Your chief end is not to be the smartest, the richest, the most successful, the most liked or respected. It is to glorify God by dying to self and growing in Christlikeness, which is achieved by the means of grace. Your chief end is not to find ultimate joy and contentment in the things of this world. It is to make the Lord your portion, which involves taking hold of Him through His gracious means.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“What college are you planning on going to, and what will you study?”
“What career do you plan on pursuing?”
“Do you plan on getting married?”
“Who do you plan on marrying and when?”
If your experience has been anything like mine, you have most likely been asked these sorts of questions at some point in your life. Especially in high school and college, these questions seem to be at the forefront of everyone’s minds. While an education, a career, and marriage are certainly important things, there is a far more important question that ought to be at the forefront of our mind: “What is the chief end of man?”
As many of you already know, this is the first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and its answer is this: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” It is this truth concerning man’s chief end, or man’s primary purpose, that ought to dictate how we answer life’s other questions and ought to help us keep those things in their proper place. In other words, to live a properly ordered Christian life that is pleasing to the Lord, we must grasp what it means to glorify and enjoy Him, and the primacy those two things have over our lives. 
First, what does it mean to glorify God? Matthew 16:24-27 says this:
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.”
In these verses, Jesus makes it clear that glorifying God involves self-denial. It means dying to self and living soli Deo gloria, for God’s glory alone. In other words, we must cast aside our own desires, both good and evil, and pursue wholeheartedly what God desires for us. As Christians, it’s a no-brainer that evil desires, or those desires that violate God’s will, must be done away with completely. If you are uncertain what those things are, consult Exodus 20 and Galatians 5 for guidance. 
Good desires are those things that are in accord with God’s will. Examples of good desires are an education, a career, a spouse, and a family. We often don’t pause to consider our good desiresin relation to glorifying God. However, this is where we tend to get in the most trouble. As Timothy Keller says, “The human heart is an idol factory that takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things.”
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Any paradigm of “care” that does not manifest itself in encouraging one’s brother to pursue comprehensive, Spirit-wrought change is caring only in name. Calling on a fellow believer earnestly to desire and actively to seek change at the level of sexual desire is not abusive; it is our duty. As believers we are called to hate our sin, turn from it to God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience (WSC Q. 87) and to call on our brothers and sisters in Christ to do the same.2 Repentance unto life is the pulse of God’s people individually and corporately. No desire, no matter how consistent or persistent, is exempt from Scripture’s call to mortification and vivification.

Since the inaugural meeting of Revoice in 2018 the Reformed and evangelical world has been holding its breath wondering, “Where will all of this lead?” In four years we have seen three successive Revoice conferences with the fourth forthcoming, hotly debated BCO amendments with more to be debated at the 2022 PCA General Assembly, and the recent decision of the Standing Judicial Commission concerning Missouri Presbytery’s investigation of Memorial Presbyterian Church. All of these together suggest that matters will get worse before they get better. Only the sovereign God knows exactly how everything will fall out, but we now know where the most prominent figure of the Revoice movement wants to see things go. In the concluding chapters of Still Time to Care, Greg Johnson offers his vision for the church’s future: he wants us to pick up the ball that we dropped forty years ago and return to the “paradigm of care” that he sees exemplified in the ministries of C. S. Lewis, Billy Graham, Francis Schaeffer, and Richard Lovelace (216). The “paradigm of care” is Johnson’s antidote to the “paradigm of cure” that undergirded the ex-gay movement of the last 50 years. To be sure, the ex-gay movement was fraught with serious theological and methodological errors from the start but, as one examines Johnson’s “paradigm of care,” one will find a host of other issues that will do more harm than good to the one who adopts it. For the sake of our sheep, I encourage pastors to consider different paradigm, a third way that I believe better adheres to the teaching of Scripture: a paradigm of change.
“But wait, change? That’s the same empty promise of the ex-gay movement. They tried to change peoples’ sexual orientation before, but it was an utter failure. Why turn back to a defunct paradigm like that?”  In Johnson’s eyes, the language of “change” has become so poisoned by the ex-gay movement that calls to change are all but off limits. In fact, he goes so far as to call them abusive.
While Exodus in the United States is largely buried and dead, change-focused ministries continue to exist. And in much of the world, the ex-gay movement is still very much alive. As we ask what a path to care looks like for gay people who become Christians, we have to confront the ways the ex-gay movement is still moving about undead among us. The relics of the ex-gay movement continue to foster emotionally unsafe and even abusive spaces within conservative Christianity. Any path to care must root out the emotional abuse within our churches and ministries (190).
To be sure, if the only change that is pursued is a change in one’s sexual orientation, that is setting the bar for holiness woefully, woefully low.1 I am not here to advocate for mere behavioral change as was common among the purveyors of the ex-gay movement. As Christians we are called to aim higher and seek change that is deeper— change at the level of our hearts, affections, and yes, even our sexual desires. I agree, by and large, with Dr. Johnson’s assessment of the ex-gay movement and find many of its measures misguided and some even abusive. It pains me to hear that anyone would be told they must not be a Christian if they continue to struggle with a particular besetting sin. This represents an unfortunate and painful chapter in the history of American evangelicalism and it is one to which I hope we never return.
Johnson’s reaction, however, to the excesses of the ex-gay movement and its promise of orientation change inflicts a new damage all its own: it cuts the hope for meaningful change at the knees. Johnson writes:
Lewis, Schaeffer, Graham, and Stott viewed the homosexual condition not as a cognitive behavioral challenge to be cured but as an unchosen orientation with no reliable cure in this life (32; emphasis added).
What is a paradigm of care?…Be honest about the relative fixity of sexual orientation for most people (33; emphasis added).
In this positive gospel vision for gay people and the church, we see a focus not on curing homosexuality but on caring for people. We see that the locus of hope lies in the coming age. This present age is not for cure but for care (35; emphasis added).
There were some individuals who experienced profound shifts in their sexual preference. Jill Rennick recalls several cases that could be deemed orientation change. She counts eight women and one man whose stories she is confident pan out. I spoke with one woman, named Debra, who has experienced a significant shift in her sexual orientation. So it’s not impossible in some instances, but the rarity of these cases is still striking (123–4; emphasis added).
Our struggle to confirm even a couple handfuls of cases of true gay-to-straight orientation change is telling. God has the power to do anything. It appears this is something he has chosen to do only very rarely in this era (127; emphasis added).
For me (Johnson), the sexualized pull toward people of the same sex is not likely to go away. This is a lifetime calling not to let it rule over me (136; emphasis added).
Paul wrote to the Corinthians to stress just how limited our transformation is in this life. Yet many well-meaning believers, having drunk the ex-gay Kool-Aid, continue to twist Paul’s letter to say something very different (143; emphasis added).
Can we not find a way to acknowledge the reality and persistence of sexual orientations that seldom change and are part of our lowercase, secondary identities, while still locating homoerotic temptation as an affect of the fall and manifestation of indwelling sin? I think we can and must (207; emphasis added).
We learned that sexual orientation is real. It’s not an addiction. And any shifts within it are fairly rare and incremental (243; emphasis added).
Whatever hope Johnson gives with one hand, he immediately takes away with the other. One can feel the walls closing in on the believer who wrestles with homosexual desire and longs to be freed from its bondage. “Sexual orientation is relatively fixed…change is so rare…hope is beyond our grasp until we reach the eschaton…look at all these statistics of people who tried and failed to change their orientation,” what other choice does the homosexual struggler have than to wave the white flag and adopt their homosexual desires as a “secondary identity” (199)?
Johnson is very careful in his walk along the terminological tightrope. Nowhere does he say that a homosexual orientation is altogether fixed, which would certainly open him up to ecclesiastical investigation. Instead he speaks of homosexuality’s “relative fixity” (33) which doesn’t violate the letter of progressive sanctification, but when all the individual pieces above are brought into focus, the spirit of progressive sanctification is consistently undermined throughout the book. The cumulative effect of Johnson’s countless qualifications and reminders that change is “fairly rare” and that “the locus of our hope lies in the coming age” feels like death by a thousand paper cuts instead of blunt force heterodoxy. Either way, the sexual struggler is left with virtually no encouragement to war against his sin.
Is “Change” a Biblical Paradigm?
Any paradigm of “care” that does not manifest itself in encouraging one’s brother to pursue comprehensive, Spirit-wrought change is caring only in name. Calling on a fellow believer earnestly to desire and actively to seek change at the level of sexual desire is not abusive; it is our duty. As believers we are called to hate our sin, turn from it to God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience (WSC Q. 87) and to call on our brothers and sisters in Christ to do the same.2 Repentance unto life is the pulse of God’s people individually and corporately. No desire, no matter how consistent or persistent, is exempt from Scripture’s call to mortification and vivification. Consider Paul’s exhortations to the saints in Rome and Colossae:
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” (Rom 12:2; emphasis added).
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col 3:5; emphasis added).
Paul didn’t seem to think that calling on believers to mortify evil desires in their hearts and minds was abusive, so who is Greg Johnson to say that it is? Paul’s call to “put to death” the earthly within sounds very differently from the way Johnson speaks about homosexual desire, “God has called me to steward my sexual orientation in obedience to him” (199). How can one steward that which Scripture commands be put to death? How can Johnson’s paradigm of care peacefully coexist beside Scripture’s obvious paradigm of change?3 It cannot.
Is “Change” a Confessional Paradigm?
Change, however, is not only the expectation of Scripture. It is the expectation of the Reformed churches. Consider the Westminster Standards’ stress on the necessity of holistic sanctification, i.e., change not in part but in the whole man. They taught that sanctification cannot be selective or piecemeal, it must be comprehensive. If we exempt a handful of our besetting sinful desires from the process of progressive sanctification then we are guilty of two perilous errors:

Thinking too much of the power of our sin;
Thinking too little of the transformative power of the Holy Spirit.

In our Standards we confess God’s Word to teach:
WSC Q.35 What is Sanctification?

Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole manafter the image of God,and are enabled more and moreto die unto sin, and live unto righteousness (emphasis added).

WLC Q. 75. What is sanctification?

Sanctification is a work of God’s grace, whereby they whom God hath, before the foundation of the world, chosen to be holy, are in time, through the powerful operation of his Spirit applying the death and resurrection of Christ unto them, renewed in their whole man after the image of God; having the seeds of repentance unto life, and all other saving graces, put into their hearts, and those graces so stirred up, increased, and strengthened, as that they more and more die unto sin, and rise unto newness of life (emphasis added).

WCF 13.2  This sanctification is throughout in the whole man, yet imperfect in this life; there abideth still some remnants of corruption in every part: whence ariseth a continual and irreconcilable war; the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh (emphasis added).
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We will not come to God, if we believe his motive is to deprive us, wound us, or restrict our pleasure. Have you ever known someone who lost a parent through death or divorce and is bitter with God? We must be convinced that God wants what is best for us, or we won’t pursue him whole-heartedly. But God says, Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing (Ps 34:8-10).

Men don’t always admit it, but deep inside, we all want to be heroes. We want to come through when it matters for our loved ones. In our own way we would love to be like Joshua or David or William Wallace leading the charge with a sword in our hand in the spiritual battle. Yet, instead of identifying with such great warriors on the front line, most of us feel like we are just the factory worker back home in the war effort, putting in our 8 plus hours a day, sharing home responsibilities with our wives, checking our social media, maybe grabbing an hour on Disney+ and starting the whole routine over again the next day. But thinking that your role in spiritual battle is insignificant is a lie from the Enemy. Christ has called you and me to follow him in his cause of defeating evil and establishing his righteous kingdom over every square inch of human hearts and lives. There is no other man who can replace you in your life, in the arenas you have been called to. If you leave your place in line, it will remain empty. You must be the hero in your own story. There is no extra or stunt man to fill in for you. Winning your spiritual battles matters. You will celebrate for eternity the ones you win tomorrow and the next day and the day after that because each victory has honored Christ. This episode examines how we protect ourselves from Satan’s fiery arrows by lifting up our shield of faith.
One thoughtful author writes,
Behind the world and the flesh is an even more powerful enemy, one we rarely speak of and are even more less ready to resist. Yet, this is where we live now—on the front lines of a fierce spiritual war that is to blame for most of the casualties you see around you and most of the assault against you. It is time we prepared ourselves for it (John Eldredge, Wild at Heart).
There IS a dragon to be slain. Our loved ones do need us to be heroic and to fight for them, for ourselves, and for the honor of our King, Jesus Christ who has defeated Satan’s kingdom and claims this world as his own. Let’s learn from Ephesians 6:16 another truth about how to fight this battle:  In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. The Roman battle shield looked more like a door than a trash can lid. It was four feet tall and two and a half feet wide allowing the soldier to crouch completely behind it. It was covered with thick leather and metal, that could deflect incoming arrows.
Paul likens this protective shield to the Christian’s faith. Biblical faith is relentless confidence in the goodness of God’s character—that all of his dealings with us and those we love spring from the character of goodness and love—wanting what is best for us. This unwavering confidence in the goodness and love of God is what Satan relentlessly seeks to destroy. We see that in his attack on Eve and on Job.

Consider Eve. When we read God’s history of mankind—the Bible, we’ve barely gotten through creation in the first two chapters when we encounter Satan planting the one idea into Eve’s heart that is responsible for more human destruction than any other idea—the lie that God’s goodness can’t be trusted. When this wrong idea captured Eve’s heart, she rebelled, Adam rebelled with her, and humans have been rebelling against God and his law ever since. Satan’s chief strategy to inspire rebellion in Eve’s heart was to make her doubt God’s goodness. Let’s take a moment to study again this tactic of Satan used on Eve.

The Serpent said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:2-5).

Notice that Satan actually begins the temptation by planting a complete fabrication into Eve’s mind, i.e. the possibility that this unfair God might have put all the delicious fruit trees in the garden just to make them miserable by not permitting them to eat ANY of them. His words, again, Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree. Even though God never said that, as Eve pointed out, Satan still planted the idea that God was the kind of being who could have done something so completely unfair.
Satan further undermined Eve’s confidence in God’s goodness by taking her focus off all the wonderful fruit God had given them to enjoy throughout the entire garden and directing her focus on one apparently unfair restriction. EVERY SINGLE other tree in the garden, with its lush fruit for Adam and Eve to enjoy proved God’s GOODNESS—his desire to bless them with GOOD gifts. Later, Jesus would remind us of this wonderful benevolent nature of God: Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him (Matt 7:9-11).
Satan’s attack on God’s goodness continues, For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” Satan insinuates that: 1) God’s motive is selfishness—he is keeping something good from her and Adam, all to himself, i.e. the knowledge of good and evil, and 2) God’s moral law is fundamentally a restriction on our happiness. Both undermine her confidence in the goodness of God. The truth of course is that his law is given to us out of his goodness—to guide us into blessing. King David said, I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life (Ps 119:93).
Satan’s tactics to destroy the faith of Job are different—he has the power to inflict enormous physical, emotional, and spiritual pain on Job. But his strategy is the same—to try to get him to curse God instead of trusting him. Job learns some humility, but Satan fails. In the midst of unfathomable pain, Job, says, Though he slay me, yet will I trust him (13:15). And God’s goodness, hidden for a season of affliction, bursts forth, again in the closing chapter of Job with the words, And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job….And the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before (42:10) Inscribed on the shield of faith we need to raise against Satan’s attack on God’s goodness are the words, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”

It is noteworthy that Paul begins this admonition to raise our shield of faith with “In all circumstances” (ESV). Because Satan’s desire is to create doubt in our hearts about God’s love for us, the fiery darts of doubt Satan sends our way often result from painful experiences and situations. Tony Evens, in his book, Victory in Spiritual Warfare, notes that Paul tells us to take up our armor in the evil day:
The evil day is the day that all hell breaks loose in your life—when you are under attack. It’s when the finances are so low that you don’t know how you are going to make it through the end of the week. It’s when you’ve lost your job.
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