The book of Psalms is a collection of 150 ancient Hebrew praise songs that were composed by numerous writers over hundreds of years.

That’s a true one-sentence summary, but it’s also incomplete — woefully incomplete. It leaves out the most important dimension of what the psalms are.

So, let’s briefly explore where these songs came from, why they have been preserved for thousands of years, and how they model, sometimes in surprising ways, what the author of Hebrews calls “acceptable worship” (Hebrews 12:28). Then we will be able to add in the crucial dimension to our one-sentence summary — and perhaps challenge some of our assumptions for what makes worship “acceptable” in God’s eyes.

What Is a Psalm?

Why do we call these Hebrew poems “psalms”? The word psalm is an English transliteration of the Greek word psalmos, which means “song.” And psalmos is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word for “song.” That’s one way we know these poems were written to be sung. The word appears in many of the titles of individual psalms.

In my one-sentence summary, I referred to the whole collection of psalms as “praise songs.” Some obviously fit that description, like Psalm 135 (“Praise the Lord! Praise the name of the Lord . . .”), but some psalms don’t sound like the praise songs most of us sing in church, like Psalm 10 (“Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”). So, is it accurate to call them all praise songs?

The reason it’s right to call all the psalms in sacred Scripture “praise songs” is because the ancient Hebrews did. The Hebrew title for this book is tehillîm, which means “praises.” This gives us a critical insight: the original singers of these songs considered the breadth of these expressions to all be praise to God. And if our ancient forebears in the faith had a broader definitional range for what qualified as praise than we modern worshipers do, it seems to me that some reevaluation on our part would be good, especially since these praise songs were inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Songs Written to Remember

These songs were written to provide God’s people collective expressions of worship through singing. They are means by which believers in every era can teach and admonish one another through song in order to stir up the adoration and thankfulness of faith (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16). And just as important (integral, actually, to achieving this), these songs were written to help God’s people remember.

Keep in mind that during the centuries when the Psalms were written — and, really, up to just a few centuries ago — the vast majority of any population was illiterate. The most important information had to be memorized. And recent studies have since confirmed what history has demonstrated, that among the most effective human mnemonic devices ever discovered is combining words (especially poetically arranged words) with a pleasing, patterned musical melody. Songs have always helped us remember.

“Songs have always helped us remember.”

Some psalms were written to mark special occasions (Psalm 20), or to recall pivotal moments in Israel’s history (Psalm 78). Others were crucial in helping the ancient Hebrews remember who God truly was (Psalm 103), who they, as a people, truly were (Psalm 95), how intimately aware God was of each individual (Psalm 139), what happened at key moments in their history (Psalm 135), why they had good reason to thank God (Psalm 136), and why, in spite of the toil and trouble of life, they had cause to give God exuberant, loud praise (Psalm 147).

The reason this book is still beloved by millions today, though, is that so many psalms were written to help God’s children remember a crucial truth that God (the Son) later articulated this way: “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Sacrifices of Praise

God’s people throughout redemptive history have been called to “hope in God” (Psalm 43:5) while living as full participants in a world full of suffering. Which means we all live much of our lives “as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).

That’s why there are so many psalms of lament in this sacred book. And it is in these darker psalms that we find what might be for us the most surprising expressions of “acceptable worship,” because they give worshipful expression to a wide range of human misery — the kinds we all experience — with its accompanying fear, grief, and confusion.

These ancient Hebrew composers wrote with sometimes startling honesty and transparency about their faith struggles. They wrote about feeling abandoned by God (Psalm 22), suffering severe illness (Psalm 41), fearing great danger (Psalm 54), almost giving up on God out of disillusionment (Psalm 73), experiencing a faith crisis (Psalm 77), enduring chronic, lifelong, severe depression (Psalm 88), feeling dismayed over God seemingly neglecting to keep his promises (Psalm 89), seething with anger over another’s treachery (Psalm 109), and more. They also wrote candidly about grievous sins they committed (Psalm 51) and being on the receiving end of God’s painful, fatherly discipline (Psalm 39). And these authors all wrote their deeply personal, even exposing, songs for the benefit of all God’s people, since some members at any given time would be experiencing something similar.

“Every psalm encourages the readers to believe God’s promises over their perceptions.”

All these psalms of lament were considered “praise songs” by the ancient Hebrews. Why? Because every psalm, whether sorrowful or rejoicing, encourages the singers (or readers) to “trust in the Lord” (Psalm 37:3), to believe God’s promises over their perceptions. And whenever a believer exercises and expresses true faith in God — that is, “the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” — God receives it as “acceptable worship,” as a “sacrifice of praise” (Hebrews 13:15).

It’s interesting to note that in the structure of most of these darker psalms, as well as in the general structure of the whole book, there is a progression from fear to faith, from doubt and discouragement to hope in God, from sin to repentance and forgiveness, from sorrow to joy. The Psalms were written to help us shift our focus from ourselves and our circumstances to the God of hope, who fills us with joy and peace as we believe him (Romans 15:13).

Does Our Worship Sound Like Psalms?

Now we can fill out our one-sentence summary:

The book of Psalms is a collection of 150 ancient Hebrew praise songs that were composed by numerous writers over hundreds of years in order to help God’s people remember in every circumstance that God is the only source of the salvation they most need and the joy and peace they most long for, so that they will always put their full hope in him.

The more that added dimension is an experienced reality for us, the more we engage in “acceptable worship.”

I can’t help but think that we Western Christians should examine how closely our definitions of “acceptable worship” align with what we see modeled in the Psalms. In particular, does the thematic range of songs we’re willing to sing (or for leaders, allow people to sing) during corporate worship strike the same notes as the psalms?

A dangerous temptation we face, especially in America, is being too influenced by our consumer-driven culture in how we design our corporate worship events and what songs we incentivize modern praise-song composers to write. Christian worship music is a large and profitable industry. Which means our modern psalmists in many cases (though certainly not all) are being incentivized to compose songs for quick mass-consumption (to score a hit), rather than out of real, deep, complex spiritual experience. The predictable result is a fairly narrow thematic range and relatively shallow lyrical content.

What’s best for God’s people is often not the same as what sells the best and attracts the most. It’s what provides fresh worshipful expressions for the wide range of complex and sometimes deeply painful experiences God’s people go through in order to help them remember in every circumstance that God is the only source of the salvation they most need and the joy and peace they most long for, so that they will always put their full hope in him.

Thank God that he has preserved the book of Psalms for us all these years. For they continue their fruitful ministry of providing us sacred songs of praise as we seek to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28). And they continue their fruitful ministry of modeling for us what worship looks like when we lose our bearings.

Over the years, I have talked with several Christians who have told me they wanted to die. They were of different ages and different ethnicities; they had different personalities and different reasons. But they each concluded that death was better for them now than life.

It took courage to bring into the open the secret thoughts of death. Many others could not relate. Most of humanity had only run from the dread that gained on them moment by moment. Few had felt the impulse to stop, turn, and welcome the beast as a friend.

Now these, again, were Christian men and women. They knew the horror of self-murder. They knew such a crime was not a romantic gesture between teenage lovers, but a heinous sin against the Author of life. When suicidal ruminations sought to guide them to another exit, even amid debilitating and cruel circumstances, they knew to resist Satan’s suggestions. By faith, they would continue, one foot in front of the other, until their all-wise Father brought them home. And a few had prayed for just that.

“If you have asked God to take your life, the first thing to realize is that you are not alone.”

If you have asked God to take your life, one of the first truths to realize is that you are not alone.

God has heard such petitions before. For different reasons, at different times, from different pits, men and women of God have prayed to be taken away. And the prayers we find in Scripture come not just from normal saints like us, but from the ones we would least expect to struggle with this life: leaders and heroes of God’s people.

Consider a few men of God, then, whose prayers the Holy Spirit captured to remind us we are not alone and, more importantly, to witness how our kind and gracious God deals with his own at their lowest.

Job: The Despairing Father

Oh that I might have my request, and that God would fulfill my hope, that it would please God to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and cut me off! (Job 6:8–9)

I wager that anguished prayers for death are the most common. They come in the winter of life, when even songbirds are too cold to sing.

Job, a righteous man without rival on earth (Job 1:8), now sits in the ashes, boils rising on his skin, surrounded by accusing friends, and plagued with a heart too heavy to carry. His shards of a prayer rise from the ruins of a former life: all his wealth gone, many of his servants slain, and what was more, all ten of his children buried beneath a house, collapsed by a great wind.

Job, staggering with grief, curses the day of his birth: “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived’” (Job 3:3). He muses aloud, “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave?” (Job 3:20–22). Death now glitters as a treasure, wafts as sweetness. He sees no reason to wait.

Perhaps you, like Job, know great loss. Perhaps you sit in the rubble, scorned by former days and missing loves. You can’t bear any more; you gaze ahead into an endless night. Hope has turned its back. Consider afresh that God has not.

“Continue believing. Continue trusting. This dark night is preparing for you an eternal weight of glory.”

The Lord denied Job’s request. He had more compassion to give, more mercy, more communion, more repentance, even more children waiting on the other side. Job couldn’t yet imagine how his life might turn out to glorify God’s grace, as James summarizes: “You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11).

Some sufferers may not find comfort in the fairy-tale ending of Job, but his renewed fortunes foreshadow not even half of yours in Christ. Continue believing. Continue trusting. This dark night is preparing for you an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). Scars will do more than heal there.

Moses: The Weary Leader

If you will treat me like this, kill me at once. (Numbers 11:15)

This is the second prayer for death we overhear from Moses on his long journey with the people. The first comes in his intercession for them following the golden-calf rebellion (Exodus 32:32). Here, he prays for death as an overburdened, fed-up leader.

The rescued people of Israel, with sores still mending and Egypt still within view, complain “about their misfortunes.”

Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at. (Numbers 11:4–6)

Ingratitude has warped their minds. Their memories suggest that slavery included a seafood buffet; meanwhile, the free miracle bread had grown bitter and bland. Did Moses really expect them to settle for second chef?

The ingrates fix their eyes on Moses, mutinously mumbling about how much they missed Egypt. Moses looks up to God, and exclaims,

I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness. (Numbers 11:14–15)

Notice again God’s gracious answer. He does not kill Moses, but instead provides seventy elders to aid him in his work, giving these men some of his Spirit. And for added measure, God promises to feed Israel meat — so much meat that it will come out of their nostrils and they will begin to loathe it (Numbers 11:20).

If you weary under burdens too heavy for your feeble arms to carry, and could wish to die at times, see the God of Moses. Lean into him in prayer. Your compassionate Father will provide help to alleviate your load and hold up your arms to give victory.

Jonah: The Angry Messenger

Please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. (Jonah 4:3)

The merciless prophet Jonah baffles many when they read the book bearing his name. He shows a calloused determination that Nineveh, capital city of Israel’s enemy the Assyrians, not receive mercy from God but rather destruction. He refuses to be an instrument of their salvation.

God had renewed him after sailing away from his calling. God had rescued him from drowning in the sea. God had given him refreshing shade as he waited outside the city to watch it burn. Yet Jonah still would not put away his hatred. When he realized no doom would descend,

It displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4:1–3)

Few in the West today face the temptation to want a whole people destroyed. The Assyrians were a brutal people — brutal to Jonah’s people. But perhaps we often murder in our hearts those who have wronged us. While they live, our life rots. To this, the Lord responds, again, patiently and compassionately, giving us shade while we scorch, asking us as a long-suffering Father, “Do you do well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4).

Most of the time, we do not do well. This prayer for death is foolish. Repentance is required. Go to your Father for help to extend that impossible forgiveness that you most freely received from him, that you might be able to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).

Elijah: The Fearful Prophet

[Elijah] was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life. . . . And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” (1 Kings 19:3–4)

We can attest truly that here stands one with a like nature to ours (James 5:17). Notice that this moment follows Elijah’s finest hour. The prophet of God won the showdown with Ahab and the 450 prophets of Baal. God rains down fire in front of all Israel to show that a true prophet walks among them.

Or runs among them. After Jezebel hears that he had the 450 prophets of Baal killed, she vows to add Elijah to that number. “Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life” (1 Kings 19:3). The hunted prophet hides in the wilderness, sits under a tree, tries to sleep, and prays not to wake: “O Lord, take my life.”

Do you pray for death because you fear those living? Jesus tells us, “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do” (Luke 12:4). Beyond this, the story of Elijah invites us to survey our last year or our last week or our yesterday for reasons, often conspicuous, to continue entrusting ourselves to a faithful Creator while doing good.

God, again, deals compassionately with Elijah. He calls him to rise and eat, provides a fresh meal for him in the wilderness, and gives provision for the journey ahead (1 Kings 19:5–8). Notice also the smiling kindness of God to Elijah in that the prophet, though threatened with death and praying for death, never dies (2 Kings 2:11–12).

Paul: The Eager Apostle

My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (Philippians 1:23)

God’s predominant response to those men of God who prayed for death is fatherly compassion.

Whether you be Jonah-like and tempted to despise God’s mercy toward others, or you cry out under your burdens like Moses, or run for your life like Elijah, or yearn for relief like Job, consider your gracious God. He meets Job with himself and a new beginning, Moses with seventy men to help, Jonah with a plant for shade, Elijah with food and drink for the journey ahead.

And God himself, after all, through the finished work of his Son and the recreating work of his Spirit, turns death into an eager expectation for us, does he not? That enemy death must ferry us into that world for which we were remade.

The apostle Paul, though not praying for death, shows us a redeemed perspective on our last foe.

To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (Philippians 1:21–23)

We too can turn, face the monster in God’s perfect timing, and embrace it with a peace the world does not know. We too have a healthy longing to depart from this earth and be with Christ. We too have the Spirit, who inwardly groans as we await the consummation of our hope (Romans 8:23). We too pray, “Maranatha!” and long for this world’s last night because we long for this world’s new beginning.

We do not long to die for death’s sake, nor merely to escape our troubles, but we do ache for an unending life with Christ that lies on the other side of sleep, and which we can taste more and more, even now, through his word and Spirit.

Today I get to share with you the 3,000-year backstory to Tesla electric cars. But the story doesn’t start here in Silicon Valley. For that story we need to cross the country to America’s epicenter of innovation in the 1740s, to New England, and to the time of Benjamin Franklin and his lightning rod, for an electrifying story filled with lightning and thunder.

The Lightning Rod Arrives

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, churches built steeples high into the sky. And within those steeples they installed bells. And on those bells was often inscribed some form of the Latin phrase fulgura frango — translated, “I break up the lightning flashes.” Church bells did many things, including suppressing thunderstorms. It became a common practice, beginning in the medieval age and extending into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, during a major thunderstorm, for local bellringers to climb up into the church’s steeple and ring the church bells loudly. By doing so they could — perhaps, perhaps — ward off the divine wrath and the devilish invasion in the skies.

That was the theory. But that theory was plagued by two design fails. First, the bells were cast metal. And second, those cast metal bells hung in the steeple, usually the town’s high-point. So, you can imagine how well this worked out for bell ringers! In France and Belgium alone, over the span of just three decades, nearly 400 bell towers were hit by lightning. Many of them burned down, killing more than 100 bell ringers (Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries, 341). In a twist of irony, during thunderstorms, townspeople were encouraged to keep their distance from churches — while the town’s pubs and shadier establishments almost always escaped untouched from the divine displeasure in the tempest.

So bell ringers were not fans of steeples in thunderstorms. But one man loved them. Benjamin Franklin. For him, the steeple was the perfect focal point for his lightning experiments. Franklin came to understand that “storm clouds contained electrical charges, notwithstanding their heavy loads of water.” Even though electricity was a fire, he theorized, “it was a different kind of fire, one that could coexist with water.” So, he developed the concept of a lightning rod to protect structures from fire by drawing off the electrical charge from lightning.

By 1750, he was proving his theory. He made little miniature houses and put gunpowder in them. Then, he’d strike the little house with a spark from a battery, and the mini-house would explode. On a second little house he installed a replica lightning rod, a wire, then struck the house with another spark. The house didn’t explode.

Theological Alarm Bells

But even as the evidence became indisputable, Franklin’s invention raised theological alarm bells. One pastor in Boston proposed that if you diverted God’s wrath of lightning into the earth, it would simply supercharge future earthquakes (Benjamin Franklin, 173). In fact, a major earthquake hit New England soon after Franklin began diverting bolts into the ground, seemingly proving this fear to be true.

John Adams, a future president, summarized what he was hearing from leaders in New England, that the lightning rod was “an impious attempt to rob the Almighty of his thunder, to wrest the bolt of vengeance out of his hand” (Stealing God’s Thunder, 111).

Across the Atlantic Ocean, the French, who loved Franklin, more eagerly adopted his lightning rod. But even there, the French pastor and famous physicist, Jean-Antoine Nollet, who bought in 100% to the rod’s effectiveness, refused to adopt it, saying the rod was, quote, “as impious to ward off heaven’s lightnings as for a child to ward off the chastening rod of its father” (Stealing God’s Thunder, 96).

To his dismay, Benjamin Franklin found himself locked inside a theology debate. “The more scientists knew about the workings of lightning and electricity, the less mysterious those phenomena appeared. The more one could control lightning’s fury, the less vulnerable the world seemed before God’s wrath” (Benjamin Franklin, 176). Franklin, it seemed, was stealing God’s thunder.

His lightning rods sparked a debate that split the eighteenth century. Is a lightning rod on a church steeple an act of faith? Or an act of God-thwarting unbelief? That’s the debate I want to settle today. Because if we can answer this, I think we will get clarity on electric cars and resolve one key tension Christians face here inside Silicon Valley, the epicenter of the most highly advanced technological society the world has ever known. And to understand our latest tech, we turn to an old book: the book of Job.

Where Is God in the Thunderstorm?

Job is an ancient book, perhaps the oldest book in the Bible. It’s about the sufferings of a man named Job — a kingly figure, a wealthy man, perhaps a local ruler. Then his life was upended, partly due to a major storm brought by Satan and permitted by God.

In Job we find the longest and most vivid sermon in the Bible on thunderstorms, from a young man named Elihu, the youngest of Job’s friends. Because he’s one of Job’s friends, we can put an asterisk on everything he says, though he seems especially trustworthy. But Elihu is not an infallible prophet. He’s not a professional theologian. He’s just a relatively trustworthy guy who affirms God’s sovereignty as he tries to figure out how weather patterns work. Elihu is a forerunner to Ben Franklin.

“Elihu is a forerunner to Ben Franklin.”

And so thunderstorms are a major theme in the book of Job. At the start, Job had 7,000 sheep and “very many servants,” but then a lightning storm hit, “the fire of God fell from heaven,” and it “burned up” his 7,000 sheep and “consumed” his many servants (Job 1:3, 16). So a storm of huge magnitude shatters Job’s life at the start of the book. And now we jump into the story at the end of the book. A second storm is brewing.

God’s Greatness from Afar

God will soon speak from this second thunderstorm, beginning in chapter 38. But in chapters 36 and 37 this thunderstorm is still gathering in the background. So imagine Elihu, the final human voice in Job, in the last speech of the book, setting up God’s dramatic entrance. That’s our scene. So, we find Elihu preaching on lightning as a thunderstorm brews behind him. Distant thunder is growling, the winds are picking up, the sun is shrouded, and lightning marches closer to Job. The storm is brewing. And God will speak from this storm, directly to Job. So this is the dramatic context of Elihu’s sermon we will study now in Job 36:24 and following.

In this thunderstorm we marvel at God, exult over his power, and witness his direct actions in creation. We pick up Elihu’s sermon here, as he speaks to his friend Job in Job 36:24–26:

“Remember to extol his work [thunderstorms],     of which men have sung.All mankind has looked on it;     man beholds it from afar.Behold, God is great, and we know him not;     the number of his years is unsearchable.”

So we meet the theme of this text: storms and God. God is eternal Spirit, wholly other than us. Ancient. Wise. A mystery beyond our understanding. But storms and natural laws are different. We can learn from them — within limits, Elihu says. The natural world is hard to understand, not because it cannot be known, but because it’s all happening from “afar” — far away, far up in the sky. Elihu wants to investigate God’s works in nature, but he can only see nature from a distance. We can understand the natural world today because we can zoom in closer. Weather balloons, drones, satellites, telescopes, microscopes — proximity is our scientific advantage. We can get close to storms. Elihu has none of these advantages.

God Is Invisible, Yet Present

And yet, this distance doesn’t stop Elihu from investigating God’s work over nature.

For he draws up the drops of water;     they distill his mist in rain,which the skies pour down     and drop on mankind abundantly. (Job 36:27–28)

This is amazing! Elihu delivers a “proto-scientific description of the formation of rain”(Job 21–37, 869). It’s primitive, but he’s on to atmospheric water cycles. He does not understand evaporation as we now understand it, but he’s pressing into a natural phenomenon with the scientific curiosity that will eventually lead to the discovery of evaporation — a law set in place by the Creator. So he’s inquiring into the atmospheric phenomena at play.

And as Elihu works to figure out storms, notice that he clings to two truths: God is invisible, but majestically present in his creation. That’s what I want you to see all over this text. We can’t see God; but we can see his acts.

So Elihu investigates nature, far off and full of mystery. But he knows this much: Every lightning strike is fired directly by God and is aimed at a specific target. That’s what we see next.

Present in Every Lightning Bolt

Can anyone understand the spreading of the clouds,     the thunderings of his pavilion? [There’s natural mystery here.]Behold, he scatters his lightning about him [where lightning bolts are, there God is]     and covers the roots of the sea. [More literally, he uncovers the roots of the sea — a lightning strike hits the sea and illuminates that underworld for a flash of a moment.]For by these [bolts] he judges peoples;     [and] he gives food in abundance. (Job 36:29–31)

So Elihu doesn’t fully understand the weather patterns. But he knows enough to see that rain gives food to all creatures — and that blessing is connected to lightning, and that lightning is connected to God. So on one hand, yes, the lightning expresses God’s displeasure. But lightning also expresses God’s love. Lightning judges. Lightning feeds. Lightning is complex, as we will see in a moment. But in every bolt, God is present, according to this incredible statement:

He [God] covers his hands with the lightning     and commands it to strike the mark. (Job 36:32)

God’s hands are charged with crackling lightning. You can’t help but think of Zeus and his thunderbolt — the most powerful, unrivaled weapon feared among all the pagan gods. Or the storm gods of Elihu’s age, who held lightning bolts in their hands (Job, 358). Those fictional characters are one-dimensional. But the living God of the universe truly holds thunderbolts in his hands. And not only does he hold them, he shoots them. And not only does he shoot them, he aims them. And not only does he aim them, this forked, zigzagging fire from heaven nails its bullseye every single time (The Book of Job, 480).

God never misses. And this is what led to the utter confusion of Bible-believing Christians in New England. The town bar is never tasered. But the church bells are bullseyes. What gives?

God Speaks Through Lightning

Whatever else lightning is, it’s never less than the presence of God shown to us in the natural world. God is here. He is speaking.

Its crashing declares his presence;     the cattle also declare that he rises.At this also my heart trembles     and leaps out of its place. (Job 36:33–37:1)

Thunder from the skies triggers a thunder inside Elihu’s chest. It does for us, too, right? This past summer we were driving home late in the desert, watching cloud-to-cloud strikes of a huge thunderstorm west of Phoenix — 20-mile-long bolts of lightning flashing like silent strobe lights across the black sky. And my son said, “Every time I see that, something inside of me moves.” Yes! Same for Elihu. Lightning sets off an internal thunder inside us.

Keep listening to the thunder of his voice     and the rumbling that comes from his mouth [that deep growl you hear in the distant storm as it marches close].[Until] Under the whole heaven he [God] lets it go,     and his lightning to the corners of the earth. (Job 37:2–3)

Ever felt that? Lightning hitting in every direction around you? North, south, east, west. And when a bolt flashes and hits especially close — what do we do? We count. One one-thousand, two one-thousand . . . boom!

After it [after the bolt] his voice roars;     he thunders with his majestic voice,     and he does not restrain the lightnings when his voice is heard.God thunders wondrously with his voice;     he does great things that we cannot comprehend. (Job 37:4–5)

“Whatever else lightning is, it’s never less than the presence of God shown to us in the natural world.”

Again, Elihu is not saying that we cannot understand nature. He’s saying that we cannot fully understand God’s purposes in nature. And we certainly cannot stop God’s fire from the sky. We sense our powerlessness (The Book of Job, 480). And yet every peal of thunder is the voice of God speaking.

God’s Purposes in the Storm

Back to Job, who is suffering in dust and ashes. Job’s “bitter” complaint was that God had left him in the dark and disappeared (Job 23:1–9). But Elihu corrects Job. God didn’t abandon Job. He is no absentee Creator. God is here. God’s closeness echoes in the skies in every peal of thunder — a point made in all four seasons.

For to the snow he says, ‘Fall on the earth,’     likewise to the downpour, his mighty downpour.He seals up the hand of every man,     that all men whom he made may know it.Then the beasts go into their lairs,     and remain in their dens. (Job 37:6–8)

By inclement weather, God seals the hand of every man. With his storms, he zip-ties our hands and places us under house arrest. Or as the NIV says: “he stops all people from their labor.” Blizzards and monsoons shut people inside their homes and beasts inside their caves.

Guiding Creatures Where He Wants Them

So God commands dumps of snow and torrents of rain. Why? Because he is positioning (and repositioning) each of his creatures as on a chessboard. In all four seasons, God uses his creation to guide the work of man. Major weather disruptions are one of God’s means to guide his creatures to where he wants them (The Book of Job, 480–481).

Delayed flights. Cancelled meetings. Viruses. If God chose to keep us all shut inside in 2020, it was no hard thing for him to pull off. God governs the business of his creatures through his created order — and very often through weather patterns. He governs our travels through snow, ice, lightning storms, power outages, flooding — you name it. All the seasons are included here. But winter especially.

From its chamber comes the whirlwind,     and cold from the scattering winds.By the breath of God ice is given,     and the broad waters are frozen fast. (Job 37:9–10)

Showing His Presence and Control

And then of course, again, God wields lightning.

He loads the thick cloud with moisture;     the clouds scatter his lightning. (Job 37:11)

Again, we’ve seen this. Elihu is on to evaporation. Water goes up, makes clouds thicken, and then lightning strikes, and that same water pours back down (Job 36:27–28). Elihu gets that. The NIV translates this verse, God “loads the clouds with moisture; he scatters his lightning through them.” So God shoots lightning from his hands. And he shoots them through an atmospheric channel (Job 38:26). Elihu is doing something remarkable here by making two points at the same time. (1) The unseen God is here. (2) His presence is mediated in the natural laws that govern the skies. He’s here. He’s in charge. And he’s leading storms like a leashed dog.

They turn around and around by his guidance,     to accomplish all that he commands them     on the face of the habitable world. (Job 37:12)

Bolts of Correction, Blessing, and Love

God harnesses the storm — leads it, directs it, so that every lightning bolt fulfills his will for creation. So what is his will? Three things, in verse 13.

Whether for correction     or for his land     or for love [ḥesed],     he causes it to happen. (Job 37:13)

So beyond God’s repositioning of his creatures, lightning fulfills his will in three other ways.

One, he uses bolts to chasten and correct sinners.

Two, he shoots bolts to rain down blessings on the thirsty land to feed all his creatures, including us.

“Lightning expresses God’s ‘hesed’ — his loyal love.”

Three, he sends bolts “for love.” Lightning expresses God’s ḥesed — his loyal love. Undying covenant love. So, if you can only imagine God and lightning in a one-dimensional context — like Zeus, some angry god firing off a pistol of lightning to whomever aggravates him — you’ll miss the love of God.

None of this means that it’s easy to interpret what each storm means, says Elihu. We know that God sends the storms. But we don’t know exactly why. And trying to figure out God’s intent in providence is a dangerous task. God’s will is complex. So Elihu is throwing serious side-eye to Job’s older friends who tried to draw definite conclusions from Job’s misfortunes.

Realigning Human Attitudes

Now, finally, as the storm builds up to God’s speech, Elihu makes eye contact with his suffering friend Job.

Hear this, O Job;     stop and consider the wondrous works of God.Do you know how God lays his command upon them     and causes the lightning of his cloud to shine? (Job 37:14–15)

Job desperately needs to realign his attitude. But what can change Job’s attitude in suffering? Consider the wonders of God in the natural world. Here’s a preview of what God is about to unleash in Job 38–42. He will speak to Job from a storm to remind Job of wonder after wonder after wonder in creation.

Traveling from Job to Tesla

But we end Job’s story here. Elihu is trying to understand lightning. He’s an observant man of faith. He trusts God. He marvels at the patterns in the atmosphere. He’s the Bible’s Ben Franklin, but with better theology. And he’s asking his friend Job, “Job, do you know how lightning works? Do you know about the electricity in the clouds, like batteries that hold a charge until it’s time to fire a bolt? Can you explain how water and fire coexist in the sky? No.”

For Job these are great mysteries. But for us? Not anymore. We understand how a lot of it works. And that’s where the tension with science arises. And so we need to move from Elihu to Ben Franklin to Nichola Tesla and down to the Tesla Model X and to the brand new F-150 EV truck, fittingly called the “Lightning.” Let me do that with six brief takeaways.

1. God fires every lightning bolt. He never misses.

God shoots lightning from his hands to a bullseye every time. Elihu makes this clear, and his words are confirmed by other Old Testament texts — namely Psalm 135 and Jeremiah 10. For some, this is news to you — a missing piece of your theology. God is present in lightning bolts. That’s not pagan superstition. That’s biblical orthodoxy.

2. God fires every lightning bolt through atmospheric channels. He ordains the means.

God shoots lightning from his hands to a bullseye every time, but this sovereign marvel does not stop Elihu’s curiosity. He still searches for the atmospheric means God uses in thunderstorms. Providence drives him into natural science, not away from it. Elihu is both trying to unriddle the mystery of God’s providence in the storm, and he’s trying to unriddle the atmospheric mechanics of a storm. And he’s doing both at the same time.

You can pursue science and believe in God without contradiction. So Elihu is simultaneously seeking to decipher the voice of God and atmospheric physics; the invisible world and the visible world; the spirit realm and the physical realm; the laws of providence and the laws of nature. He’s modeling faith-filled science, because these two worlds work in tandem.

3. God governs every natural law. We ignore them to our peril.

God governs his creation “by certain fixed laws.” Do those laws bend “and make allowance for” our mistakes? No, says the nineteenth-century preacher Charles Spurgeon: “Every violation of them is avenged,” Spurgeon says of the laws of lightning, offering this grisly example.

“The simple countryman, in his ignorance of the laws of electricity, is overtaken by a pelting storm, and to escape from the drenching rain he runs beneath some lofty tree to screen himself beneath its spreading branches. It is a law of nature that elevated points should attract the lightning: the man does not know this, he does not intend to defy his Maker’s natural law, but for all that, when the death-dealing fluid splits the tree it leaves a senseless corpse. The law does not suspend its operations though that man may be the husband upon whose life the bread of many children may depend, though he may have been one of the most guileless and prayerful of mankind, though he may have been utterly unconscious of having exposed himself to the force of a physical law of God, yet still he dies, for he has placed himself in the way of a settled law of nature, and it takes its course.”

The natural law is fixed. Be dumb with lightning and it will cost you — perhaps your life (MTPS, 22:13–15). Don’t be dumb with the fixed natural laws. That’s dangerous and deadly. Fear nature. Fear God.

4. Fear drives our inventors.

Necessity is the mother of invention. And so is fear. One way God ignites science and innovation is through fear. He uses all sorts of human desires to motivate our discoveries of creation, but fear is a biggie. Our fear drives us to understand, and understanding leads to discovery. So why do we understand electricity today? Because humans faced the sheer power of lightning, and were motivated to engineer. Fear drives man into God’s created patterns. And that fear is how you end up with the lightning rod.

5. Lightning rod strikes obey God.

So if God commands each bolt, it would be an act of unbelief to divert that bolt with a lightning rod, right? That’s the question we are back to.

And the answer is, no. Actually, God teaches us to make lightning rods. To divert the lightning is not an act of unbelief — but one that can be made in faith. This is because, as theologian Abraham Kuyper writes,

“When God accumulates electricity in the clouds and the possibility increases of a lightning strike that might endanger the lives of a family or their property, we are not only permitted but obligated to apply every means available to avert or at least mitigate this danger. It is none other than God himself who has included within nature this means to divert the lightning.… And when a dangerous bolt of lightning travels down along the metal rod and terminates in the ground, it is God himself who guides the lightning along that rod and who smothers the enormous spark in the earth. Humankind does not do this, and Satan does not do this; it is God. And whoever honors God’s majesty in the lightning that flashes, yet does not honor the majesty with which God draws this flashing lightning to the rod, grounding and guiding it away, takes from God half the honor due him” (Common Grace, 2:596)

Realize this: No bolt travels harmlessly down a lightning rod unless God directs it that way, through the innovation of man. When the bolt travels down the rod, God guides it there. This is the key theological point missing from 1750 New England, and for many Christians today — who fear that human innovation strongarms God, or makes him look weaker. No. That’s a myth. New tech never bullies our sovereign God. It reveals more of him, his patterns in creation, and his generosity to us. Leading to point 6.

6. No one sees God’s love in lightning like we do.

Once Ben Franklin proved decisively with a kite that clouds hold an electric charge, like a huge battery in the sky, he opened a floodgate of new human innovation. We could make battery farms. We could envision man-made lightning bolts to power cities. And “the power we now recognize in electricity God had already hidden in nature from the very hour of paradise.” The electrified age was hidden by God in the lightning bolt from the beginning of time. “In due time,” innovators were ordained to discover electricity, and to electrify cities and industries, although in doing so we “actually added nothing new to creation as such” (Pro Rege, 3:34).

The power was there all along. And if we had failed to harness electricity, we would have deprived God of the honor due to him. Electricity was hidden for millennia in the lightning bolt, a harnessed power that changed the world forever. In electricity we give God glory for lightning in ways that lightning alone cannot accomplish. Human innovation, the harnessing of this creation, magnifies the Creator’s brilliance more than a simple lightning storm. That’s the highest value and purpose possible for human tech — to disclose more of the Creator’s brilliance.

So Ben Franklin didn’t steal God’s thunder. No. He discovered lightning — diverted it — and introduced the world to electricity at the scale of what could eventually power cities. Electricity was not invented by Ben Franklin. Nor did it originate by inventors with the last names of Watts, Ampere, Volta, Faraday, Ohm, or Tesla. No. These innovators were raised up by God, at the right time, to discover and to divert and to harness what was hidden in plain sight from the beginning of creation. God was hiding electricity all along in lightning. Electricity was hidden in the bolt, awaiting discovery. And once we did, the age of electrification began — a watershed moment in human history — the electrified age — and it added nothing new to God’s creation! It was there all along. God used the fear of lightning to drive us to discover what now powers this room.

The natural lightning bolt that tears through the sky, and the artificial lightning bolt in the power plant that causes our lights to work right now, are equally from God. Yes, he uses means. Yes, he uses clouds. Yes, he uses power plants. But if Elihu were here today, he would say: Behold the love of God in the lightning bolt coursing through the wires of Silicon Valley, a power hidden in creation from day one in the lightning bolt. So why does your smartphone have power right now? The loyal love of God — his ḥesed.

God Over Lightning and Electricity

Let me attempt to summarize it all — and it’s a lot. Human fear of God in lightning drives us to discover the love of God in electricity. Elihu had no idea how much of God’s love to us was charged into the lightning bolt. He could never have predicted God’s love to thousands of COVID sufferers whose lives would be saved by ventilators. He could not have imagined God’s love in millions of heart defibrillators and pacemakers. Or in lights, air conditioning, dishwashers, computers, smartphones, televisions, electric cars—all the electrified things we take for granted every single day. All of them originated in the first cause of the electrified age—in the lightning bolt.

Elihu could never have imagined that the electricity hidden in lightning is animation, a life force, an invisible force coursing through wires to power farms, cities, homes, tools, industries. And now it’s nearly impossible for us to imagine life on this planet without electricity. Most of our jobs and hobbies and ministries are only possible because of it.

So, the challenge for us is this: Don’t ignore the God of the lightning bolt. Don’t take electricity from creation without giving your awe to the Creator who created every bolt of energy. Don’t hear the voice of God in lightning and then grow deaf to his glory and his love to us in the electricity powering our lives every day. As we see in Elihu himself, the utter transcendence and all-sufficiency of God does not stop us from investigating natural causes. It pushes us into the science of understanding how the means work. So we study physics and quantum physics. We study atmospheric phenomena, we harness those powers, then we use them to disclose the glory of God.

So don’t be dumb with electricity. Don’t stand under a tree in a lightning storm. And don’t use electricity to ignore the God who patterned electricity and who gave you this gift from his kindness. Put lightning rods on your steeples. Redirect the lightning. Harness its power. Make electric cars. And use every watt of power to do what lightning has always intended to do: to showcase the majesty and uniqueness and beauty of the Creator, who loves us lavishly with good gifts.

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.

Let’s talk about framing. Not framing as in home construction, but framing as in the way we perceive reality. Framing refers to how we see things. In particular, it refers to the fact that, as human beings, we don’t merely see things; we see things as. If you see a bear, you don’t just see a bear. You see the bear as dangerous. When you see a sunset, you don’t just see the sunset; you see the sunset as beautiful. That’s what I mean by framing. We see things as.

And not just sight, but our other senses as well. We hear the buzzing of a fly as annoying. We hear the laughter of a child as delightful. We smell the aroma of cookies as pleasant. We taste and see that honey is good. Framing, then, has to do with the immediate and snap judgments we make about reality and its relation to us.

Changing Lenses

Our framing is not static. The child’s laughter that is delightful at one moment is a nuisance when you’re trying to get work done. The laughter is the same; the framing — your snap judgment — is different.

“Framing has to do with the immediate and snap judgments that we make about reality and its relation to us.”

Let’s take another step. We’re always framing, and it’s good that we are. It’s what keeps us alive. Our snap judgments lead to snap reactions. The framing bear-as-dangerous is why you jump in the car and drive away when you see one. The speed of our snap judgments engages our snap reactions almost automatically. In fact, we might say that our snap judgments and snap reactions are not in our immediate control (though, as we’ll see, they are shaped over time by our choices and experiences).

As humans — with souls and bodies, hearts and minds, intellects and wills — our snap judgments are often incredibly complex. They don’t merely involve simple and straightforward judgments about dangerous bears and delightful laughter. Behind our framing lies a complex web of imagination, memory, narrative-framing, embodied experience, and our present expectations, desires, and fears. In short, because we are human, why we see things as we do is a complicated question.

More than simply being human, our fallibility and sinfulness complicate our framing. Because we are fallible, our framing can be mistaken. We might mistake a garden hose for a snake and unnecessarily panic. And because we are sinful, our snap reactions following our snap judgments are not always good. Your spouse makes an observation; you make a snap judgment — comment-as-insult — and you react with your own insulting comment, and the situation escalates. You see the two places you could go wrong: Was your snap judgment correct? And was your snap reaction appropriate?

Our Chosen Stories

We can think of many other examples. Was that question from your coworker simply a request for information? Or was it a subtle shot at your ignorance? Your friends go out one night and don’t invite you. Did they simply forget or intentionally leave you out? Snap judgment, snap reaction.

And now we can see how our framing — and the snap reactions that flow from it — sets us on a path.

They didn’t invite me. They intentionally left me out. They don’t want to be around me. They’ve rejected me as their friend. I’ll show them.

With every judgment, we add a corresponding reaction, which together make the frame sturdier. Our experience and our choices, our memories and our imaginations, the stories we tell ourselves and the things that happen to us — all of these work together to shape and reshape our framing.

Notice How You Frame

What then should we do?

First, we ought to be curious about our own framing. I reacted because I made a snap judgment. Why did I make that judgment? And was that an appropriate reaction? Growing in self-awareness is crucial if we are to frame the world rightly. Our reactions are tied to our framing, and both often reveal subtle assumptions that we may not even be fully aware of.
C.S. Lewis describes just this sort of dynamic in The Screwtape Letters.

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. (111)

Note the snap reactions: anger and ill-temper. Note that what produces them is a snap judgment: misfortune conceived as injury. That’s the framing: hardship as violation of a claim. What assumption is revealed by this snap judgment and snap reaction? Screwtape continues.

Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear.

Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption “My time is my own.” (111–12)

There is the assumption, the pattern, beneath the snap judgment — “My time is my own.” Curiosity about our reaction leads us to awareness of our judgment and the revealing of our (false) assumption. Thus, reframing our view of our time becomes essential in shaping us in a more humble and godly way.

Notice How Others Frame

Second, be curious about the framing of others. My spouse or child or friend reacted strongly because they made a snap judgment about me. Why did they do so? Does their snap judgment fit a real pattern I display? And rather than escalating the situation with my own snap reaction, how can I love them through it?

Again, Lewis describes how important such self-reflection is in our closest relationships. Listen to Screwtape’s strategy for provoking our snap judgments and snap reactions in our domestic lives.

When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother’s eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it.

Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy — if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed. (13)

Again, note the way that our reactions and judgments reveal improbable assumptions. Our awareness of such facts allows us to be curious and compassionate toward our family and friends and, Lord willing, love them more wisely.

Be Transformed by Scripture

Third, mind the patterns that shape your framing. Paul says it clearly in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world.” In other words, don’t frame reality the way that the world frames reality. Its pattern is not to be our pattern. Instead, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This is why we read the Scriptures and seek God in prayer and worship with God’s people — so that our minds can be renewed and we frame reality the way God does.

“Don’t frame reality the way that the world frames reality.”

Finally, marvel at the amazing reframing that God has worked in us in our view of Christ. At one time, our frame was darkened and blind. We saw Christ as a stumbling block and foolishness. Christ-as-ugly, Christ-as-dull, Christ-as-trivial — that was our frame.

But then, the God who said “Let light shine out of darkness” shone in our hearts (2 Corinthians 4:6). He called us from darkness to light and reframed Jesus for us. Now we see Christ as the power of God and the wisdom of God. Through the miracle of the new birth, we see Jesus differently. Christ-as-glorious. Jesus-as-worthy. This is the frame of frames, the pattern that transforms us from one degree of glory to another.

Audio Transcript

If my sinful flesh was removed, put off, in Christ, then why do I still sin? That’s a question we get often, rightly so. It’s a question that should be on our minds as we process the glorious truths of Colossians 2:11–12. Today the question comes from two listeners.

Max in Tulsa, Oklahoma writes in. “Hello Pastor John! My question is this: Does the born-again Christian still have a sin nature? I read Romans 7 and Galatians 5 and it seems to say yes, we do. But when I read Paul in Colossians 2:11–12, he says our ‘body of the flesh’ has been put off, cut off, and done away with completely. Or so it reads to me. Biblically speaking, do genuine Christians have a sin nature or not? Thank you!”

The same text raised the question for a listener named Carlos, who lives in the nation of Colombia. “Pastor John, according to Colossians 2:11, a Christian’s sin nature has been cut away. So why am I still tempted to sin? Why do I still battle with temptation if such a decisive work has been done in me, in Christ?”

“We can’t pursue the kind of life God calls us to live if we don’t know what happened to us when became a Christian.”

This question is so important because we can’t pursue the kind of life God calls us to live if we don’t know what happened to us when became a Christian. There’s a great deal of emphasis today, it seems to me, on what has happened for us in the cross, namely that our sins are forgiven, and that we are accepted, and that we are loved, and that we have eternal life. But there doesn’t seem to me to be as much emphasis on what has happened to us in becoming Christians, what happened to us because of the cross.

And it’s precisely this — what happened to us, what changed in us — that Paul emphasizes as the key to how we are to pursue holiness and love and righteousness and all the fruit of the Holy Spirit. So, it’s a very important question.

Buried and Raised with Christ

Sometimes we can get all tangled up in our terminology, and so, in answering the question, I’m going to stay very close to the apostle Paul’s terminology.

Max asked the question in terms of sin nature. Now that’s not exactly Paul’s language but I think if we stay with Paul’s language, we will answer Max’s question. Paul teaches that when we become Christians through faith in Christ, we are united to Christ so that his death counts as our death. And that’s true in two senses, not just one. First, it’s true in that the punishment we deserve for our sin was taken by Christ so that his death on the cross was our condemnation and so there’s now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

But the other sense in which his death counts as our death is that we really did die with him. In a profound sense, we really did come alive with him in his resurrection. And so the question that we’re asking is, in what sense did we die? What’s dead, and in what sense do we have newness of life?

When You Became a Christian

In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Colossians 2:11–12)

So let’s start with the text that Max refers to in the Colossians 2:11–12: “In him” — so there’s the union piece, in union with Jesus Christ — “In him, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh . . . ” — now that’s the phrase he picked up on: “put off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ” — “having been buried with him in baptism in which you were raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.”

So Paul is describing what happens to a person when he becomes a Christian, and he symbolizes that miracle in baptism, been buried under the water and raised up out of the water to walk in newness of life like a resurrection. So first, there’s a union with Christ. He says, “In him, you were buried and raised.” Second, this union is experienced through faith. “You were raised with him through faith, in the powerful working of God.” Baptism is an expression of faith. Third, in union with Christ, we died, and in union with Christ, we were raised. Some aspect of our being died. Something new came into being by this resurrection with Christ. Fourth, Paul compares this death in baptism through faith to a circumcision made without hands. So the analogy is that just as the foreskin of the male sexual organ is cut off and thrown away, so the body of flesh is cut off and thrown away. And we’ll come back to that in just a second (what is the body of flesh?).

This raises more questions: Who died, and who came to life, when we became Christians? And Paul describes who died in at least four ways. First, he says, “I died.” Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lived.” So I died. Number two, he says our old self died. Roman 6:6: “We know that our old self was crucified with him.” Third, he says that our flesh died. Galatians 2:24: “Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh.” Fourth, he says the body of flesh. Now that’s a reference back to what we just saw in Colossians 2:11, the body of flesh. He says that in being buried with Christ, we have put off the body of flesh.

Now putting those four ways of saying it together, here’s what I conclude. In so far as I am identified with my flesh and in so far as my body is the instrument of my flesh, I died and my body died because my flesh died. Now, what does that mean?

What Is My Flesh?

What is my flesh? And here’s Paul’s answer to that question in Romans 8:7: “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh” — that is in the control and sway of this thing called flesh — “cannot please God.” So the flesh is not synonymous with the body. The flesh is my old self in its hostility to God. It’s insubordination to God. It’s inability to submit to God and please God — that’s my flesh. That’s what died when I became a Christian. God killed my hostility to God. God killed my insubordination to God.

God killed my inability to submit to God and my inability to please God. He killed me in that sense. And in the place of that old self of hostility and insubordination and inability, God created a new self. He calls it a new creation in 2 Corinthians 5 and in Ephesians 2:10. And what are the traits of this new creation, this new self that came into being when I was united to Christ and died and rose with him? Galatians 2:19–20 give a beautiful answer that says I died to the law so that I might live to God:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and here comes the key phrase I think, the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

So three ways Paul describes his new self as a Christian. First, he’s alive to God. God is real to him, precious, beautiful, desirable. He isn’t hostile to God anymore, he admires God, he loves God, he trusts God, he’s alive to God. Second, his new self lives by faith in the Son of God. So he’s no longer insubordinate and self-sufficient and self-exalting, he trusts the son of God like a little child. He submits and depends upon the mercy of God in Christ. He’s a believer, that’s what came alive. A believer came alive. And third, another way to say it is that Christ himself lives in us. I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me.

The new self of the Christian is the God-loving, son-of-God-trusting, Christ-inhabited self. That’s the new creation that came into being when I rose with Christ.

Be What You Are

Now, Max is asking how this reality, not possibility, reality, these things really happen to us, we don’t make them happen, they really happen to us, how that relates, he says to my battle with sin. And the answer is that this way of understanding ourselves is the way we do battle with sin. Paul didn’t say, “Oh, since this glorious death and resurrection has happened to you, there’s no more battle of a sin.”

“Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. In the other words, be what you are.”

He said this new reality of life from the dead and this old reality which has died with Christ is precisely the way we fight sin in our lives. For example, Colossians 2:20, he says, “If with Christ, you died to the legalistic elemental principles of dos and don’ts — do not taste, do not touch, do not handle. . . .” And he’s explaining the false religion there. If you died to those, why are you submitting to such regulations? You’re dead to those. Don’t submit to them, be who you are.

Then later in chapter 3, he said, “You have died. So put to death what is earthly in you, immorality, impurity, passion.” So Paul did not say because you have died, there’s no battle. He said, “Because you have died, reckon yourselves dead,” Romans 6:11. Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. In the other words, be what you are.

Cleanse Out the Old Leaven

It may sound paradoxical, but it is a profound and glorious truth. God has made us what we are. In Christ, we are new creatures. We don’t make ourselves new creatures; we are new creatures. We act the miracle that he performed. He performed the miracle, we act it out.

Listen to first Corinthians 5:7: “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump of dough as you really are unleavened.” That just captures everything right in one verse. You are unleavened, so get the leaven out. I just love it.

So, I say to Max and to all of us, don’t let your death with Christ in your new life in Christ cause you to shrink back from making war on your sin as though that conflict should not be happening. Rather, let your death with Christ and your newness in Christ be the happy, confident ground where you take your stand and put to death the sin that remains.

Not long ago, purity was something all Christians seemed to admire, and want, without qualification. Now, many professing believers associate the pursuit of personal purity with the scandal of “purity culture.” Christian pleas for purity, some claim, have spread fear, guilt, and shame instead. I encountered these concerns again as I researched and published a fresh plea for sexual purity.

Some reformation was warranted. In some circles, the concerted effort for sexual purity in the nineties was a desperate effort to stem the tide of teenage pregnancy, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, and abortion. In the eyes of many, sexual sin and temptation were the hordes outside the gate, and we needed extraordinary measures to hold them back. So they held rallies, published books, printed cards, and fashioned rings. And also (in the eyes of some, anyway) mass-produced shame, even as untold numbers made admirable resolves and were spared great miseries.

Some, it seems, came away thinking of purity mainly as a means to marriage, to health, to earthly happiness, even to salvation, and not mainly as fruit of knowing and enjoying Jesus. Purity was not the final solution to AIDS, pornography, or teenage pregnancy; worship was. Purity wasn’t the ultimate key to a better marriage or better sex; worship was. But teenagers weren’t angsty about worship; they were angsty about marriage, sex, pregnancy, and disease, so that’s where the messaging often went (or at least what many kids came away with). Therefore, while teenage pregnancy and STDs did decline over the next couple decades (truly amazing when you think about it), many testified to experiencing more shame than freedom, more disillusionment than worship, more self than Jesus.

And, in the process, some (certainly not all) missed the gift and peace of true purity. They may not have dated young or kissed someone before marriage, but they didn’t get to taste what God means by purity either.

Lies That Spread in Purity Culture

Calls for sexual purity were (and are) biblical and needed. Even in the midst of the good that was done through lots of preaching and discipleship during those years, several lies seemed to spread in the renewed emphasis on purity — each laced with enough truth to be taken seriously and yet with enough deceit to lead some astray.

Lie 1: Sexual purity guarantees a happy marriage.

Some heard, If you want to get married to a great guy (or girl), have a great marriage, and enjoy a great sex life, then abstain from any sexual sin. One commentator has called this “the sexual prosperity gospel.”

It is true that sexual purity before marriage does guard and bless our future marriage, and it may improve our chances of marrying well and enjoying a healthy and happy sex life. But it doesn’t guarantee a great marriage. Sexual purity does not guarantee we will marry, or that our spouse will be wonderful and faithful, or that sex will easy or satisfying.

Marriage is not a reward for purity in singleness, and prolonged singleness is not a curse for sexual sin. Sexual purity before marriage is a profound way to love your future spouse (if God brings you a spouse). More than that, though, it’s a profound way to honor God and experience more of his presence and power. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” Jesus says, “for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

Lie 2: Virginity is what makes someone desirable.

Some heard, If I want a godly guy (or girl) to want to marry me, then I should abstain from sexual sin. They went away thinking that virginity was the greatest gift anyone could give a future spouse and that those who kept their virginity would, again, receive marriage as a reward for their waiting.

“Virginity is not the greatest gift anyone can give a future spouse; a genuine faith in Jesus is.”

Virginity is a precious gift to give a spouse. Perhaps my greatest regret as a husband, a father, as a man, is that I did not practice the love and self-control of waiting for the marriage bed. Virginity, however, is not the greatest gift anyone can give a future spouse; a genuine faith in Jesus is. Make no mistake, your sexual history (or lack thereof) will affect your marriage for better or worse, if God gives you a spouse, but the effect will not compare to your lived-out love for Christ (or lack thereof). Virginity is not at the top of a godly man’s or woman’s priorities; Jesus is. Whatever the history, he or she is now most committed to marrying in the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:39).

That means sexual sinners are not ruined for happy marriages if we turn from our sin and commit to pursuing purity in Christ.

Lie 3: Girls are why men sin.

Some pushback against “purity culture” has come from women who felt the burden was unfairly laid on them to keep men from sinning. Lust is every young man’s battle, and they’re tempted and fall because women dress and act immodestly. As a result, some women may have carried shame and guilt over the sins of their brothers — and some men may have left thinking they experienced lust mainly because women dressed inappropriately.

Jesus did not diagnose lust this way. He pointed first to our own hearts: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person” (Matthew 15:19–20). This doesn’t discount God’s real call to modesty, that women “adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control” (1 Timothy 2:9); nor does it dismiss that immodesty can feed sexual temptation and lust. But Jesus does not lay a man’s sin chiefly at the feet of women. A man’s sexual immorality comes first and foremost from within him.

How Does God Motivate Sexual Purity?

If these untruths compromised the cause for purity, how does God inspire purity? What kinds of realities does he rely on to kindle a grace-filled, Christ-exalting, joyful pursuit of purity, especially sexual purity? A good place to start would be 1 Thessalonians 4:1–8, and especially verse 3:

>This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.

Do you want to know God’s will for you? (Everyone, of course, does, and especially young people trying to figure out their lives.) This verse says God’s will for you is your sexual purity. In the wrong hands, the verse could become a prooftext for distorted teaching on purity, but I believe this passage still holds the cure for an ailing purity culture — and the catalyst for a new one.

So how does Paul motivate sexual purity in 1 Thessalonians 4? In at least five profound ways.

1. Do you want to be free from lust?

Again, beginning in verse 3, “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:3–5).

Paul is preaching freedom from the tyranny of the passions of the flesh. Those who don’t know God are enslaved to their cravings. They do what their body tells them to do — and their body consistently tells them to defy the living God. And so they forfeit fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore — and their very lives — for fractions of joy and moments of pleasure.

But those who know God realize that sexual immorality is not freedom; it is slavery. And sexual purity is not slavery; it is a truer, longer-lasting freedom (Romans 6:6–7).

2. Do you want to experience the power of God?

God not only calls us to sexual purity; he promises to work that purity in us. “God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thessalonians 4:7–8). With the command — abstain from sexual immorality — he also gives himself. I will work in you that which is pleasing in my sight, God says, as you work out your salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:13–14). The soul successfully pursuing sexual purity in Christ is a soul coursing with the power of God — with the presence and help of the Holy Spirit.

3. Do you want to avoid the wrath to come?

First Thessalonians 4:1–8 is a weighty passage. It’s not “Come as you are, and stay as you are.” It’s filled with warning.

The Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God. (1 Thessalonians 4:6–8)

Faithful teaching on sexual purity will sound severe warnings. Those warnings, however, will harmonize with the melody of God’s grace to sinners — and they will focus most not on temporary, earthly consequences, but on spiritual, eternal ones. To be sure, there’s a place to warn about sexually transmitted diseases, teenage pregnancy, unwanted singleness, and marital dysfunction, but the weight of the church’s warnings about sex should land on God. And God makes himself clear:

Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9–10)

4. Do you want to guard the ones you love?

Satan wants us to think that sexual sin is secret and private. That no one has to know. That we’re the only ones who suffer for our lack of self-control. The testimony of Scripture, however, is that our sexual sin always harms more than ourselves. That means sexual purity is an act of love. “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality . . . that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter” (1 Thessalonians 4:3–6).

“The consequences of sexual sin always injure others, and especially those we love.”

There may have been particular ways the Thessalonians were using sex against one another, but the principle applies much more broadly: the consequences of sexual sin always injure others, and especially those we love. Sexual sin treats people as objects, and fuels sex slavery around the world. Sexual sin corrupts leadership, in the home and in the church, and it ruins ministries. Sexual sin destroys marriages and wounds children.

Because God has given sex such unusual power for good in marriage, it has unusual power for destruction everywhere else. So, abstain from sexual immorality as an act of earnest love.

5. Do you want to feel the smile of God?

Finally, a great reason to practice sexual purity in our pornographic age is that our purity pleases God. In Christ, by the power of the Spirit, we now have the profound ability to make the King of heaven smile.

Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. (1 Thessalonians 4:1)

This does not mean God only loves those who kept their virginity before marriage. It does mean that when his chosen, forgiven, imperfect children choose purity, it pleases him. It makes him happy. Paul prays elsewhere, “that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:9–10). Our God is the happiest being in the universe (1 Timothy 1:11), and one of his great pleasures is seeing his people overcome sin and temptation by his grace.

Do you want a reason to resist sexual sin? Your purity pleases the Father. And your purity allows you to see and enjoy more of God (Matthew 5:8). Those who live to please him experience deeper, more enduring pleasure than this world can offer.

Purity Is Greater Than Sex

We likely won’t get to read many articles about the men and women who signed cards and wore rings out of a real, burning love for Jesus. The New York Times likely won’t cover the countless stories of those who credit the movement for helping them make Christian resolves against peer pressure and fight the good fight for purity in days when many weren’t.

Where purity culture erred or was unclear, it wasn’t because Christian leaders called for sexual purity, but because sex and marriage threatened to become bigger than God. Wherever the messaging downplayed grace, or relied disproportionately on fear, or reduced purity to sexual ethics, it plundered the riveting and appealing beauty of purity in Christ — and, ironically, robbed purity of its power to overcome temptation. As purity becomes smaller and more human, it also becomes more burdensome — and less Christian. Christian purity is rooted in the bigness and goodness of God — his grace, his power, his love, his worth.

The pursuit of purity (then and now) is not mainly about rejecting sexual temptation, but about receiving and embracing the heart of God. Yes, God calls us to walk in purity, but the only path to true purity is covered in blood and leads us to him.

“You are not alone.”

Just hearing those words when we’re in pain can cause a subtle shift within us, moving us toward hope where we had seen only despair. Suffering can be one of the loneliest experiences, separating us from people we love and, at times, from a sense of God’s nearness. We long for presence — both the presence of God, who draws near in our pain, and the presence of others who can minister his grace. Yet sometimes it’s hard to find or experience either.

Sunday After He Left

Though I’d been part of the local church for decades, I didn’t want to go to church the Sunday after my husband left. I was convinced it would be painful and awkward. Most people didn’t know what had happened, and I wasn’t sure what I would say. Afraid that I’d break down in tears, I wanted to pull the covers over my head and not face anyone. Nothing felt safe. But after wrestling in bed, I finally got up and drove to church with my daughters, praying that God would meet us there.

Some friends were waiting for us in the back. They had saved seats for us. I was relieved we wouldn’t be sitting alone. As we stood for the first hymn and began to hear our voices harmonize with those around us, I felt a strange swell of emotion. We were part of a community, and even though our world had collapsed, there were people around us who would hold us up. I still remember leaving encouraged that day, thankful that I had been worshiping in God’s house, hearing God’s word, surrounded by God’s people.

I couldn’t have known when I walked through the doors that Sunday how much I would rely on those people in the coming years.

With Me in the Fire

It was in the church where I felt nurtured and known. Hearing God’s word preached every Sunday grounded me, reminding me of the truths I needed as anchors. I remember a particular sermon on the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3. My pastor pointed out, vividly and memorably, that God is with us in the fire. He emphasized our witness in trials and how people can see our faithfulness and God’s sufficiency in our weaknesses. I needed to hear, again and again throughout Scripture, that God will never leave or forsake us.

In those long, hard days, I also heard truth from friends and people in my small group who individually encouraged me, prayed with me, and wept with me as they pointed me to Jesus. It was through their faithfulness that I experienced firsthand the church as the body of Christ, redeemed people who love, serve, and sacrifice for each other. Their love came in many forms — providing for our practical needs, sharing testimonies of how God had met them in their own grief, and reminding me of truth when I was tempted to doubt.

“When I wondered how I could go on, the church carried me, reassuring me that I was not alone.”

The response from our church was overwhelming — people fixed our computers, brought our family meals, and even changed light bulbs in our house. Families invited us to dinner, reminding us that we were part of a larger community that was going to support us. Several times, a small group gathered in my home to pray, lamenting with me through a psalm and crying out for God to fill our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.

When I wondered how I could go on, the church carried me, reassuring me that I was not alone.

What If the Church Hurt Us?

Though I was nurtured and loved by my local church, I do know others who have been hurt by fellow Christians in the wake of suffering, feeling unknown and uncared for in their pain. For some, members of the church showed up right away, but then the support quickly evaporated and they were left to grieve on their own. Others have felt judged or minimized as people have sought to fix them rather than mourn with them. They have left the church disillusioned, discouraged, and disappointed. Their experience in church has seemed to only intensify their loneliness, rather than lessen it.

So how do suffering people move forward when we have been let down by the church? While everyone’s situation is unique, and there is no universal answer, God has chosen the church as the place where his children heal, serve, and grow. In his manifold wisdom, God makes himself known through the church (Ephesians 3:10). The church is the body of Christ, his hands and feet in the world. When one member suffers, all suffer together (1 Corinthians 12:26).

“The church is one of God’s greatest means of grace in our lives, and all the more so in suffering.”

When we already feel weak and wounded, it takes courage to tell others, especially in the church, how they have hurt us. As we bravely move forward, we can pray that God would direct us, help us overlook or forgive when appropriate, and give us wisdom on what actions to take next. In some circumstances, we may deem it wise to leave our local church and look for another, but God will never call us to leave the church altogether. It is one of his greatest means of grace in our lives, and all the more so in suffering.

Do We Really Need Church?

The inevitable questions arise: Why do we need the local church in suffering? Why is it worth finding one where we can belong and trust? Why can’t we just do this on our own?

We need the local church in our suffering because, without it, we might become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13). When our suffering lingers, and our prayers seemingly go unanswered, we may begin to wonder if God cares — if he can really be trusted. Our fears may feel greater than our faith. When that happens, we can lean into the faith of the saints around us and let them carry us (Hebrews 10:24–25). We can entrust them to pray for us when we have no words ourselves. And we can rest knowing that even if we stumble and fall, someone will be there to pick us up and help us find our strength in God.

In his book Embodied Hope, Kelly Kapic reminds us, “The saints speak to God for us when we struggle to believe and speak alone. Further, the saints are called to speak to us for God when we seem unable to hear him on our own. Their prayers sustain our faith; their proclamation reignites our hope.”

When We Hide Our Pain

As we share our suffering with those in the church, we not only allow them to minister hope to us, but we also minister to them through our pain.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (2 Corinthians 1:3–4)

When we hide our wounds and weaknesses, we not only distance ourselves from others, but we also subtly reinforce the lie that the Christian life promises continuous victory, pain-free bodies, and material prosperity. Letting our brothers and sisters in Christ into that sacred space of our suffering, sharing our failures and weakness, our pain and our despair, brings a rare closeness that reminds us all that we are not alone.

Suffering can be one of the loneliest experiences, making us feel estranged and isolated from our friends, from our community, and from God. Yet paradoxically, as we let the church minister to us in our pain, leaning into God and into our friends, letting them carry us when we are weak, we often will find a deeper intimacy than we have ever known. God himself whispers to us, through Scripture and through fellow believers, that we are beloved, seen, and known, even in the valley.

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.

If you follow the greatest men of God back to their beginnings, you will often find yourself in a hidden closet or lonely pew, where a mother kneels to pray. Look behind Augustine, and you will find Monica. Look behind Spurgeon, and you will find Eliza. Look behind Hudson Taylor, and you will find Amelia. And look at each of these mothers, and you will find earnest prayer.

Those who know their Bibles should hardly be surprised. Like the star the wise men saw, the stories of God’s redemptive movements often lead us to a home where a woman, hidden from the great ones of the earth, caresses a heel that will one day crush a serpent. In the prayers of a mother, awakenings are born and peoples won, idols are toppled and devils undone, dry bones are raised and prodigals rescued.

Again and again, before God laid his hand on a man, he laid it on his mother.

Mother of the Kingdom

“The dawn of the great new movements of God repeatedly occurs in women’s spaces,” Alastair Roberts writes. The word repeatedly is right. Over and again, redemptive history turns on a flawed but faithful mother bearing a son: Sarah and Isaac, Rebekah and Jacob, Rachel and Joseph, Ruth and Obed, Elizabeth and John, Eunice and Timothy — and, of course, Mary and Jesus.

Among all these stories, however, one in particular illustrates the power of a praying mother. The books of 1 and 2 Samuel tell the story of how God turned Israel into a kingdom — how he sought “a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14) to sit on the throne and begin a royal line that one day would run to Jesus (2 Samuel 7:13–14). But where does this story of a king and a kingdom begin? With one infertile woman, pleading for a son.

[Elkanah] had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other, Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. (1 Samuel 1:2)

“If you follow the greatest men of God back to their beginnings, you will often find a mother kneeling to pray.”

A barren woman and a fruitful rival: we’ve been here before (Genesis 16:1–6; 30:1–8). The stage is set for God to make a name for himself through a miraculous birth. And prayer will be his appointed means.

Hannah’s Prayer

Like Hagar before her, Peninnah can’t help pointing the finger at Hannah’s empty womb: “[Hannah’s] rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year” (1 Samuel 1:6–7). But unlike Sarah before her, Hannah turns to God instead of turning against Peninnah.

Listen to the simple prayer of a suffering woman, longing for an open womb:

O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head. (1 Samuel 1:11)

We know the rest of the story. The Lord would hear Hannah and give her a son. And her son, Samuel, would establish Israel’s kingdom (1 Samuel 16:10–13), inaugurate the nation’s prophetic line (Acts 3:24; 13:20), and gain a standing beside Moses as a mediator of God’s people (Jeremiah 15:1). Through prayer, Hannah’s once-barren womb bore a son to rescue Israel.

What might mothers learn from Hannah’s prayer today?

1. Anguish can be a good teacher.

Years of infertility, joined with Peninnah’s mockery, had finally broken the dam of Hannah’s sorrow. The pain of hope deferred flooded her heart, and the flood could not be hidden. “Hannah wept and would not eat. . . . She was deeply distressed” (1 Samuel 1:7, 10).

Yet, as so often happens, Hannah’s tears became a trail that led her to her knees. “After they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh, Hannah rose . . . and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly” (1 Samuel 1:9–10). We don’t know what Hannah’s prayer life was like before this moment. But here, at least, anguish became her best teacher.

In a world as broken as ours, anguish hems a mother in, behind and before. Some, like Hannah, feel the peculiar agony of wished-for motherhood. Others, the pain of pregnancy and childbirth itself. And still others, the sorrow of a child who has not yet been born again. What Augustine once said of his mother holds true for many:

She wept and wailed, and these cries of pain revealed what there was left of Eve in her, as in anguish she sought the son whom in anguish she had brought to birth. (Confessions, 5.8.15)

“Anguish often leads a mother to a prayer God longs to answer.”

Anguish, we know, may tempt a mother toward bitterness, as it did both Sarah and Rachel for a time (Genesis 16:5–6; 30:1). But here, Hannah reveals a surprising truth: anguish often leads a mother to a prayer God longs to answer.

2. God delights in open hands.

Two words in Hannah’s prayer rise to the surface through repetition: Lord (twice) and its counterpart, servant (three times). In her anguish, she does not forget that God is her Lord, high and wise above her, nor that she is his servant, bound to do his will. The famous words of Mary over a millennium later — “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord” (Luke 1:38) — are an echo of Hannah’s.

Hannah’s open hands also appear in her remarkable vow: “If you will . . . give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head” (1 Samuel 1:11). Her promise not to cut her son’s hair refers to the Nazirite vow, by which a person’s life was devoted entirely to God (Numbers 6:1–5). Hannah says, in others words, “Give me a son, and I will give him back to you — heart and soul, body and mind, all the days of his life.” In response, God gives her a son to return to God.

We should hesitate, of course, before drawing a straight line between a mother’s heart and how God answers her prayers. Some mothers pray with Hannah-like surrender, and still their wombs stay empty, or their children keep walking to the far country. Hannah’s story does teach us, however, that God loves to put gifts in open hands. He delights when a mother, welling up with maternal affection, wells up still more with desire for Christ and his kingdom.

In Hannah’s case, her openhanded motherhood allowed Samuel to spend his days at the temple, where, the narrator tells us, “he worshiped the Lord” (1 Samuel 1:28). May God be pleased to do the same for many mothers’ sons.

3. A mother’s prayers can shake the world.

The anguished prayer of 1 Samuel 1:11 is not the only prayer we hear from Hannah. When she brings her freshly weaned son to the temple, she prays again, this time soaring with praise (1 Samuel 2:1–10). And as we listen, we quickly realize that the story of Hannah and Samuel reaches far beyond the four walls of a happy home.

Consider just her final words, which offer a fitting ending to a massive prayer:

The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces;     against them he will thunder in heaven.The Lord will judge the ends of the earth;     he will give strength to his king     and exalt the power of his anointed. (1 Samuel 2:10)

Hannah, carried along by the Spirit, finds herself caught up in something far greater than her own domestic hopes: under God, her son would deliver Israel from its oppressors and establish a kingdom that one day would cover the earth. Hannah had simply prayed for a son — but in return, God answered far bigger than she asked.

And so he still does. Eliza Spurgeon and Amelia Taylor prayed for saved sons, scarcely imagining that God would give a preacher to the masses and a missionary to the nations. And though not every son is a Samuel, or a Spurgeon, or a Taylor, who knows what lovers of orphans, or pastors of churches, or seekers of justice, or fathers of lost ones God is right now raising up through a faithful mother on her knees? With a God like ours, we can dare to dream — and pray.

Mother for Every Mother

The weeping, anxious Hannah of 1 Samuel 1 is not a woman out of a mother’s reach. She was not a well-known woman. She was not a put-together woman. So far as we know, she was not a particularly strong woman. But she was a praying woman. And through her prayers, God showed his great power.

The God who crushed the serpent’s head by the woman’s offspring has more victories to win. Jesus dealt the deathblow, the blow no other son could give. But more of the devil’s kingdom needs crushing. And if we look behind the men who lift their heels, we will often find a mother like Hannah: anguished yet openhanded, praying for her boy.