There are many different ways to chart the journey through life. We can do it in life stages, like childhood to adulthood to middle age to old age. We can do it in decades, like teens to twenties to thirties and so on. But lately I’ve been pondering the passing of the generations, how when we are young we lose our grandparents, and then when we are a bit older we lose our parents, until finally we come to the stage when our own generation begins to fade—when we have to bid farewell to the people we counted as friends and peers.
In the past few years, I have watched a number of dear friends grapple with terrible and ultimately terminal illnesses. I have watched people I only ever knew to be whole and strong fade until they were broken and weak. I have watched them accept the reality that their time was short and the Lord was calling them home. And through it all, I’m convinced that I’ve seen their faith shine all the brighter. I’ve seen an inner beauty and an inner glory that has become all the more evident as everything outside has been slowly pulled off and peeled away.

I want you to imagine that you are walking toward the Old Testament tabernacle, that you are seeing and experiencing it for the very first time. The twelve tribes of Israel are camped in a great rectangle all around it—millions of people, hundreds of thousands of tents, countless cattle. In the center of it all is a clearing and within that clearing is the tabernacle.
As you approach it, you can see the outer wall which is made up of plainly-colored curtains supported by bronze stands. The people and the priests are coming and going through an entrance that faces east. The outside of the tabernacle is noble and dignified, but hardly impressive.
As you pass through the entrance, you now find yourself in the outer courtyard. Here you see the great bronze altar billowing with smoke. Nearby is a bronze laver where the priests carry out their ceremonial washings. You stand for a few moments and observe the structure of the tabernacle tent, and while you know it is made up of four layers, you can mostly see only the practical outer layer. This courtyard is a place of bronze and silver. It is impressive, but not stunning.
And now you know it is time to pass into the Holy Place. (For the sake of the illustration, we’ll have to suppose you are somehow permitted to do so.) You walk past the great columns of gold that support the veil and inside you see the lampstand, the altar of incense, and the table for the showbread, all of it covered in gold. The walls are made up of vertical wooden frames and horizontal wooden bars, all overlaid with gold. Ahead of you is the veil guarding the entrance to the Most Holy Place. This veil is blue and purple and scarlet and fine twined linen, and woven into it with the most precious thread is the image of the cherubim, the angelic guardians. Looking above, you admire the precious inner covering that contrasts sharply with the practical outer covering you saw from the courtyard. If the courtyard is a place of bronze and silver, this is a place of gold. It evokes awe within.
The best of the beauty is in the hidden places.Share
There is just one more step to take. Parting that great curtain you walk into the Holy of Holies and gasp at the beauty of the Ark of the Covenant with the ornately carved cherubim stretching out their wings over the mercy seat. This room is beautifully ornate, every surface made of either precious gold or exquisite cloth. Best of all, the glory of God is tangible here, visible and undeniable, for this is the place where God lives, where God has chosen to dwell among his people. This is a place of gold and of glory. You can only fall on your face in wonder and worship.
And later, as you ponder what you have seen, you consider this: The best of the beauty is in the hidden places. In fact, the deeper you go into the tabernacle, the more precious the contents. The more you peel away layer after layer of the tabernacle, the greater the beauty and the greater the glory.

And this is exactly what I have observed as my friends have grown ill, as their strength has faded, as their bodies have failed. As more and more layers of strength and health have been peeled away, the beauty and the glory within have shone all the brighter—the glory of God displayed in the beauty of a sanctified life, the beauty of a submitted heart, the beauty of a satisfied soul. I have seen the glory of the Lord as he shines in the place he now chooses to dwell—not in a tabernacle made of gold and cloth, but a tabernacle made of body and soul. And as the body and soul have prepared to part for a time, it has shone all the more, all the brighter. I have seen and I have known: the glory of God is in this place.

One of the great challenges of the Christian life is to become a giver—and not just a giver, but a cheerful giver. The Bible commends generosity, but generosity that is free from compunction or coercion, for “each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” We must not love money so much that we fail to be generous. Yet we must also ensure we are not giving merely as a way to assuage guilt or relieve external pressure. As is so often the case in the practice of the Christian faith, we need to guard against competing extremes.

It has long been my observation that it often takes some time for Christians to begin to give to the church (and/or to other ministries) and to do so in a way that is genuinely generous. And I think this actually makes a good deal of sense. The majority of people who come to Christ do so when they are young and in a phase of life when earnings tend to be low and a lot expenses loom before them. We can hardly criticize young people for thinking that good financial stewardship must involve prioritizing their savings account. Why give money to the church when you aren’t certain you’ll be able to afford next year’s tuition or put down first-and-last on an apartment? How does it make sense to give money away when you have so little and need so much?
It doesn’t make sense. At least it doesn’t make sense by any standard principle of personal finance. But then again, God’s ways are rarely consistent with the human mind and often push us to reexamine what we have always taken for granted. In that vein, here are a few things I would encourage young or new Christians to consider.
Consider that your money is actually God’s money. While your name may be on the bank account and stamped on the debit card, it is God who owns it. You merely manage it on his behalf. And so as you consider your finances, the controlling question should not be “What should I do with my money?” but “What does God want me to do with his money?”
Consider the human tendency to become captivated by money. The Bible warns that money can control us to such a degree that it competes with God for our ultimately loyalty. Every one of us will be tempted to try to find in money what God means for us to find only in himself. Is there something we can do to prove to ourselves and to God that we put him ahead of money? Read on.
Consider that God promises to provide what you need. One of the reasons we can become so easily enamored with money is that it seems to be the solution to so many of our problems. Money can put food in our bellies, a roof over our head, and so much more. Yet it is God who has promised he will provide these things. Yes, he is likely to use money to do it, but it’s important to ultimately trust in him rather than in the strength of our bank account.
Consider that God expects you to commit some of your finances to his causes in the world. He makes it clear that he expects each Christian to give—and to give primarily and as a matter of first importance to the local church. He expects his work to carry on through the means provided by his people.
Finally, consider that obedience fosters joy. When you do what God calls you to do, you experience joy rather than guilt or sorrow. Hence, if you give to the Lord’s work, you’ll find it a joyful rather than difficult experience. In fact, when you choose not to give, you are denying yourself the pleasure of doing so.
With all of those building blocks in place, it falls to you to take God at his word. You do that by giving, and as you give you are essentially putting God to the test (though in a good and acceptable way). As you give you can prayerfully say to God, “I have trusted you with my soul and am now choosing to trust you with my money. This doesn’t really make sense to me, but I trust you. So please show me that your ways are better than my ways. Please show me that you will provide even as I give to your work. Please accept this gift and prove yourself to me.”
And he will. God cannot prove himself if you will not give him the opportunity. But he can and will prove himself once you create the context. He will prove that he will provide not despite your generosity, but because of it. Because when it comes to God, the normal, accepted, and seemingly common-sense principles of finance just don’t add up.
How much should you give? That is a whole different topic. But briefly, the Bible does not provide an exact amount or percentage, though the Old Testament tithe of ten percent of your income is probably a good place to begin. (And no, don’t get all hung up on pre-tax or post-tax income—just pick one and go with it.) My recommendation—and, to be clear, this is me and not the Bible speaking here—is that you should give enough that you notice it in some way. It is one thing to throw a few spare coins in the offering plate but another to give an amount that is noticeable and that actually makes a difference in your life. Perhaps that means you cannot buy something you had hoped to buy or that you’ll be heading into a new semester with a little less buffer than you had expected. But God knows and God honors that. That small sacrifice is one you can lay before him and joyfully do without for the sake of trusting him and serving his cause.

Do you ever find yourself wondering just how much the Lord loves us? Do you ever find yourself wondering just how good his purposes can be and just how glorious his plans? Do you ever find yourself wondering if God really cares?

I found myself pondering these matters the other day after a friend sent me an article about the precipitous rise of euthanasia in Canada. What politicians insisted would be nothing more than a means to hasten death for those who are terminally ill has actually become a means to prey upon the vulnerable.
While many request euthanasia to avoid pain in their final days, some are now using it simply because they are downcast or impoverished. Veterans who seek help for emotional turmoil are being offered the option of suicide. Those who can’t afford to live are being allowed to die. As the article says, “Since Canada legalized euthanasia in 2016, there has been a strange balancing act at the heart of its medical system. There is a national suicide prevention hotline you can call 24/7, where sympathetic operators will try to talk you out of killing yourself. But today there are also euthanasia hotlines, where operators will give you the resources you need to carry out your wish. Doctors and nurse practitioners are now in the business of saving the lives of some patients while providing death to others.” And all this is taking place before the rules grow even more permissive in the months ahead.
This is just one of many moral abominations that has taken root in the modern Western imagination—a context in which aborting babies is understood to be as inalienable a right as voting, in which even questioning the goodness of assisting children in transitioning from one gender to another (as if such a thing were even possible) is considered contemptible, in which the basic family structure that holds society together is being disparaged and undermined. “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”
If we were to list all of society’s ills we would be here all day and all night. And it brings to mind one of the Bible’s most sobering woes—one of its most terrifying warnings to those who turn from God’s ways. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” We see all of this before us each and every day.
Yet my purpose here is not to recount the ways in which society curses God, but to consider God’s love for his people. There is a connection between the two. For as I have pondered society’s full-out rebellion against God, I also found myself marveling that he does not just strike this whole world and everyone in it with his hand of judgment. Why does he allow all this evil to continue? Why does he permit people to carry on and even deepen their rebellion against him?
Surely the answer is not apathy. Surely it is not inability or disinterest. There must be some other very good reasons. And the best I can figure is that those reasons must relate to God’s love and purposes.
God loves his people—the people he chose to be his own even before he created this world. Yet clearly not all of his people have yet been saved—nor probably even been born. God’s love for his people is so great that he will continue to tolerate all of this sin and rebellion, all of this hatred toward him, until the last of his chosen and beloved children has been born, has heard the gospel, and has been saved.
And then God has purposes he means to accomplish in this world, the foremost among them being glorifying himself. His purposes in this world must be so good and must bring such glory to his name that he permits evil to continue. For God freely makes use of the evil actions of men to bring about the best of his plans and accomplish the best of his purposes—purposes like the preservation of his people through famine and the salvation of his people through Christ’s crucifixion. Even the greatest evil is God’s servant to accomplish great good.
So the next time you are faced with the sheer depravity of this world, allow it to point you beyond the evil of man to consider the purposes of God. The next time you are forced to consider the rebellion that exists in the hearts of men, consider also the love that flows from the heart of God. You will see that his purposes are so good and his heart so tender that he will continue to allow mankind to rage against him and commit abhorrent acts so that he might welcome in all of his people and further the glory of his great name.