Sometimes, the solution to our spiritual struggles is less spiritual than we imagined.

Maybe you walk in a spiritual wilderness, afflicted by distressing doubts. Maybe a dull apathy settled upon you some time ago. Maybe you live in a land where joy feels far away.

You might imagine that the main solution to these spiritual struggles is, well, spiritual: hold more firmly to God’s promises; draw near to him more regularly; search out hidden sins. And you might be right. But maybe, just maybe, you need to hear counsel like John Newton’s (1725–1807):

Sometimes when nervous people come to me, distressed about their souls, and think that is their only complaint, I surprise them by asking if they have no friend in Cornwall, or in the north of Scotland, whom they could visit; for I thought a ride to the Land’s End, or John o’ Groat’s House, might do them more good than all the counsel I could give them. (Letters, 389)

Sometimes, our spiritual struggles come not because we have neglected God’s word but because we have neglected his world. We have walked through life wearing sunglasses and wondered at the darkness. We have lived with headphones on and questioned why we can’t hear.

We may indeed have spiritual issues to address. But our first solution may simply be this: open your eyes and ears and wonder at the world God made.

Where Wonder Dies

By wonder, I mean a wide-eyed awareness of God’s creation that leaves us hushed, self-forgetful, and brimming with joy. Such wonder quiets cares and awakens worship. It gilds ordinary moments and dignifies daily labors. It composes and calms, reminds and recalibrates, adds poetry to prose. Even a little wonder can do wonders for the soul.

But some of us rarely look through the window of wonder. We are too distracted by other attractions, even though they lend far less cheer to heart and mind. Perhaps two allure your attention.

The first is probably not surprising. On average, we Americans check our phones some two hundred times a day, or about once every five waking minutes. “With the smartphone,” Nicholas Carr writes, “the human race has succeeded in creating the most interesting thing in the world” (The Shallows, 233). But this “most interesting thing” has a way of rendering the real world uninteresting. Life looks drab in the smartphone’s glow.

You don’t need to be addicted to your phone, however, to lose your wonder. Another more surprising attraction draws and keeps many for far too long. Some have called it “the devilish onrush” of the modern world; others, “the cult of productivity and efficiency” (The Art of Noticing, xv). Many of us really like getting things done — and fast.

People made in the image of a creative God ought to value productivity. But “the cult of productivity” is something different. Those shaped by this cult don’t simply like getting things done; they dislike not getting things done. And so they have little patience for stillness and silence, meditation and marveling. Unproductive feels unbearable.

So then, the phone and the to-do list, entertainment and efficiency, digital bombardments and hustle-bustle busyness — often, these are the enemies that steal our wonder.

How Then Shall We See?

These enemies are also difficult to resist, even when you know what they take from you. The sight of a real mountain may seem dull compared to a digital mountain — or the mountain of work we’d like to get done. Reclaiming wonder takes effort. It takes a willingness to pin down our twitchy thumbs and endure the sight of unchecked boxes as we reorient our vision to “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely” (Philippians 4:8).

I find help from two habits that draw from God’s creative pattern in Genesis 1:1–2:3: Daily look upon God’s world and call it good. Weekly rest in God’s world and be refreshed.

DAILY ATTENTIVENESS

Habit 1: At least once daily, attend — truly attend — to one of the wonders God has made.

This first habit borrows from Clyde Kilby’s “means to mental health,” where he gets more specific: “I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are.”

At least once a day, in other words, find something unentertaining and unproductive, some flower that unfolds its beauty only under the sun of patient attention. Press through the discomfort of undistracted inefficiency and slow down. Look. Listen. Notice. Consider something God created and “be glad” that he spoke it into being.

“Sometimes, the solution to our spiritual struggles is less spiritual than we imagined.”

As the biblical writers show, we do not lack wonders to choose from. The sun gives one reason for gladness (Psalm 19:1–6); insects give another (Proverbs 30:28). Gentle rains show one kind of beauty (Psalm 104:13); stormy winds show another (Psalm 148:8). We find unspeakable variety in God’s world — from sheep to sharks, earlobes to earthworms, tree rings to the rings around Jupiter — but they all share the glory of God’s original “good” (Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31).

And if the objects of our wonder are many, so too are the means for observing them. The creativity of God invites creative exploration. Maybe journal daily just a line or two about something you observe. Or try your hand at some modest poetry. Or reclaim lull moments (like waiting or walking) for noticing. Or build a five-minute sanctuary in your afternoon where you simply sit, pray, and see.

Throughout Genesis 1, our God took daily pleasure in the world his words had made. So, why not adorn your own days with an answering “good”?

WEEKLY REFRESHMENT

Habit 2: Weekly, set apart extended time to get lost in the wonders of God’s world.

Daily attentiveness has a way of delighting us in the midst of our labors, sending us back to our screens and our tasks a little more free. But our souls cry out for something more than snatches of wonder. We want to hear more than a passing melody, want to see more than a corner of the canvas. We want to give our attention to the wonders of God’s world long enough to get lost in them.

Scripture’s celebrations of creation bear the marks not simply of attention but of extended attention. In Proverbs 30:24–28, the wise man’s appreciation of small creatures is exceedingly big. Our Lord Jesus showed a similarly patient pleasure in creation. He knew the ways of the wind and the signs of the skies (John 3:8; Matthew 16:2–3); he sat before wildflowers with enough awareness to see splendor greater than Solomon’s (Matthew 6:28–29). The wise care about wonder; they also know that wonder can take time.

Some of us feel wonder so rarely because we rarely (or never) walk through a whole day or even afternoon with the phone silent, calendar clear, and to-do list empty. We rarely let creation or those around us set the day’s agenda. And so the trails near home go unwalked, the best of books lie unread, quiet birdsong goes unheard, deliciously complex meals go unmade, and the images of God within our own home go unobserved, unmarveled.

Both in creation and among his old-covenant people, God set apart one day in seven for the rest that leaves room for wonder. Though Christians are not bound to keep the old-covenant Sabbath, God’s original six-and-one pattern still holds wisdom. But even if we choose a different interval, we need some kind of rhythm that refreshes the deepest parts of us.

Wonderers and Worshipers

Creation holds “untold resources for mental health and spiritual joy,” writes John Piper (When I Don’t Desire God, 197). But as he emphasizes, these “untold resources” do not belong to creation itself. They belong to the Creator. And so, we look to creation to see the Artist, not simply the art; we listen for the Author in every line we read.

In Psalm 148, the psalmist’s reflections follow a wonderful pattern: in meditating on sky, earth, sea, and man, he follows God’s creative work from day 4 to day 6 (Genesis 1:14–31). He puts his finger to paper and traces his Father’s lines, seeking to add his creaturely “good” and “very good” to God’s primal pleasure.

He is, in other words, not first a wonderer but a worshiper. Breathless, he beholds trees, clouds, cows, grass, storms, ships, laughs, stars, streams, and comes away saying, “His name alone is exalted” (Psalm 148:13). The countless wonders of the world bear one signature. God has written his name in everything good.

Maybe, then, the solution to your spiritual struggle is less spiritual than you thought. And maybe the God of Genesis 1 calls you to seek him not just through his word but through his world, daily and weekly rejoicing in him.

O come, O come, Immanuel,And ransom captive IsraelThat mourns in lonely exile hereUntil the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! ImmanuelShall come to thee, O Israel.

From Adam and Eve onward, the hope of God’s people has rested on a coming. We are a waiting people, a yearning people, a people who know we need rescue and know that only “the coming one” can bring it (Hebrews 10:37).

For over a thousand years, the hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” has put words to the church’s waiting, especially during Advent (a word that refers to an arrival, a coming). Advent, more than any other season, bids us to long for our coming Rescuer — and “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” perhaps more than any other hymn, provides lyrics for our longing.

This month at Desiring God, our team of teachers (with a few guests) will walk through the hymn with a focus on its seven titles for the Savior who came once and will come again. His name is Wisdom, Lord, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Day-Spring, King of the Gentiles — and here on the first day of Advent, Immanuel.

“Behold,” the prophet said, the angel told, “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (Matthew 1:23). They shall call him God with us.

Land of Lonely Exile

At the heart of the human condition lies a deep and unshakable loneliness. We may find ways to mask the feeling, but however many people or pleasures surround us, we are by nature a lonely people on a lonely planet. For whoever and whatever is with us, we are nevertheless “without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12).

Without God: like body without soul, tree without sap, family without father or mother, earth without sun. The words flash like the sword at Eden’s eastern gate: though with friends, with money, with job, with marriage, with pleasure, with power, with plenty — this one without ruins all. We are inescapably lonely without God. We are spiritually lost.

The hymn calls it our captivity, our lonely exile in a land “under sin” (Romans 3:9). We are like Israel in Egypt or the people of God “by the waters of Babylon” (Psalm 137:1) — but far worse, for our Pharaoh follows us wherever we go, and the rivers of our banishment run through our very soul. Without God, we are in exile everywhere.

Our home does not lie across a Red Sea or a wilderness but across the infinite chasm carved by human sin. So we live and die in a land of lonely exile, us without God. Unless, somehow, one should come named Immanuel, God with us.

Jesus Our Immanuel

Now, in one sense, Israel knew their God as Immanuel before the angel spoke to Mary. Moses wouldn’t leave Sinai unless God went “with us” (Exodus 33:15–16). In desperate moments, the people remembered that “the Lord of hosts is with us” (Psalm 46:6). The temple in particular stood as a precious sign of God’s presence with his people.

But the temple also stood as a trembling testimony of God’s distance from his people. The altar, the doorway, and the veil triple-locked God’s presence in the Most Holy Place from even the most upright of Israelites. Only one person could enter that Most Holy Place — “and he but once a year” (Hebrews 9:7).

In the deepest sense, then, God’s people were exiles even in Israel; they were lonely even in the promised land. However far west they went, they still lived east of Eden, for the angels embroidered on the temple’s veil still “turned every way to guard” the garden we once knew (Genesis 3:24; Exodus 26:31).

“At the heart of the human condition lies a deep and unshakable loneliness.”

We needed something more. We needed a temple “not made with hands” but having hands (Mark 14:58). We needed a Most Holy Place made human, a sanctuary with skin on, a veil born from a virgin. We needed a temple that John could lay his head upon and that Thomas could touch (John 13:23; 20:27). We needed Immanuel to enter the land of our exile. And we needed him to die like we exiles deserve.

And so he did. Jesus came, God with us, to restore relationship through ransom. He came to be Immanuel on the cross, crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). There Jesus embraced our captivity — and took captivity captive. There he entered our exile — and ended it from the inside.

The Son of God came to be with us so that he might experience all that it means to be without God — and so that, on the other side of that loneliest of exiles, our loneliness might come to an end as we say, “My God, my God, why have you welcomed me?”

Alone, Yet Not Alone

At the heart of the human condition lies a deep and unshakable loneliness. But at the heart of the Christian condition lies a deep and unshakable presence. Our sense of exile may linger, and we may feel, at times, the ache of old loneliness. But if we could read the secret script upon our heart, it would no longer say, “without God,” but rather “the beloved of Immanuel.”

Once, we were alone even when most surrounded; now, we are surrounded even when most alone. As Jesus told his disciples, “You . . . will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone” (John 16:32). Alone, yet not alone. So we are too in Christ, for the parting gift of Immanuel was to put another Immanuel in our hearts, the Spirit who is God with us and even God in us (John 14:17).

So even when we feel alone, we are not alone. Our captivity is over, our lonely exile ended. For Jesus, our Immanuel, has come.

He came into this world of sin,Made flesh and blood his dearest kin;He died, that he might take us in,And keep us till he comes again.

C.S. Lewis describes it as the cheerful hallmark of humility. Tim Keller calls it the doorway into freedom. John Piper names it as the best friend of deep wonder. And we know it as one of earth’s most elusive gifts: self-forgetfulness.

Joy, true joy, does not live in the land of mirrors. Peace of mind is not found in our inner wells, no matter how deep we lower the pail of introspection. No personality test can usher the soul into contentment. Yes, we must know something of ourselves to live well in this world. But the healthiest people hardly consider what psychological categories they belong to, hardly care how they compare to others. They mainly forget about themselves and live.

I write these words less like Joshua in the promised land and more like Moses on Mount Nebo. I can see this Canaan of self-forgetfulness, but I do not yet dwell there. I have tasted the joys of that country like manna from heaven, like honey from the rock, and I long to leave this wilderness and join the saints whose joys are many and whose thoughts of self are few.

God alone can give this gift; he alone can mend a soul curved in on itself. But as we pray for him to lift us upward and outward, we can do something. To use an acronym, we can remember to FORGET.

Fill your mind with Jesus.
Obey more than you analyze.
Repent and confess quickly.
Get lost in something good.
Embrace your God-given callings.
Thank God always and for everything.

If you find yourself too focused on yourself, consider with me these six modest steps toward joyful self-forgetfulness.

1. Fill your mind with Jesus.

If you have ever told yourself to forget yourself, to stop thinking about yourself, you have also discovered the powerlessness of such a command. Self-forgetfulness happens indirectly: we don’t so much forget ourselves as remember something better. To tweak a phrase from Thomas Chalmers, we need the expulsive power of a new attention. And nothing warrants our attention more than Jesus Christ.

The Father commands us to listen to him (Matthew 17:5). The Spirit is given to glorify him (John 16:14). The apostles bid us to behold him (2 Corinthians 3:18; Hebrews 12:2). The angels never cease to worship him (Revelation 5:6–14). His riches are unsearchable; his glories, incomparable; the joys of those who love him, inexpressible (Ephesians 3:8; Hebrews 3:3; 1 Peter 1:8).

How, then, shall we fill our minds with him? In any of a hundred ways. An unsearchable Christ invites creative exploration — and the more we seek, the more we’ll find. Perhaps make Gospel reading a regular habit; consider always keeping a bookmark in these blessed stories. Or find rich, doxological books about the person and work of Jesus. Or get to know the loveliness of Christ through the meditations of Christ-saturated saints. Or become the kind of friend or spouse who frequently turns the conversation toward the Savior. However you do it, seek to make him your morning sun and evening star, your afternoon oasis, the joy of every hour.

“I am sure,” writes Samuel Rutherford, “the saints at their best are but strangers to the weight and worth of the incomparable sweetness of Christ.” And so, with him, make it your happiness “to win new ground daily in Christ’s love” (The Loveliness of Christ, 22, 27), to catch a new sight of him, to enjoy a new glory in him.

2. Obey more than you analyze.

Consider some familiar scenarios for the introspective. You just finished leading a Bible study, and now, on the drive home with your roommate, your mind replays half a dozen comments you made. Or while singing in corporate worship, you keep gauging your own emotions and comparing your demeanor to those around you. Or during dinner with your family, you go over a work project you just turned in, wondering if you should have done it differently.

In moments like these (and many others), self-analysis can feel so right, even so responsible. We don’t want to miss our mistakes and sins; we don’t want to remain strangers to ourselves. At the same time, however, we would do well to consider how self-analysis can lead us into subtle disobedience.

“Peace of mind is not found in our inner wells, no matter how deep we lower the pail of introspection.”

As long as you replay moments from the Bible study, you fail to love the roommate in the car with you. As long as you consider your own heart in worship, you fail to behold the Lord of the song. And as long as you critique and mentally redo the work project, you fail to offer your family your undivided presence. Even in solitude, when self-analysis doesn’t keep us from loving our neighbors, it often still distracts us from other kinds of obedience: doing our work, saying our prayers, getting our sleep, or thinking of the honorable and excellent and lovely (Philippians 4:8).

There is a place for self-analysis — for paying attention to ourselves, watching ourselves, and confessing our sins (Luke 17:3; 21:34; 1 John 1:9). But that place is not the dinner table or our kids’ bedside or our work desks or any other sphere where God has made our duty plain. There, he calls us to “look . . . to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4), speak a grace-filled word (Ephesians 4:29), work heartily as for him (Colossians 3:23).

So, when introspective thoughts intrude upon your mind, don’t assume that God expects you to heed them. Instead, ask, “Are these thoughts distracting me from more important obedience?” If so, tell your inner self, “I should perhaps think about that sometime soon, but right now I have a different job to do.” And then ask God for grace to do it.

3. Repent and confess quickly.

Imagine that you have spilled a bowl of cereal in your living room. But instead of cleaning it up right away, you go about your day with the milky mess on the floor. You keep catching glimpses of it; in the back of your head, you know it’s there. You have a vague sense that it might be damaging the floorboards, but still you carry on.

As ridiculous as this scenario sounds, many of us respond to sin similarly. Sometime in the morning, say, we made a thoughtless comment, or we shirked a plain duty, or we welcomed a twisted thought. We sinned. But instead of cleaning up the mess right away, instead of confessing the sin quickly, we linger. We keep stepping around the sin. And so we walk through a haze of vague guilt, background accusation, stumbling self-consciousness.

“Oh, what peace we often forfeit; oh, what needless pain we bear; all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!” Do we not have an advocate in heaven (1 John 2:1)? Do we not have a Father whose heart grows warm toward his returning children (Luke 15:20)? Do we not have a gospel big enough for every sin we could bring?

Harboring guilt has no atoning power. Nor does God tell us to confess only after feeling awful through the afternoon. No, everything in him, everything in the gospel, everything in his word bids us to come now, right away. Respond to the first pang of guilt by saying, “I will go to my Father.” You really can sit down, confess your sin outright, receive forgiveness in Christ, and move on.

God promises that he forgets the sins he forgives (Hebrews 8:12). Surely that means we can forget them too. And in forgetting our sins, we might just forget ourselves.

4. Get lost in something good.

When was the last time you were rapt? The word refers to one of the most self-forgetful, and most pleasurable, experiences God gives. Those who are rapt, writes Winifred Gallagher, are “completely absorbed, engrossed, fascinated, perhaps even ‘carried away’ . . . from the scholar’s study to the carpenter’s craft to the lover’s obsession” (The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, 86). When we become rapt before some beauty, some hobby, some person, we lose ourselves — even if only for a few moments — and then find ourselves all the better for it.

Scripture gives us many examples of such holy fascination. Often, they come in the context of worship, as when David breathes after his “one thing” (Psalm 27:4) or Moses beholds the back of Glory (Exodus 33:21–23). Other times, however, the saints lose themselves in something God has made — from the four wonders of the wise man (Proverbs 30:18–19) to our Savior’s bird watching (Matthew 6:26) to the raucous song of Psalm 104.

When was the last time you were so engrossed, so blissfully lost? When was the last time you even found yourself in a context where you could be? Too many of us have gone far too long without a walk in the woods, without taking our seat at a true feast, without reading a book far more beautiful than it is “useful.” I know, as a father of three young boys, that life does not always allow much time for hobbies. But can we not embrace, at a minimum, the resolve of Clyde Kilby?

I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.

However busy you may be, find a way — some way — to regularly get lost in something good. We cannot simply manufacture such experiences; they are gifts. But we can place ourselves before the goodness of God in his good world. We can open our eyes. We can walk on some path of pleasure long enough to get lost.

5. Embrace your God-given callings.

For as self-reflective as I can be, I used to spend much more time poring over my soul. Look through my journals from former days, and you would find page upon page of agonizing introspection. But then you would see the entries slowly taper off until page after page of blank. Why? For several reasons, but one of the more significant is simply that I got busy. I found more friends. I took more (and harder) classes. I started working more hours. Empty evenings and solitary days gave way to good, God-given callings — a blessed kind of busyness, a friend of self-forgetfulness.

When dark thoughts lure us inward, when we feel ourselves falling into the vortex of self, what a gift to have a spouse to love, an infant to console, friends to serve, dishes to wash, neighbors to help, churches to build, work projects to accomplish, and other needs to meet. Such callings give a glorious objectivity to our days. As one introspective man, a new father, told me recently, “When my daughter needs me, God doesn’t expect me to be doing anything else.”

“Seek to make Christ your morning sun and evening star, your afternoon oasis, the joy of every hour.”

By all means, avoid the kind of devilish hurry that leaves no room for quiet mornings before God, calm moments through the day, leisurely Sabbath-like rests. But by all means, get a few big callings in life — and then hear in them the voice of God saying, “Husband, love your wife” (Ephesians 5:25), “Mother, train up your toddler” (Proverbs 22:6), “Friend, stir up your brother” (Hebrews 10:24), “Christian, meet the needs of the saints” (Romans 12:13). In short, hear in them the voice of God calling you out of yourself.

6. Thank God always and for everything.

Finally, however self-conscious and inward you feel, resolve to thank God “in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18), “always and for everything” (Ephesians 5:20).

Morbid introspection and Godward gratitude work against each other. The one takes us deep underground; the other lifts our eyes to a big and bright sky. The one curves us inward; the other bends us outward. The one sends us into a hall of mirrors, where we see ourselves and yet so often become deceived about ourselves; the other fills our thoughts with the Father of lights, our good and giving God (James 1:17).

Philippians 4:6–7 traces the way from anxious introspection to a mind and heart at peace:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

We turn from inward anxiety not only by casting our cares on God, but by doing so “with thanksgiving.” For thanksgiving puts us in a place far broader than our burdens, where we see a past filled with God’s faithfulness and a future alive with his promises — the cross behind us and heaven before us. Thanksgiving snaps us back to reality, speaking a gospel louder than our inward thoughts.

Under the old covenant, the Levites “were to stand every morning, thanking and praising the Lord, and likewise at evening” (1 Chronicles 23:30). As children of the new covenant, can we not (at least) match this godly practice? What if we hailed the morning and crowned the evening with gratitude? What if, at least twice a day, we turned around to notice the many gifts God has given, the goodness and mercy chasing us home (Psalm 23:6)? We might find that thanksgiving can become a stairway out of our inward cellar, a remembrance of God that helps us forget ourselves.

So, seek to fill your mind with Jesus. Obey more than you analyze. Repent and confess quickly. Get lost in something good. Embrace your God-given callings. And however stuck you feel inside yourself, thank God always and for everything.

Christian introspection can feel a little like walking into a broad and intricate maze. Entering the maze is easy enough, but so is getting lost within it. Your sense of direction slips. Promising paths of thought take unexpected and distressing turns. Dead ends abound.

If we want to live safely in this world, then we will need at least some of the self-knowledge that comes from introspection (we might also call it self-examination). “Pay attention to yourselves,” our Lord Jesus told his disciples (Luke 17:3). “Keep a close watch on yourself,” Paul wrote to Timothy (1 Timothy 4:16). “Keep your heart with all vigilance,” the wise man counsels (Proverbs 4:23). So we enter the maze of self for good reason.

Yet anyone who has seriously embarked upon this path of self-knowledge knows how many holes and pits, how many crossroads and mistaken turns, how many briars and thorns line the way. And some Christians, inward and scrupulous by nature, know what it’s like to get lost in that maze for long stretches of time.

Our Lord calls us to look within. Yet alongside healthy introspection are a dozen dangers and dead ends — paths that will yield not more self-knowledge but rather more anxiety, insecurity, distraction, and fear. As we consider the maze before us, then, we would do well to remember some common ways introspection goes wrong.

Dead End 1: Endless Introspection

For some Christians, introspection is less a spiritual practice and more a spiritual atmosphere. They don’t so much visit the maze as live there. These believers often live with split attention — one part of them talking, working, resting, worshiping, the other part standing back and assessing their talking, working, resting, worshiping.

We might find ourselves engaging in endless introspection for several reasons. Maybe we imagine that we really can know ourselves comprehensively if we just look long enough. So, we assess and reassess, guess and second-guess, analyze and scrutinize as if just a little more looking might unmask our inner selves. We may leave little room for Paul’s modest self-awareness (1 Corinthians 4:3–4) or prayers like David’s in Psalm 19:12: “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.”

“‘Love God’ and ‘love neighbor’ are our most crucial callings — and continual self-scrutiny undermines both.”

Probably more often, endless introspection is less intentional. We don’t decide to analyze ourselves so much; we just reflexively find ourselves doing so. The power of this vague, atmospheric self-analysis lies partly in the fact that it can feel productive and obedient. Jesus tells us to watch ourselves; we’re watching. Or so we think. But as with a preoccupied father who feels productive while mentally solving work problems at the dinner table, endless introspection usually distracts us from plainer, more important obedience.

God may command us to look within, but these commands hold a small place among the whole, just a sliver of the pie chart. Far more often, God commands us to look upward and outward — to Christ (Hebrews 12:2), to heaven (Colossians 3:1–4), to the people beside us and the wonders around us and the gifts before us (Matthew 6:26; Philippians 2:3; 4:8). “Love God” and “love neighbor” are our most crucial callings — and continual self-scrutiny undermines both.

So, instead of stumbling around in a maze of thoughts, introspect with intention. Aim to enter this maze with a prayer and a plan, with a clear beginning and end. And even if intrusive thoughts keep tempting you inward, dare to remember that the obedience God expects of you usually lies outward.

Dead End 2: One-Eyed Introspection

Self-examination sometimes gets construed as simply a sin search or idol hunt: we look within to trace our guilt to its buried roots. Granted, Scripture’s calls to introspection often do focus on finding the troublesome parts about ourselves — “any grievous way in me,” as David says (Psalm 139:24). We want to meet our enemies in their infancy so they don’t grow up to slay us. But if we search for only sin within, then we are like a man who keeps one eye closed.

“We must have two eyes,” Richard Sibbes writes, “one to see imperfections in ourselves, the other to see what is good” (The Bruised Reed, 35). And if Jesus is your Lord, Savior, and Treasure, then no matter how embattled you feel, you have something good to see. Your soul may have weeds, but it also has fruit planted and growing by the Spirit of God (Galatians 5:22–23).

The apostle John writes, “By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3). We can know that we are in Christ, John says. And one of the ways we know is by noticing the grace he has given us to obey him — to delight in his word, love his people, rely on his strength, trust his promises. We are not who we once were, and God wants us to know it.

Confession and repentance are marks of Christian maturity, but endless self-accusation is not. As Octavius Winslow writes,

It is not true humility to doubt, and underrate, until it becomes easy to deny altogether the work of the Holy Ghost within us — it is true humility and lowliness to confess his work, bear testimony to his operation, and ascribe to him all the power, praise, and glory. (Personal Declension, 151)

Do not pinch your nose as you walk past the fruit of the Spirit in your life. Do not speak of your soul as if the good work God has begun is actually a bad work, one without progress or beauty (Philippians 1:6). Rather, open both your eyes when you look within, and praise him for whatever good you find.

Dead End 3: Untethered Introspection

In John Calvin’s discussion of the knowledge of God, he uses a vivid image that we might also apply to the knowledge of self. “The divine countenance,” he writes, “is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted into it by the thread of the Word” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.6.3).

Those who try to know God apart from Scripture are like men dropped in the middle of an infinite maze. Our own souls, while not as unsearchable as God’s nature, are likewise “inexplicable” to us apart from God’s word. We need a thread to lead us through the labyrinth of self to the places we need to see (and then to guide us back out).

David models this approach to self-knowledge in Psalm 19. Even as he acknowledges the persistent hiddenness of some sins (Psalm 19:12), he celebrates the searching and illuminating character of God’s word. “The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. . . . Moreover, by [it] is your servant warned” (Psalm 19:8, 11). God’s word is a sun upon the soul — warming us, warning us, revealing us, and leading us back to our rock and redeemer (Psalm 19:14).

Imagine, then, that a particular sin has been pestering you. You want to see it more clearly so you can confess it more sincerely and kill it more effectively. You might simply pray and think about why this sin holds such power over you — and that could be fruitful. You might also bring this sin before another believer — and that could be even more fruitful. But you might also consider how to hold more tightly to “the thread of the word.”

“Understanding ourselves holds almost no value if we remain preoccupied with ourselves.”

If you want to see your envy more clearly, you might hold onto the story of Saul’s jealousy (1 Samuel 8:6–16) or James’s words about “the wisdom from above” (James 3:13–18). If you want to understand and address some recurring fear more decisively, you might get into the boat with the disciples (Mark 4:35–41) or allow Paul to lovingly question you at the end of Romans 8 (verses 31–39). If you want to turn from shallow entertainment and earthly-mindedness, you might let John lead you into his vision of the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:4).

As we linger in passages like these — pondering, meditating, and allowing them to search our souls — we may find them leading us to motives we never imagined, temptations we never named, and ways of escape we never saw.

Dead End 4: Christless Introspection

In the end, self-examination, like all means of God’s grace, is just that: a means. Understanding ourselves holds almost no value if we remain preoccupied with ourselves. But if we allow what we see of ourselves to lead us somewhere else, to preoccupy us with Christ, then introspection will become one more servant of our joy in him.

We do not pore over our souls simply to see our illnesses, but so we might show the Great Physician where we need him to lay his healing hands and bestow his benediction of peace. And what a physician he is! Throngs came to him on earth, their needs as varied as their humanity, yet “he healed them all” (Matthew 12:15). And so he still does by his Spirit from heaven.

If bitterness consumes you like leprosy, he can cleanse you and send you home whole. If laziness or self-indulgence has paralyzed your love, he can raise you up again. If twisted words have made your praises go mute, he can unloose and retrain your tongue. If lofty thoughts of self have blinded you to his worth, he can once again say to your eyes, “Be opened.”

Whatever we discover within is already known by him. We may find ourselves surprised; he is not. And in this Jesus — his person, his work — is all the healing we could ever need. So, look within, but don’t live there. Let every inward look lead you to the Lord outside yourself. Live in him.

You, like me, have probably watched it happen. A friend or family member gets excited about Jesus, comes alive to his gospel, joins his mission. In their zeal, they make a clean cut with former sins. They gladly associate with God’s church. They evangelize unashamed. They don’t mind looking strange.

But then, slowly, like the Israelites in the wilderness, they begin to cast backward glances, as if Egypt were calling them home. They remember parts of that former life; they want some things back. And though they once didn’t mind looking strange, now they do. They feel drawn to the normal they once knew.

“The more you feel strange to the people around you, the more help you need to stay strange.”

To bring the point closer to home, you have probably not only watched it happen but felt it happen. Like me, you have probably passed through seasons where you became a little (or a lot) less strange in this world, where you traded your heavenly clothes for garments less conspicuous. You once were quite strange (and happy to be so); then, over time, you became quietly normal.

Christians are, by definition, “sojourners and exiles” in this world (1 Peter 2:11) — strangers. But we do not always live up to the name. We strangers need help staying strange.

Stay Strange

The apostle Peter was a man familiar with strangeness — familiar too with the difficulty of remaining so. As he surveyed his beloved churches, and as he considered his own soul, he saw an array of forces bent on making Christian strangers normal: the unrelenting passions of our flesh (1 Peter 2:11), a surprised and smirking world (1 Peter 4:4), a prowling devil (1 Peter 5:8).

Among these various forces, Peter seems to have been especially sensitive to the normalizing influence of the world — of friends and neighbors and family and coworkers who look at your life and “are surprised” at what you do and don’t do, what you say and don’t say (1 Peter 4:4). As the King James Version puts it, “They think it strange.” They think you strange.

However strong our identity in Christ, Peter knows that quizzical looks, awkward conversations, and constant cultural messaging can take their toll on Christian integrity. The more you feel strange to the people around you, the more help you need to stay strange. And for that, you need other strangers.

And so, amid his calls to Christian strangeness in 1 Peter 4, he describes the kind of community that keeps and cultivates that strangeness. Granted, Peter knows that not even the healthiest community can prevent all apostasy. But he also knows that if strangers do not find a home in the church, then sooner or later they will find a home in the world. Only together do we stay strange.

So, over against the passions and patterns of unbelieving society, Peter mentions four features of a faithfully strange community — churches that offer a home on the journey to heaven.

1. Strange Posture

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)

In 1 Peter 4:3, Peter lists the kinds of community sins these Christians once enjoyed and that their neighbors still enjoy: “sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” His vision of Christian community in verses 7–11 offers an alternative society, a place where such passions are not only renounced but replaced by God-glorifying, soul-dignifying patterns.

The first of these patterns is love — earnest, sincere, sin-covering love. Sinful communities like those of verse 3 may know some kind of friendship or camaraderie; they do not know this kind of love. Nor did we know this kind of love when we were living in “malice and . . . deceit and hypocrisy and envy and . . . slander” (1 Peter 2:1). Back then, we stirred up sin in others and ourselves. Now, however, we cover it.

“Love covers a multitude of sins” means that, when wounded, we forgive, overlook, show mercy, refuse to grow bitter. A brother snubs you; you pray, forgive in your heart, and go on loving him. A sister speaks a shameful word against you; you tell her how that felt, gently restore her, and go on loving her. Some sins we pass over; some we confront — all we cover.

Such love is strange in this world. But every time we practice it, we remind each other of the Christ who “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Sin-covering love not only keeps our strange communities together — it also keeps our communities near Christ, whose nearness makes all our strangeness sweet.

2. Strange Place

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:9)

Peter’s charge to cover over sins implies we know each other deeply enough to wound each other deeply. It implies relationship beyond acquaintance and fellowship beyond Sunday. Healthy churches know, with Peter, that gathering once a week does not keep Christians strange. And so, throughout the week, we bring our strange posture into a strange place: our homes.

Hospitality (literally “love of strangers”) may have been more common in Peter’s world than it is in ours (at least in the West), but it was not so common that Peter felt no need to command it. Nor was it so easy that he felt no need to add that phrase “without grumbling.” Then, as now, Christian hospitality came with many costs and temptations to complain. If our love covers a multitude of sins, our hospitality covers a multitude of inconveniences.

But when we open our homes to other Christians, especially to those far different from us, we help make strangers feel a bit more at home. We invite each other into a world where, for an afternoon or evening at least, we feel welcomed, at ease, a stranger among fellow strangers — and therefore a stranger among friends. In the home, we catch a small glimpse of Home, and we leave with a little more courage to stay strange.

If our churches are going to feel like a home for Christian strangers, then we will need to open our actual homes — often and without grumbling.

3. Strange Practice

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace. (1 Peter 4:10)

When Peter’s readers moved about in the world, they were allotted a certain place and significance. Their society paid close attention to whether someone was high-born or low-born, master or servant, man or woman, old or young — and assigned value accordingly.

But when Peter’s readers moved about in the church, these wildly different people found themselves on spiritually level ground. Without losing their earthly identities (Peter still addresses servants as servants, wives as wives, the younger as the younger), they gained a remarkable equality in Christ. “Each . . . received a gift,” each became a good steward “of God’s varied grace,” and each was called “to serve one another.”

An unbelieving neighbor observing such a church would have seen society unstratified, partiality put away, as low served high and high served low — each a steward of the King. Our own worthy Lord did not count himself too high for foot-washing. And in a hundred ways, with a hundred gifts — teaching, leading, exhorting, giving, administrating — his church continues to upend social expectations and wash unlikely feet.

Such communities still seem strange, even in supposedly egalitarian societies. No matter how much we prize equality, we each (apart from grace) have categories of people we will not gladly serve — or be served by. But when, in the church, our service extends to all and receives from all, we embody the coming kingdom, reflect the coming King, and minister the “varied grace” we need to stay strange.

4. Strange Perspective

The end of all things is at hand. . . . To [God] belong glory and dominion forever and ever. (1 Peter 4:7, 11)

The church’s strange posture, place, and practice cultivate and keep Christian strangeness, but not apart from the strangest quality of all: our perspective. So, Peter begins and ends this passage by flipping forward a few pages in the story, reminding us of history’s next and last chapter. In the end, we stay strange by remembering that we live in the end.

Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ has risen and ascended — and now no major event stands between us and Christ coming again. “The end of all things is at hand”; the end of this world is at hand. And therefore, the end of our strangeness is at hand as well.

“If strangers do not find a home in the church, then sooner or later they will find a home in the world.”

Faithful Christians cannot help but look strange to unbelievers of all sorts — progressive and conservative, urban and rural, young and old. But that doesn’t mean we fundamentally are strange, not from the standpoint of eternity. No, from the perspective of “forever and ever,” the strangest thing of all is this present world of sin, this God-ignoring age. Such was not the case in eternity past, such is not the case in heaven now, and such will not be the case everywhere soon. “To him belong glory and dominion” — and to him they will always be.

The more eternity rests on our minds, the more this world, which can seem so normal, will begin to look alien, fugitive, dislocated, strange. And so, together, we pray for God’s kingdom to come. We preach and talk of Christ’s return. And we remind each other that this world is not our home. However strange we seem here, we are not strange to God, not strange to the angels, not strange to the cloud of witnesses gone before us.

Stay strange, then, for a few moments longer, for you live on the threshold of home.

“For one look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ!”

This memorable line from Robert Murray M‘Cheyne (1813–1843) has drawn many Christians out of the cellar of morbid introspection. Some of us once lived in that cellar — bent down double, curved concave, scrutinizing, analyzing, paralyzing. For every one look at Christ, we took ten at self.

But then the Spirit began to unbend us, convex us. He sent a friend, gave us a passage, or perhaps used M‘Cheyne’s famous line to lift us up and out to Christ. Self-scrutiny gradually gave way to Christ-scrutiny. We dared to believe that taking ten looks at him was better and safer than taking ten looks within. So, we looked and looked and looked — ten times and more.

I have no desire to discourage such “looking to Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2). At the same time, however, I do wonder if M‘Cheyne’s quote has sometimes been taken in ways he didn’t quite intend. We might read his counsel and think he gave little or no place to introspection — that he countered every inward turn with “Christ! Look to Christ!” And so we might strive for the same attitude.

But for all of M‘Cheyne’s remarkable Christ-centeredness, the man was not afraid to examine himself, and often with surprising rigor. In fact, M‘Cheyne believed that the right kind of introspection could actually serve his sight of Christ. He knew that one good look at self has the potential to make our ten looks at Christ all the sweeter, stronger, and more wonderfully specific.

Godly introspection is a road, not a room, that ever takes us to the same glorious place: Jesus. And as we learn from M‘Cheyne, some of the best sights of Christ come at the end of that road.

One Look Within

“I am persuaded that I ought to confess my sins more,” M‘Cheyne wrote near the end of his life. “I think I ought at certain times of the day — my best times — say, after breakfast and after tea — to confess solemnly the sins of the previous hours, and to seek their complete remission.” He goes on, “I ought to take all methods for seeing the vileness of my sins” (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M‘Cheyne, 150).

Those who have felt trapped in the prison of introspection may tremble at such words; we may hear in them the clink of former chains. We might also wonder, Is this really the same man who told us to take ten looks at Christ — the same man who said, “Do not take up your time so much with studying your own heart as with studying Christ’s heart” (279)? Yes, the same man. He treated the command to “keep a close watch on yourself” with utter seriousness (1 Timothy 4:16).

We might imagine that such precise self-examination would leave M‘Cheyne feeling like a constant spiritual failure. But remarkably, it didn’t. Those who read his biography find a man often exuberant with joy, regularly relaxing in God’s love. “Oh, how sweet to work all day for God, and then to lie down under his smiles!” he wrote in his journal (56). His looks at self did not steal his sense of God’s steadfast favor.

How? Well, for one, M‘Cheyne was aware not only of indwelling sin but of indwelling grace; when he looked within, he could notice the ways his life pleased God. But even more significantly, he grasped that seeing self (even the worst parts of himself) was not an end but a means of seeing Christ more clearly, of beholding his glories more intimately and particularly. And so he surrounded his self-examination and confessions of sin with celebrations of Jesus.

Ten Sweeter, Stronger Looks

We need not follow M‘Cheyne’s precise regimen of self-examination in order to learn from his Christ-focused pattern. Scripture doesn’t tell us how often we should confess our sins or how rigorously we should examine ourselves. We will need to find our own way under the guidance of the Spirit and in community with God’s people.

But however often or deeply we consider ourselves, how might our one look at self serve our ten looks at Christ?

1. Make introspection a road, not a room.

For some Christians, introspection leads to paralyzed inaction. Our look within becomes a locked sight, a fixed gaze — a room rather than a road. M‘Cheyne, for all of his inward intensity, speaks of self-examination in dramatically different terms. Yes, he sought to see “the vileness of [his] sins,” and to that end he examined himself carefully (150). But once he saw himself clearly, he did not linger long. He flew to Jesus.

At one point, M‘Cheyne uses the image of the prodigal son among the pigs. He knew how tempting it could feel to sit in his guilt, letting his inward look extend, not daring “to go straight from the swine-trough to the best robe.” But this suggestion, he said, is a lie “direct from hell.” “I am sure that there is neither peace nor safety from deeper sin, but in going directly to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is God’s way of peace and holiness” (151). And so he resolved to let no guilt “hinder me from fleeing to Christ” (152). Rather, he let his guilt drive him to God.

“Godly introspection is a road, not a room, that ever takes us to the same glorious place: Jesus.”

By definition, self-examination and confession require a careful inward look; they call us to know and feel the sicknesses of our soul. But they equally call us not to remain there. In confession, we are like the woman with the flow of blood — knowing our disease, yes, but allowing that knowledge to send our feet striding and hands reaching for the Healer (Mark 5:27–29). As M‘Cheyne’s friend Horatius Bonar wrote, “Complaints against self, which do not lead the complainer directly to the cross, are most dangerous” (Think Again, 107).

Done well, inward looking leads us to the Lord outside ourselves, the Christ worth beholding with tenfold attention. But what exactly do we behold about Christ at the end of this road? How does our inward look draw out glories we wouldn’t have seen otherwise — or would have seen less clearly? M‘Cheyne describes this sight of Christ in terms of both cleansing and clothing, or washing and wearing.

2. Wash from the infinite fountain.

Consider first the cleansing. When we bring our sins to Jesus, we approach an infinite fountain overflowing with the worth of Christ’s suffering. “In Christ’s bloodshedding,” M‘Cheyne writes, “there is an infinite over-payment for all my sins. Although Christ did not suffer more than infinite justice demanded, yet he could not have suffered at all without laying down an infinite ransom” (151).

M‘Cheyne names some of the sins he felt tempted to consider “too great, too aggravated, too presumptuous” for full, free, immediate forgiveness: “as when done on my knees, or in preaching, or by a dying bed, or during dangerous illness” (152). Does God readily forgive such evils upon sincere confession? Can we bring not just small sins but Goliath-sins to him? He does, and we can.

Hate your sins, renounce your sins, and resolve to forsake your sins. But do not fear to look your sins full in the face. Do not hesitate to call them what they are. The larger they seem, the larger Christ seems when he forgives them. The worse they appear, the worthier he appears when he covers them. “If we confess our sins” — whatever sins — “[God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

We can bring no sin Christ cannot cleanse. And however often we draw from these waters, they remain ever full. So, come wash in the infinite fountain.

3. Wear his many-colored robe.

After the cleansing comes the clothing. “I must not only wash me in Christ’s blood,” M‘Cheyne writes, “but clothe me in Christ’s obedience” (152). And here we get to the heart of how our inward-looking shapes our sight of Christ. M‘Cheyne goes on,

For every sin of omission in myself, I may find a divinely perfect obedience ready for me in Christ. For every sin of commission in self, I may find not only a stripe or a wound in Christ, but also a perfect rendering of the opposite obedience in my place, so that the law is magnified, its curse more than carried, its demand more than answered. (152)

The “robe of righteousness” Christ gives is not generic (Isaiah 61:10). Like Joseph’s many-colored coat, Christ’s robe has every shade of splendor for our every shade of sin. Whatever our misery, he has an excellency to outmatch it. Every guilt finds an opposite glory in him.

For example, lately I have found myself feeling indignant at interruptions and demands upon my time. But then one morning in Mark 6, as an unrelenting crowd disrupted Jesus’s desired rest, I read this: “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them” (Mark 6:34). Where I am affronted and offended, Christ bleeds mercy. I saw my selfishness in that moment, yes, but I also saw a robe woven with Christ’s own compassion — a robe to wear by faith and to increasingly embody by grace.

And so with every single sin. For our barbed words he has his own bridled tongue, and for our apathy his mighty zeal, and for our bitterness his tender grace, and for our impatience his slow-to-anger love. So, while sin can show us parts of ourselves we feel dismayed to see, sin can also show us parts of Christ we feel thrilled to behold. For our darkness cannot help but show his light — his many-splendored, perfect light, shining from every facet of his spotless human life.

His Unsearchable Riches

To be clear, M‘Cheyne’s ten looks at Christ did not all spring from his self-examination. He spent many hours in simple self-forgetful study, marveling at “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8). But he also knew how to make introspection a means of seeing those riches more clearly.

By all means, then, take ten looks at Christ for every one look at self. Focus not so much on studying your heart as on studying Christ’s heart. But also do take that one look at yourself — and let it inform and shape those ten looks. And let what you see of your own heart show you the worth and beauty of his.

When it comes to confessing our sins, many Christians fall into one of two errors — both of which steal joy, disrupt peace, and undermine assurance.

On one side are those we might call non-confessors, Christians who rarely confess specific sins to God. Maybe the reason is theological: “Christ has already covered all my sins, so why keep confessing them?” Or maybe, having a thin grasp of grace, they cannot endure the exposure and shame confession brings. Or maybe they simply don’t take the time to pause, examine themselves, and bring their sins before God. Either way, they seldom say anything like, “Father, I have lusted” — or gossiped, envied, overeaten, fumed — “and I am sorry. Will you forgive me?”

On the other side (a side I know well) are those we might call repeat confessors, Christians who bring the same moment again and again before God, repeatedly asking for forgiveness. They sin, they feel conviction, they confess — yet they still feel unforgiven. So, they confess again a little later, and then again, perhaps three or four (or more) times, just to be safe and sure. As often as not, however, their repeated confessions do little to blunt the sharp blade of conviction. Their guilt is a demon only time can cast out.

To both kinds of Christians, Psalm 32 speaks a needed and blessed word. “Confess,” it says to the first group, “and receive again the gift of God’s pardon.” “Confess once,” it says to the second group, “and listen for the shouts of God’s mercy.”

Following the psalm, we might describe healthy confession in four parts: Heed God’s hand. Name your sins. Receive God’s forgiveness. Be glad in him.

1. Heed God’s Hand

Day and night your hand was heavy upon me. (Psalm 32:4)

Psalm 32 sings of sins forgiven and guilt forgotten, of a King who reigns in grace and welcomes sinners with favor. But early in the psalm, David also laments the sorrows of those who, for whatever reason, refuse to walk through the only door that leads to such joys: confession. Looking back to his own season of unconfessed sin, David writes, “I kept silent” (Psalm 32:3). And what a miserable silence it was.

David doesn’t share his specific sin with us, nor does he say how long his silence lasted. But he does tell us that his unconfessed sin began sabotaging both soul and body, turning his bones brittle and sapping his strength, dogging him by day and lying down with him at night (Psalm 32:3–4). The Lord’s hand lay heavy upon him.

You likely know something of the feeling. A shameful comment escapes your mouth, maybe, or a twisted thought tempts you into dark places, or a session of scrolling sends you spiraling into jealousy or self-pity. For an hour, a few minutes, even a moment, you turn away from your God. Then guilt rises — but you immediately smother the feeling. No, you say to yourself, that wasn’t sin. Or maybe Yes, it was sin, but let’s just move on. But you can’t move on. Time passes. Conscience presses. Attention fails. Sleep flees. “Your hand was heavy upon me” (Psalm 32:4).

And then you remember: this hand, this heaviness, is mercy. Your offended God has not left you alone, has not handed you over and allowed sin to sear your conscience. He disturbs you because he loves you. He disrupts your peace to remind you of your disrupted communion with him — and to invite you back. He calls you to confess.

“Confession is God’s own gift for restoring communion with God.”

Some, to be sure, suffer from an overactive conscience that smites them when God does not. For such Christians, distinguishing between God’s hand and their own hand (or Satan’s hand, for that matter) takes wisdom and counsel from others. But many of us, especially those who confess sin less often, can learn from David to heed God’s hand, however lightly or heavily it rests upon us. And we can let that hand lead us to what David does next.

2. Name Your Sins

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” (Psalm 32:5)

David may have remained silent in his sin for far too long, but once he opens his mouth, he does not hold back. In a single verse, David uses three groups of three to press upon us the honesty and earnestness of his confession.

Note, first, the threefold repetition of my: “my sin . . . my iniquity . . . my transgressions.” Whatever the extenuating circumstances, and whoever else may have been guilty as well, David knows that his sins are his, and so he owns them without excuse. In an echo of Nathan’s rebuke, he says before God, “I am the man” (2 Samuel 12:7).

Second, consider the three words he attaches to his deeply personal guilt: sin, iniquity, and transgressions. David would not (as we so often do) call sexual immorality “stumbling,” or hatred “irritation,” or lies “mistakes.” He takes biblical words upon his lips and names his guilt as God does. Many have described confession as agreeing with God about our sin — and so David does here. Each word is blunt, humbling, unvarnished, and true.

Third, observe the three ways David describes his speech toward God: “I acknowledged . . . I did not cover . . . I will confess.” He does not mumble his “I’m sorry”; he does not address God distractedly. Instead, he fully, freely, and thoughtfully exposes his heart before God.

A confession like David’s might be short or long; it might take many words or few. The specifics will depend, in part, on the severity of our sin and the length of our silence. But whether short or long, the key is to look our sin full in the face and confess its ugliness outright. David deals seriously with his sin here. And he discovers, as Charles Spurgeon once said, “When we deal seriously with our sin, God will deal gently with us.”

3. Receive God’s Forgiveness

You forgave the iniquity of my sin. (Psalm 32:5)

David has now confessed. He has ended his stubborn silence, bowed his weary head, and named his sins before God. And then, into the quiet of his confession comes a response as stunning as it is simple: “You forgave.” God forgave — just like that? Just like that the heavy hand was lifted? Yes, just like that. David may have waited to confess; God did not wait to forgive.

We know from David’s other psalms (like Psalm 51) that some time may pass before we feel fully forgiven. We also know from David’s life that God’s forgiveness does not always remove deeply painful consequences (as with Bathsheba and Uriah). But in this psalm, David would have us remember and embrace the promise almost too wonderful to be true: God is ready to forgive as quickly as we confess. He needs no long penance; he requires no probation. Our confession and his pardon belong in the very same verse (Psalm 32:5).

The brief end of verse 5 — “you forgave the iniquity of my sin” — pithily stresses the point. But for those prone to linger in guilt even after earnest, open confession, David captures God’s forgiveness from several other angles as well. Indeed, as varied as Scripture is in its vocabulary of human evil (sin, iniquity, transgressions, and more), we find just as many descriptions of divine mercy.

“David may have waited to confess; God did not wait to forgive.”

If we feel burdened, heavy laden with guilt, he forgives (a word that means “to carry away”). If our sin seems to stand boldly before us, he covers it (Psalm 32:1). If we cannot forget our former failures, he pledges not to count them as we do (Psalm 32:2). When we feel exposed, he is our hiding place; when endangered, he preserves us; when besieged with accusations, he surrounds us with shouts of deliverance (Psalm 32:7).

We have no guilt for which God has not a corresponding grace. For in Jesus Christ (the Messiah David hoped in but didn’t yet know by name), God has forever out-mercied our sin.

4. Be Glad in Him

Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart! (Psalm 32:11)

David, freshly forgiven, ends his psalm with a shout of joy. And anyone who has felt deep guilt wiped clean can understand why: the forgiveness of sin brings a greater freedom than any prisoner has felt upon release, even if confined for life. Yet consider David’s final line closely, and you will see that his highest joy comes from something even greater than forgiveness.

A forgiven husband rejoices not simply in the absence of guilt but in the restored presence of his wife. A forgiven friend gives thanks not only for those words, “I forgive you,” but for the ensuing days of lost friendship found. And a forgiven Christian sings not merely of a clean conscience but of a reconciled God. We are “glad,” David says — in forgiveness, yes, but far more deeply “in the Lord” (Psalm 32:11).

Confession, in other words, is God’s own gift for restoring communion with God. Confession is a doorway out of misery, the prodigal’s path home, a river that looks black as death but lifts us onto brighter shores.

If we believe as much, then we will quickly heed the hand of God that bends us to our knees. We will name our sins, starkly and thoughtfully and without excuse. We will receive God’s forgiveness, believing him to be as good as he says and as kind as he promises. And we will be glad in him, the God who condemned our sin at the cross and now delights to cast it from us as far as east from west.

When someone turns from self to Christ, he trades not only sin for righteousness, hell for heaven, and despair for living hope. He also trades a small life for a large life — a life as large as the world Christ came to redeem.

The transformation takes time, of course. But in the end, the Spirit-filled soul cannot rest satisfied with self, nor with the affairs of his own kin and city and nation. No, as surely as all nations will one day bow to Christ, so Christ is moving his people to care about all nations.

Have you known Christians whose life seems marked by such largeness — Christians who live for places beyond here, times beyond now, and tribes beyond mine? Their eyes seem fixed on distant frontiers where Christ has not been named (Romans 15:20). They watch, fascinated, as the promise of redemption advances to “the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Their heart beats for the day when a better flood than Noah’s will prevail upon the world — when “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).

They are, in a word, world Christians.

What Is a World Christian?

“World Christians,” David Bryant writes, “are day-to-day disciples for whom Christ and his global cause have become the integrating, overriding priority” (In the Gap, 6). Or as D.A. Carson puts it, “they see themselves first and foremost as citizens of the heavenly kingdom” and are therefore “single-minded and sacrificial when it comes to the paramount mandate to evangelize and make disciples” (The Cross and Christian Ministry, 117). World Christians may not personally go to faraway nations (though many do), but faraway nations have gone into them. They send, pray, dream, give, support, and worship like disciples of a worldwide Lord.

And we could use more of them. Our churches today do not have too many world Christians. We do not have too many among us overzealous for cross-cultural missions. We do not have too many who regularly remind us of unreached and unengaged peoples, those for whom Jesus is a strange sound. We do not have too many who plead in our prayer meetings, “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!” (Psalm 57:5).

Personally, I can remember seasons when I was more of a world Christian than I am now. Maybe you can too. Or maybe your heart has yet to feel the thrill of Christ’s worldwide dominion. Either way, many of us need a fresh wind from that Spirit who ever blows toward the Christless corners of the earth. And perhaps we might feel that wind if we consider some early disciples who formed what we might consider the first world-Christian church: the church of Christ at Antioch. In four marks, these believers display the nature and joy of the world-Christian life.

1. World Relationships

By the eleventh chapter of Acts, the gospel has begun to spread beyond the Jews. The Spirit has fallen on Cornelius and his household in response to Peter’s preaching; God has made common Gentiles clean through faith (Acts 10:15, 44–48). But we have not yet seen a world-Christian church, a true fellowship of nations, until some “men of Cyprus and Cyrene” come to Antioch and speak not just to the Jews but “to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus” — resulting in “a great number” of Jesus-worshiping Gentiles (Acts 11:20–21).

For the first time, Jews and Gentiles ate together, prayed together, ministered together, and worshiped together in the same local assembly and on the same spiritual footing. Soon, this church in Antioch would become a missionary-sending base (Acts 13:2–3). But before they sought to spread world Christianity abroad, they lived world Christianity at home. Their world Christianity was first a matter of world relationships, world friendships, world partnerships with local neighbors.

“As surely as all nations will one day bow to Christ, so Christ is moving his people to care about all nations.”

And so with us. Some today may live in an all-but monocultural, monoethnic place (in a small rural town, perhaps), but most of us can find something of the world without going far — often without even leaving our church. Even in my own relatively small church, I’m likely to sit near someone of Haitian, Bahamian, or Russian background on any given Sunday. Perhaps the first question for our own world Christianity, then, is not whether we’re willing to cross an ocean for Christ, but whether we’ll cross an aisle for him.

Will we embrace whatever differences lie between us and seek — by welcome, warmth, hospitality, friendship — to take our fellowship deeper than formalities? Will we cultivate a love for God’s global glory by embracing Christ-centered local diversity? And will we sincerely pray that our church would look a little more like a kingdom of all peoples? World Christianity, like so many other parts of the Christian life, begins at home.

2. World Responsibility

Bryant, in another description of world Christians, speaks not only of caring about God’s global glory, but also of accepting “personal responsibility” to see that glory go forth (In the Gap, 35). World Christians hear the Great Commission as if personally addressed, as if they too were on the Galilean mountain. They live as if the words “disciple all nations” were meant for them.

The Antioch Christians’ world responsibility appears most clearly in their missionary going and sending. In two other ways, however, we see just how sincerely they took this responsibility for God’s global kingdom.

First, when the church in Antioch heard about a financial need among the saints in Judea (some three hundred miles south of them), “the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief” (Acts 11:29). Distant news was not a distant care to these Christians, not when it concerned “the brothers” who had supported this church in its infancy by sending them Barnabas (Acts 11:22). Partnership in the gospel collapsed the distance and compelled them to give.

Do we, like them, care deeply about the faraway news of God’s kingdom, especially among our partners in the gospel? Do we treat missionary newsletters as more important than national headlines? And do needs there inspire prayer and generosity here because of the world responsibility we feel?

Second, Antioch not only sent missionaries (as we’ll see below), but they also took seriously the responsibility to support missionaries. If the apostle Paul had a home church, Antioch was it. From Antioch he sailed, and to Antioch he returned — not just once (Acts 14:27–28) or twice (Acts 15:35) but three times (Acts 18:22–23). It was a place he enjoyed spending “no little time” (Acts 14:28). And when he returned, he was not a no-name missionary, barely remembered by the church (“Who was that guy again?”), but a precious partner sent with fasting, sustained with prayer, and received with joy. In Antioch, Paul found a ready audience to hear “all that God had done” (Acts 14:27).

World Christians embrace God’s global mission as part of their calling, part of their personal responsibility. Like civilians in wartime, they do not treat lightly news from the front or the soldiers who come home.

3. World Readiness

When the Holy Spirit moved among the Antioch Christians and said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2), we read of no hesitation or resistance: “After fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off” (Acts 13:3). Can you imagine sending Paul and Barnabas away from your church — Paul, the mighty apostle, and Barnabas, the son of encouragement? For a whole year these men had “met with the church and taught a great many people” (Acts 11:26). But now the Spirit said, “Send them.” And so they did. Antioch was ready.

World Christianity, if embraced deeply, will disrupt some of our dearest relationships. The Spirit will send away our family and friends — indeed, he will ask us to send them away. Or he may send us ourselves, bidding us to be the ones who depart. Either way, world Christianity calls for readiness to send and be sent, even if, as Paul said of Onesimus, we feel like we’re “sending [our] very heart” (Philemon 12).

If two of your best friends, or two of your church’s best leaders, sensed a stirring to go, would you encourage them? If you sensed a stirring yourself, even if in a seemingly crucial ministry position, would you be willing to take the next step? Significantly, Luke notes that the Spirit’s commission came “while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting” (Acts 13:2). Only such a Godward posture can give us the world readiness we need. The Lord Jesus can make up for every loss we incur in his cause, whether by sending or going — and even give a hundredfold more (Matthew 19:29). But readiness for such losses will depend on keeping his fullness before our eyes.

4. World Resolve

Sometime after Paul’s first missionary journey, as he and Barnabas were ministering in Antioch again, “some men came down from Judea” with a teaching that threatened the world-Christian movement: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). In other words, faith in Jesus is not enough for Gentiles to be justified before God; they must also live under Jewish law.

But Antioch wouldn’t buy it. Not only did Paul and Barnabas have “no small dissension and debate” with the Judaizing teachers, but the whole church “appointed [them] to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question” (Acts 15:2–3). These believers would not give up the gospel so easily. They had been taught Christ too well. More than that, they had tasted and seen the goodness of God’s global purposes and would not build again “the dividing wall of hostility” between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14). To their relationships, responsibility, and readiness, they added world resolve.

We too have need for such resolve. Even if our world Christianity faces few theological distortions, it faces many practical distractions. We may not be tempted to force circumcision on the nations, but we are likely tempted to forget the nations — and to forget the joy that comes from living for God’s global cause. Our attention is too embattled, our pull toward the here and now too strong, our flesh too in love with the familiar for our world Christianity to remain without resolve.

Perhaps one of the most crucial steps we could take, then, is to embrace habits that keep the nations before our eyes. Read missionary biographies. Befriend believers who make the Great Commission a practical priority. Visit parts of your city filled with neighbors from other nations. Have meals with missions-minded brothers or sisters in your church. Treat missionary newsletters as precious prompts for family devotions and corporate prayer. And along the way, pray that God would make his global glory the passion of your heart.

Because when someone turns from self to Christ, he trades not only sin for righteousness, hell for heaven, and despair for living hope. He also trades a small life for a large life — a life as large as the world Christ came to redeem.

If we could distill God’s will for his people into a simple prayer, we may do no better than an often-repeated plea from Robert Murray M’Cheyne: “Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made” (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 159).

How often does such a prayer find its place upon your lips? How deeply does such a desire shape your hopes and plans? If the longings of your heart could speak, would any of them cry out, “Make me as holy as I can be”?

God’s desire for our holiness burns through the Scriptures like a purifying fire. Paul would have us think so: “This is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Peter would have us think so: “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15–16). Hebrews would have us think so: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).

And in a hundred other ways, God would have us think so. Our holiness delights him (Psalm 40:6–8), pleases him (1 Thessalonians 4:1), rises before him like a fragrant offering (Philippians 4:18), elicits his approval and praise (Romans 2:29; 12:1). If you want to please a holy God, be as holy as you can be.

Holiness and Its Hoaxes

Before we consider why holiness makes God happy, ponder for a moment what we even mean by holiness. Like many familiar Bible words, holiness can get lost in a haze of abstraction. And over time, if we’re not careful, we may come to associate the word with images or ideas at odds with the real thing.

Some, for example, may hear holiness and (perhaps subconsciously) think bland or boring. Holiness belongs in a museum or antique shop, hushed and stuffy. True holiness, however, knows nothing of blandness and cannot abide boredom. Scripture speaks of “the splendor of holiness,” of holiness as “glory and beauty” (1 Chronicles 16:29; Exodus 28:2). As Sinclair Ferguson writes, holy people shine with something of God’s own brilliance:

“To sanctify” means that God repossesses persons and things that have been devoted to other uses, and have been possessed for purposes other than his glory, and takes them into his own possession in order that they may reflect his own glory. (The Holy Spirit, 140)

True holiness is breathtakingly beautiful. It participates in God’s own glory — a glory bursting with life and majesty.

Others may hear holiness and think mainly of religious ritual: food laws and temple sacrifices, perhaps, or a devotion to churchly routines. But such was the mistake of many Pharisees — those punctual, precise, “worshiping” bundles of corruption (Matthew 23:25–28). True holiness pierces to the deepest parts of a person; it touches and transforms “spirit and soul and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Holiness is a hand that plucks the heart’s hidden strings, filling all of life with heavenly melody. It is not smoke arising from the altar, but faith and love arising from the soul (Psalm 40:6–8).

Then, finally, some may hear holiness and wonder what relevance it holds to daily life. Maybe holiness seems like a cloud: miles above the ground and impossible to grasp. But true holiness has everything to do with everyday life. When Jesus and his apostles call us to holiness, they address our thinking and speaking, our eating and drinking, our spending and saving, our working and resting. Even on the most ordinary day, there never comes a moment when “be holy” doesn’t mean something practical. Holiness embraces and dignifies our daily doings.

And such holiness — beautiful, deep, broad — makes God happy.

God’s Complex Pleasure

Depending on your personality and theological background, the thought of our holiness pleasing God may raise some questions. Some, especially lovers of the doctrine of justification, may wonder, Doesn’t God already delight in me? And others, especially the sensitive and scrupulous, may ask, How could God ever delight in me?

Doesn’t God already delight in me?

For some, the idea that our holiness delights God seems to undermine (or at least sit in tension with) justification by faith alone. Doesn’t God’s delight rest on Christ’s perfect holiness now reckoned to me through faith? Doesn’t he call me “holy and beloved” before I obey (Colossians 3:12) and even after I sin (1 Corinthians 6:11)?

These questions press us toward a helpful distinction. At one level, God has an unshakeable delight in his people because we are united to “his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13), our holy Savior who remains the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). We are in Christ — wrapped in his righteousness, sanctified by his purity — and therefore fully approved in God’s sight. And yet, above this foundation of God’s unchanging favor, we really can please him more or less, depending on how we live. We can grieve the Spirit or gladden him (Ephesians 4:30); we can delight God Almighty or displease him (Ephesians 5:9–10).

The image of fatherly discipline in Hebrews 12 brings these two kinds of pleasure together. All discipline implies some degree of displeasure or disapproval. At the same time, all good discipline springs from deep love. “The Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Hebrews 12:6). Beneath the displeasure of God’s discipline is his deep and unchanging fatherly affection.

Because he loves us, he responds to our displeasing sins with discipline — and by discipline, he makes us more pleasing. He gives us the security of his everlasting approval in Christ — and amazingly, he also gives us the dignity of becoming the kind of people who will hear his “well done.”

How could God ever delight in me?

Others ask a different question about God’s delight. They understand why holiness pleases God, and they would love to know themselves pleasing before him. But they can’t seem to imagine their holiness — their small, stumbling holiness — ever being pure enough to please him. Maybe in heaven they’ll delight God, but how could they do so now?

I feel the force of the question. Our sins are still many, our present imperfections run deep, and mixed motives taint even our best deeds. This side of heaven, God can always disapprove of something inside us. So it can feel safer to simply take refuge in the righteousness of Christ and wait till we’re perfect to believe ourselves pleasing. But that would be a great mistake.

“God is happy with our holiness because the heart of true holiness is happiness in God.”

If we, though trusting in Jesus and seeking to follow him, doubt that God could delight in our holiness, we need to reckon with how often God uses the language of pleasure to describe his posture toward his partly sanctified people. He says brotherly love pleases him (Romans 14:18), sharing with others pleases him (Hebrews 13:16), praying for kings pleases him (1 Timothy 2:3–4), a child’s obedience pleases him (Colossians 3:20), even that we can be “fully pleasing” to him (Colossians 1:10). And in each of these examples (and many more), he is not lying. The holy, holy, holy God is astoundingly, wonderfully pleasable.

Roots of His Approval

If we ask why such imperfect holiness pleases God, we might give several answers. We might remember that our present holiness is nothing less than the emerging character of Christ in us (2 Corinthians 3:18), his image rescued and renewed (Romans 8:29) — and God loves the glory of his Son. We might also remember that our holiness is the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) — and just as in the beginning, God regards the creative work of his Spirit as “good,” indeed “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Or we might remember, as Richard Sibbes writes, that God is able to take a long view of our holiness, seeing today’s small step as part of a much bigger and more beautiful picture:

Christ values us by what we shall be, and by what we are elected unto. We call a little plant a tree, because it is growing up to be so. “Who has despised the day of small things?” (Zechariah 4:10). Christ would not have us despise little things. (The Bruised Reed, 17)

Today’s edifying speech, purity of thought, self-denying service, prayerful yearning toward heaven — these are acorns becoming oaks, buds about to bloom, mustard seeds destined to outgrow and outlast the thorns and thistles of our sin. And so they please him.

Yet we can dig still deeper.

Happiness at the Heart

At bottom, we might say that God is happy with our holiness because the heart of true holiness is happiness in God. God made the world so that people like us would find our greatest joy in him and so glorify him as the Greatest Joy in the world— the treasure in the field, the pearl of infinite price, the fairest among ten thousand (and far more). And if we could peel back the layers of a truly holy life, we would find a heart that pulses with such pleasure in God.

People growing in holiness have felt, with Paul, something of “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” a worth that makes us more ready to suffer than to sin (Philippians 3:8–10). With Jeremiah, we have left sin’s broken cisterns, drunk deeply from the fountain, and now refuse to leave (Jeremiah 2:13–14). With John, we have taken up the commandments of God and said, with a cry of joy, “Not burdensome!” (1 John 5:3). And with David, we have tasted and seen that God is good (Psalm 34:8) — his presence the height of joy, his right hand the province of pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

Such holiness is beautiful, a flicker of the love between Father and Son, the aroma of heaven’s atmosphere. Such holiness is heart deep, filling our innermost parts with rivers of living water. Such holiness is broad, spreading over life as comprehensively as the waters cover the sea. And such holiness makes God happy.

So, if we want to distill God’s will for his people into a simple prayer, we may do no better than M’Cheyne’s striking line: “Lord, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be made.” And as we pray, we’ll know what we mean deep down: “Lord, make me as happy in you as a pardoned sinner can be made.”