Waiting on the Lord is not passive. When we are waiting on the Lord, there is plenty to keep us busy. We have an entire book riddled with the will of God to be busy about. Just because we are waiting on the Lord for one thing does not mean that we have pushed pause on everything else he has told us to do. No, we keep going in what we know until God brings about what we don’t know.

There is a regular trap I fall into as a homeowner. Something will break, wear out, or become damaged and I will take a look and then nod my head in resolution. Under my breath, I’ll say something like, “I’ll take care of this myself.” It hardly ever works out the way I intend.
I have lumpy drywall repair jobs, badly swinging screen doors, and half-done leaf raking jobs as witnesses to what I am and am not capable of on my own. It’s actually not that big of a deal; I learn a little something with each attempt, and my family indulges these ventures into the unknown with good-natured humor. Mostly. So my disposition toward trying this stuff is likely not to change in the future.
When it comes to your home, or your car, or your whatever, it’s fine to take matters into your own hands. You roll the dice on your own ability and accept the coming result. But then there are other times when it’s very much not fine to do that. Saul, the first king of Israel, is a case study in this respect.
Despite having all the promise in the world – he looked like a king, sounded like a king, commanded like a king – the reign of Saul was marked with impatience. Time after time, when he should have exercised restraint he instead charged forward. When he should have exercised faith, he took matters into his own hands. And in 1 Samuel 13, the Lord had enough:
“You have done a foolish thing,” Samuel said. “You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command” (1 Sam. 13:13-14).
So what had he done?
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According to Paul, we should not take matters into our own hands. It’s not that there’s not justice to be served; there very well might be. But it’s not for you or I to administer it because we aren’t capable of doing so in a true and good and noble way. This belongs to the Lord. When we execute our own sense of vengeance, whether big or small, we are expressing our lack of faith that God can and will do it on His own. We are communicating instead that our way is better. But God is just. Justice will be served, and it will be served in a far better and more appropriate way that we could ever deliver it.

Jesus isn’t interested in the minimum. When we have enemies, we might reasonably just try and stay away from them, but Jesus won’t settle for that. He calls us to love them. When we are wondering how many people we reasonably have to love and care for, Jesus won’t settle for that. He calls us to recognize every person in our pathway as a neighbor. When we are wondering just how many of the commands in Scripture reasonably apply to us, Jesus won’t settle for that. He calls us to take up our cross daily and follow Him.
No, Jesus isn’t interested in the minimum of anything. In so many ways, Jesus calls us to the unexpected. Unexpected love, unexpected sacrifice, unexpected loyalty. So it is when we come to the subject of revenge. Here’s how He put it:
You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you (Matt. 5:38-42).
We might reasonably assume that we can give a little payback here and there to those who have wronged us, but here again Jesus pushes us well beyond the minimum. According to Him, not only should we not pay others back for what they’ve done, but we should so forego our need for revenge that we move into generosity. And boy, that’s a hard thing, because we feel that desire down deep in our souls.
We have been treated unfairly, maligned unjustly, and pushed down unkindly, and someone ought to pay for it. How do we deal with that deep down desire for revenge? We fight it with truth – specifically, with truth about who God is. Here are four such truths to snuff out that flickering flame of vengeance in our hearts:
1. God is active.
Saul had been wreaking havoc on the early church. There was a literal trail of bodies in his wake, and he was just getting wound up. But that all changed with a dramatic encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road and the great enemy of the church became her most ardent advocate.
I’m reminded of how, in those first days after his conversion, the early Christians did not know whether to trust him or not. Who could blame them?
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As a discipline, as we look deeper – past the surface level feeling and into the deepest part of our need. That’s when we find true renewal. That’s when we will turn to the true bread. To the true light. To the true way. to the true vine. When you start to feel any of those things, don’t just take a nap. Look deeper. Don’t be afraid to come to the end of your rope because when you do, you’ll find the true source of renewal waiting there.

In a sense, our lives are a constant rhythm of depletion and renewal. This rhythm happens over and over again, several times a day.
We deplete our reserves of calories and so we feel hungry. We are renewed when we eat. And then we do it again.
We deplete our reserves of energy and so we feel tired. We are renewed when we sleep. And then we do it again.
We deplete our reserves of hydration and so we feel thirsty. We are renewed when we drink. And then we do it again.
These rhythms are so natural to us, so often repeated, that we don’t even think about them any more. We simply respond when we sense the depletion and then experience the renewal. When it comes to our souls, though, the process is less natural. It takes more conscious thought and intentional choice. And the reason why it does is because of our propensity to try and deal with the depletion we are experiencing using lesser means of renewal.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are in that daily rhythm. You have been working all morning, busy with meetings, agenda items, and to-do lists. You have been concentrating hard, and that concentration is interrupted by an embarrassingly loud grumble from your belly. You clearly have depleted your reserves and are in need of renewal. But instead of eating a sandwich, you lay down in the floor and try to take a nap.
Weird to think about, but in a similar way this is what we do all the time in a spiritual sense.
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Today, and every day, we will come up against the hard commands of Jesus. And the temptation will be for us to regard Him as ungenerous. As uncaring. As persnickety. Anything but loving. But here is where we come back not to what we think in the moment, but what we know to be true. We know it to be true that Jesus loves us. Every command is evidence of that love.

God tells us to stop, and God tells us to start. The Bible is full of prohibitions, and the Bible is full of exhortations. Regardless, the “do’s” and the “do not’s” are filtered through God’s love.
We know that right? We think we do. We think we know the reason God tells us to do certain things in service to Him and others is not because He needs us to serve Him, but because He loves us. He knows that the best way to live is to live in this fashion, and He loves us enough to tell us so.
Similarly, we think we know that the reason God tells us not to do some things is not because He is a cosmic killjoy; it’s because He is a Father who wants the best for us. He doesn’t want us to waste our lives or settle for less than the best, so He tells us to flee from this and turn away from that.
We think we know that, but when it comes to actually living out these commands, we begin to question. We question it especially when God tells us to stop doing something we really enjoy doing. It’s in those moments we start to wonder if God really loves us, because if He does, then why would He want to take something away from us?
In other words, we tend to think of prohibitions as exceptions to love.
But all of God’s commands are filtered through His love. Even the painful ones.
Case in point is the rich, young ruler.

But in asking, “How would you like me to pray?” we are actually pressing in. We are inviting more disclosure. More knowledge. More intimacy. We are choosing to step closer rather than step away, and this is what a true friend does. A true friend presses in. And when we press in as friends, we might actually be surprised at the answer to that question.

Friendship is work.
The older I get, the more convinced I become that it’s true. That’s because when you’re younger, you have natural and regular points of personal connection with the same group of people. You see them every day at school, you play beside them on the court or field, you sit next to them at lunch. These are friends, sure, but they are friends by association. Or, if you’re a little more cynical, they are friends of convenience.
But as you get older, you become more established. You acquire more and more responsibilities. The schedule gets busier. And as a result, friendships are affected. You no longer have as many of these natural and regular connections, and as a result, you have to work at friendships. Every relationship has a cost, and you have to subconsciously weigh the value of that relationship against the cost in time, resources, and energy it will take to maintain and grow it.
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And now, much as He did on the seventh day then, after He created life in us in Christ, He stands back in Sabbath. Not because He’s tired, but because He’s finished. When Jesus hung on the cross, His pronouncement was one that has great meaning for the followers of Jesus and the children of God. It is indeed finished. We don’t need to strive any more. We don’t need to improve on what God has done. The work He has done in us is His work, and it is very good. The call for us now is to Sabbath along with God, reflecting on and enjoying His finished work in creation. Creating us in Jesus.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That’s how it all begins. And when I say “all” I mean all. This is the source of all things. It was an event that is absolutely unrepeatable. Unreproducable. Unobservable – because God was the only one there. Out of nothing, God made “everything.”
God created not out of boredom, because eternity was getting a little stale. Not out of loneliness, for God is completely and totally sufficient in and of Himself. God created out of love. It’s not unlike the reason why we have children. Some people have kids because they’re lonely or because they feel like there is a void in their lives. But often times, when kids come into the picture, it doesn’t necessarily fix that hole; it might put a band aid on it for a while, but it will come back. The best reason a husband and a wife have children is out of an overflow of love for one another. They love each other, and they want that love to spill over into others as well. So they have kids.
Before anything was created, there was an inexhaustible amount of love among the members of the Trinity. And that love spilled out into the creation of all that we see and know. So in the beginning God created. He created the molecules and the cellular division. He created the ecosystems that work in tandem with each other through His common grace. He knit together the vast number of individual species in all their glorious variety. He set the orbits of the planets in such a way that the tides on earth don’t rise more than they should. He planned night and day to be an appropriate amount of time to support different life systems in different areas. God not only created, but He created in such a way that all of His creation fits together in a harmonious way.
But let’s not stop there either. For in as much as God created the physical universe, He also created things that are invisible to us and yet are integral for the way we live. Take time, for instance. God thought that up, too, in the same way He thought up the Venus fly-trap or the brown trout. This too sprang from His creativity.
And so the process of creation went for six days. The heavenly bodies. The creatures and plantlife of the seas and the air. Then humanity, stamped and made uniquely with the imprint of the image of God. And then, quite suddenly it seems, creation is over. The end and conclusion comes at the end of day 6, as recorded as chapter 1 closes and moves into chapter 2, beginning in verse 31:
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. But the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”
That’s how the account of creation ends. And at first glance, it doesn’t seem to end with a bang, but with a whimper.
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Because of God’s mercies that are new every morning, and because we are His children, we are growing in our inner selves younger – growing to look more and more like the true children of God even while our outer selves are growing older. Such is the grand and glorious paradox of Christian aging. What does that mean for us? It means that as Christians, we do not have to chase the ever-elusive promise of youth. We do not have to fix our eyes on the vanity of the physical. It means that we can still steward our bodies, but we can not have our entire self-worth and value rest on them. 

I recently went to a yearly checkup, and the doc (who looked to be about 16, in my estimation) was explaining to me the results of my blood work, blood pressure, weight, and the rest of it, led her explanation with these words: “When you reach a certain age…”
I knew what she was saying. Blood work aside, I’ve got an ache in my left leg, and I don’t know exactly how it got there. But it’s there, and even when I’m typing these words, it’s kind of throbbing down my side. Stuff like this happens to me from time to time; it’s not a big deal, but it does happen, and it reminds me that I am indeed aging. We all are. The law of entropy which tells us that natural processes only run in one direction – that is in a degrading direction – is applicable to our physical bodies. We are deteriorating creatures.
And yet for the Christian, there is a glorious paradox that comes in aging – one that causes a great measure of joy when you could feel an increasingly measure of sorrow that you cannot do the things that you were once able to do. Here is how Paul would frame this paradox:
Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Cor. 4:16-18).
There’s no pulling punches here, but rather an embracing of two simultaneous realities for the Christian.
The first reality is that of aging. That our outer person, our physical bodies, are on the downhill.
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As we trust Jesus and follow Him, we can also feel the freedom of knowing that God has created us each individually, each with different personalities and traits, with skills and experiences all our own. All of these things come together in the actual fashion that we carry out Jesus’ command. In other words, we observe the guardrails, but we practice discipleship with some measure of individuality. And that is a wonderful thing.

I’m not a great cook.
Early in our marriage, I wanted to make boxed mac and cheese for dinner, and because we did not have any margarine in the cabinet, I substituted vegetable oil. The results were… slick.
Then, several years later, I accidentally used baking soda instead of baking powder in a batch of pancakes I was putting together. The results were… sharp.
There have been other missteps over the years, but as with all things, they have become fewer and fewer the more I have practiced. In fact, I’ve even found in some cases that I don’t even need to use a recipe any more. Not always, but sometimes, I’m able to go off script. I can season according to taste or preference rather than following a step by step recipe. The ability to do that comes with time and experience; it happens through trial and error. Though the basics of cooking a dish remain the same, it can be adapted and customized based on the person cooking it and the people it’s being cooked for.
That, in some ways, is the way discipleship works.
If you look to the call of Jesus in Matthew 28, there are a lot of observations we can make about it:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20).
We can observe clearly that this call is rooted in the authority of Jesus, and that He doesn’t only command the task to be done but also promises His presence in doing it.
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Jesus is not afraid of your investigation. He’s not afraid to invite you in – to bring you close – because He knows who He is. And He knows what He is offering. There is no guile, no insecurity, no anger at those who are truly seeking.

There is no insecurity in the Son of God.
He’s not like us. We subtly beg for compliments, we subversively week affirmation, we passive aggressively look for allies – but not Jesus. Jesus knows what He’s about. And He knows that what He offers is the only thing that truly satisfies.
It’s against that backdrop that we find the very simple but profound invitation of John 1. To set the context, John the Baptist was the religious draw of the day. With his eccentric dress, his biting rhetoric, and his fearless demeanor he challenged the religious establishment calling all who heard his message to repent, for the kingdom was at hand.
But John also knew that he was only a messenger; his entire life was meant to point to another. And so in John 1, when Jesus came walking toward him, it was the perfect thing to do for him to deflect the attention from himself and onto Jesus:
“Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).
There were those who heard John say this – those who had been following John himself. But hearing the pronouncement, they stopped following John and started following Jesus. And the Bible tells us that Jesus, knowing these two men were following Him turned to them and asked them a simple question:
“What are you looking for?” (John 1:38).
The truth is, they didn’t know. At least not yet. They didn’t know what they were getting into. They didn’t understand the journey Jesus was about to take them on. They didn’t grasp the fullness of what it meant to truly follow Jesus. So they returned Jesus’ question with another question:
 “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?” (John 1:38).
That’s when Jesus said four words that changed their lives. And four words that can still change your life:
“Come and you’ll see” (John 1:29).
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