What Does Your Faith Do For You?
It is good to be a man or woman of faith. It is good to be a man or woman who regularly attends church, who faithfully studies the Scriptures, who diligently puts sin to death and who joyfully comes alive to righteousness. This is all good and very good.
But every now and again it is important to ask something like this: What does your faith do for you? In those times when life is difficult, in those times when sorrows are many and answers are few, in those times when life is not going the way you had hoped, the way you had planned, the way you had dreamed, what does your faith do for you?
What does your faith do for your when wealth gives way to poverty and abundance gives way to lack? Do you forget all of the blessings you have enjoyed and neglect to give thanks for them? Do you grow disillusioned with God as if he is no longer worthy of your trust, your worship, and your adoration? Or do you profess, with confident humility “I can be content … for I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.”
What does your faith do for you when you face the fires of persecution, when colleagues or family members or government officials harass you, disparage you, mistreat you, because of your love for the Lord? Do you respond to anger with anger and to insults with insults? Or do you respond peaceably, praying for that person and entrusting yourself to the God who judges fairly and faithfully?
What does your faith do for you when you are called to pass through trials? Does your heart rise up in rebellion against God that he has taken what you loved or failed to give what you longed for? Do you dispute his plans as if your will should always triumph over his and impugn his motives as if he could never gain glory through anything but your happiness? Or do you bow before him and, even through tears, submit your heart by saying “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”
What does your faith do for you when your hands are emptied, when your mind is troubled, when your heart is broken, when your faith is tested? What then? Surely the Christian faith is meant to be displayed not only in the good times but also in the hard. Surely the light of Christ should shine most brightly in the darkness, the joy of Christ be heard most prominently in the gloom.
It is a good thing to have studied deeply in doctrine and theology and a great thing to have an extensive knowledge of Scripture. There is tremendous benefit in knowing creeds and catechisms and in reading the classics of the Christian faith. These are disciplines every Christian should practice with diligence.
Yet these practices are meant to serve a greater purpose—the purpose of godly living. These practices are meant to equip us to master every circumstance, to meet each one with a stout heart and a deep submission, with the joy of salvation and the character of Christ. These practices are meant to not merely inform our minds, but to train our hearts, to bend our knees, to lift our hands in worship even in the most discouraging of circumstances and even in the most difficult of providences.
And so I ask you to ask yourself: What does your faith do for you? It is inevitable that trials will come. It is inevitable that difficulties will make their way into your life. But it is not inevitable that you will pass through them well, that you will endure them with your faith intact and your godly character on display.
Those who pass through them well are the ones who have trained their minds to know what God says about his character, his will, his glory. They are the ones who have trained their hearts to respond to this divine revelation with joy and submission. And they are the ones who have surrendered not just their minds and hearts but their very life and circumstances, who have prayed “not my will, but your will be done.” And then, when the trial comes, when the light fades, when the rain pours, they diligently enact what they have believed, enact what they have professed, enact what they know to be true. They prove to themselves, they prove to those around, they prove to the Lord himself that their faith is true and deep, that it upholds and sustains, that with it they can endure any trial and emerge sweeter and better, holier and more fully devoted to God.
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A La Carte (March 6)
The Lord be with you and bless you today.
I added some new Kindle deals yesterday and will hope to add some more today.
(Yesterday on the blog: 24 Years of Being a Dad)John Piper: “Christians are called to high standards with the words we speak. On the tongue’s use and misuse of words, four general principles guide us.”
We all know the exclusivity of the gospel causes offense. This article explains why.
We are all familiar with these words from 1 Peter: “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” This article asks whether we tend to use those words in the way they were intended.
Mitch explains why these three words denote the same office, even if they point to some different functions of that office.
Wes is beginning a series that promises to be interesting: A look at some of the key events in Christian history over the past 2,000 years.
“Complaining is easy. It doesn’t take much effort to lean into that fleshly disposition of negativity. An unfortunate reality is that this often creeps into the church. Something, or often someone, doesn’t live up to our standard and we are quick to grumble and find fault. The sermon is too long or too short. The music is too loud or too soft. More nefariously though, there is a tendency to level the criticism at brothers and sisters within the church.”
We still pull our phones out of our pockets a few hundred times a day and still can’t as much as wait in a line or go to the bathroom without bringing it along. Why would our kids be any different?
We are made to rejoice and tremble before God, to love and enjoy him with an intensity that is fitting for him.
—Michael Reeves -
A La Carte (December 18)
Good morning. Grace and peace to you.
Today’s Kindle deals include a selection from Crossway.
If you missed it over the weekend, Westminster Books is wondering if you know of an aspiring pastor, missionary, counselor, or teacher. If you do, they’ve got a gift they’d like to send them.
(Yesterday on the blog: A Prayer to Our Father)Glenna has a beautiful piece about visiting a nursing home with her church to serve its residents.
This is an interesting take on the domestication of animals—and one I find myself agreeing with.
Jim Elliff says that “giving is a sign of something. You give according to your own desire, not begrudgingly and mournfully as if you are parting with your vital organs. It is the expression of your love. God likes to keep it on this basis. Attitude is every bit as important as amount—no, much more so. You should want to give.”
“It would be all too easy for Protestants to overreact against the excessive devotion given to Mary by many and either ignore her completely or treat her like any other woman. That would be a great mistake, for she was, in Elizabeth’s words, ‘blessed among women’. We mustn’t elevate her to a position God never intended her for – which she herself would have been appalled by – but at the same time she has much to teach us.” She does, indeed.
Tim Briggs provided a roundup of his favorite Christian folk and worship of 2023—what he calls his Jesus-y, Folky, Singer-songwriter-y, Worship-y, High Quality Music Awards. (See also Brett McCracken’s list at TGC.)
Randy Newman offers some counsel on witnessing to family during the holidays. “How might we evangelize our family on what appears to be a minefield? It may prove helpful to begin with some internal preparation before we brainstorm strategies for external interaction. In fact, framing the topic through before, during, and after scenarios might ease the burden of our endeavor.”
God reveals himself as the good Father who searches and knows the deepest recesses of my heart. His Son is the very Man of Sorrows who is intimately acquainted with grief and who can sympathize with me in my every weakness.
True happiness does not lie in the obvious and natural choice but in the countercultural and Christian one.
—Alistair Begg -
The Death of Porn
There was a time, and it was not so very long ago, when the Christian world was tragically under-resourced when it came to books confronting pornography and the men who indulge in it. At that time just about any resource was better than nothing if only it would help men make headway against their addiction.* Today, though, we are extremely well-resourced when it comes to such works and a new book must have something unique to offer if it is going to displace or complement the other ones on the subject. I’m glad to report that Ray Ortlund’s The Death of Porn is just such a book.
The Death of Porn is a series of six letters from Ray Ortlund to younger men, or, if you prefer, from a father to a son. It is written in a way that is both paternal and pastoral, in a way that is both soft and firm, both encouraging and rebuking. “This book is not about you just getting polished up a bit here and there, making yourself more socially presentable. It’s about your heart finally daring to believe in your true royalty. It’s about the ‘real you’ gaining traction for new integrity, especially in honest brotherhood with other men. It’s about you, with other magnificent young men like you, building a new world of nobility, where both men and women can flourish.”
The words “royalty” and “nobility” are key. In his first letter, Ortlund explains the dignity God has given humanity by virtue of our special place in his creation as creatures made in his image. “Your identity—who you really are—is found in the King you represent. You are his royal ambassador to our broken world.” Not only that, but this royalty has been affirmed and restored to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In the second letter, he turns his focus from men to women to show that they, as much as we, are royalty. “God created every woman with high dignity and immeasurable worth. Whether or not any woman herself believes it, this is still true: God created her for majesty. God is why she matters. And no one has the right to degrade her, since God has dignified her. Whoever a woman is in his sight—that’s what she’s really worth.” There are serious implications to this. “I’m asking you to change how you see that woman on the porn site. I’m not asking you to make anything up. I’m only asking you to accept the way God sees her. He is on her side. He is indignant at the ways she is objectified, monetized, and mistreated.”
And it is in this chapter that Ortlund begins to land some heavy blows, to pummel men with the sheer horror of what they do when they indulge in pornography. So here, for example, is his explanation of what a man tacitly says to a woman when he looks at her on that screen.I don’t care about you. I don’t care about your personal story that got you onto this wretched porn site. I don’t care about what will happen to you when the filming is over—how you’ll drag yourself back to your apartment and get drunk just to stop feeling the pain. I don’t care about what you’ll be facing tomorrow, which will be yet another day of this torment. I don’t want to know what you’re suffering. I don’t even want to know your name. You don’t matter. All that matters here is me. And not the ‘royal me’ God created but the predatory me, the masturbatory me, the urge-of-the-moment me, the selfish me that Satan is robbing of life, even as I rob you of life. So whoever you are there on the screen—I’ll click over to some other victim soon, but you just keep up the show, okay? Keep smiling while you’re abused. Keep it up, while I masturbate and masturbate and masturbate, because nothing about me or you really matters anyway.
He pulls no punches: “If you look at porn, be honest enough to say to God, ‘Today I entertained myself with sexual exploitation,’ or ‘Today I joined in the abuse of a woman,’ or ‘Today I watched her degradation for my pleasure,’ or ‘Today I took my stand against you and with Satan.’”
Yet he does not fail to offer hope, for in his third letter he shows that Jesus, too, is royalty, and that “he is better at saving than we are at sinning.” He is eager to forgive us our sins and to transform our desires and deeds.
The final three letters turn from the characters (men, women, Jesus) to imagining a much better future. This is where he gets very practical in encouraging men to turn from freeing themselves from porn to freeing others, to work together in true brotherhood, and to tackle this issue not just in their own lives but in the church and wider society. His encouragements in the area of confessing sin, prayer, and receiving God’s healing are as good as any I’ve read.
His book is unique in its format, unique in its writing, and unique in its authorship. Ortlund is not a younger man joining with his peers to offer them a soft shoulder, but an older man who is pleading with those who are younger to embrace who they most truly are in Christ. And sometimes slapping them down. He writes with love, with firmness, with the best kind of intensity.
“Here’s what I ask you to remember all along the way,” he says. Your battle against porn isn’t about porn. It isn’t about sex. It isn’t about willpower. Your battle is about hope. It’s about your heart believing that in spite of your many sins—like my many sins—God rejoices to give you a future you can scarcely dream of. You’ll win your fight by believing that God’s love for you is too great to be limited to what you deserve.” Indeed. I hope many men, young and old, take the time to read The Death of Porn and let it transform their lives.
(Note: While the use of pornography is by no means limited to men, they are the audience for this particular work.)Buy from Amazon
