Some milestones in our children’s lives stick with us. I cannot forget teaching our children to read — a pleasure that continues as I help our youngest son.

I remember the weight of my charge to help my young children’s developing minds grasp written language! This skill enables them to read God’s word for themselves. What could be more motivating for me as their mom and teacher? Yet the process of training them to read started long before they turned four or five or six or seven. It started when they were babies being read board books by Mom and Dad.

Cultivate the Right Tastes Together

Reading doesn’t begin as an activity your child does by himself. It begins with fathers and mothers. It begins with us reading aloud. We increase our kid’s appetite by narrating books that they enjoy and understand. These books are not the books you would choose to read in your alone time, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy them together.

This is a benefit of being a mom — getting to find joy and delight in the things that our children find joy and delight in. We get to reexperience every stage of childhood, which means we get to reexperience every stage of reading. Are there moments when this is more duty than delight? Of course! But not often if you’ve taken care to put off that sinful sort of adulthood that can’t enjoy the childlikeness that marks the very kingdom of God.

I have memorized many books over the years (even longer ones!) simply because my young children wanted to hear the book over and over, day after day, night after night. This sort of repetition is good for them and us. We often benefit more from knowing one good book inside and out than we would from barely knowing ten books, so welcome your child’s love of repetition.

Discipling Readers

From the earliest books you read to your children, remember that you’re cultivating tastes — tastes for rhyme, rhythm, and cadence; tastes for artwork, color, and illustrations; tastes for themes, plots, and morals.

Books are not inherently virtuous. Books can have good content and bad content. The cadence can be off, the themes can be foolish, the illustrations can be gaudy. As mom, you get to help weed out the bad and offer up the good. It won’t do to send young sons or daughters to peruse the aisles of the children’s section at the public library or bookstore without your steady hand to guide them.

“From the earliest books you read to your children, remember that you’re cultivating tastes.”

Books can teach and catechize all sorts of ungodly ideologies, but thankfully, that’s why children have a mom — so that she can help to discern between books that are junk food, books that are snack food, books that are poison, and books that are healthy. And, as a Christian, it’s perfectly acceptable to avoid the public library altogether if you find it unhelpful. That was my approach. Instead, we started our own home library — a decision I’ve never regretted.

The Good, the True, the Beautiful

One of our favorite family pastimes has been to listen to books together while in the car — either a lengthy book series over a long trip, or shorter books on the way to weekly activities. We made the decision early on to avoid screens for our kids in the car, but instead to listen to books and music, and talk to each other.

Once we were driving a fifteen-hour trek from Montana home to Minnesota in one day, and we had been listening to The Chronicles of Narnia. It was our first time listening to the whole series as a family, and our five children ranged from infant to grade school. We finally arrived home late at night, but we still had about fifteen minutes left of The Last Battle. So, at the older kids’ request, we parked the car in the garage and sat for fifteen more minutes going further up and further into True Narnia, as tears streamed down my face at the wonder of it all.

But why do we encourage our kids to read? I’ve noticed that there is a sort of strange pride we moms can have about our children being “readers,” as though a child with his head in a book must be a good kid, or at the very least, a smart one. But we moms need to know better. Reading is a means, not an end. And it ought to be a means to Christian virtue — to the good, the true, and the beautiful — and to help sharpen or challenge thinking, to inspire courage, and glean insight. If reading is desirable merely because it’s better than the TV or iPad, then we should probably raise the bar.

“God knows how to write the best stories. We want our children to read of him, trust him, and enjoy him forever.”

Just as we must be discerning readers and help our children develop into discerning readers, we also must be discerning moms — seeing clearly whether our children’s reading habit is cultivating virtue or suppressing it. As our children have grown to love reading, I have frequently confiscated (good!) books, and reminded them they have stories of their own to be living. Get outside, solve a problem, talk to people, do your chores, tell some jokes, make music. Do I want them to be “readers”? Yes, inasmuch as reading cultivates virtue, not a malformed introversion.

Expect the Eucatastrophe

When our oldest daughter, Eliza, was ten, she was finishing up a book in the back seat of our minivan. Seth, her younger brother, was reading the last chapter along with her, not having read the rest of the book. He commented to her, “It looks like it’s going to be a happy ending.” She responded, “Oh, I don’t like happy endings. That means the book is over.” Then she gave this insight, “But when things are scary or sad at the end, you know there will be another chapter or book coming.”

Haven’t you known the sinking feeling of ending a book that you love? J.R.R. Tolkien said that the best kind of stories (which he calls fairy-tales) don’t have an ending. But what they do have is the eucatastrophe, which Tolkien describes in one of his letters:

I coined the word eucatastrophe: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives . . . that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest eucatastrophe possible. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 100)

Perhaps the greatest virtue we aim to instill in our children through reading is to recognize the eucatastrophe, and learn to expect it — which is integral to the Christian faith and story. This reality is why we would have them daily become acquainted with the stories and rhythms and plots and cadence and themes of the Scriptures through reading.

The Best of Stories

The great Eucatastrophe has happened — God the Son was crucified and buried, then raised to life on the third day. But there are more eucatastrophes to come for those who are in Christ.

That is why the chief book we encourage our kids to read is Scripture. The God who brought his people through the Red Sea as they were pressed by Pharoah’s army, and who toppled the walls of Jericho with trumpets and shouts, and who used a young shepherd to take down Goliath, and who kept Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego unsinged in the hottest fire, and who rescued his people with a beautiful young woman turned Queen Esther — he knows how to rescue the godly when all seems lost. He knows how to write the best stories. We want our children to read of him, trust him, and enjoy him forever.

Audio Transcript

This week in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan, we read together Psalm 79. So, this question — from Kimberly in Houston, Texas — is timely. She writes in to ask this: “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast. In Psalm 79:9, the psalmist prays like this: ‘Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake!’ I want to pray like this. But how? How do I pray for things that would benefit me and the people I know and love and would also glorify God at the same time in answer to those prayers?

“It seems very Christian Hedonistic. We get the help; he gets the glory. Except I just don’t know how to frame my praying like this. I thought it would be easy until I tried to do it. It’s actually very hard and limiting because I’m finding that most of my prayers have no conscious relation to God’s glory. Can you teach me to pray the Psalm 79:9 way?”

Well, Kimberly has one problem already solved, which many people stumble over. And the problem is expressed in the question, “How do I pray for things that would benefit me and glorify God at the same time?” And many people stumble over that tension as though it were a tension. For me, for God — which is it?

But Kimberly knows there doesn’t have to be a tension, because she says, “We get the help; he gets the glory.” So, she’s got that one wonderfully, biblically figured out, which is exactly what Psalm 50:15 says: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” We get the deliverance; he gets the glory. That’s what it says. If we keep in mind that the giver gets the glory, then there doesn’t have to be a tension between our asking for what we need and our asking that God be glorified.

“There doesn’t have to be a tension between our asking for what we need and our asking that God be glorified.”

But Kimberly says that she does not have an answer to the question (or the problem), “I just don’t know how to frame my praying like this. I thought this would be easy until I tried it. It’s actually hard and limiting because I’m finding that most of my prayers have no conscious relation to the glory of God.” So, let me see if I can make a few biblical observations. I think I have five that might reorient Kimberly’s (and all of our) thinking so that it feels natural that every request we make in prayer relates to the glory of God.

1. Remember why God does everything.

So, here’s number one. Never forget that God does everything for his own name’s sake — that is, for his glory. He does everything for his glory. He delivers us for his name’s sake (Psalm 79:9). He blots out our transgressions for his own sake (Isaiah 43:25). He leads us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake (Psalm 23:3). He does not forsake his people for his great name’s sake (1 Samuel 12:22). He saves us for his name’s sake (Psalm 106:8).

It helps to see our prayers as fitting into this overarching, global, historical purpose of God in everything that he does. He does all that he does for his name’s sake — that is, to display and communicate his beauty, his worth, his greatness, his glory. So, if we have just an overarching, pervasive mindset that God does all he does for his glory, then our prayers assume a new fitness as we think that way, as we dream that way, and as we ask that way.

2. Pray beneath God’s righteousness.

Number two, this unwavering commitment of God to uphold the glory of his name is at the heart of what is his righteousness. We see that in Psalm 143:11: “For your name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life!” So, we pray like that: “For your name’s sake, preserve my life! In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble!” So, God’s acting for his name’s sake and his acting in righteousness are parallel. They explain each other; they interpret each other.

And when you think about it, this makes really good sense. What is the ultimately right thing for God to do when God has no book to consult outside himself about what’s right and wrong? He only has himself to consult. There’s just God. There’s nothing else before he creates anything. He is the measure of all that is right. The right thing to do, I would argue, is for God to always act in accord with the infinite worth of his own name, his own being. I think that’s the essence of his righteousness. It’s right for him to always act in accord with the infinite worth of his name.

And I think that helps us in our praying, because we always want God to do the right thing in answer to our prayer. “Do the right thing” — which will mean, “Act for the sake of your name.” That’s the ultimately right thing for God to do.

3. End your prayers in Jesus’s name.

Number three, keep in mind what it means to pray in Jesus’s name. I used to say to my kids when they were growing up and they’d end a prayer with a throwaway sound, “In Jesus’s name” — I said, “Let’s just pause here. That’s not a throwaway phrase.” It may be that one of the reasons we stumble over seeking God’s glory in our prayers is that we forget what we’re saying when we pray, “In Jesus’s name, amen.”

In John 14:13, Jesus taught us to pray in his name. To pray in Jesus’s name means that it is his death in our place that makes it possible for God’s wrath to be removed and God’s grace to pour down all over us in answer to our prayers. So, Jesus’s name refers to the basis or the foundation of every single gracious answer to prayer. “In Jesus’s name” means, “because Jesus died for me and purchased the grace of every answered prayer.” No cross, no answered prayer. But “in Jesus’s name” also means that the giver gets the glory. If he paid for every answered prayer, he gets the glory for every answered prayer.

So, let the meaning of “in Jesus’s name” have its full effect as you speak it. End every prayer with the thought, “You, Jesus, are my only hope for any gracious answer to this prayer. And when it comes, I will be glad for you to get the glory.”

4. Let the Lord’s Prayer shape yours.

Number four, keep in mind that there is a reason that the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is “Hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). Hallowed means “sanctified” — that is, set apart as sacred, holy, precious, valuable, infinitely worthy of all our admiration and desire and praise. It would not be far off to translate it, “Glorified be your name,” “Admired be your name,” “Praised be your name,” “Treasured be your name.” Which means that, every time you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you are asking, first and foremost, that the Lord would cause his name to be glorified.

“If Jesus paid for every answered prayer, he gets the glory for every answered prayer.”

You don’t have to add that later as you just stick on an artificial, “Be sure you get glory from my prayer, Lord.” You began with it. Jesus begins with it. “Lord, my heart’s number-one desire is that your name be glorified in every answer to my prayer.” So, let the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer remind you that the first concern of every prayer is that God be glorified.

5. Pray with one main passion.

Finally, number five, whether you say it out loud or not, let every request that you make in prayer be like Paul’s desire in Philippians 1:20, where he said, “It is my eager . . . hope” — and, thus, you could say, “It is my prayer” — “that . . . Christ [be magnified or glorified] in my body, whether by life or by death.”

In other words, even if you don’t say it out loud, let your whole mindset in prayer be this: “Lord, I pray that you would deliver me from my enemies and let me live another day that I might serve you. But whether I live or die, the main passion of my heart, with the apostle Paul, is that you would be magnified in my life, whether I live or whether I die.”

So, my prayer is that these five observations from Scripture will help us all to build into the mindset of our prayer a constant desire, a primary hope, that God be glorified however he answers our prayer.

“The church” this. “The church” that.

One way professing Christians betray a small, thin, and weak vision of the risen Christ is by dumping on “the church.” They might speak flippantly of what “the church” doesn’t get. Or what “the church” does wrong. Or the problem with “the church” in our day. They claim to know better than “the church.” If only they could fix “the church.” Having become concerned about an oversight, error, or danger they see in some Christians or churches, they’ve become careless with their words about the church — and particularly so when we consider what Christ himself says about her.

As much as we may claim to esteem Jesus, and desire to speak highly of him, we reveal gaps in our devotion when we broad-brush his bride with negativity, evidence strange biases against her, and feed into popular opinion by suspecting, seeing, spinning, and spreading the worst.

“We show how little we think of Christ by speaking endless negativity about his bride.”

Whatever the motivations (which are varied and complex), we demonstrate how subtly, and perhaps deeply, we have been shaped by, and conformed to, the course of this world, when we talk about “the church” in ways grossly out of step with our Lord. And we show how little we think of Christ, by speaking endless negativity about his bride.

Wife of the Lamb

Make no mistake, the church is his bride. How startling that Christ himself would risk such an image?

Not only did John the Baptist speak of him as such (John 3:29), but Jesus cast himself as “the bridegroom” who is taken away (Matthew 9:15; Mark 2:19–20; Luke 5:34–35), and whose return is delayed (Matthew 25:1–10). In one of Scripture’s final climactic statements, Revelation 22:17 says, “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come’” — meaning the church. In Revelation 21:9, the angel says, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

The church is Jesus’s bride, “the wife of the Lamb.” And when we admire a man, respect him, appreciate him, and reverence him, we are careful what we say about his wife — and all the more so in public. We check our suspicions. We are vigilant to not let personal disappointments fester into a global cynicism toward her. We go out of our way not to regard her, speak of her, or criticize her in his presence in any way that would puzzle or dishonor her husband. We show little esteem for a groom when we insult his bride.

So, those who genuinely admire and worship Christ will not only reverence his person but also his perspective. They will want to know, and remember, What does Jesus think of his church? What does Christ feel toward her? How does he talk about her?

He Chose Her

First, the great Groom’s choice of his Bride is remarkable. Not only is she “a chosen race” (1 Peter 2:9), but he chose her in her ungodliness, not because of any native beauty in her. The Father chose the church for his Son before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), writing the names of his people in “the book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8).

Not only did Christ and his Father choose the church for her salvation, but also to be an instrument of divine revelation in the world. And not just an instrument, but the central vessel in making God known in his world in this age. The vision of the church is astoundingly, almost uncomfortably, high in Ephesians 3.

When Paul there offers praise to God the Father, he says, “To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus.” We expect “in Christ Jesus” as the focal point through which God’s glory is displayed — but here she is, his wife, side by side with Christ himself, the bridegroom: “to him be glory in the church.” This echoes the centrality of the church in making God known just a few verses prior: the manifold wisdom of God is being “made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” — and now he mentions only one instrument — “through the church” (Ephesians 3:10).

Disappointed as we may be with an unfaithful leader, or hurt as we may feel by particular people or ministries in a local community, we would do well to remember such a vision of the church — Christ’s own vision of his church. The church, worldwide and throughout the ages, is not mainly bringing reproach upon Christ. Rather, the church, alongside Christ, is bringing glory to the Father and making his wisdom known to all the powers, earthly and heavenly.

He Cherishes Her

Second, the church is not just a body. She is his body (Ephesians 5:22; Colossians 1:18, 24). “You are the body of Christ,” Paul says to the church (1 Corinthians 12:27).

In the best body reference of all, God not only has “put all things under [Christ’s] feet” as sovereign of the universe on the very throne of heaven, but also God “gave [Christ] as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:22–23). Christ’s vision and concern for his body boggles, stretches, and defies human explanation. Which might, at least, correct our uncareful speech.

Jesus loves the church as his own body. He emphatically does not hate his own flesh, but he nourishes and cherishes it (Ephesians 5:29). Jesus cherishes his church. He adores her, cares for her, gladly devotes his attention to her. He has pledged his loyalty to her, to be one flesh with her, to hold fast to her, to not give up on her, to never leave or forsake her. “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25).

He Cleanses Her

Jesus’s awareness of his church’s flaws and failures is far more extensive than any human’s. He knows every detail of ongoing evil. He knows the sins we try to hide. Jesus’s high view of his church is not owing in the least to his turning a blind eye to, or any codding or soft-peddling of, sin. He died to cleanse his church of her sin. He does not take her sin lightly. He is his church’s “Savior” (Ephesians 5:23). No one takes sin in the church more seriously than Jesus. He knows the depths of her sin. Yet he still loves her.

“No one takes sin in the church more seriously than Jesus.”

He not only chose her (despite her sin) and cherishes her (despite her sin), but he also is cleansing her from her sin. He died to both secure his bride and to sanctify her, to make her holy (Ephesians 5:26). And he rose, and lives, to cleanse her “by the washing of water with the word” (Ephesians 5:26). Do our words echo his? Do we join him in washing her, cleansing her, sanctifying her, building her up with our words? Or do we oppose him, insult her, sully her, tear her down by the spirit we harbor and the words we speak in the world and post on the web?

The day is coming when Jesus will “present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27) — when all will see “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2). Christ is preparing his church for the wedding, purging sin, adorning his bride for that day when she will be presented to him, and every eye will see her, at last, in unparalleled majesty.

Hard Words of Love

Here we might ask about Jesus’s own hard words for his bride. Isn’t it the Bridegroom himself who says these devastating words in Revelation 3:15–16? “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Love for the Bride of Christ does not mean silence about the sins of particular churches and specific saints. But it does mean that we take care how we speak about those failures.

Part of cleansing the church means correcting her, but correcting her does not mean despising her, or painting her sins in broad strokes. When Christ confronts the churches in Revelation 2–3, he addresses specific churches with their own failures. And in correcting them, he also woos them back to himself. Notice even in Revelation 3:

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:19–20).

Jesus doesn’t sit back in his armchair issuing criticisms about the church, however much indwelling sin remains, for now, in his people. He “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession” (Titus 2:14). He is redeeming his church from her sin, purifying her as a people for himself. There is no place for hopelessness about the future of the church. Jesus will build his church (Matthew 16:18), and he will cleanse her.

He Covenants with Her

Finally, Jesus makes lifelong — eternity long — promises to his bride. He covenants with her.

He will provide for and protect her. The gates of hell will not prevail against her (Matthew 16:18). “The righteous” — his church — “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43). Stunningly, Jesus will “dress himself for service and have [his people] recline at table, and he will come and serve them” (Luke 12:37). And not only will he come to them; he will bring them to himself, to sit with him on his very throne: “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Revelation 3:21).

For now, tears remain. We face death, battle remaining sin, endure mourning and crying, persevere in pain. Yet he promises, to his church, to “wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore” (Revelation 21:4). And this when we hear a loud voice from the throne saying,

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. (Revelation 21:3).

And so we, his church, will receive the fulfillment of Scripture’s great, long-running promise: He will be our God, and we will be his people. He has pledged himself to us. We will have him. We will know him. We will enjoy him. We will dwell with him, forever.

His church is the people he has chosen to be among for eternity.

Would You Insult His Bride?

Jesus chose his wife before the foundation of the world. He cherishes her with energy and attentiveness. He cleanses her and prepares to present her pure and beautiful to himself. And he covenants to be hers, and with her, for all eternity. The Lord of heaven loves his bride. Does that not make you love her all the more? Does that not make you want to keep from carelessly speaking ill of her?

We do not whitewash the flaws of particular church leaders, or particular tendencies in sinful hearts. We do not cover for evil. Nor do we broad-brush the church, pretending to see and know flaws that are beyond our vantage nationwide, not to mention worldwide, and across the ages. And we don’t pretend the church is yet fully cleansed. Christ is still working on her.

When tempted to dump on “the church,” we who claim Christ will do well to remember his perspective, and his heart, and to speak with the grace and truth of our Savior toward his bride.