Many experts have already observed the obvious: dating (like so much of life) is changing rapidly because technology is regularly revolutionizing everyday life. And dating websites aren’t the only flashpoint.

“A guy from church started texting me. What should I do?”
“She hasn’t texted me back in a week. What does that mean?”
“He liked a couple of my old posts on Instagram. Does that mean he’s interested?”
“She started following me yesterday. Should I ask her out?”
“She still uses Facebook. Should I be worried?”
“My friend found someone on an app. Should I try that?”

You’ve likely heard other questions (or asked them yourself). If you had to ask all the questions in one, you might ask, Does technology help or hurt Christian dating?

Blessings of Technology

As we ask about the potential benefits and dangers of technology in dating, I need to say up front that technology was a massive blessing in my wife’s and my story. We met at a wedding and dated long-distance for two whole years. Some 95 percent or more of our interactions before our wedding were made possible by technology. Our honeymoon was the longest stretch we’d ever spent in the same city.

Three days after we met in Los Angeles, I flew 1,911 miles away to Minneapolis. Why didn’t the relationship end right there? Because she had acquiesced and given me a special nine-digit code (a much longer story), which I could then type into a small plastic box and immediately hear her voice anytime anywhere, even from faraway snow-covered hills. Fifty years ago, every phone was attached to a wall. One hundred fifty years ago, you couldn’t make a phone call. And that’s to say nothing of the opportunities of social media and instant messaging (or cars and planes, for that matter!). Imagine dating in a world where you could talk only face to face with people nearby or else write long letters (which might take weeks or months to be delivered).

Were it not for planes, phones, and Wi-Fi, my wife and I probably wouldn’t be married. And with technology, long-distance dating wasn’t only possible, but came with its own advantages and benefits. So I thank God for technology, and specifically for how technology can serve dating and marriage.

Hurdles of Technology

Now, someone might read about our story and conclude technology is all blessing and no curse when it comes to dating. The reality, however, is that the blessings (which are real) come with equally real dangers and consequences — and all the more so in the pursuit of marriage.

“We were made to know and be known in real time and shared space.”

While technology makes many aspects of relationships easier (or even possible!), it can make other aspects more challenging. Probably the highest hurdle of technology is achieving and maintaining meaningful levels of relationship. We were made to know and be known in real time and shared space, to experience the kind of love and joy that’s possible only through physical presence (2 John 12; Romans 1:11–12). Technology can effectively (and even beautifully) complement that kind of togetherness, but it can’t replace it. We’re learning this again and again and again (for evidence, revisit the heartaches and challenges of the last three years).

For sure, technology allows us to have and keep many more relationships (or, in this case, allows us to “meet” many more men or women whom we might date), but technology struggles to create meaningful relationships where there wasn’t one already. Even how we talk about technology confirms its less-than-ideal role in our relationships: “I’ve tried everything else and come up empty, so I’m thinking about trying a website.” Technology connects more dots over larger distances, but the dots are unavoidably fuzzier (no matter how high-definition our cameras become). We simply can’t get to know people virtually the way we can in person (I mean, we call them virtual interactions). I would argue, then, that technology is weakest in what dating relationships need most: clarity and depth.

People pursuing marriage want to get to know each other well enough to decide whether to make an exclusive, lifelong, for-better-or-worse vow. So how well is technology helping us make that decision? Well, it depends on how we use it.

Two Kinds of Technology

I recently stumbled onto a new way to see both the benefits and the hurdles of technology in the pursuit of marriage. In his book The Life We’re Looking For, Andy Crouch helpfully differentiates between two kinds of technology: devices and instruments.

Devices, he says, are kinds of technology that discourage human effort and eventually replace human labor altogether (the furnace, the phonograph, the Roomba). Instruments, on the other hand, encourage and extend human effort and ingenuity (the bicycle, the piano, the telescope). Here’s how Crouch describes instruments:

There is a kind of technology that is easily distinguished from magic — a kind that involves us more and more deeply as persons rather than diminishing and sidelining us. This kind of technology elevates and dignifies human work, rather than reducing human beings to drones that do only the work the robots have not yet automated. It does not give us effortless power but instead gives us room to exert ourselves in deeper and more rewarding ways. (134)

As he goes on to observe (and this is where the distinction becomes hyper-relevant for dating), our phones can be devices or instruments, depending on how we use them. “With the right software it can become the ultimate instrument for any number of exercises of personal heart, soul, mind, and strength. Or, of course, it can serve as the ultimate device” (146). Our phones can encourage and extend our effort and ingenuity, or they can discourage and replace them. And perhaps never more so than in how we woo and date one another.

Two Kinds of Men

One question we could ask about technology and dating, then, would be, Is the way we’re using technology — phone calls, text messaging, social media, dating websites and apps — encouraging and extending the right kind of effort? Or is it rewarding (or at least compensating for) laziness? And while this question can go both directions, I have men particularly in mind, because I believe God wants men to bear a greater responsibility for leadership and initiative in marriage, beginning with dating. In the hands of the right kind of men, technology can strengthen and multiply blessings in a relationship. In the wrong hands, however, it can become a relational curse.

So when does technology help in Christian dating? When it helps us (again, men in particular) rise to meet the demands of love, rather than helping us avoid them. Technology helps when it draws the right kind of risk-taking initiative out of a man. And it helps when it serves what happens when we’re face to face (like we’re meant to be in relationships). Technology hurts when it replaces initiative and displaces presence.

The kind of man who uses technology well in dating wears the selflessness of Philippians 2:3–4, even when he’s online: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” He wears the intentionality of 1 Corinthians 10:31: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” He wears the humility of 1 Peter 5:5: “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another.” Above all, he puts on love (Colossians 3:14), even when shielded by a keyboard.

Dating Devices or Instruments?

Let’s try to apply these principles to some real technology today. For single women, how do the men pursuing you use their phones?

Take social media, for example. Do they use social media to flirt and signal interest in order to avoid the possibility of rejection (device)? Or are their interactions with you marked by honest and intentional initiative (instrument)? Is their general presence online the typical exhibition of impulsiveness, laziness, and self-gratification (what social media companies prey on)? Or is it refreshingly selfless, considerate, self-controlled, and valuable to others (instrument)? I’m not encouraging you to over-analyze every post or like, but on the whole, what patterns do you see?

Or what about dating apps or websites? Do their profiles exaggerate their better qualities and hide their weaknesses (device)? Or are their profiles refreshingly honest, modest, and Godward (instrument)? When they call, are most of your conversations meaningful and beneficial (instrument)? Or are they shallow, meandering, and self-indulgent (device)? Are their texts consistently thoughtful and caring (instrument) — or listless and cavalier (device)? Do they text in ways they wouldn’t speak to you face to face (device)?

We could ask dozens of more questions. In short, are phones drawing the right kind of effort and intentionality out of the men interested in you? Men, you can ask some of the same questions of women you’re interested in, but over time men will inevitably (and rightly) set the tone in relationships. Technology can help relationships, and technology can hurt them. Unfortunately, many naively assume the former, while living the latter.

What Do You Want from Dating?

Another good way to assess technology’s role in your dating might be to ask, What do you really want from dating? For what it’s worth, this question is a good one for how we use technology in every area of life. Far too often we assume technology is helping us achieve what’s important to us. Often technology promises to help us, and convinces us it’s helping, but only ends up distracting and undermining us.

“Technology can facilitate clarity or impede it; it can accelerate clarity or slow it.”

When it comes to dating, then, what do you want to accomplish? Have you even thought of dating in those terms? As I’ve said elsewhere, the great prize in marriage is Christ-centered intimacy; the great prize in dating is Christ-centered clarity. Technology can be a wonderful vehicle to that kind of clarity (I know, because airplanes and phones helped bring my wife and me together). Technology can also be an obscurer, hiding concerns and dangers we would easily spot face to face. Technology can facilitate clarity or impede it; it can accelerate clarity or slow it. So, are the ways you use technology in dating helping you see each other more clearly? Over time, are your calls and texts and posts and video chats helping you each decide whether you want to marry?

If you want the short-lived, adrenaline-filled pleasure of thin, low-commitment romance, technology has very effectively reproduced those relationships by the millions. Billion-dollar companies are wholly devoted to this kind of “love.” You’re just a few quick swipes from your next fling. If, however, you’re looking for a deeper, safer, more durable, more satisfying, more Christ-exalting love — for the kind of holy intimacy and security only a covenant in Christ can provide — if you want to live out the mystery of the gospel in a lifelong union (Ephesians 5:32), if you want to see and enjoy more of God in the harrowing and thrilling trenches of marriage, then technology may still help you, but only when it complements and encourages what can happen face to face.

If you were teaching the Lord’s Prayer to someone for the first time — a child, a neighbor, a co-worker, or friend — which line would you feel the most need to explain?

Our Father in heaven,hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come,your will be done,     on earth as it is in heaven.Give us this day our daily bread,and forgive us our debts,     as we also have forgiven our debtors.And lead us not into temptation,     but deliver us from evil. (Matthew 6:9–13)

As you rehearse those familiar lines, which one begs for more explanation? Maybe it’s the first, Why do we call the God of the universe “Father”? Or perhaps the second, What does it mean to “hallow” something, much less a name? What about the will of God — what is it and how would we recognize it on earth? Or that haunting last line, What kind of evil is surrounding and threatening us?

However we might answer, we have Jesus’s answer to the question. He chooses to say more about just one line, and it’s not the one many of us might think.

Do You Pray for Your Sin?

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he started with the kingdom of God, the will of God, and the glory of God — you can almost hear the replies, Amen! Amen! Amen! And then, as suddenly as he entered the manger, he climbed down into the nitty-gritty of our earthly lives: “Give us this day our daily bread . . .” Give us all we need for today. Who could refuse such provision?

The next line, however, may have been more jarring:

. . . and forgive us our debts,     as we also have forgiven our debtors.

When you pray, Jesus says, remember how you have offended God. Remember how you’ve failed him again today, how far short you have fallen of his kingdom, his will, his glory — and then ask him for forgiveness.

Whatever else you pray, he teaches, make sure you pray for this. Each day that you wake up, you will need to eat and you will need to be forgiven. Your stomach will rumble and your soul will rebel. So pray and live accordingly.

Hunger Pangs of the Heart

Most Christians pray daily for bread (if not for God to provide it before it comes, then to thank him once it’s on the table). How many of us, however, pray as persistently for our sin as we do for our meals? Why might that be?

Well, for one, because we viscerally sense our need for food. We ache. We may be able to skip meals here and there, but not many and not for long. And when we do, our bodies let us hear about it. We take it for granted, but there’s a magic tying our brains to our intestines, telling us when we need to eat. We don’t have to constantly record what we eat to survive; our bodies push notifications when it’s time for lunch or a snack or a drink of water. We’re less likely to forget food because our hunger eventually shouts over everything else.

For various reasons, though, we often have a harder time hearing the rumblings of our sinful hearts. The heart has its own voice, but it doesn’t physically overwhelm us like hunger can. The pangs of the heart reveal as much or more as hunger, but we learn to live with them. Restlessness. Anxiety. Irritability. Sluggishness. Impatience. Grumbling. If we notice them at all, we learn to excuse them instead of addressing them.

The symptoms of remaining sin are saying what Jesus clearly taught: We need to be forgiven — and far more often than we want to acknowledge. The prayer, “Forgive us our sins,” is an honest, gracious, and daily reminder of a constant need.

Isn’t Forgiveness Finished?

We also might not pray more often for forgiveness, though, because we assume we’ve already been forgiven. If our debt is already paid in full, why would we need to keep asking God to forgive us? When Jesus died on the cross, he announced that his atoning work was complete: “It is finished” (John 19:30). So why would he teach us to pray as if forgiveness was somehow an ongoing need?

Justification — full acceptance with God, through faith alone — is not a new need each day, like our need for daily bread. If you’re justified by grace through faith today, you do not need to be re-justified tomorrow. “Since we have been justified by faith,” Romans 5:1, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Since we have been justified, we have peace with God — and that peace isn’t undone by today’s or tomorrow’s sins. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Eternal condemnation isn’t a weed that creeps back into the garden overnight. For those truly in Christ, it’s dead and gone for good.

“By regularly asking for forgiveness, we draw the finished work of Christ into today’s temptations and failures.”

Still Jesus teaches us to pray (and keep praying), “Forgive us our debts.” Why? Because justified sinners are still sinners, and sin still disrupts our communion with God. Sin cannot damn the truly justified — their debt has been canceled, their curse lifted, their wrath removed. That doesn’t mean sin isn’t offensive or damaging to relationships, including with God. By regularly asking for forgiveness, we draw the finished work of Christ into today’s temptations and failures — and we renew and sweeten the fellowship we enjoy with him because of that finished work.

We see this dynamic when James exhorts us, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16). These believers have already been justified, but they’re still sinning and still feeling the awful consequences of sin, which leads them to pray, confess, and ask for forgiveness. And as they pray, they push back the painful havoc sin causes. In this case, they’re healed.

How Not to Be Forgiven

We still haven’t heard Jesus explain this line in the prayer, though. After he finishes the prayer, he specifically returns to the petition for forgiveness:

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:14–15)

He doesn’t dig further into God’s will or shed light on the dangers of evil; no, he impresses on them how spiritually urgent it is that they forgive. He warns them that their prayers — all their prayers for everything else — will fall on deaf ears if they harbor bitterness and withhold forgiveness. The warning’s baked directly into the prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The prayer for God to forgive presumes we’ve already done forgiving ourselves — so have we?

At least as often as we’ll need to eat, we’ll need to be forgiven. And almost as often as we’ll need to be forgiven, we’ll need to forgive. And we won’t be forgiven if we don’t go and do likewise. So who do you need to forgive? We cannot pray the rest of the Lord’s Prayer in any meaningful way if we refuse to forgive like he does.

Forgiveness Makes Prayer Possible

Jesus’s simple prayer reminds us that our sin problem is a daily problem. Every day, we do what we shouldn’t and don’t do what we should. We say what we shouldn’t and don’t say what we should. We think what we shouldn’t and don’t think what we should. The Lord’s Prayer exposes the rotten leftovers of our mutiny against God. And it reminds us, as often as we pray, that God still forgives — even today, even you, if you’ll humble yourself and ask him to.

“Even before Jesus received the nails, the thorns, the beams, he was teaching his friends how to receive the cross.”

Jesus didn’t say, “Remember your sin and wallow in shame and guilt.” No, he taught them to bring their sin and expect forgiveness in return. And why could they presume to be forgiven? Because, he knew his wounds would soon make this kind of prayer possible. He didn’t just teach them how to pray; he would die to give their prayers life and power before the throne. Even before he received the nails, the thorns, the beams, he was teaching his friends how to receive the cross.

So, when you pray, plead boldly for forgiveness in the name of Jesus. And before you pray, forgive like God so gladly forgives you.

Some of us fall out of Bible reading because we fail to make time for it. Busyness crowds out the minutes we might otherwise give to sitting and hearing from God. There’s always something that didn’t get done yesterday or something relatively urgent that’s come up today. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it, just how many things in our little worlds seem to trump listening to the one who made them all?

For others, it’s not busyness that gets the best of us, but a subtle cynicism about reading the Bible. How am I ever going to understand this? It’s hard to keep getting up extra early and setting aside precious minutes when you’re not convinced you’ll be able to make sense of what you see, when you might finish and strangely feel further from God, when you’re chasing a full heart morning after morning and yet often walk away just scratching your head.

If you’ve felt that way before, you’re not alone. In fact, even the men who wrote the Bible know something of what you feel. The apostle Peter says of the letters Paul wrote, “There are some things in them that are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). Think about that: Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote books in the Bible, and yet even he struggled to read Romans or Thessalonians (or whatever particular letter he had in mind). If he could write on behalf of God and have a hard time understanding Scripture, we shouldn’t be surprised if we do too.

And I, for one, definitely do. I’ve battled to get through the census records in Numbers. I’ve labored through the kidneys, livers, and “entrails” of the Levitical laws. I’ve grown weary of the repetitive failures of Israel in 1–2 Kings. I’ve sometimes struggled to see what Hebrews sees in the Old Testament. Much of the imagery of Revelation is still a mystery to me. And so, I regularly find these clear and accessible words from Paul all the more meaningful and encouraging:

Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. (2 Timothy 2:7)

Understanding Is Possible

This is an amazing acknowledgment from Paul to Timothy. He says, in essence, “I know some of what I am writing won’t make sense to you immediately, and you’ll be tempted to think you cannot understand it — but you can. So, don’t give up too easily. Don’t assume this is above you. Assume that God can make his words clear to you.”

Those apart from Christ cannot understand the things of God. They flip through the Bible’s majesty and wisdom in vain. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). But not you. If you’re in Christ, you can see things that they can’t. You can understand things that they can’t. Where they see foolishness and irrelevance, you see unspeakable beauty, a radiant window into reality. Not because you’re smarter or more educated or merely a better reader, but because you’re not a natural person anymore; you’re a supernatural you, with a supernatural mind and heart and eyes.

“Because you’re someone new, you can understand more of the Bible than you might think.”

Or as Paul says elsewhere of natural people, “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart” (Ephesians 4:18). But not you. You’re not alienated from God anymore. Through the cross, he’s brought you near, and in bringing you near, he’s softened your heart and unlocked your mind. The God who flooded all creation with light “has shone in [your] heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). That’s who you are when you open the Bible.

And because you’re someone new, you can understand more of the Bible than you might think.

In Everything

Not only can you understand more than you think, but the apostle goes even further: “ . . . the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” If God lives in you, nothing in the Bible is above you — not the genealogies of Numbers, or the sacrificial laws of Leviticus, or the prophetic visions of Ezekiel, or the apocalyptic imagery of Revelation. With God, all are within your reach.

Lest we think Paul’s talking only about the verses immediately before this one, he comes back to the same reality in the very next chapter: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). As much of the Bible that has been breathed out by God — all of it! — that much is now profitable for you. Even on the most obscure, most confusing pages, God means to teach you, to exhort you, to correct you, to train you, to equip you — he means to speak to you.

“Even on the most obscure, most confusing pages, God means to teach you.”

Before any of that can happen, however, we first have to understand what God is saying — which is exactly where God promises to help us: “The Lord will give you understanding in everything.”

Varied Means of Understanding

None of this means we just sit alone with our Bibles until we understand everything. No, God gives the gift of understanding in a hundred different ways. Remember, most Christians in the history of the world didn’t own a Bible (much less carry it with them everywhere in their pockets). They depended on the regular reading and reciting of Scripture in community. From the first church to today, believers have depended on faithful teachers to rehearse, explain, and model the words of God for them.

And God has multiplied pathways to understanding in our day — first and foremost through our local churches, but then through messages, articles, books, study Bibles, online courses, commentaries, podcasts, and more. So understanding may come in any number of ways. The point here, however, is that you really can understand what’s in this book — everything that’s in this book, Paul says.

Now, to say that we can understand everything in the Bible is not to suggest that we will understand everything immediately and fully. We won’t — and certainly not the first (or second or even tenth) time through. God can give us understanding in every passage without giving us understanding of every part of a passage. He also often chooses to give understanding, not immediately, but over years or even decades. As we keep reading (and living), familiar verses will emerge with new or deeper meaning and relevance. Some questions will be answered slowly. So don’t expect to understand everything now, but expect to understand something now — and then more tomorrow.

Ask God

Up until now, we’ve seen only that we can understand more than we may assume. You should be asking how. What makes this kind of supernatural reading possible? How do the lights come on?

Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

On our own, we can’t understand the Bible. If God leaves us alone with this book, it wouldn’t be worth getting up early, pouring more hours in, and pressing through difficult verses and chapters. We would search and ask and wrestle in vain. But if it’s God who makes things clear, then he can overcome our limitations and blind spots. You can understand the Bible because God will give you understanding. When you read, he’s not just over your shoulder; he’s inside of you — in your eyes, your mind, your heart — showing you what you’d never see on your own.

The one who reveals himself in the Bible wants to make himself clear. He’s not content to have divinely inspired words on the page; he wants them written on our hearts. He wants to see understanding, and satisfaction, and transformation — and so he won’t leave you alone with your Bible. This may be why Paul ends the letter the way he does: “The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you” (2 Timothy 4:22). We need the present, spiritual help of God in all we do all the time, and especially in understanding his word.

Think Hard

This understanding, however, doesn’t float down from the clouds and land softly on our heads. No, God gives the gift of understanding through the hard work of reading well. This verse demands almost as much as it promises: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” This won’t come easily, Timothy. Yes, God is the one who gives understanding, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have to work for it.

Isn’t it strange that some of us hear that God sovereignly gives understanding, and we assume that means we need to do less? Satan teaches this kind of calculus all year round (and not just in Bible reading).

No, 2 Timothy 2:7 is far more like God’s words to Joshua before Israel entered the promised land:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. . . . Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:8–9)

“I will be with you” didn’t mean “You won’t have to fight.” Along with his promise of help and protection, God gave Joshua a charge: “Be strong and courageous.” Fight all the harder because you know I’ll fight with you and for you.

So, when you open your Bible, be strong and courageous. God will be with you wherever you read. Don’t be discouraged or intimidated. Think harder and longer because you know the Lord loves to give you understanding.

I wonder how many people in his day knew the apostle Paul as a guy who made and fixed tents. Surely many did. When he went to Corinth, he went to see Aquila and Priscilla, “and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade” (Acts 18:3). He had been doing this for a while. He was well-acquainted with goat’s hair. He could probably tie his favorite knots without looking. He knew all the ways holes were made and how to mend them. I imagine, as it is with most trades, that some days he wished he could choose another one.

I wonder how many knew the apostle Peter as a guy who caught fish. Surely many did. Even after Jesus died and rose and appeared to his disciples, where did he go to find his friend? Where Peter had spent so many long days and longer nights, where Jesus had first found him years before — fishing (John 21:3). He knew what each kind of fish smelled like (and if he forgot, his clothes could remind him). He had been through serious storms. He knew the best place to drop an anchor and the best times to cast the nets — and he knew what it was like to lift an empty one (like that night the risen Jesus suddenly appeared).

I wonder how many knew Jesus as a guy who built tables and chairs. We know some did. When he returned to his hometown to preach, his former neighbors asked, “What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” (Mark 6:2–3). They were surprised by his words because they had grown so used to seeing him with saws and hammers and nails. He came not only in flesh and blood, but in sweat and toil. A man of splinters and acquainted with setbacks.

Each of them altered history with their ministry (and none more than the God-man). Each of them also spent much of their life doing ordinary, even tedious work (perhaps even more ordinary than what lies before you). And each of them knew that work like theirs, done well, is anything but ordinary.

Man Goes Out to Work

We would do our work differently next year, wouldn’t we, if we could see even our ordinary work through the wider eyes of God. So where could we go to see what God sees in our work? I love the glimpses we get in the wild and wondrous world of Psalm 104.

The psalm, like so many psalms, is meant to awaken awe and joy in our souls. It opens, verse 1, “Bless the Lord, O my soul!” But this psalm takes a less-traveled road to worship. When the psalmist sees the disconnect between what he believes about God and how he feels about God, he lets his mind wander over hills and through valleys (verse 8). He walks along springs and wades into oceans (verses 10, 25). He watches for badgers and listens for birds (verses 12, 18). Creation was his chosen hymnal, with all its familiar melodies and surprising key changes.

But we were talking about ordinary work — and the psalmist gets there. Watch how man enters the scene: “The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly,” verse 16. “The high mountains are for the wild goats,” verse 18. “He made the moon to mark the seasons,” verse 19, “the sun knows its time for setting.” Verses 21–23,

The young lions roar for their prey,     seeking their food from God.When the sun rises, they steal away     and lie down in their dens.Man goes out to his work     and to his labor until the evening.

Man goes out to his work, and puts in a full day. It feels a little anticlimactic, right? The trees climb into the heavens, the mountains shake with wildlife, the lions roar their hunger for all to hear, the moon ushers in fall and winter and spring, the sun chooses when the sky goes from blue to red to purple to dark. . . . and Paul walks across town to mend another torn tent. Peter loads his boat for another day at sea.

The psalmist sees something in man’s work, even the dullest, most wearying work, that we so often fail to see and experience in ours.

Manifold Work of God

Notice, the man of verse 23 wasn’t headed to a corner office with a nice desk and big windows. He wasn’t writing code for some revolutionary technology. He wasn’t overseeing warehouses on multiple continents. He was in a field, doing physical labor — no phone, no email, no sophisticated equipment. Just a man and his hands against the thorns and thistles. His ordinary work would make most of ours today (even the most physical) look pretty extraordinary.

“Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening.” Very next verse, listen to this: “O Lord, how manifold are your works!” — trees and mountains and lions and the work that man can do — “In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.” The ordinary work of man is one of the manifold works of God. Your work is one of the manifold works of God. No other creature on the planet can do what you do. What you can do in an hour or 2 or 8 with your mind and hands and gifts says as much or more about God as a sunset or a canyon or thunderstorm. Do you believe that? Do you work like it’s true?

“Only God could conceive of a creature capable of doing the work you’re called to do.”

Only God could conceive of a creature capable of doing the work you’re called to do. Every working human you meet (white collar or blue collar; paid or unpaid; student, employee, manager, or stay-at-home mother) is a living canvas covered in the wisdom and creativity of God — whether they believe in him or not, whether they see the glory in their work or not. That they can do what they do, whatever they do and however well they do it, reminds us of just how much more God can do.

God’s Pleasure in Your Work

We haven’t seen enough in Psalm 104 yet, though. Not only is our ordinary work one of the manifold works of God; our ordinary work is one of the satisfying pleasures of God. After traveling over mountains with the wild goats and through caves with the rock badgers and over seas with sea monsters and into fields for a normal workday, the psalmist sings,

May the glory of the Lord endure forever;     may the Lord rejoice in his works,who looks on the earth and it trembles,     who touches the mountains and they smoke! (Psalm 104:31–32)

“The God of the universe genuinely enjoys the universe he’s made — the one we get to live and work in every day.”

Not, may we rejoice in his works. No, may he rejoice in his works. God’s not just putting on a show that a few nature-loving people might enjoy. No, he loves high mountains and winding valleys; he loves full moons and brilliant sunsets; he loves badgers, storks, and wild donkeys — and the everyday work we do week after week. He rejoices in what we’ve done, because it’s another glimpse of all he’s done.

The God of the universe genuinely enjoys the universe he’s made — the one we get to live and work in every day, the one he designed as a gift for his Son (Hebrews 1:2). He rejoices to see what normal humans can do in a day — and all the more so when that work rises from a heart set on him. Even when everyone else seems to completely overlook what we’ve done, he sees and he smiles, because he sees the dim, but brilliant reflection of his own work.

So, as you prepare for another year of work — perhaps hard, perhaps thankless, perhaps “ordinary” — ask God to help you see the work through his eyes. Ask him for some of the pleasure he takes in what you do.

I imagine the tears really came once he could finally get the words out.

How many times had he and his wife sat and cried together in silence? How many times had they had the same aching conversations? How many times had they talked about names? How many times had they held someone else’s newborn? How many times had they thought she might be pregnant? How many times had they asked for a child?

And here he was, buried in their arms. The dream they had stopped dreaming. The son they thought they’d never meet.

Like many first-time fathers (myself included), the man couldn’t find the words. In this case, however, he literally couldn’t speak. When Zechariah finally met his son, he could only ask for something to write on. He didn’t get to taste the boy’s name on his lips for eight whole days. I vividly remember meeting our firstborn. I can’t imagine feeling all I felt those days in silence. It might have killed me to try.

So why had God held Zechariah’s tongue? When the angel Gabriel came to tell Zechariah what God was about to do, the old man couldn’t bring himself to believe it. “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years” (Luke 1:18). The angel didn’t take kindly to his lack of faith.

I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time. (Luke 1:19–20)

Zechariah held his long-awaited son in silence because he had sinned against the God who had opened his wife’s womb. He — a priest — had dismissed what God had plainly said. And so, God gave him nine quiet, painful months in front of the mirror. Every time he tried to speak, he was reminded of how he had failed. His speechlessness said what no one else could hear: “I have sinned.”

And then, as easily as he had shut Zechariah’s mouth, God opened it again.

Taste of Forgiveness

If a man has been silent for nearly a year, when he finally does speak, everyone leans in to listen. So, when his prodigal tongue returned, what did Zechariah say? This is where the tears must have flowed.

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,     for he has visited and redeemed his peopleand has raised up a horn of salvation for us     in the house of his servant David. (Luke 1:68–69)

And then, a few verses later, he says directly to his son,

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;     for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,to give knowledge of salvation to his people     in the forgiveness of their sins,because of the tender mercy of our God. (Luke 1:76–78)

Had God’s mercy ever felt more tender, more real to Zechariah than when, holding his answered prayer, he could finally form words again? God forgives, son. God really forgives. He forgives sinners like me. He really is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Go and tell them forgiveness is possible, because God has come.

Could it be any more fitting that the boy was named John — “graced by God”? And so Zechariah was. And so we are.

Who Can Forgive Sins?

Not long after, John’s long-awaited cousin was born. An even more miraculous child. Forgiveness incarnate.

As Jesus began his ministry, he drove a stake in the ground that he had come to declare and achieve forgiveness. As he was teaching and healing one day, a crowd gathered — a crowd so thick that a group of men couldn’t get close enough with their paralyzed friend. Determined, the men opened a hole in the roof and lowered their friend to where Jesus was. Of all the things Jesus could have said, notice how he responded: “When he saw their faith, he said, ‘Man, your sins are forgiven you’” (Luke 5:20).

The scribes and Pharisees who heard him were furious: “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Luke 5:21). They asked the right question, but drew the wrong conclusion. Jesus corrected them, and in an unforgettable way.

“Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” — he said to the man who was paralyzed — “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” (Luke 5:22–24)

And the paralyzed man did what he had not done in who knows how long: “Immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God” (Luke 5:25). His words were beautiful, but he didn’t need to say a thing. His legs said it all. This man healed my failing body. Far more than that, he forgave my wayward soul. He forgives. God really forgives.

Forgive Us Our Sins

This forgiveness wasn’t held out to a few especially defiant sinners. This was the deep and daily need of every human soul. When his disciples asked him how to pray, Jesus’s response was strikingly brief, simple, and to the point. “When you pray,” Jesus told them, say this:

Father, hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come.Give us each day our daily bread,and forgive us our sins,     for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.And lead us not into temptation. (Luke 11:2)

Notice, Jesus prayed a lot, but he never had to pray that part of the prayer. No, he simply knew what everyone else needed most every day. Like him, they needed food for the day and protection from temptation; unlike him, they needed forgiveness for when they fell short. And fall we would, again and again (1 John 1:8). We were, each one of us, brought forth in iniquity and conceived in sin (Psalm 51:5). And while that old man died when we believed, we still have to face him every day.

Jesus never sinned, but he knew just how seductive sin could be (Hebrews 4:15). He knew how much sin would cost him. He came to cancel sin, and so he taught us to plead for forgiveness.

Forgiveness in Flesh and Blood

Until Good Friday, forgiveness had been a promise — real, but unseen. As the nails went in and the beams rose high, however, forgiveness broke into sight, painted in red for all to see. They seized him without warrant, tried him without justice, and beat him without mercy. And yet, even as they showered him with hostility, he prayed for them. And what did he pray? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

And then, from the weakness and humiliation of the cross, with barely enough oxygen to breathe, he spoke that forgiveness into another longing soul. One of the criminals beside him said, “We are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong. . . . Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:41–42). Forgive me my sins. And with one of his very last breaths, Jesus replied, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Has the possibility of forgiveness ever been clearer? Has the wonder of forgiveness ever been more blinding? From the just nails of torture to the just reward of paradise in just one sentence — forgiveness.

“God had always been forgiving people through faith; now he had the blood to prove it.”

And in the next moments, he finishes paying for that unthinkable pardon. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46). Dying didn’t give him the authority to forgive — he had that before the world began. No, dying justified what had been happening since the garden (Romans 3:25). God had always been forgiving people through faith; now he had the blood to prove it.

Through This Man

After Jesus rose from the grave, he appeared to his disciples and ate with them. As they talked, he gave them a tour through Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms to show them how every part pointed to him. And then he summed up the lesson, saying, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46–47). Forgiveness promised. Forgiveness purchased. And now, forgiveness preached far and wide throughout the world.

And that’s exactly what the church did. When wind and fire came down from heaven at Pentecost, what did the apostle Peter say? “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’” (Acts 2:38). Remember, Peter had tasted the riches of God’s mercy firsthand — “I do not know him. . . . I do not know him. . . . I do not know him.” And when, later, God sent him to the centurion to finally and fully welcome the nations into the church, what did he say then? “To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43). And when Paul boldly stood in the synagogue in Antioch, telling Jews to repent and turn to Christ, what did he say? “Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you” (Acts 13:38). The whole city gathered the next week to hear more. Could this forgiveness be true?

“In a world entrenched in sin and shame, the church became a lighthouse of forgiveness.”

In a world entrenched in sin and shame, the church became a lighthouse of forgiveness. Thousands traded the burden of guilt for the joy of rest. Countless millions have joined them since. Like Zechariah, they’ve been confronted with the horror of their sins against God. They’ve tasted its bitter consequences. And they’ve found forgiveness — lying in a manger, laboring in Nazareth, lifted on a cross, leaving the grave, and now Lord over all.

When he was born, forgiveness. When he died, forgiveness. When he rose, forgiveness. When he ascended into heaven, forgiveness. And in his wide and wondrous wake, forgiveness. Do you still wonder, this Christmas, if you could be forgiven?