http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15177550/can-slaves-of-christ-have-another-master
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Let Tragedy Find Us Living
A line in the book of Job detained me: “The thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me” (Job 3:25). The chief fear arrived. The one that kept him up at night found him. The worst to visit his imagination befell him.
As a result, he welcomes death, but it tarries. He sighs and moans in anguish, cursing the day of his birth (Job 3:1). Arrows from the Almighty sink into him; his spirit drinks their poison (Job 6:4). He finds no rest in the rubble (Job 7:4). His eyes search and see no good (Job 7:7). He loathes his life, and is glad not to live forever (Job 7:16).
Few things in life can lay us this low.
I imagine the dread that caught him was the death of his ten children. Of the few glimpses of him before his misery, we see his fatherly concern for them, continually offering sacrifices on their behalf. “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts” (Job 1:5).
Perhaps he feared that he cared more about their sin than they did. Perhaps he now lay buried beneath sorrow because they very possibly died in unbelief. Regardless, this father of ten lost all his children in one day, and this horror strangled his will to go on.
In a World of Threat
What do you dread? What would have to happen for you to say, “What I have feared has come upon me”? Having your mother die of cancer? Never finding a spouse? Discovering your wife has committed adultery? Seeing your parents get divorced? Hearing the specialist say that your child will not have a normal life? Witnessing a child die apart from Christ?
Fears that I did not know as a single man have crept upon me: losing my wife, or one of our children. As a family man, I realize how much more vulnerable I am to new depths of pain. The drawbridge of my heart has lowered; calamities and despair have more inroads now.
“The line between my life and Job’s rests upon a spider’s web.”
The line between my life and Job’s rests upon a spider’s web. The worst case can arrive in countless ways. Car accidents, disease, a fall, a crash, a swallow, a moment’s lapse in judgment. Chaldeans do not need to raid and destroy; violent winds do not need to collapse the house to make me know Job’s anguish. A run into the street, a doctor’s phone call, a fall from the slide, a toy in the mouth can bring my world down — at any moment, in any place, by nearly any means.
Paralyzed with Peril
Before Job lived in a world of sorrow, he lived in the world of what if. . . “The thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me” (Job 3:25). He dreaded before it came, feared before it actualized.
I do not wish to usher you into this world if you’ve never thought this way. But I know people who live in this world, one I am tempted to frequent more than before. A world where catastrophe lurks; a world that envelopes like quicksand: If I can just envision how my life could crumble, I think, maybe I prevent it, or at least inoculate myself against some of the sorrow.
The story of Job teaches us that neither works.
As he sits, cutting his boils with shards of pottery, his anguish reminds us that no degree of dread beforehand can avert our greatest fears. And imagining them beforehand does not ease the pain should they arrive. The anxiety, the fret, the darting eyes to and fro cannot do as we often hope. As Jesus asked, “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matthew 6:27) — or, he might add, to the lives of those we love?
Help for Panicked Hearts
How are we to go on living in a world where risks threaten us at every turn? I have found three answers from C.S. Lewis helpful to navigate through this dangerous and unpredictable world.
Writing amidst World War II — in a time when explosions demolished cities and citizens knew any day could be their last — C.S. Lewis answers the question, “How are we to live in an atomic age?”
Just as Your Ancestors Lived
Lewis begins,
“How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents. In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.” (Essay Collection & Other Short Pieces, 361)
The first point in Lewis’s response is that we must not imagine that our situation is new. Horse-drawn carriages could be fatal, just as cars and buses can now. World pandemics are nothing new (and comparatively, we have been spared the severest plagues thus far). Worst-case scenarios struck then as they do today. The world has been menacing since the first day out of Eden.
This does not draw out all the venom, but it does take some of the isolation out of it. If we come to weep, we know that we join many already weeping. Other mothers have lost their precious sons, other husbands have lost wondrous wives. We are not alone. Peter reminds hurting Christians of this, writing: “Resist [Satan], firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:9). Your situation, though collapsing, is not singular to you.
Knowing Death Is Certain
In the second place, he reminds us what we all know but often don’t consider (especially in the West): Death, whenever it comes, will come.
Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty. (Ibid.)
Against all naturalistic explanations to the contrary, men die because men have sinned. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). The result of our sins, our greatest terror, will strike. Sin, not fate, tucks us in the grave. Iniquity digs our plots and gives our eulogy. As part of Adam’s lineage, we die.
Bad things are certain to come to us as Christians. The Bible never shies away from the fact. We are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:17). Fiery trials ought not surprise us (1 Peter 4:12). We are destined for affliction (1 Thessalonians 3:3). After Paul gets stoned so brutally that his attackers leave him for dead, he gets right back up and returns to the city, bruised and bloodied, “strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
Bad things are certain in this life, but we take heart, for the next life is also certain. In Christ we know that neither life nor death, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:37).
With Minds Set on Living
The third point Lewis makes is that we must not stop living, even in a world where so much has, can, and will go wrong.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds. (Ibid.)
“We must not stop living, even in a world where so much has, can, and will go wrong.”
If atomic bombs or Chaldeans or tornados or illness or accidents or injury or our worst-case scenario finds us, let it find us living — not curled up in a ball in the corner. Lewis called it “sensible human things.” Let calamity find us, if our all-wise Father deems it “necessary” (1 Peter 1:6), fully alive brimming with hope in God and love for people.
What we most fear may find us — whether we worry about it or not. But as Christians, we need not be anxious about our lives or obsess over every possible calamity. Our dread does not match the world’s dread (Isaiah 8:12–13); rather, we fear God and trust him. We live our lives in atomic ages — or any other — entrusting ourselves to a faithful Creator while doing good, testifying,
Through many dangers, toils, and snares,I have already come;‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,And grace will lead me home.
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We Were Made for Thanksgiving: A Father’s Gratitude for a National Holiday
I thank God for Thanksgiving. Particularly this year, as a father of four, ages 11 to 4, I feel a fresh sense of awe, and gratitude, that my generally unbelieving nation pauses for a weekday each November formally dedicated to giving thanks.
It may seem like a trifle to most people. But for those with eyes to see, this is a dazzling ray of God’s common kindness in our day, however much we grieve the public commendations of sin and unbelief that surround us in other ways. Our heavenly Father “is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:35). “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). To his common kindnesses of beautiful days, human minds and bodies and words, friends and family, food and shelter — the everyday divine kindnesses we take for granted until they’re threatened or gone — add this annual mercy: Thanksgiving Day.
Whatever conversations it might prompt with neighbors and coworkers, the Thanksgiving holiday is also an especially rich opportunity for moms and dads. To be sure, if practicing thanksgiving happens only once a year in our homes, then our children will not be much better for it. But if this one day is a marker, a springboard, an annual emphasis and re-kindler that feeds a regular theme and habit in our families, then we have an occasion, in this one day, to highlight one of the most important realities God calls us to teach our sons and daughters.
Thanksgiving Honors God
When we ourselves give thanks to God, out loud for our children to hear, we model for them something very basic and profound about being human: we are created by God, for God.
God made us in his image (Genesis 1:27), and what do images do? They image. They reflect, display, make visible. They ensure the one being imaged is remembered and honored. God made us to reflect him and display him in the world around us. We image him through our visible actions and our audible (or written) words that give meaning to our actions. This fundamental purpose and calling makes thanksgiving essential to life.
Sin, however, mars our imaging. In Romans 1:21, the apostle Paul gives us a revealing glimpse into what has gone wrong in the human race: “although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.”
We Did Not Give Thanks
At one level, our plight in this world is remarkably simple: God made us, and surrounded us with a world teeming with good, and we failed to thank him as we ought.
God showered us with warm sunny days, beautiful blue skies and green grass, stunning cloud formations to dazzle the eye and provide shade, trees bearing mouthwatering fruit, and the greatest wonder of all in the created world: each other and the marvels that are human bodies and brains. Our world, even now under the sway of sin, still abounds with God’s goodness and kindness. And we ourselves have been given life and countless blessings, even in our most trying of times and disabilities.
Our first response to God’s lavish provision, very simply, should have been to give him thanks. To do so honors the one who made us and provides for us. But we did not give thanks — whether from indifference or contempt — and so we dishonored him. We rebelled against one of the most basic purposes for our existence. To give God thanks honors him, and to honor him — our very design and calling as humans — includes giving him thanks.
Ingratitude, then, is no minor vice. And thanksgiving is no insignificant act for a creature designed to image God.
Feel God’s Pleasure
We were made to give God thanks. And when we do — and model it for our children, teaching them to do the same — we taste one of the great pleasures God made us to enjoy. As Olympian Eric Liddell (1902–1945) memorably said that God made him to run, and he felt God’s pleasure when he ran, so we all were made to give God thanks, and feel God’s pleasure when we do.
“Will our children grow up in homes that thank God daily, regularly, spontaneously, gladly?”
Yet we find ourselves, as fathers and mothers, with a call to raise the next generation, while living in times that celebrate pride, rather than humility. Our generation’s sense of entitlement is off the charts, and rising. Will thanksgiving be a trifle for our children? Will they assume grace, assume God’s provision, assume blessing, assume resources, assume ability, assume community? Or will they presume little, and learn to thank much and express it?
Will our children grow up in homes that thank God daily, regularly, spontaneously, gladly — even as Thanksgiving Day adds its annual exclamation point?
Jesus Gave Thanks
In the end, despite our many failures, we want to model for our children what it would be like for God himself to live as human. And when he did come as man, he gave thanks. Even as God himself, Lord of heaven and earth, Jesus embraced the fullness of the humanity he took at that first Christmas, all the way down to the basics of our flesh and blood — including thanksgiving.
He thanked his Father in prayer (Matthew 11:25–26; Luke 10:21), not just privately but out loud for his disciples to hear. When he fed the four thousand, “he took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds” (Matthew 15:36; Mark 8:6). And when he fed five thousand, he began the same way (John 6:11). So memorable, in fact, was his giving thanks that later John refers to the location where the miracle occurred as “the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks” (John 6:23).
“Jesus was the supreme human, and the supreme giver of thanks.”
Then, on the night before he died, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples (Luke 22:17; 1 Corinthians 11:24). So too, after supper, he took the cup, gave thanks, and they all drank to the spectacularly gracious new covenant in his blood (Matthew 26:27; Mark 14:23; Luke 22:19). So pronounced was Jesus’s thanksgiving during that Last Supper that some traditions call the rite of remembrance “the Eucharist,” from the Greek for thanksgiving.
For Jesus, the God-man, giving thanks to his Father was no trifle. Jesus was the supreme human, and the supreme giver of thanks. Nor should thanksgiving be small for us, or for our children. What an honor, and pleasure, to not only taste for ourselves the joy of giving God thanks, but also share this joy with our children. Thank you, God, for Thanksgiving.
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Fight for Delight by Planning Your Devotions
Audio Transcript
We fight off personal despondency through a habit of daily Bible reading. That’s what we’ve been seeing here in these early weeks of 2023, as we focus our attention on Psalm 77. Thanks for joining here on this Wednesday. We’re going to do so with one last clip from John Piper’s sermon on Psalm 77. We close our little study of the psalm with a practical plea and summons from Pastor John for making and holding to a daily Bible reading routine in this new year. Here he is, speaking to his church in the early days of the year 2000.
“I will remember. I will meditate. I will muse.” We must become an intentional, purposeful, active, aggressive warrior people who fight for delight. It doesn’t come automatically. We fight for delight.
When Will You Read?
I close with this very practical plea, summons, call: this afternoon, before you go to bed tonight, if you haven’t already got it, will you take enough time — five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, whatever — to plan when in your days you are going to read the Bible every day in the year 2000?
“If you say, ‘I’ll read it tomorrow whenever I get a chance,’ there will be no chance.”
When? If you don’t have a time picked out, it won’t happen. If you say, “I’ll read it tomorrow whenever I get a chance,” there will be no chance. Satan will see to that. Your flesh will see to that. If you don’t plan to read the Bible at a particular time, you will become a hit-and-miss, hazard Christian — and weak.
Where Will You Read?
The second question to ask this afternoon is, Where will I read the Bible? Closet, kitchen, bedroom, living room, den, car, conference room at work, park — you choose. If you don’t have a place picked out, you’ll stand in the halls, and you’ll say, “There’s no quiet place. There’s no place to go. Music in there, TV in there, cooking in there — there’s no place to go. Well, let’s check the email.” You never know what you might get sent.
Susanna Wesley had sixteen children. Housewives, she knows where you’re coming from. So, five little kids — noise, noise, noise. Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? Two of them are sick. Susanna Wesley was such a disciplinarian that she taught these sixteen kids, “When you walk into the kitchen and my apron is over my head, you don’t say a word.” That’s her closet. She just created one.
And she was strong enough, really strong — I’ll maybe read some of her excerpts from her words on Wednesday night — that they obeyed. “When mommy’s apron is over mommy’s head, we know what’s happened: Bible is open, and she’s praying. And you don’t go into the holy place.” It can be done if you want it, if you believe in it.
How Will You Read?
And the third question: when, where, and how. How are you going to do it? If you don’t have your own way, you’ve got to have a way. I’ll tell you, I’ve been working at this now for 48 years or so, and I know a lot about defeat in Bible reading. And one of the defeats that’s most painful is to have the place, have the time, sit down and open the book, and you don’t know where to go.
I ought to know where to go. I’m a pastor. And you just open, and you say, “Well, Malachi doesn’t look right. And the psalm doesn’t look right.” Satan will actually persuade me that that’s a good enough reason to reach for a book on theology. Isn’t that crazy? And if it happens to me, probably it happens to you. And therefore, we’ve just got to have some guidelines. You don’t have to keep them — you’ve just got to have them there so that you can fall back on them if there’s no better thing to do that day.
“Delight doesn’t come automatically. We fight for delight.”
Okay — how, where, and when. Will you, if you don’t already have a plan, take whatever amount of time — five, ten, fifteen minutes today — to plan to do it? I’m not asking you to do it. Isn’t that easy? I’m asking for intentionality here. I’m asking for a plan. And you might in your heart even make it a vow to the Lord.
Would you stand with me for closing prayer?
Father, I ask you that you would fulfill every good resolve and work of faith by your power. Bless these people, who have seen the way to live the Christian life as a life on the word — meditating, musing, remembering. And Lord, make it part of our arsenal of how we triumph day in and day out against the evil one. O Lord, make us good warriors, I pray. Help us know how to fight for delight.
And all the people said, “Amen.” You’re dismissed.