On some nights, as the lights go off and the house grows quiet, a restful hush seems to descend on everything around us — but not on us. We lie on our bed like Gideon’s fleece, the only dry spot in a world bedewed with sleep.

A thousand thoughts may keep us awake when all around us rests. Thoughts of work unfinished and questions unanswered. Thoughts of living sorrows and dead comforts. Thoughts of last day’s regrets and next day’s needs.

Falling asleep may seem simple enough. “All it takes,” writes sleep researcher Nancy Hamilton, “is a tired body and a quiet mind” (The Depression Cure, 207). Yet the second half of that equation sometimes feels like a wish beyond reach. We might sooner touch the moon.

Our Lord “gives to his beloved sleep,” Solomon assures us (Psalm 127:2). But on nights such as these, we can hold the gift in helpless hands, wondering how to unwrap it.

Calm and Quiet Mind

The psalmists knew just how easily cares, sorrows, and mysterious causes could chase the sleep from their eyes. They, like us, had lain for long hours on their beds, thoughts churning (Psalm 77:1–3). They had watched many moons roll slowly across the sky (Psalm 22:2). They knew that sometimes, for good and kind reasons, the God who gives to his beloved sleep also takes from his beloved sleep.

And yet, Solomon and David and the other psalmists also knew that sleep really was possible, even on the most unlikely nights. Even when hunted in the wilderness (Psalm 3:5), or sunk down in sorrow (Psalm 42:8), or consumed with thoughts of life’s half-finished buildings (Psalm 127:1–2), they had experienced the wonder of laying their cares before their God, and laying themselves down to sleep. The psalmists knew that a quiet mind could be theirs, even when a quiet life was not.

No doubt, a quiet mind comes, in part, from simple wisdom: if we drink coffee in the late afternoon, or try to sleep in the afterglow of our smartphones, we should not be surprised to find ourselves still awake at midnight. But ultimately, the Psalms remind us that a quiet mind comes from the hand of our sleep-giving God, who nightly draws near to our beds as the Lord who is our shield, our shepherd, our comfort, our life.

The Lord Is Your Shield

I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. (Psalm 3:5)

The David of Psalm 3 had every reason to be anxious, every reason to lie down on a bed of cares. Chased from Jerusalem by a treacherous son, he now ran through the wilderness, hunted like a beast (Psalm 3:1–2). I can scarcely imagine a scenario less hospitable to sleep. Yet sleep David did, and apparently without much trouble: “I lay down and slept,” he says (Psalm 3:5). But how?

David’s words just before these shed particularly helpful light on the faith that sent him to sleep:

I cried aloud to the Lord,     and he answered me from his holy hill. (Psalm 3:4)

David, king of Israel, was used to reigning on the holy hill of Jerusalem. He once sat atop that hill with tremendous authority, royal power. Yet David knows that even when his own throne sits empty, or occupied by a rebel son, God’s throne is always and ever full. David didn’t need to reign on his throne in order to sleep; he just needed God to reign on his. If only God was on his holy hill — his character sure, his covenant firm — then David could sleep in the wilderness.

“Our cares may be many and close; our God is mighty and closer.”

We may lie down tonight in some wilderness of helplessness, hunted by cares far beyond our control. We may feel utterly vulnerable before some dark and brooding uncertainty — some coming diagnosis, some job insecurity, some relational conflict with much at stake. But even then, our God still sits with crown and scepter, his holy hill untouched. He is, by night, “a shield about me,” and by morning, “the lifter of my head” (Psalm 3:3). Our cares may be many and close; our God is mighty and closer.

The Lord Is Your Shepherd

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.He makes me lie down in green pastures. (Psalm 23:1–2)

In his helpful little book And So to Bed . . ., Adrian Reynolds notes that sheep lie down for only one reason: to rest or sleep (35). Picture, then, those familiar green pastures of Psalm 23 dotted with mounds of dozing wool, at rest beneath a shepherd whose faithful care assures them, “I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).

How many restless nights find their source in the deep-down fear that we shall, in fact, want — that the new morning will not bring new mercies, that tomorrow’s bread will not come? How often does our lonely ruminating suggest that we do not trust the Lord to be our shepherd? How strange and sad it would be to see a sheep anxious and fearful beside the rod and staff, bleating as if it walked alone. Yet so I often am.

On such nights, we could hardly ask for a better bedtime confession than “I shall not want” — nor for a better assurance of that truth than “the Lord is my shepherd.” Especially when tomorrow seems filled with daunting needs, with wants beyond the strength of sheep, these words may become the staff that leads us to green pastures, the shepherd’s hand that lays us down.

If the Lord really is our shepherd, then our wants do not require a worried and wakeful heart. He can do far more in our sleeping than we can do in our waking. And whatever needs tomorrow holds, his provision will prove equal to the task.

The Lord Is Your Comfort

He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. (Psalm 147:4)

Among the many kinds of restlessness the psalmists bring to their beds, the restlessness of sorrow may be the most common. Throughout the Psalms, we read of midnight weepers (Psalm 30:5), of wakeful, comfortless souls (Psalm 77:1–2), of saints whose tears stain their sheets (Psalm 6:6). Sorrow often makes for a sleepless heart.

In such moments, God’s voice in creation joins his voice in Scripture to speak comfort over our pain. Turn, then, and look out your window. Can you see a hundred burning stars — and imagine beyond them billions more? Your God “determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names” (Psalm 147:4). Such a thought might, at first, make us feel smaller than ever, our broken hearts too humble for God’s notice. But the psalmist draws the opposite application: if God names the very stars — these background props of creation — then he has certainly not lost sight of his dear people’s sorrows (Psalm 147:3; Isaiah 40:26–27).

“As surely as God knows the name of every star, he knows our hidden sorrows, our unseen aches.”

God’s exhaustive awareness of heaven’s hosts is meant to assure us not of our insignificance, but of his attention — and his attention particularly to our pains: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds,” the psalmist says (Psalm 147:3). As surely as he knows the name of every star, he knows our hidden sorrows, our unseen aches. And he is, for all his people, the great Healer of hearts and Binder of wounds.

Such a promise, shining from every star above, can become the song that sends us to sleep.

The Lord Is Your Life

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness. (Psalm 17:15)

Someday, if Jesus should tarry, we will shut our eyes one final time, never to awake again in this world. The psalmists keenly felt the coming of this last sleep. But they were also given glimpses, however small, of something past this sleep. When David sings of a waking that will show him “your face . . . your likeness,” he sings of a waking beyond this world, a morning only heaven could make (see also Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2).

It was a precious glimpse, but still just a glimpse. You and I see more. For David’s Son has now come, bringing a dawn beyond death’s night. For two days he lay down in the tomb, and then on the third, he woke. The apostle Paul draws the line between Jesus’s great and final sleep and ours:

God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. (1 Thessalonians 5:9–10)

As we go to sleep tonight, our Lord’s hands are ready to hold us safe. And in the hollow of his hands is a quiet that can calm the loudest mind, waking or sleeping, living or dying. Because even if this sleep should be our last, our eyes will open once again — not now upon the face of spouse or children, but upon the face of him who for ten thousand nights has been our shield, our shepherd, our comfort, and now our everlasting life.

I sometimes think I could be very holy if, after doing my morning devotions, I just stayed in my room all day long. I find that patience, for example, comes easier by myself. Peace, too. I feel a general kindness and goodwill when I’m alone. I imagine myself ready to bear others’ burdens.

But then I leave my room and begin interacting with some of those “others” face to face. And before long, I wonder where my holiness went. Patience now feels fragile; peace goes on the retreat. My theoretical kindness finds itself unprepared for real annoyances, and my shoulders seem too weak for real burdens. People, it turns out, have an irritating way of poking the spiritual fruit on my table, only to reveal just how many of those apples and pears are plastic.

I might prefer holiness to be a more private affair, a halo that hangs over my solitary head. But “holiness,” John Stott helpfully reminds me, “is not a mystical condition experienced in relation to God but in isolation from human beings. You cannot be good in a vacuum, but only in the real world of people” (Message of Ephesians, 184). True holiness may begin between God and the soul, but it finds full expression in community with other people — other wonderful, glorious, frustrating, and sometimes offensive people.

“True holiness may begin between God and the soul, but it finds full expression in community with other people.”

Which explains why, again and again, the New Testament describes the authentically holy life using two simple words: “one another.”

The One-Anothers

Around fifty times in the New Testament, Jesus and the apostles tell us to feel, say, or do something to “one another.” We are to care for one another and bear with one another, honor one another and sing to one another, do good to one another and forgive one another. And then there is the grand, overarching, most-repeated one-another, the command that “binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Colossians 3:14): “Love one another.”

The one-anothers do not exhaust our obligations to other Christians (many communal imperatives do not include the phrase “one another”), but together they offer a brilliant picture of life together under the lordship of Christ — and not only under the lordship of Christ, but also in the pattern of Christ. For, rightly grasped, the one-anothers are nothing less than the life of Christ at work in the people of Christ to glory of Christ.

Consider, for example, how even in a community-oriented passage like Colossians 3:12–17 (which includes three one-anothers), Paul can’t stop talking about Jesus. Our new character — compassionate, kind, humble, meek, patient (verse 12) — reflects “the image of its creator,” Christ (verse 10). We forgive “as the Lord has forgiven [us]” (verse 13). Our unity reflects “the peace of Christ” (verse 15); our words flow from “the word of Christ” (verse 16). In fact, whatever we do in community, we do “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (verse 17). For here, “Christ is all, and in all” (verse 11).

The one-anothers, then, are earthly dramas of heavenly realities; they are the love of Christ played out on ten thousand stages. So, with this pattern in mind, we might fruitfully consider the one-anothers in five categories: have his mind, offer his welcome, speak his words, show his love, and give his grace.

1. Have His Mind

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count [one another] more significant than yourselves. (Philippians 2:3)

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. (1 Peter 5:5)

We might easily launch into the one-anothers wondering about all we should do for our brothers and sisters in Christ — and indeed, the one-anothers call us to do much. But before we say or do anything for one another, God calls us to feel something toward one another. “Have this mind among yourselves,” he says, “which is yours in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). And this mind, or attitude, can be captured in one word: humility.

It is possible — frighteningly possible, I’ve discovered — to externally “obey” the one-anothers with a mind utterly at odds with Christ. It’s possible to greet one another with a smile that hides bitterness; and encourage one another with a grasping, flattering heart; and bear one another’s burdens with a messiah complex. In other words, it is possible to turn the one-anothers into subtle servants of Master Self.

Humility, however, clothes us with the others-oriented attitude of Christ. Humility puts a pair of eyeglasses on the soul, allowing us to see others without the blurring of selfishness. And humility, in its own miniature way, follows the same descent Christ took when he “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:8). It goes low to lift others high — and doesn’t scheme for how it might lift self too.

In a Spirit-filled community, we all (no matter how tall) look up at each other, not down; we jostle to kneel and hold the towel; we choose the seat of the last and the least — because we remember how Jesus did the same for us.

2. Offer His Welcome

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. (Romans 12:16)

Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you. (Romans 15:7)

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

The one-anothers, having begun with a humble mind, now move outward to eyes, mouth, and outstretched hand. The “mind of Christ” led our high and holy Lord toward us, not away. He came to us with a welcome, drawing us near through the door of his humble heart. His was a fellowship-creating love, a love that turned strangers into brothers (Ephesians 2:14–17). And now we, his people, walk in that same love and offer that same welcome.

“Welcome one another” (Romans 15:7), like all the one-anothers, sounds nice in theory. But the real-life application of this command may stretch our preferences and personalities beyond the breaking point. For “welcome,” of course, means more than “nod and say hello,” and “one another” means more than “those others whom you like.” Rather, the command calls us to warmly embrace, gladly associate with, and readily invite into our homes every other in our church — including those who seem “lowly” (Romans 12:16), and those we feel strongly tempted to judge or despise (Romans 14:3).

But if Christ left heaven to welcome sinners like us, then we can cross the church foyer to welcome difficult saints. And if he opened his heart to let us strangers in, then we can open our homes to others, no matter how strange. And if he greeted us in our lostness, then surely we can greet others in their loneliness.

3. Speak His Words

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. (Colossians 3:16)

Encourage one another and build one another up. (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

Exhort one another every day. (Hebrews 3:13)

Christians are a word people, a speaking people. Brought to life ourselves by “the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23), we now seek to bring that life to others through our Word-shaped words. And we employ the whole range of our tones and vocal cords to do so: we not only speak, but teach, instruct, admonish, encourage, exhort, comfort, honor, stir up, and even sing. Whether pastors or not, we all are stewards of God’s life-giving word; we all have something to say.

So, as we welcome one another, we look for opportunities to take some portion of God’s word and apply it in a way that “fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). We are people with a Bible always open on the table of our hearts, ready to “stir up one another to love and good works” with a well-timed word (Hebrews 10:24). So, even as we laugh and exchange small talk, a current of holy intentionality flows through our conversation: we know that God intends to use what we say to work wonders in each other’s lives.

Which means, of course, that we are also a listening people. For, first, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, we can speak “the Word of God” faithfully and accurately only when we listen “with the ears of God” (Life Together, 76) — patiently and attentively tracing the contours of a brother’s or sister’s heart. And then, second, we also listen to the words that others have for us. No one in any local church, including its pastors, is only teacher, but always teacher and disciple, speaker and listener, exhorter and exhorted.

4. Show His Love

Always seek to do good to one another. (1 Thessalonians 5:15)

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another. (1 Peter 4:10)

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2)

As important as words are for a healthy Christian community, no community lives on words alone. Jesus did not just speak to people during his earthly ministry; he healed them and touched them and delivered them and ate with them. And so we, his disciples, are not mere mouths to one another, but also hands and feet and shoulders. We not only speak his love, but show it.

Now, service may often feel like a costlier form of love than speech. It’s one thing to speak comforting words; it’s another to sit for long hours as a comforting presence. It’s one thing to encourage someone carrying a heavy burden; it’s another to bend your shoulder to the load. This kind of love interrupts the day’s plans with untimely requests and lays hands on evenings and weekends.

“Let . . . the greatest account it their greatest honour to perform the meanest necessary service to the meanest of saints,” John Owen writes (Works, 13:81). In the one-another kingdom of Christ, pastors count it their high honor to visit shut-in saints. Busy fathers set up chairs before the Sunday gathering. Tired mothers listen over children’s background chaos to the quiet tears of a younger woman. College students give their Saturdays to helping church members move houses.

And all of us, like the woman in Mark 14, gladly break our precious alabaster flasks — our time, our gifts, our money, our homes — to anoint the body of Christ.

5. Give His Grace

[Bear] with one another in love. (Ephesians 4:2)

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

The humble mind of Christ, the warm welcome of Christ, the stirring words of Christ, the helpful hand of Christ — these show, marvelously, what the Spirit of Christ can do in a community. But none displays our Lord quite so clearly as the forgiving heart of Christ. Christian communities are built, through great disappointment and heartache, in the shape of a cross.

Therefore, we never have a better opportunity to show the glory of Christian community than when Christian community feels hardest. Get close enough to any group of recovering sinners, and they will poke and prod your patience. They will say things that baffle and offend you. They will wound you without even knowing it. The worst of these moments can leave a smoking crater in our souls. But they can also become ground zero for something beautiful and new: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

This love will hurt. Oh will it hurt. To forgive completely — not counting others’ sins against them, not holding onto it, not allowing it to become the lens through which we see them? This love feels, in some small measure, like Calvary love. And it shines with Calvary splendor.

One Another for the World

Why, we might ask, did Paul, Peter, James, and John lay such stress on Christian community? Why did they stack up so many one-another commands in their letters, rather than promoting a more private piety?

Perhaps for the same reason Jesus said to his disciples,

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34–35)

“This Lord reconciles us not only to himself, but to each other, creating one-another love out of one-another pain.”

We live in a world with its own set of one-anothers: one-another brokenness, one-another enmity, one-another manipulation, one-another selfishness. And local churches exist to show a different way of life — a different Lord of life. This Lord reconciles us not only to himself, but to each other, creating one-another love out of one-another pain.

As such communities move out into the world — into parks and coffee shops and sports teams and neighborhoods — and as they invite outsiders in, such relational glory will not go unnoticed. “By this all people will know . . .” And therefore, Christians walking in the one-anothers not only have Christ’s mind, offer his welcome, speak his words, show his love, and give his grace. They also advance his mission.

Say you have a friend whose approach to the Christian life seems somewhat extreme. Too strict. Overly disciplined.

You heard him say something the other day about beating his own body — figuratively (you think), but still. In fact, the way he talks often makes you squirm a little bit. Strain, agonize, struggle, labor, strive — these are common words for him. Maybe too common for someone saved by grace.

Then again, he does regularly celebrate God’s grace — more than you do, actually. He’s a joyful, worshiping man, not gloomy or obsessive in the typical sense. His seriousness is almost always tinged with something merry, and for all his drive he seems marked by unusual peace. He’s warm toward you, friendly.

But still, the man never seems to let up. He reads his Bible, and prays, and speaks of spiritual things with an earnestness that embarrasses you. He talks of fighting sin as if he had a sword strapped to his thigh. He denies himself many innocent pleasures (without expecting you to do so) because, he says, they “slow his pursuit of Christ.” You can’t help but feel a touch kittenish in his presence, your Christianity more purr than roar. So you wonder.

Is this legalism? Asceticism? An attempt to be superhuman?

And then, once again, you remember that this friend is the apostle Paul.

Pauline Paradox

Now, if the apostle himself had overheard our concern, he may have sympathized, at least a little. For Paul had known the dangers of discipline. Hebrew of Hebrews, law-keeping Pharisee, zealous persecutor, Paul ran harder and faster than most (Philippians 3:5–6; Galatians 1:14). Yet his disciplined feet only carried him farther and farther from Christ (1 Timothy 1:13). He was rigorous, precise, self-denying, and lost.

“When Paul lost his legalism, he did not lose his discipline. Not even a little bit.”

Yet, remarkably, when Paul lost his legalism, he did not lose his discipline. Not even a little bit. God transformed him, instead, into a stunning apostolic paradox: He preached justification by faith alone, and he pursued holiness with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12–13). He worshiped God for his grace, and he “worked harder than any” (1 Corinthians 15:10). He boasted of Christ’s sufficiency, and he beat his body lest somehow he should fail to finish the race (1 Corinthians 9:27).

We struggle to live such paradoxes. The grace of God, for many of us, seems to produce a more casual Christianity, a faith without a sweat. But when Paul’s own discipline passed through the fires of grace, it emerged on the other side not consumed but refined — free from the dross of self-righteousness, aglow with the Spirit’s flame.

Redeeming Discipline

Mentions of discipline lace Paul’s letters. We could consider his toil in teaching (Colossians 1:29), his striving in prayer (Romans 15:30), his refusal to use his full apostolic rights (1 Corinthians 9:12), or that startling statement already mentioned: “I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave” (1 Corinthians 9:27 NIV). But we may hear the heartbeat of Paul’s discipline most clearly in Philippians 3:12–14 and its context:

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Paul the persecutor died on the Damascus road — and in his place arose a man who pressed and strained for Christ. A mighty discipline still drove him forward, but a discipline far different from the one he had known. A new power, new purpose, and new pleasure now gripped him.

New Power

Paul had known something of power in his pre-Christian life, but it was power “from a self-strength,” as John Owen puts it (Works, 6:7). The source of Paul’s unredeemed power was Paul; he relied on self, not the Spirit, for his strength. Not only did such power prove powerless against sins of the heart (Romans 7:7–8), but also, being an offspring of the flesh, it could never please God (Romans 8:8).

But then, Paul says, “Christ Jesus . . . made me his own” (Philippians 3:12). And with Christ’s presence came Christ’s power — power from above and beyond him, and yet power now dwelling within him. And so, Paul saw former sins, once unconquerable, fall dead at his feet (Romans 8:13). He “pressed” and “strained” with a new kind of strength (Philippians 3:13–14). And he worked as one who knew “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

With Paul, disciplined Christians do not run on the strength of self-resolve; they know and fear the manufactured power of the flesh. But they also take seriously those four familiar, radical words: “God works in you.” God works in you — and therefore you are not bound to the narrow limits of your self-strength. God works in you — and therefore laziness is not a celebration of his grace but a tacit denial of his presence. God works in you — and therefore every resistance is an opportunity to prove his power.

New Purpose

The power behind Paul’s discipline, then, was decidedly different after Damascus. And so too was the purpose or aim of his discipline. Once, Paul ran to attain “a righteousness of my own that comes from the law” (Philippians 3:9). But then, blinded by the risen Christ, he realized there was only one righteousness worth having, and it was one that discipline could never win: “the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:9). So, in a moment, Paul stopped running for righteousness.

But he did not stop running. For though he already wore the robe of Christ’s righteousness, another robe still awaited: the robe of resurrection. “The resurrection from the dead” was the “it” he pressed on to make his own, the “prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:11–12, 14). By discipline, Paul reached to share his Lord’s undying life.

Paul knew, of course, that discipline could not earn his resurrection — nor was he ultimately uncertain about reaching that land beyond death. He could already feel the hand of Christ upon him; he could already say, “Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12). And yet, Paul also knew that God-empowered discipline — pressing on, straining forward — was Christ’s way of bringing his people to glory. In a world where many professing Christians give up after making a good start, discipline keeps the righteous running till resurrection.

By discipline, we throw off every hindrance that slows our pace toward heaven. We shake off every hand that wraps around our ankles. We set our gaze ahead, where Christ himself awaits us. And with holy resolve we say, “By the power of God within me, I won’t allow sin to keep me from him.”

New Pleasure

Perhaps Paul once saw discipline as many of us have: as a purse-lipped virtue, a grim necessity, a healthy fruit with sour taste. Discipline is an alarm at 5:00am; it is wind sprints and diets and long hours over dull books. Yes, Paul may have seen discipline as such. But then he saw the face of Jesus, and discipline became filled with new pleasure.

What spark lit the fire of Paul’s resolve? What gunshot sent him racing toward resurrection? This spark, this shot:

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. (Philippians 3:8–9)

“The surpassing worth of Christ has captured our hearts, calling forth our own surpassing work.”

Christian discipline may press and strain. It may rise early to read and pray; it may fast and go willingly without; it may say many a painful no. But not from any barren sense of oughtness. Rather, the surpassing worth of Christ has captured our hearts, calling forth our own surpassing work.

Not that we always feel the same sense of Christ’s worth. Sometimes, discipline is the song of living longing; other times, it is the prayer of longing lost. But whether discipline moves mainly from desire or for desire, its sights remain set on him whose presence is our pleasure. Out, then, with any thoughts of stern and frowning resolve. The only discipline worth the name runs under the banner of delight.

From ‘Done’ to ‘Do’

So, say you have a friend whose approach to the Christian life seems somewhat extreme. Too strict. Overly disciplined. So you wonder. Doesn’t the gospel cry “Done!” rather than “Do!”?

Indeed it does (John 19:30). But as you watch your friend more closely, you realize that on the other side of the gospel’s “done,” there is another kind of “do”: not the doing that strives for God’s favor or adds anything to Christ’s cross, but the doing that rises from fresh power, resurrection purpose, and a new and deep pleasure in God.

So, by grace, you start running harder. You pray and press on; you trust and strain forward. And you begin to discover that God’s grace is a bigger wonder than you once thought. Not only does grace grant our forgiveness and win our worship, but it works — hard. And to top off the paradox, it keeps us happy while we work.

Some sorrows run so deep, and last so long, that those who bear them may despair of ever finding solace, at least in this life. No matter how large a frame they put around their pain, the darkness seems to bleed all the way to the edges.

Perhaps you are among those saints whose lot seems to lie in the land of sorrow. You have not taken the bitter counsel of Job’s wife — “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9) — and by God’s grace, you will not. Yours is not a fair-weather faith. You know that God has treated you with everlasting kindness in Christ. You cannot curse him.

But still, with Job, you stare at the fallen house of your life, where so many dear desires lie dead. And even with faith larger than a mustard seed, the brokenness seems unfixable in this world. The wound incurable. The grief inconsolable. The darkness defies the largest frames we could build.

Which is why, when God speaks to such saints in Romans 8, he does not bid them to merely look harder here below, squinting for a silver lining. Instead, he gives them a frame far larger than this life.

Groaning Bodies, Groaning Earth

When we think of Romans 8, we may remember only the series of triumphant trumpet blasts sounding through the chapter: “No condemnation.” “Abba! Father!” “All things work together for good.” “Who can be against us?” “More than conquerors.” But even as Paul takes us to the heights of Christian joy, he also leads us through the depths of Christian sorrow. For the mountaintop glory of Romans 8 rises from the valley of deep and desperate groaning.

“The whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now,” Paul writes. “And not only the creation, but we ourselves . . . groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22–23). This earth, for all its beauty, lies like a mother on her back, miserable and aching for the cry of new life. And God’s people, for all our blessings in Christ, stumble through this world like children far from home, waiting for our Father. And as we wait, “we . . . groan.”

We groan because we, sons of the Second Adam, still suffer and die like sons of the first — ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We groan because legs and lungs fail, because eyes grow dim, because paralysis lames and Alzheimer’s erases the face of dearest loves. We groan because the tribulation and distress of this age sometimes feel like nightmares brought to life (Romans 8:35), like burdens beyond the strength of our frail shoulders. We groan because hope deferred makes the heart sick, and the sickness sometimes feels terminal (Romans 8:24–25). We groan because “the sufferings of this present time” can veil the Christ we love (Romans 8:18).

We should beware of papering over such groanings with platitudes (however well-intended). The saints may find themselves, at times, so perplexed, so oppressed, so utterly weak that our mouth, opened for prayer, forms no words. “We do not know what to pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). And so we gaze speechlessly ahead, the horizon of this life shrouded in one incoherent groan.

At the same time, however, we should beware of allowing “this present time,” these seventy or eighty years, to set the boundaries of our hope, our joy. “For,” Paul tells us, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). Into this world of deep groaning, glory is coming.

Glory Will Come

We do not groan, then, as those who have no hope. For these pains, though they last all our life long, are “the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8:22), not the pains of death. “The sufferings of this present time” end in glory, not a grave. And the glory to come will be big enough, incomparable enough to answer the double groaning of this age: the groaning of these broken bodies, and the groaning of this broken earth.

Renewed Bodies

For now, your identity as God’s beloved child lies veiled beneath a weak body and a pain-ridden life. Your body breaks like every other body. Your life trips and bleeds on this world’s thorns like every other life. In fact, just as onlookers esteemed Jesus “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4), so may you seem: like a sheep led to slaughter (Romans 8:36), you may appear, to the natural eye, Godforsaken. You may, at times, even appear so to yourself.

“Glory will be the balm you longed for but never found here, the cure that felt a world beyond reach.”

But not forever. One day soon, your true self, hidden for now in Christ (Colossians 3:3), will be seen. Then will come “the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19), “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21), our “adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). Your status as God’s child will become manifest not only to the eye of faith, but to the eye of sight, as you shed this death-bound body and, like a brilliant flower born from a dirty seed, rise up resplendent. Imperishable, powerful, glorious with Christ’s glory (1 Corinthians 15:42–43; Philippians 3:21), you finally will look like the child you are.

And finally you will see what glory can do with this life’s shattered pieces. Like the palm of our Lord Jesus upon the sick, glory will restore every part of you still broken and blind, still leprous and lame, healing all your unhealable places. Glory will be the balm you longed for but never found here, the cure that felt a world beyond reach. For Glory himself will touch you with his own hands, and his scars will banish ours forever (Revelation 21:4).

Renewed Earth

His scars will banish ours — and not only ours. The creation, too, waits for glory, its current brokenness a consequence and reminder of our own. “The creation was subjected to futility”; it lives “in bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:20–21). But oh how it yearns for freedom, waiting “with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19). The sea, even now, is ready to roar, the trees are poised to clap their hands, and the song of the hills hangs on inhaled breath (Psalm 98:7–8; Isaiah 55:12).

With us, creation too will descend into the grave, and rise again transfigured. It too, seed-like, will sprout into a beauty beyond imagining, its freedom and glory an echo of our own — and both an echo of Christ’s (Romans 8:21). Meanwhile, the creation groans for this transformation, aching to become the mirror of the children’s glory, the fitting frame for our own endless joy.

Creation looks to the day when its stones will run like streets of gold, when its trees will bear fruit for our healing, when every bird will sing the song and every flower waft the fragrance of God’s all-conquering love in Christ (Romans 8:37–39).

Glory Is Already Here

Glory, then, is rushing toward this world like a river from the throne of God, like light from the lamp of the Lamb, like the Spirit blown over Ezekiel’s valley, ready to come and dig a grave for all our griefs. And yet, even now, in this present age of groaning, the guarantee of that glory lives and dwells within us.

“Some wounds never heal fully in this world. Some hopes follow us, still deferred, into the grave. But glory is coming.”

If Christ is yours, then “the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Romans 8:9). The same Spirit who raised and glorified Jesus has made your heart his home (Romans 8:11), his presence a promise that your groans will turn to glory (Romans 8:23, 30) — and a promise, too, that glory can even now enter your groans.

Whenever you walk “according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:5), you feel the beat of glory’s undying heart. Whenever you put to death some deed of the body (Romans 8:13), or respond to heartache by crying, “Abba!” (Romans 8:15), or love Christ in the midst of deep loss (Romans 8:35–39), you hold, like Noah, an olive leaf of the coming glory, a little piece of the land beyond sorrow.

Some pain fills the whole frame of this life. Some wounds never heal fully in this world. Some hopes follow us, still deferred, into the grave. But glory is coming — and the Spirit of glory lives, even now, as our inseparable friend. And the sufferings of this present time, however high and wide and deep and long, are not worth comparing with him.

Some spiritual darkness feels so woven into the fabric of our souls, so enmeshed in our personality and wiring, so deeply rooted and subtle, that escaping it can feel like trying to run from our own shadow. An ingrained and abiding lack of assurance, a distorted relationship with body image or food, the twisting temptations of unwanted desire — such darkness has a way of hounding at the heels.

Perhaps you feel, as I have, like “a man in a shipwreck who sees land and envies the happiness of all those who are there but thinks it is impossible for him to reach the shore,” as Henry Scougal once described the experience (The Life of God in the Soul of Man, 108). You see clearly enough what a life free from your darkness would look like, but every attempt to reach that happy shore has left you wave-tossed and battered upon the rocks. So you look wistfully from the deeps, still desiring deliverance, but no longer trying so hard. You settle into a life of treading water.

Some years ago, as this fatalistic spirit began to settle on me, I struck upon a piece of counsel that offered a mighty and needed shake. John Owen (1616–1683), addressing spiritual doubters in particular, writes,

Be not . . . heartless or slothful: up and be doing; attend with diligence to the word of grace; be fervent in prayer, assiduous in the use of all ordinances of the church; in one or other of them, at one time or other, thou wilt meet with Him whom thy soul loveth, and God through Him will speak peace unto thee. (Works of John Owen, 6:614)

“Up and be doing.” Certainly this is not the only counsel the spiritually stuck need to hear (nor is it the only counsel Owen offers). But in my own entrenched struggles, I have found great help from this gentle but firm hand on the shoulder, this kind but resolute look in the eye, this warm but weighty voice telling me I am no prisoner to my past or present and bidding me not to grow weary in seeking God.

‘Up and Be Doing’

Perhaps you read counsel like the above and sigh. “Read the Bible more? Pray more? Go to church more? I’ve already tried all that.” A similar sigh has passed through my own lips more than once. I’ve already asked, sought, and knocked, I’ve thought to myself, but it just hasn’t worked. Eventually, however, my mind drifts back to Scripture’s own examples of long and earnest seeking, and the words “I’ve already tried that” fall limply to the ground.

We could consider the Old Testament refrain to seek the Lord “with all your heart and all your soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29), or the prophets’ resolve, come what may, to “wait for the God of my salvation” (Micah 7:7), or the psalmists’ example of crying out “day and night before you,” even from the deepest, longest darkness (Psalm 88:1). But perhaps the Gospels offer the most powerful call to rise, lift up our heads, and seek God with fresh diligence.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you,” Jesus tells his disciples. Fewer words hold more promise for those seeking a deliverance as yet ungiven. Fewer too hold more challenge. For when Jesus illustrates the kind of asking, seeking, and knocking he has in mind, he offers the parable of the impudent friend, that noisy midnight knocker who wouldn’t leave without his loaves (Luke 11:5–9). Of the various charges that might be brought against my own prayer life, I fear impudence is rarely one of them.

Meanwhile, the Gospels give us living portraits of the same point: women who break through crowds to touch the hem of his garment (Mark 5:27–28), fathers half-beaten by unbelief who nevertheless carry their sons to Christ (Mark 9:24), mothers who persist in their petitions, undaunted by refusals, until they receive their request (Mark 7:24–30). Such desperate souls asked and sought and knocked — and asked and sought and knocked again — until the gift was given, the treasure found, the handle turned.

Compared to such as these, how much of my own seeking has happened from half a heart, from a split soul, with one foot stepping toward God and one dragging lazily behind?

Draw Near to God

To be sure, Jesus does sometimes surprise his struggling people and, quite apart from our diligent seeking, grant the deliverance we need. Our Christian lives began when he raised us, Lazarus-like, from the tomb — and sometimes, our Christian lives progress when he blesses us unsought, or sought only feebly.

But we have no warrant for presuming he will do so. The spiritual world, like the physical world, has its causes and effects, its means and ends, its principle that “whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Neither creation nor Scripture gives us a category for a sanctified sluggard, whose spiritual crop grows without diligent plowing and planting, weeding and watering. Our Spirit-dependent efforts cannot earn God’s blessing — only Christ can — but very often they are the divinely appointed means of experiencing his blessing.

Knowing that God uses our diligence as a means of deliverance, we might ask questions like these when darkness persists:

Am I actively killing every known sin, including those that seem unrelated to my main struggle, and by comparison small (Romans 8:13)?
Have my prayers for deliverance looked anything like that holy impudence that knocks and knocks again (Luke 11:8)?
Do I meditate upon God’s word day and night (Psalm 1:2) — and in particular, am I intimately acquainted with passages that address my struggle?
On Sundays, do I listen to sermons and take the Lord’s Supper expectantly, looking to my Lord “as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master” (Psalm 123:2)?
Have I kept pursuing Christian community, surrounding myself with Spirit-filled people rather than shrinking away into the shadows (Hebrews 10:24–25)?
Have I sought specific counsel from wise and trusted saints, inviting them to take a flashlight into the cellar of my soul?

Questions like these make me mindful of God’s mercy, which so often has met my half-hearted seeking with wholehearted kindness. He is a blessed and blessing God, always “ready to forgive” and give more than we ask (Nehemiah 9:17; Ephesians 3:20). Yet as I think about my own persistent struggles, these questions also remind me just how much territory remains to be explored in the promise of James 4:8: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

Seeking from the Depths

We should beware, at this point, of reducing the deepest struggles to a mere matter of trying harder. Nor would I wish to imply that all who have sought some deliverance unsuccessfully have simply not sought earnestly enough. Sometimes, the shore remains out of reach not because we haven’t swum hard enough, but because the sea is long. Jesus promises that those who seek will find; he does not promise they will find immediately. So, in reality, our seeking may last much longer, and our progress may advance much slower, than we hoped.

“Sometimes, the shore remains out of reach not because we haven’t swum hard enough, but because the sea is long.”

Spiritually speaking, we may feel somewhat like the woman with the twelve-year flow of blood, stuck in a place of undesired darkness despite our best efforts. Why did God let her sickness linger for twelve years instead of ten — or two? We don’t know. We do know, however, that in the fields of God’s kingdom, no seed of diligence, buried and watered with patient perseverance, remains fruitless forever (Galatians 6:9). God has never told his people, “Seek me in vain” (Isaiah 45:19). Nor does he show us the happy shore to merely tantalize us in the water. He shows it because it really can be ours — maybe not immediately or all at once, but really.

So, in the midst of long seeking, don’t lose heart. Your God sees you. His ways may soar high above your understanding, but they are never unwise or unkind (Isaiah 55:8–9). And if you go on seeking him, if every time you fall you rise up again and be doing, the sun will sooner drop from the sky than you be put to shame (Isaiah 49:23).

Our Hand on His Hem

Diligent seeking also holds its dangers, of course. And chief among them may be this: as we pray, and read, and gather with God’s people, and hear counsel, we may rely more on these means than on the One who made them. We may hang our hopes for deliverance not upon Christ, but upon all our efforts to seek him, like travelers too focused on the road to see their home.

Here again, a mind immersed in the Gospels may be our best guide. For in all our seeking, we are doing spiritually what so many Gospel characters did physically: getting as close to Jesus as we can, certain that he is our only hope.

“All our best efforts are only the hand on the hem of Christ’s garment, and all the blessing belongs to him.”

Our prayers may rise like Bartimaeus’s cry, but they are not the voice that bids us see. Our Bible reading may kneel us like the leper before Jesus, but it is not the touch that heals us. Our Sunday worship may stretch out an arm like the sick and anguished woman’s, but it is not the power flowing. All our best efforts are only the hand on the hem of Christ’s garment, and all the blessing belongs to him.

But oh, what blessing awaits those who do cry out and keep crying, kneel and keep kneeling, reach and keep reaching. In all our hardest wrestlings, we are not bound to the narrow fences of our own personality, our own power, our own past: we are bound to Christ himself. And in him, the long and desperate darkness can finally begin to lift, and the shipwrecked saint can finally draw near to shore, carried on the waves of his strength.

In the church’s mission against the gates of hell, one of our main weapons is the familiar, often unremarkable, easily underestimated act of teaching.

Jesus taught (Matthew 4:23; 9:35), and he called his apostles to teach (Matthew 28:19–20). The apostles taught (Acts 5:28; 28:31), and they equipped local pastors to teach (1 Timothy 3:2; 4:13). Now, pastors teach (2 Timothy 4:2), and they raise up faithful men (2 Timothy 2:2), as well as all the saints (Colossians 3:16), to continue the teaching task. Through teaching, God lights up the darkness and lifts up his Christ, he frees Satan’s captives and makes them his sons, he hammers hell’s gates and wins back the world.

But not just through any teaching. Thoroughly Christian teaching is a bigger, broader task than many assume, especially in an age of abundant online content. Throughout the New Testament, the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, and then the church, assumes a certain context, flows from a certain character, comes with a certain content, and aims toward a certain completion.

And perhaps nowhere do we see these features more clearly than in Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:18–35). How did Paul teach the Ephesians so as to “open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18)? And how might pastors, missionaries, and other teachers model him today?

Context: All of Life

The word teaching, for us, likely evokes images of academia: classrooms and desks, lectures and note-taking. Paul certainly had a category for formal public teaching, as when he taught in the Ephesian synagogue or reasoned in the hall of Tyrannus (Acts 19:8–10). But for the apostle, teaching was also woven into all of life.

Paul “lived among” the Ephesians for three years; his “students” were those “among whom I have gone about” (Acts 20:18, 25). Paul knew the Ephesians deeply, and the Ephesians likewise knew Paul. He had taught not only in public but “from house to house” (Acts 20:20); they had seen not only his talk but his tears (Acts 20:31). In his teaching, Paul clothed abstract principles with his own lived example. He had not only told them the words of the Lord Jesus, that “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” but he had “shown” them (Acts 20:35).

Andrew Clarke, in a review of Claire Smith’s study Pauline Communities as ‘Scholastic Communities’, describes Paul’s teaching method this way: “Close, authoritative relationships invited the imitation of modeled lives, and not merely attendance at formal discourse.” Discipleship, Paul knew, is less like learning physics and more like learning carpentry, and disciples are less like students and more like apprentices. And so, Paul spoke to all of the church’s life with all of his life, joining doctrine and devotion, precept and pattern.

“Paul spoke to all of the church’s life with all of his life, joining doctrine and devotion, precept and pattern.”

Understandably, then, Paul was not content with distant, disembodied teaching — at least, not as his primary mode of teaching. Even when Paul wrote letters, he longed to turn pen and ink into flesh and blood (Galatians 4:20; 1 Thessalonians 2:17–18; 2 Timothy 1:4), and he often sent his written teaching with those who could model “my ways in Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:17).

Today, we rightly leverage our digital technologies for teaching (as I am now). But as we turn away from the Internet and toward our real-life churches (ideally our primary teaching context), can we say with Paul, “You yourselves know how I lived among you” (Acts 20:25) — because, indeed, we have enfleshed our teaching in everyday life?

Character: All of Christ

Given this all-of-life context, Paul’s teaching required a certain character. If teaching included imitation and not just information, the teacher needed more than true ideas; he needed a holy life. So, as Paul reminds the Ephesian elders of his ministry among them, he says as much about his manner as he does about his message.

Paul had served with humility, taught with tears, suffered with patience (Acts 20:19). He preached Christ as altogether worthy and then showed his willingness to die for his name (Acts 20:24). He taught the whole counsel of God with courage (Acts 20:27). And he displayed a manifest freedom from greed and laziness as he commended the Servant Savior (Acts 20:33–35). As he taught in all of life, he modeled — as much as an imperfect saint can — all of Christ.

Words and works could not be separated in the apostle’s mind. Faithful teaching called for faithful living — not only because a faithful life would illustrate and embody the teaching, but also because it would guard the truth in a teacher’s heart. “Pay careful attention to yourselves,” Paul told the church’s elders. And why? Because “from your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:28, 30). Before a teacher speaks “twisted things,” the desire to draw others after himself captures his heart. Twisted teaching comes from a twisted soul, a twisted life.

The church father Gregory Nazianzen once said of his friend Basil that “his speech was like thunder because his life was like lightning” (Pia Desideria, 104). Likewise with Paul. So, when the apostle instructs Timothy to raise up more teachers, he tells him to look not merely for “able” men — men who can and want to teach — but for “faithful men” (2 Timothy 2:2), men whose words thunder because their lives blaze.

Content: All of Scripture

If the context of Paul’s teaching was all of life, and the character was all of Christ, then the content was all of Scripture, with a special focus on Jesus’s person and work. He taught the whole Christ from the whole counsel of God.

Twice, Paul mentions his refusal to pick and choose from God’s word:

“I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable” (Acts 20:20).
“I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).

How tempting to “shrink” before some uncomfortable word from God rather than, like Paul, “declaring” it. How tempting to minimize, sidestep, muffle, ignore, or twist the toughest texts. Yet Paul knew that all God’s words were “profitable,” no matter how painful they landed at first, and that he as God’s steward would be judged by how faithfully he taught his Master’s message (Acts 20:26–27). And so, he didn’t shrink from proclaiming every promise, telling every story, witnessing to every warning, and declaring every command.

At the same time, he spoke especially “of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21), or what he calls “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24) — or most succinctly, “the word of his grace” (Acts 20:32). Of all that was profitable, the gospel was most profitable; among the whole counsel of God, Christ was the climax. Every promise pointed to his person and work, and every command flowed from his cross.

Completion: All He Commanded

Finally, as Paul taught, he aimed toward the grand ambition of the Great Commission: “. . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). The end of Christian teaching is not understanding but obedience — what Paul elsewhere calls “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5).

“Oh, how good it would be if our own teaching were washed in the tears of holy love.”

Paul yearned to see the word of God’s grace “build . . . up” believers into Christ-loving, word-obeying, devil-shaming disciples (Acts 20:32). So, he not only explained and applied God’s word, but even “admonish[ed] everyone with tears” (Acts 20:31). Oh, how good it would be if our own teaching were washed in the tears of holy love. With Paul, such leaders live and weep and teach to kill anger and birth gentleness, to clothe the proud with humility and the sorrowful with praise, to take people curved toward themselves and open them up to a broad new world, to heal fractured relationships and create communities so satisfied in Christ they confound the devil’s kingdom.

Such a mission, of course, is impossible apart from God. Who can open the eyes of the blind, or break the iron chains wrapped around the will, or deliver those enslaved to the ancient lie? Only the Spirit of the living God. Paul knew it, and so we read, “When he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all” (Acts 20:36).

Teaching may be the church’s sword, but it cuts only when wielded by the Spirit. Without him, our best words are a dull and broken blade. So, before we teach, and after we teach, and perhaps even as we teach, we pray, “Father, take these feeble words, this little teaching, and win back more of your world.”

Twenty-five years. Three hundred months. One thousand three hundred weeks. Nine thousand one hundred twenty-five days. That’s how long Abraham waited between hearing God’s promise and holding his son (Genesis 12:4; 21:5).

We can read Genesis 12–21 in one sitting. Abraham and Sarah lived it day by day, nine thousand mornings and more. Three times we’re told God appeared to Abraham to reaffirm his word (Genesis 15:5; 17:16; 18:10). Otherwise, he and Sarah carried the past promise in a land of present silence, waiting with open hands and an empty womb.

Abraham, “the father of us all” (Romans 4:16), was a waiting man; his faith, a waiting faith. As his seventies turned to eighties turned to nineties, he waited. As he moved through Haran to Canaan to Egypt and back, he waited. As his body weakened and his wife grew gray, he waited.

God could have brought Isaac sooner, or he could have given the promise later. Instead, he sent Abraham into the wilderness of waiting for twenty-five years. Waiting was part of God’s good plan for Abraham. And so it is with us.

Wait for the Lord

Like father, like sons: the children of Abraham have always been, and are still, a waiting people. We often walk with empty hands, the womb of our hopes still aching for life.

“Like father, like sons: the children of Abraham have always been, and are still, a waiting people.”

Perhaps, with David, we sit in some spiritual or relational pit, waiting for God to draw us out (Psalm 40:1–2). Or maybe, with Jeremiah, we lie in a ruin of our own making, waiting for God to rescue and redeem (Lamentations 3:25–26). Or possibly, with Isaiah, we walk before the hidden face of God, waiting to see him again (Isaiah 8:17). Either way, we have asked but not yet received, sought but not yet found, knocked but not yet been answered (Matthew 7:7–8). God has promised; we have prayed; still we wait.

Meanwhile, the questions can multiply, captured in the words of waiting Asaph:

Will the Lord spurn forever,     and never again be favorable?Has his steadfast love forever ceased?     Are his promises at an end for all time?Has God forgotten to be gracious?     Has he in anger shut up his compassion? (Psalm 77:7–9)

When the hours roll by and the sun refuses to rise, the waiting heart can nearly break. And yet, break it does not — at least not when held by God’s own hand. For as so many saints have discovered, God knows how to make rivers run through the wilderness of waiting, daily refreshing our driest hopes. We read that Abraham “grew strong in his faith” as the childless years unfolded (Romans 4:20). And so may we, if we know where to look in our waiting: not only at our own barren life, but up to God, back to his faithfulness, forward to his promise, and down to his path.

Look Up to God

For many, the deepest pain of waiting lies in the sense that God, who once seemed so near, now feels so far away. We may find ourselves saying with David, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). The heavens were once a window; now they seem more like a wall.

Remarkably, however, Israel’s psalmists and prophets did not take God’s felt absence as reason to turn away from him. In their waiting, they kept a fundamentally Godward posture, their eyes lifted and prayers ascending to the God they could not see. The prophet Micah speaks for many:

As for me, I will look to the Lord;     I will wait for the God of my salvation;     my God will hear me. (Micah 7:7)

Though the skies look black as lead, and the heavens seem silent as the grave, yet I will pray to God, my only hope. I will lift my hands to him. I will pour out my heart before him (Psalm 62:8). And though I cannot see his face, yet still I will show him mine.

Look Back to His Faithfulness

After looking up to the God they cannot see, the waiting then routinely look back to God’s former faithfulness. “I will remember the deeds of the Lord,” Asaph tells himself (Psalm 77:11). Similarly, Jeremiah answers his own anguish by saying, “But this I call to mind” (Lamentations 3:21). When the present seemed a desolate land, they plundered the past for hope.

Psalm 89 may offer the most remarkable example of letting the past be heard. Ethan, the psalmist, finds himself in a desperate present, reflected in the outpoured grief of verses 38–51. Yet even as that sorrow churns within, he spends the first 37 verses of the psalm patiently walking the paths of past redemption. Before he laments, he remembers:

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever;     with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. (Psalm 89:1)

“When the present seemed a desolate land, they plundered the past for hope.”

Back then he goes: to the exodus, to the promised land, to the covenant with David (Psalm 89:9–10, 15–16, 19–37), each an immovable monument to God’s unchanging faithfulness. Given Ethan’s knife-edge agony, Derek Kidner rightly calls these first 37 verses “a miracle of self-discipline” (Psalms 73–150, 356).

God still gives that miracle today. He still takes people like us, bowed down and barely able to lift our heads, and bids us look back. With Ethan, then, trace the ancient paths. Remember again God’s wonders of old. Sit beside miraculous pregnancies and split seas, a Christ born and a cross carried. And in it all, refuse to allow present pain to set the boundaries of your future hopes.

Look Forward to His Promise

With God’s past faithfulness fresh in our minds, we can dare to the look toward the future with hope. We can take our stand like a watchman on the walls, and say with defiant faith, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope” (Psalm 130:5). God’s promise now no longer seems like an empty word, a fragile wish: it will come as surely as the dawn (Psalm 130:6).

Abraham shows us the same orientation toward God’s promise in his own long wait:

No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. (Romans 4:20–21)

A vague sense of God’s faithfulness was not enough to sustain Abraham’s faith: he clung to a particular promise. He remembered how God had lifted his eyes toward the starry sky and said, “So shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15:5). Abraham treasured every letter of that pledge as the years marched on. He carried the promise in his coat pocket like a soldier far from home, stealing glances through the day, sure that his children would one day rival the skies.

Do the promises of God find such a welcome home in your waiting heart? Whatever your need, God has spoken. He may not have promised a particular gift you long for — a son like Abraham’s, perhaps — but he has not left you promise-less. Comfort for the comfortless (Isaiah 40:1), help for the helpless (Isaiah 41:10), provision for the needy (Philippians 4:19), an answer to our knocking (Matthew 7:7–8) — all these and more he pledges to his waiting people. With Abraham, then, turn away from your own frailty, and fix your eyes on God’s promise.

Look Down to His Path

We have looked up, we have looked back, and we have looked forward. Still, however, we find ourselves in the wilderness of waiting. Maybe quiet years still stretch before us, or maybe our wait is nearly over. Either way, we have today to live. And today, we wait.

We might be tempted on a day like today to see life as somewhere in the future, waiting for us at the end of this wait. But then we hear a prayer like waiting David’s:

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;     teach me your paths.Lead me in your truth and teach me,     for you are the God of my salvation;     for you I wait all the day long. (Psalm 25:4–5)

David looked not only up, back, and forward, but down to the path God had set before him today. “Lord, teach me today, lead me today, help me today. Let today be marked by present obedience, joyful submission, even as I wait for you.”

Today may feel like a wasteland and a blank, a parenthesis between a lost past and a longed-for future. But today, even today, the God of waiting has good works for you to walk in. So rehearse his promises and say your prayers. Do your work and serve your family. Love your neighbors and share the gospel. And trust that one day soon, you will join Abraham and Sarah, Moses and David, Ethan and Jeremiah to sing, “None who wait for you shall be put to shame” (Psalm 25:3).

Our typical images of romantic, married love picture a couple facing each other, eyes locked in mutual affection. And for good reason.

Adam’s first words to Eve were a serenade. In the Song of Solomon, the whole world serves as backdrop to the beauty of the beloved. And one day, our Lord Jesus will “present the church to himself in splendor” (Ephesians 5:27), a bride adorned and deeply adored. While friends typically stand “side by side, absorbed in some common interest,” C.S. Lewis writes, “lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other” (The Four Loves, 61).

And yet, as most couples know, marriage calls for more than tender clasping. In fact, the inward gaze, if allowed to exclude all else, will turn sick; the Solomonic song will spiral out of tune. For from the beginning, God built into marriage another gaze, another song.

When we hear the Lord God say, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” we may assume the not good refers to a relational lack, an emotional hole in Adam’s heart. No doubt Adam felt that lack, that hole. But God’s next words turn our eyes, surprisingly, to Adam’s vocational need: “I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). God had given Adam an outward mission (Genesis 2:15–17), and Adam needed help. He needed not only a face before him, but a shoulder beside him.

Marriages today still need a mission. And that means men today still need a mission.

Woman and Helper

This dynamic picture of marriage, this inward and outward posture, finds beautiful expression in Eve’s two titles in Genesis 2. She is, one the one hand, woman. When Adam awakes from his deep sleep, and finds his rib returned to him transfigured, he breaks out in verse:

This at last is bone of my bones     and flesh of my flesh;she shall be called Woman,     because she was taken out of Man. (Genesis 2:23)

Lest we imagine marriage as a union of mere usefulness, a practical arrangement for the doing of tasks, God shows us the first husband singing the wonder of his wife. Here, standing before him, is woman — his own humanity refracted through the prism of triune diversity. She answers the longing of his heart, and he hers.

Yet Eve is, on the other hand, helper. When she enters Eden, she meets a man already on a mission to work and keep the garden under the authority of their Maker (Genesis 2:15–17). And then, together, she and her man receive the commission to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). By God’s good design, the mission of the garden required not just one, but two; not just man, but woman. Adam needed a compatible co-regent, a queen to assist in his reign, a helper of the highest honor. Together, in complementary glory, they would garden the world.

In the pattern of Genesis 2, then, a husband loves his wife as woman, and he leads his wife as helper. He waxes poetic about her beauty, and he labors with her beside him. He rises up to praise her (Proverbs 31:28–29), and he empowers her dominion (Proverbs 31:11–27). He embraces her as lover, and they stride forth as fellow rulers. Their inward romance, like the trunk of a great tree, branches up and out, bearing fruit for outward mission.

Marriage on Mission

Men today, of course, do not receive a direct, specific mission from God as Adam did. Nevertheless, God’s original pattern of creating a man, giving him a mission, and then granting him a wife as both woman and helper tells us much about God’s lasting designs for marriage.

Today’s Adams may not have a literal garden to work and keep, but we have our own spheres for mission: homes to manage, children to father, churches to love and lead, jobs to work, and neighborhoods to reach for Christ. Each is a field to de-thorn and un-thistle, to plow and sow, to take dominion (Genesis 1:28) and make disciples (Matthew 28:18–20). And any honest man, gazing upon those fields, will agree with God’s ancient verdict: “It is not good that the man should be alone.”

Some men, like the apostle Paul, will advance their mission unmarried, with the help that comes from friends and fellow laborers rather than a wife. Most, however, will follow the creation norm, and with their wives they will expand the garden of God’s kingdom in their surrounding spheres. Together, he and she will look with longing — at each other, and also at all the land around them, waiting to be claimed for Christ.

Too often, I fear, I act as if the mission of marriage were simply marriage — that merely a happy home, and not also a happy world, were God’s aim in our union. I live like an arrow at home in the quiver, forgetting the feel of the bow, the rush of outward flight.

How, then, might men like me recover, in Christ, the lost design of Genesis 2? How might husbands live with our wives as treasured women and as precious helpers, together building something beyond ourselves? I find help from a simple three-part framework: dream, draw, do.

Dream

Adam’s leadership began with a vision of what could be: a garden worked and kept, an earth filled and subdued (Genesis 1:28; 2:15–17). A husband’s leadership, likewise, often begins with a dream. He looks out upon home, children, church, neighborhood, imagining what they might look like under the total lordship of Christ — and what he and his wife might do about it. How might they disciple the kids better? How might neighborhood hospitality become more routine? How might the family join the church for corporate prayer more often?

Unlike the sluggard, who “does not plow in autumn,” and therefore “will seek at harvest and have nothing” (Proverbs 20:4), he takes thought for the future long before it comes — anticipating needs, discerning opportunities, noticing possible threats, and learning to plant and plow more faithfully in autumn. And as the seasons of family life change — as new children are born, as the kids grow, and as normal years run their course through spring, summer, fall, and winter — he keeps dreaming, developing fresh vision for the family’s various spheres.

Any godly wife, of course, will do her fair share of dreaming too. She will feel a holy discontent and imagine better ways the family might fulfill their callings. A godly husband will cherish such dreams. As head of the home, however, he also will feel his special responsibility to take the family forward, rather than waiting for his wife to lead the charge. And so, he dreams — and as he dreams, he labors to draw her.

Draw

If the responsibility to dream counteracts the passivity in a man, the calling to draw undermines any tendency he may have toward domineering leadership. As with Adam and Eve, God intends a couple’s mission to be theirs and not just his. So, with patience and tenderness, with wisdom and humility, a man draws his wife in and out.

“God intends a couple’s mission to be theirs and not just his.”

In drawing her in, he welcomes his wife into his dreaming — gathering her impressions, asking for her feedback, hearing her counsel. He knows his dreams are often incomplete and immature without her complementary perspective. He knows, too, that her dreams may often surpass his own in sound judgment. Like the Proverbs 31 woman, “she opens her mouth with wisdom” (Proverbs 31:26) — and he is not too insecure to hear it.

In drawing his wife out, he imagines how their mission together might make full use of her abilities. How might he draw out her strengths rather than diminish them, unleash her potential rather than cage it, see her bloom and flourish rather than wither? Or as Herman Bavinck writes, how might he help her assist him “in the fullest and broadest sense, physically and spiritually, with her wisdom and love, with her head and her heart” (The Christian Family, 6)?

Do

Finally, having dreamed for his family and drawn his wife, a husband does — he acts — taking the first steps toward the garden’s uncultivated edge. Practically, as John Piper has said, he seeks to be the one who says “let’s” most often: “Let’s gather the kids for family devotions.” “Let’s plan a block party for our neighbors.” “Let’s get away just the two of us.” “Let’s go early to serve at church this Sunday.”

Some of us may find dreaming and drawing easier than actually doing. Adam seems to have: though he knew his mission and drew Eve into it, he failed to actually do it in the face of opposition (Genesis 3:6). Doing lays a burden on a man in the most inconvenient hours, attacking his laziness and selfish use of time, calling for energy after long workdays, bidding him rise and step when he would rather sit. I need help remembering that family leadership is not a one-time vision, a momentary inspiration, but a day-in, day-out pursuit, a fashioning of dreams from difficult moments.

“What a gift to a home — and what a reflection of Christ, when a man acts as the first mover most of the time.”

Can a wife take initiative in similar ways? Yes, she can — and sometimes should. Just because her husband says “let’s” most doesn’t mean she never does. But what a gift to a home, and what a reflection of Christ, when a man acts as the first mover most of the time.

The mission of marriage calls for all of a man. And therefore, it calls for a man to give all of his heart to God, and submit all of his life to Christ, and yield all of his will to the Spirit. Such an all-in, all-out man will embrace his wife as woman: his perfect match, his lily of the valley, his home on earth, his heart’s best song. And he also will embrace her as helper: his lover on mission, his indispensable partner, his queen with crown and scepter. And so he will love her, and so he will lead her.