Jon Bloom's Blog, page 14

I Can’t Do This, God

Weak, low, despised and unlikely are essential qualities God looks for in his servants, and he chooses these qualities with great intentionality (1 Corinthians 1:27–29).

Don’t believe me? Look at the odd list of qualifications God gave for incredibly important positions in history:

The Father (and Mother) of God’s Covenant People: married couple; must be infertile and elderly (Genesis 17:6, 8, 15–16);

Israel’s Greatest King: must be a teenage shepherd when identified (1 Samuel 16:11–13); must be a musician and poet; must live as a fugitive under constant threat of assassination for a period of years (1 Samuel 20:3);

The Messiah: must have background in carpentry (Mark 6:3); must be raised in an insignificant, despised town (John 1:46); must have no formal theological education (John 7:15);

Lead Apostle: must have background in fishing industry; must have no formal theological education (Matthew 4:18; Acts 4:13);

The Apostles’ Chief Theologian, Apologist, and Missiologist: must be the most zealous persecutor of Christians (Acts 8:3).

We might know, abstractly, that God loves to use weakness and brokenness. We might find it encouraging in a Bible story or missionary biography. We might even teach or preach to others about it. But when it comes to our own qualifications, it’s almost always an unpleasant and perplexing surprise that God wants to highlight our weaknesses. Which is why we, like Moses, sometimes wish God would just choose someone else for the assignment.

But God has a very strategic purpose for this design. One that, if we will embrace it, will make our weaknesses become a source of joy, not shame.

Lord, Send Someone Else

Moses was another one of God’s odd picks. What was on God’s list of qualifications for Israel’s Exodus Leader and Greatest Old-Covenant Prophet? Must be a Jewish member of Egyptian royalty (Exodus 2:10), must commit capital murder (Exodus 2:12, 15), must live in obscurity as a fugitive shepherd for forty years (Exodus 2:15; 7:7) — oh, and must be a poor public speaker (Exodus 4:10).

Moses’s story is inspiring, but we really need to put ourselves in Moses’s place, right in front of that burning bush. Would you have felt qualified to confront Pharaoh and demand the release of his total slave labor force? Moses certainly didn’t. He had a long list of objections to God’s choice (Exodus 3:13–4:12). And when God wouldn’t budge, Moses finally came right out and said it: “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (Exodus 4:13).

Please send someone else. This is the fearful response of a person who not only feels but knows he is too weak to do what God is assigning him to do. Yes, the response lacks faith, but it is an accurate assessment: in his own strength, Moses will not be able to fulfill the assignment. Trembling is altogether appropriate.

Have you ever felt like that? I certainly have. In fact, I have a tendency to feel it more now in middle age than I did when I was younger, because I’m much more in touch with my weaknesses and limitations. I now have ministry and family leadership failures on my resumé, largely through my misplaced confidence in my own wisdom and capacities. I recognize this tendency as a lack of faith, but I can relate to Moses’s preference to wander with his flocks through the quiet hills of Horeb rather than take up God’s assignment.

Lord, I’m sure there are more qualified people than I am to [blank]. I’d really prefer to lay low in the safety of obscurity.

Qualifying Weaknesses

This response, however humanly understandable, misses the point. God never calls us to any kingdom responsibility we are capable of pulling off on our own. It doesn’t matter whether one is called to confront Pharaoh or to love his neighbor enough to share the gospel with him, no one can do what only God can do: harden or soften the human heart (Romans 9:18). All power belongs to God (Psalm 62:11). And unless it’s God working in us “both to will and to work for his good pleasure,” all our working will come to naught (Philippians 2:13).

If we do not feel a keen sense of our inadequacy for whatever assignment God gives us, we’re not in touch with reality. For when it comes to doing anything that is intended to display God’s glory, advance God’s kingdom, proclaim his word to a resistant world, win and save lost people, shepherd souls, battle demonic powers, and mortify our persistent indwelling sin, “Who [in the world] is sufficient for these things?” (2 Corinthians 2:16).

Weaknesses are necessary qualifications for God’s servants for just that reason: to make explicit, both to us and the watching world, that we are not sufficient. God puts his “treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). Our weaknesses — those very things we’re embarrassed about and wish we didn’t have to struggle with, those things we want to hide from each other and the world, those things that make us want to ask God to send someone else — those weaknesses are a critical part of the mission. They are part of God’s strategy to reveal himself to the world. It’s through our weaknesses, more than our strengths, that God demonstrates that he exists and rewards those who trust and seek him (Hebrews 11:6).

Glad Boasting in Weaknesses

Paul, who we all know had many admirable strengths, understood this profound truth and got to the place where he could say,

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9–10)

Don’t hear this as if it were from someone so immensely gifted that he’s out of touch with sorts of humbling weaknesses we mere mortals deal with. We likely barely grasp how much Paul’s various weaknesses were exposed and how many seemingly impossible deprivations, heartbreaks, and failed attempts he actually experienced. What we do know is that Jesus said right after his conversion, “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16).

Paul’s suffering and weakness-exposures weren’t punitive because he had previously persecuted Christians. Jesus had paid for that. Rather, they were a significant way in which God’s strength was revealed to the world — so much so, that Paul became a glad boaster in what made him look weak. Because in his weaknesses, people saw that the only strength he had came from God.

Why You Are Weak

That’s why we have our weaknesses. They are, perhaps more than our strengths, what qualify us to serve where God places us in his kingdom. And nothing teaches us prayerful dependence like the desperation that comes from being assigned to do what you can’t do without God.

Humans are impressed by the whole range of human strengths. But God is only impressed by one human strength: strong faith. Because faith is a dependence on God’s strength. Which is why, when God calls us into our various and diverse roles in his kingdom, he makes sure that our callings offer plenty of opportunities to expose our weaknesses. The more we understand why, the more these opportunities become occasions for joy instead of shame.

You Are Not Your Own

Your body does not belong to you. Do you believe this? I don’t mean doctrinally believe it — if you’re a Christian, you of course believe that “you are not your own” (1 Corinthians 6:19). I mean do you functionally believe this?

It’s not difficult to tell. How you use your body reveals what you believe. It can be difficult to admit, if we feel exposed by our functional belief. Believe me, I know. I have plenty of functional beliefs that fall short of my official beliefs, in varying degrees at varying times.

The question isn’t an exercise in shaming — for you or for me. It’s an exercise in honest assessment, in reality therapy, and, if needed, in repentance. Which, for Christians, should be just a normal, everyday experience. As Martin Luther famously said, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘Repent,’ he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”

Falling Forward Together

All of us fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). None of us has arrived (Philippians 3:12–13). God knows this far better than we do, and he’s made abundant provision for our shortfalls. Each time we repent — each day, even each hour — Jesus’s substitutionary, atoning death for us cleanses us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). God wants us to live condemnation-free (Romans 8:1) by taking full advantage of his endless supply of forgiving, restoring, encouraging, and empowering grace.

Since all of us redeemed short-fallers are in this fight of faith together, we can keep encouraging and exhorting one another every day to press on towards the Great Goal (Philippians 3:14), so that none of us becomes hardened in deceitful, habitual sin (Hebrews 3:13).

With God’s wonderful grace in mind, we can take a good, honest look at ourselves and ask: do we really believe that we are not our own?

Do You Not Know?

Let’s look at these Spirit-inspired, Paul-authored words in context:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)

When Paul asked “do you not know,” he was addressing Christians. And he asked the Corinthian Christians this question a lot in this letter (1 Corinthians 3:16; 5:6; 6:2–3, 9, 15–16, 19; 9:13, 24). Now, some Corinthians were probably new believers and perhaps didn’t know. But Paul’s phrasing of the question makes it clear that he was giving a firm reminder to most readers who doctrinally knew, but whose behaviors revealed that they functionally forgot.

More poignantly, they were living in functional unbelief, which was real sin and required real repentance. They knew, and they didn’t.

Who Owns Your Body?

In 1 Corinthians 6:19, Paul was specifically addressing sexual immorality among believers. Just like our society, the Corinthian society had a lot of available, accessible, culturally acceptable, and even encouraged ways to immorally indulge sexually. Very likely, many Corinthian Christians had backgrounds rife with immorality. They had habits of thinking and behaving sexually that still affected and tempted them as Christians. Some, apparently, had been repeatedly “falling short.”

More than this, they were actually rationalizing it with a common adage, “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food” (1 Corinthians 6:13). In other words, Look, if the body has an appetite for food, we feed it. So, if the body has an appetite for sex, we should “feed” it. Besides, we’re free! Jesus’s sacrifice made all things lawful! (1 Corinthians 6:12).

Paul responded with a frank correction: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Corinthians 6:13). When we become Christians, our bodies become members or appendages of Christ’s body (1 Corinthians 6:15–17). And the very Spirit of Christ dwells in our bodies as the Spirit used to dwell in Jerusalem’s temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). Implication: every sexually immoral behavior a Christian engages in drags the Lord Jesus Christ into that engagement.

That’s why sexual sin, in particular, is a sin against our own bodies (1 Corinthians 6:18). In Christianity, there is no bifurcation of body and spirit. Both make up the human being. To defile one is to defile the other. Both our bodies and spirits, though still vulnerable to sin and the futile suffering of this age while we wait for our full redemption (Romans 8:23), are nevertheless being redeemed by Jesus and will be raised (1 Corinthians 6:14). So, our bodies must not be given over to sin’s governance (Romans 6:12), because our bodies do not belong to us.

You Were Bought

But is this how we live? Do we knowingly behave with our bodies as if Christ is engaged in our physical actions — all of them? Or do we not (functionally) know?

In describing the ways we are not our own, Paul used the metaphors of a bodily member, which does the will of the head; then a bodily temple, which is animated by the divine Spirit who lives there; then a bond-slave, who does the will of his Master. That’s what Paul meant when he wrote, “for you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20).

A bond-slave is not his own person. He has sold himself to someone else. He belongs to someone else. He does not merely do as he pleases. His time is not his own. He is not free to follow the whims of his personal dreams. He is not free to indulge the craving of his appetites as he wishes. He is not his own. He belongs to his Master. This is what a Christian is.

Freed at Great Cost

This bond-slavery of a Christian, however, is like no other — far better than any alternative of autonomy. Our Master bought us with the price of his own infinitely precious life in order to make us “free indeed” (John 8:32–36). What does that mean? It means when he bought us, he freed us from our hell-bound slavery to sin (Romans 6:6). He also bought for us the priceless gift of being adopted by the Father as his very children, which makes us heirs with Jesus of his Father’s kingdom and of infinite wealth (Romans 8:16–17). If that wasn’t enough, Jesus, our Master, both now and in the age to come, serves us beyond our wildest imaginations (Mark 10:45; Luke 12:37).

But, gracious as he is, Jesus must still be our Master, which means we must obey him (John 14:15). For our master is whomever or whatever we obey (Romans 6:16).

As Christians, we know this. The question is, do we really know? Is Jesus the Master over our time, expenditures, investments, home size and location, education, career, marital status, parenting, friendships, church involvement, and ministry commitments? If not, we do not (functionally) know what we think we know.

Glorify God in Your Body

We need good, honest self-assessment. What is the Spirit bringing to mind right now? In what part of your life have you functionally forgotten, or better functionally not believed, that you belong to Jesus? What are you stewarding as if it is yours and not God’s? Follow the Spirit’s lead and repent. Your gracious Lord and Master stands with scarred arms wide open to receive, forgive, and cleanse you.

You and I are not our own. We are Christ’s (1 Corinthians 3:23). In every sense, we are Christ’s — body, mind, and spirit. We are members of Christ’s body, our bodies are Christ’s temple, and we are bond-slaves of Christ, who has made us children of his Father and fellow heirs of his estate — what a Master!

He is only, however, the Master of those who obey him. That’s why it’s crucial that our functional knowing aligns with our doctrinal knowing. Or as Paul said, “You are not your own. . . . So glorify God in your body.”

Practice Defeating Your Distractions

Distraction is not defeated in a few fell blows, but by many small, habitual ones. Therefore, I will not promise to provide you in a thousand words a magical sword that can slay the Dread Dragon Distraction in three or four simple hacks. I have discovered no such sword and do not believe one exists.

What makes me any authority on distraction in the first place? Not my expertise in focus, but my expertise in being distracted. If my observations and self-assessments are accurate, I’m on the “above average” side of the distractible spectrum. I know this struggle from the inside and fight it daily.

Expecting to fight it daily is a necessary mindset if the fight is to be won. Distraction is not a simple foe; it must be fought on numerous fronts. Victory is achieved not by one glorious coup d’état of resolve, but by the slow insurgency of developing distraction-reducing habits.

The Speed of God

However, this likely requires an expectation recalibration on our part. We children of the high-tech/information age, and grandchildren of the manufacturing and industrial ages, find it increasingly hard to appreciate the speed of God. We have learned to value efficiencies in quickness, quantity, and cost. Produce something desirable fast, scalable, and cheap, and the outcome will be success. We’ve also learned to value disposability and devalue durability.

But when God builds things, he often takes a long time (at least from our perspective) to do it. And what he builds, he builds to endure. Consider how he designed us. We require roughly nine months from conception to the point where we can survive outside the womb. Then we require roughly two additional decades before we acquire sufficient developmental maturity, knowledge, and skills to live independently from our parents.

And how are our developmental maturity, knowledge, and skills acquired during those two decades? Through rigorous repetition. Muscle and information memory are developed and sustained through the arduous process of daily, habitual practice.

The Slow, Everyday Miracle

Now, we know that God at times employs miraculous power to bring about instantaneous change in people’s lives. Deliverances and gifts of healings are very real aspects of the kingdom of God in this age. The Bible even commands us to earnestly desire them and seek them (1 Corinthians 12:31). I believe if we desired them and sought them more, they would occur more often.

However, the whole witness of Scripture and redemptive history tells us that even when they are more frequent, miraculous, instantaneous transformations are always exceptional (rare) in this age, not normative. Most of our healings will be experienced through the relatively slow processes with which God wonderfully and wisely equips our bodies. And most of our deliverances will be experienced through the relatively slow (at times frustratingly so) processes with which God wonderfully and wisely equips our minds and souls — replacing habitual responses of belief in deceptive promises and condemning accusations with habitual responses of faith in the true promises and gracious acceptance of God.

We talk a lot about the habits of grace at Desiring God, because routines build and shape human character, skill, affection, and creativity. Scripture teaches and history reinforces that habitual routines of Bible meditation, prayer, and church fellowship are God’s primary gracious means of our transformation. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither are we. We are built slowly, incrementally, painstakingly, brick by brick, day by day, over time — at God’s speed.

What Distractions Tell You

Now, God does want us to be delivered from the fragmenting effect of fruitless distraction (Luke 10:40). He wants us focused on what’s most important (Luke 10:41–42). But it’s very unlikely that we will receive a quick fix, because there is more going on in distraction than we often realize. In fact, we have a lot to learn from all that is happening in us when we’re tempted to be distracted.

First, distractions frequently tell us what we love and trust and fear. We gravitate toward desires we crave and away from fears we wish to avoid. Listen to what your familiar (habitual) distractions are saying. In what are you seeking joy? In what are you seeking shelter? What are you trying to escape?

Distractions also tell us where we formed poor habits earlier in life that we’ve not adequately addressed yet. Some bad habits are due to growing up in broken family systems, and some are indulgent habits we formed in youth or adolescence for which we must now be mature enough to take responsiblity.

Distractions can also tell us biological realities we must deal with: ADHD, OCD, chronic depression, bipolar disorder, and other maladies. Medication supervised by a skilled physician can be of significant help, but we also need to actively cultivate new habits to mitigate the effects of a disordered biology.

What are your distractions telling you? Record them as you notice them for two or three weeks. You will not fight them successfully until you know what’s fueling them. Distractions fueled by different disordered loves or fears or biology or plain old bad habits require different habitual battle strategies.

Trained by Constant Practice

Healthy habits are strategies. If resolves are our objectives (desired outcomes), habits are our strategies. Or to use a different metaphor, the engine of our resolve must run on the tracks of our habits. Resolve can only travel as far as the tracks of habits have been laid.

Hebrews 5:14 says that very thing: “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” That verse helps set our expectations. Spiritual maturity is the goal; constant practice is the means.

When I played soccer in high school, all the players enjoyed the games. Few of us enjoyed the monotonous skill-building exercises. No one I knew enjoyed the grueling conditioning exercises. But our ability to win games was largely determined by how hard we pushed ourselves in practice.

Constant practice is the only way any skill is grown and maintained in anything, including the skill of distinguishing between fruitful focus and unfruitful distraction.

But How?

Yes, but what do we do to constantly practice resisting distraction? I told you up front that I had no distraction hacks to offer. And neither does the Bible. Have you ever noticed it rarely gives us clear, practical how-to’s? Why is that?

One reason, I believe, is that our behaviors are driven by divergent and complex factors, and so formulas are typically of marginal help. What helps me may not help you much.

But another reason is that the difficult process of wrestling through ambiguities and internal resistance and confusion is part of the training itself. We learn necessary things about our affections, weaknesses, and bodies. The difficult process ends up yielding benefits of increased faith, wisdom, and perseverance that extend far beyond just the issue of distraction.

If we ask God, he will give us what we need in this fight (1 Corinthians 10:13; Philippians 4:19). But we must keep in mind: all aspects of the fight of faith is a fight (1 Timothy 6:12). We need to build endurance (Hebrews 10:36). We need to learn to discipline and control our bodies (1 Corinthians 9:27).

God isn’t merely concerned with the most efficient way to free us from distraction. He’s concerned with what will produce the greatest and most enduring spiritual fruit in our life. So, prayerfully aim to defeat distraction through the slow, steady insurgency of building new habits, one at a time.

How to Do Everything to the Glory of God

Explain this verse in your own words: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” If someone walked up to you right now and asked you how 1 Corinthians 10:31 worked — in eating, in drinking, in everything — how would you respond? Do you know what Paul really meant?

The verse is so familiar, we can easily assume we understand it, even if we don’t. By itself the verse’s meaning seems patently obvious: glorify God in everything you do. Well, of course that’s true at the highest level. But what does Paul specifically mean by glorify God, and what does he mean by everything?

If our primary application of this verse is thanking God for the tasty pizza we’re eating, we haven’t understood Paul — even though he certainly would want us to thank God for the tasty pizza we’re eating (1 Corinthians 10:30). Paul has something quite specific in mind — something quite relevant to us. When we look at the verse in its wider context, we see that Paul’s command to do all to the glory of God relates to cultural idols, the Christian conscience, and how we live before an unbelieving world.

A Wonderful, New Freedom

Paul begins his point in chapter 8. There we discover that food was a major issue of Christian liberty in the Corinthian church — specifically, “food offered to idols” (1 Corinthians 8:1). All the Corinthian Christians (except perhaps the Jewish ones) would have had backgrounds in pagan idol worship. When they became Christians, they renounced these idols and all the expressions of worship associated with them.

The problem was that idol worship was woven into the very fabric of Corinthian civic, trade, and social life — it was culturally pervasive. Idol temples were social centers, and could function similarly to public restaurants (1 Corinthians 8:10). And much of the meat sold in the markets and served in homes had been ritually offered to idols (1 Corinthians 10:25, 27). That meant eating meat could be interpreted as an act of idolatry, a betrayal of Christian beliefs (1 Corinthians 8:10).

Wonderfully, however, some Corinthian Christians were discovering that “an idol has no real existence, and that there is no God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4). Since idols were no real things, they realized that meat sacrificed to idols was meat sacrificed to nothing (1 Corinthians 10:19–20). Therefore, eating meat sacrificed to idols could not be idolatry if the people eating knew that idols weren’t real. They were free to eat this meat with a clear conscience! Paul agreed with them (1 Corinthians 10:26, 29).

Freedom’s Power to Destroy

Paul did not agree, however, with how some of them were exercising this newfound Christian freedom. In effect, some of the Corinthians had placed a higher value on enjoying this freedom than on the spiritual good of other souls. First, not all the Corinthian Christians “possessed this knowledge” (1 Corinthians 8:7). Some of them, perhaps newer converts or those who, for whatever reason, had tender consciences, still felt like eating meat sacrificed to an idol was a form of idolatrous worship. For them, to eat sacrificial meat was to deny Christ.

Second, others, who may have even believed idols were nonentities, would face temptation to a different kind of idolatry by eating such meat. Many Corinthian converts likely paid a high price to become Christians. Renouncing the false pagan religion(s) meant renouncing social customs, family traditions, and friendship networks. Some, no doubt, lost their jobs. You can imagine the temptation some experienced to give at least an appearance of homage to the prevailing religion in order to avoid losing employment, social status, and family disapproval.

Third, there was the issue of gospel witness among non-Christians who were watching the Christians. What would pagans think of Christians who knowingly ate meat sacrificed to idols? They would likely assume that the Christians venerated the idols just like they did, and therefore there was no real reason to give heed to Christians’ odd claims. And what would Jews think of this behavior? That Christians were pagans and that Christianity was demonic.

So, Paul strongly reminded the Corinthians that far more was at stake than enjoying sacrificial steaks. If Christians whose consciences were free to eat meat sacrificed to idols weren’t very careful, the exercise of their freedom could destroy the faith of another Christian (1 Corinthians 8:9–11) or ruin Jesus’s reputation among non-Christians (1 Corinthians 10:27–29).

True Christian Freedom

This is why Paul said, “If food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble” (1 Corinthians 8:13). And then he went on to describe throughout chapter 9 many ways he voluntarily abstained from things he was free to enjoy as a Christian — not to mention an apostle — like various kinds of food and drink, marriage, and a full-time ministry salary (1 Corinthians 9:4–7).

Paul’s whole orientation in life was to win as many people to the gospel as possible (1 Corinthians 9:22–23), so he sought to remove as many obstacles to the gospel as possible (1 Corinthians 9:12). For Paul, this was Christian freedom: “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them” (1 Corinthians 9:19). So, when Paul heard that the Corinthian Christians were arguing over whether or not they were free to eat sacrificial meat, he essentially told them they were missing the point:

“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. (1 Corinthians 10:23–24)

To Paul, this was true Christian freedom: to do whatever it takes to love one’s neighbor for the sake of Jesus.

Do All to the Glory of God

This is what Paul had in mind when he wrote, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). We glorify God when, out of love for him, we lay down our rights, our freedoms, in eating or drinking or whatever in order to do what is most loving toward others, either for the “progress and joy [of their] faith” (Philippians 1:25), or that they may be saved (1 Corinthians 9:22). Paul’s very next sentence says, “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God” (1 Corinthians 10:32).

Now, back to our tasty pizza. God is certainly glorified when we wholeheartedly enjoy the fullness of the earth he created for our enjoyment (1 Corinthians 10:26). Paul was a great advocate for our freedom from all false, legalistic abstinence from food or anything else (1 Timothy 4:1–3). He stated it clearly: “Food will not commend us to God” (1 Corinthians 8:8). And “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:4–5). So, Paul would take no offense by our applying 1 Corinthians 10:31 to savoring our pizza — provided that we have not lost sight of the more excellent way of glorifying God: sacrificial love.

And this kind of sacrificial love is still needed, maybe especially needed, when it comes to Christian freedoms. For we, too, have our cultural idols, our saints with tender consciences, and our watching unbelievers. So, in “whatever you do,” do not pursue your freedom to do what you want to do, but use your freedom to pursue the ultimate spiritual good of your neighbor. Do all you do to the glory of God.

When Our Waiting Will Be Over

My favorite songs are ones that make my heart burn with longing. They’re songs that have unusual power to, as C.S. Lewis put it, rip open my “inconsolable secret” — the secret “which pierces with such sweetness,” yet is so hard to capture in words, since “it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience” (The Weight of Glory, 29–30).

Which is why among my favorites is a song written by Bob and Jordan Kauflin, “When We See Your Face.” The song taps into subterranean longings and triggers profound emotions in me. I am not one to cry easily, but I rarely can listen to it without tears. So, I usually listen to it alone, sparing others the awkwardness of a weeping middle-aged man.

Lest it appear suspicious to anyone, let me say up front that I was not asked to promote this song. I asked permission to write about it, receiving no benefit beyond what the song itself delivers — which is a benefit more precious than gold. For my soul very much needs this song’s reminder, especially as another year passes and I am another year older, still fighting against the relentless darkness, still waiting, still desiring something that has never actually appeared in my experience. Not yet. It remains a desire for a promised appearing — an appearing I’m growing to increasingly love (2 Timothy 4:8).

I share this song because I assume you also need its precious reminder. And perhaps it will tap into your piercing, sweet, inconsolable secret too.

Though the Dark Is Overwhelming

Though the dark is overwhelming

And the brightest lights grow dim

Though the Word of God

Is trampled on by foolish men

Though the wicked never stumble

And abound in every place

We will all be humbled when we see Your face

It doesn’t take reaching our middle or elder years to know just how dark the world can be. But I can attest now to a cumulative effect it has upon the soul the longer one lives here. And I do not claim to have suffered greatly — yet.

Prolonged exposure to confounding darkness is a wearisome experience (Psalm 73:16). It is not merely the physical effects of aging that tempt many of us to retreat from action as we enter the older demographic columns. It’s also the spiritual and psychological effects of prolonged dealing with evil that infects and harms our families, friendships, churches, vocations, societies, and nations. We probably thought ourselves more a match for it in the optimistic bloom of youth, but experience put us in our place. The evil is beyond our strength and our comprehension. Hope can take a beating in the relentless battle against darkness.

Until we remember.

Until we remember that one day all oppressive darkness will be banished from the experience of the saints (Revelation 22:5), and that even now, even as the darkness rages (Revelation 12:12), it is passing away as the true light shines (1 John 2:8). We remember that we were never supposed to know and understand the evil we face (Genesis 3:7) — of course it’s a wearisome task! Only the Omniscient and Omnipotent can comprehend it and not grow weary (Isaiah 40:28). We remember that he promised us, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). We remember that our great task, the one way we truly conquer darkness, is to trust him (Proverbs 3:5–6) and obey him (John 14:15).

And the great day that will end all night — the day of the joyful humbling of the redeemed righteous and the horrible humbling of the condemned wicked (Philippians 2:10–11) — will be inaugurated when we see the face of Jesus (1 Corinthians 13:12).

All Our Sins Will Be Behind Us

And the demons we’ve been fighting

Those without and those within

Will be underneath our feet

To never rise again

All our sins will be behind us

Through the blood of Christ erased

And we’ll taste Your kindness when we see Your face

I’m so sick of Satan and his wretched wraiths that I don’t even want to give them the attention of a mention — except to say that one day (hear this, you horrid hoard!), the almighty foot of the Son of Man will come down once for all upon the heads of the great dragon and all his infernal snakes, and we will wrestle them no more (Ephesians 6:12; Revelation 20:10).

But we also remember something far, far sweeter — and growing sweeter every year we grow older and come more to terms with just how intractable and entwined our demon-like indwelling sin is in the very members of our bodies (Romans 7:23). We remember that our sin will someday be behind us.

Oh, we know that Jesus has paid our ransom in full (1 Timothy 2:6) and that by God’s grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8) we have been clothed in Christ’s righteousness (Philippians 3:9), so that God even now sees us justified, as if we had never sinned and always obeyed (Romans 3:26). It is, for now, an almost incomprehensibly glorious thing.

But one day, our blood-bought innocence, our holy purity, will cease to be primarily a forensic reality we embrace by faith. On that day we will fully experience what it’s like to be righteous in every atom of our resurrected bodies and every dimension of our eternal, immaterial souls. We will have no more sin. No more tainted motives, no more illicit desires, no more damned selfish ambition. We will know in every part of our being what it’s like to fully obey the Great Commandment as if it’s the most natural thing in the world — for it will be! And we will worship the Lamb who was slain for us with unclouded minds and hearts bursting with joy.

We will taste this unfathomably gracious kindness of Jesus when we see his face.

All the Waiting Will Be Over

All the waiting will be over

Every sorrow will be healed

All the dreams it seemed

Could never be will all be real

And You’ll gather us together

In Your arms of endless grace

As Your Bride forever when we see Your face

The waiting will be over. I can’t write that sentence with dry eyes. Most of our Christian experience in this dark valley is hopeful waiting for what we so long to see (Romans 8:25). And much of that waiting is accompanied by hopeful groaning (Romans 8:20): groaning in illness, groaning in grief, groaning in disappointment and perplexity over the terrible, violent brokenness of the world and the inscrutable purposes of our only wise God (Romans 16:27), whose ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8). And we hopefully groan, like a bride, with longing for the consummate intimacy of knowing the Lover of our souls, even as we have been fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12).

But one day — our Groom has promised it will be “soon” (Revelation 22:20) — the waiting will be over. And he will come, our Hero, of which all legendary heroes are but copies and shadows, and he will save us to the uttermost (Isaiah 35:4; Hebrews 7:25). And all that is dark and diseased and damaged and destroyed will pass away like a bad dream and become the shadows of the great yesterday (Psalm 90:4–5), serving only to heighten our savoring of the bright, eternal today (Revelation 22:5).

And of all the light in which we delight, the fairest will be his face.

We’ll Be Yours Forevermore

We will see, we will know

Like we’ve never known before

We’ll be found, we’ll be home

We’ll be Yours forevermore

Having once been lost, we will fully know just how found we are (Luke 19:10). Having once known our Savior in such a small part, we will fully know him — as much as the finite can fully know the Infinite (1 Corinthians 13:12). We will be fully his and fully home — forever.

Home. That is our inconsolable secret, isn’t it? That piercing sweetness, that desire for what has never actually appeared in our experience, yet somehow we know it is where we truly belong. I think that’s what this song taps into: our homesickness for a place we’ve not been, and a sense of alienation in the very places we were born. We don’t belong here, where it’s dark, depraved, and demonic, and where our sweetest experience is the blessed hope we taste in the future promises we trust. We long for home.

For home is where we will meet the One we have loved, though we have not seen him (1 Peter 1:8). Home is where we will see his face.

We were given permission to stream the song, “When We See Your Face,” from the album “Prayers of the Saints (Live)” by Sovereign Grace Music. Music and words for this song were written by Bob Kauflin and Jordan Kauflin.

Enter the Dragon Slayer: How God Took Satan’s Breath Away

There once was a great dragon, red like blood. He was a terrible serpent, ancient beyond human memory. His power and cunning were beyond human reckoning, and he was evil beyond all depraved human imagination.

And the dragon was real. He did not inhabit the realms of fairy-tale or nightmare — their horrors were but his shadows cast in legends. No, the dragon inhabited the real world of men, though imperceptible to their eyes and ears — unless, of course, being perceived served his wicked purposes.

And the dragon abhorred man. He hated them out of his virulent, bitter hatred for the High King who had created man. For, you see, the dragon too was a creature, having been fashioned by the King in ages long past, though not as a dragon, but as a magnificent prince.

A Prince Endragoned

Once upon a time, this prince was numbered among the great ones; he was a god in the holy council of the High King over all gods. But deep in the labyrinthian channels of this prince’s heart, pride began to run like a toxic sap, poisoning his loves and his thoughts. The greater he became in his own eyes, the more his true greatness diminished.

Self-deceived, the prince strove for greater glory than he possessed. He desired glory not bestowed by the King’s grace, but glory all his own, self-achieved and self-ascribed. In the deeps of his heart, he exchanged the glory of the High King for a false image of himself he had come to love. And in doing so, he exchanged the truth for a lie, and worshiped his creaturely self rather than the Creator King, making himself a rival of the King.

Therefore, the prince was cast down from his exalted place in the council of the great, and hurled out of the King’s presence. He fell like lightning to the earth. There the King gave the treacherous prince up to the wicked passions of his heart, and he, who was once numbered among the gods, became the most dreadful of dragons. A time was then fixed by the King for the dragon’s final judgment.

A Vile Ambition

So, when this dragon saw that the High King had fashioned mankind in his own image, that he made them gods as he had once been, and had given them to rule over the earth, he was enraged. He burned with bitter hatred and longed to shatter these images of the One he hated most.

Then a wicked plan took shape in his brilliant, futile mind, which pleased his darkened heart. If he could entice the man-gods to turn against the King as he had done, they too would share his terrible fate; they too would be cast from the King’s presence; they too would become objects of the King’s just and terrible wrath. And the Sovereign’s sentence upon them would be irrevocable, just like the sentence upon him.

But even more desirable, the dragon would enjoy one great triumph: he would succeed in stealing the King’s glory by defacing the King’s image, woven into the very flesh and bone of these feeble gods. And before his dreaded day of judgment, he would remake these fallen gods into lesser dragons — images of himself — which he would enslave to wreak wanton destruction in the world the King had made.

Let the High King destroy him with omnipotence! He would leave an unfading scar upon the Everlasting Father: the eternal perishing of the King’s prized people. It could not fail to diminish the King’s joy!

A Terrible Triumph

So, into the peopled garden crept the crafty, condemned serpent. He presented himself to the image bearers as a bearer of enlightenment. He promised them the fruit of godly wisdom if they would but set aside the King’s sole prohibition and simply think for themselves — for were they not also gods? Surely, possessing the King’s wisdom and knowledge would increase their glory, for they would be even more like the High King than they yet were.

As they pondered the dragon’s cunning lies, pride began to seep into the heart channels of the image bearers. They believed the dragon’s dark light. They simply thought for themselves — only to discover too late how great was this light’s darkness. In horror, they soon realized the serpentine promise yielded foolishness, not wisdom; death, not life; alienation from the King, not greater likeness to the King. In rejecting the King’s command, they had rejected the King’s rule. They had become the King’s enemies. Theirs was treason of the highest order. And for such a crime, against such a King, there was only one just sentence: destruction.

The dragon exulted as the deeply grieved King cast his broken images out of the blessed garden of his favor, into a world now cursed, one the dragon could now rule. He savored each sentence of judgment pronounced upon the fallen gods, and relished the endragoning that must surely await them.

But as the High King issued his just decrees, the dragon heard an ominous promise: the great serpent’s head would one day be crushed under a human foot. These words made him writhe in fury, and he resolved to keep a wary watch, that he might destroy the foot before the blow could fall.

But unknown to the dragon, mysterious decrees had been uttered by the High King in the secret counsel of his will ages before the dragon existed, conceived in wisdom unimaginable to a dragonly mind.

Enter the Dragon Slayer

Weary years passed as the cursed earth and its depraved inhabitants languished in bondage to corruption. And then, in the fullness of the King’s time, the ancient, mysterious decrees began to unfold. In an unexpected place and an unexpected way, into the world stepped the Dragon Slayer.

Despite the dragon’s vigilance, the Slayer appeared at first undetected. The snake had not foreseen such a mystifying entrance. When he awoke to his danger, he recognized in terror his long-expected foe was the very Son of the High King.

But what strangeness was this? The Mighty One, born in the likeness of feeble man? To what end? And as a defenseless child in the care of a peasant? Quickly he sought to devour him and his fearful foot. But the Slayer eluded the primeval assassin and waited for the appointed Day with an unnerving quietness.

The Slayer Is Slayed

Finally, the Day drew near. But as it did, the dragon grew only more perplexed by his Adversary.

At times he displayed a dreadful power. The dragon expected this. Yet the Slayer proved the meekest and humblest of all mankind. And he gave himself no advantage. He made his home in a despised village in a reviled region. He sought no education, pursued no influential profession. He chose the weak and foolish as his followers — even a treacherous man as his close confidant. But the strong and wise he humiliated, and their envy and suspicion was infected with poisonous resentment. And thus, he was rejected by those wielding power, becoming a threat they wished to eliminate. Even when his survival depended upon the approval of the great crowds he drew with mighty miracles, he drove them away with hard words.

All this made the wily lizard wary. Such absurdity! This Slayer appeared more bent on being crushed than on crushing the serpent. Well, if such was the Slayer’s wish, the serpent would grant it with relish.

Then all at once, the dark stars aligned: the lethal leaders, the traitorous confidant, the disillusioned people, the faithless friends, the immoral tetrarch, and the pragmatic prefect. All aligned against the Dragon Slayer and with terrible, brutal swiftness, the deadly dragon struck. And the great Son of the High King lay slain in the bloody bed that he had made.

The great red dragon exulted more than before. He had achieved far beyond his wildest hopes. Not only had he disfigured the image bearers — he had slain the Dragon Slayer! It had been so easy, like a wolf upon a lamb. The crusher lay in defeated death, his foot sorely bruised. The serpent lived triumphant, head unscathed and unbent. When he faced the High King’s omnipotent wrath, he would do so with his prodigious pride intact.

The Dragon’s Nightmare Morning

Then came the morning of the dragon’s nightmare, the morning the Son of the High King arose from his bed of blood and stood, indestructible, unassailable, upon strong feet, scarred but without bruise.

The great serpent looked upon the risen Slayer, bewildered. Then the terrible truth dawned upon the ancient liar with blinding brightness. He had not crushed the Crusher; he had slain the Lamb of God! He had not seen it! How had he not seen it? How had he not seen an altar of sacrifice in the Roman cross?

An altar! An altar is for the expiation of sins! Whose sins? Not the unblemished Son’s, but the fallen gods of mankind! An altar is for the propitiation of wrath! Whose wrath? The High King’s!

No! No! It could not be! Could it? Had the great Judge become guilty so man could be forgiven? Had the Holy become unholy that unholy man may become holy? And of course, the curse of death could not remain upon the sinless willingly sacrificed. What a fool he’d been! But who would have thought such a thing? Just wrath he knew. But such loving mercy he did not. And lavished upon such undeserved creatures!

The realization was excruciating. The Son of the High King had not come to bring upon his head the final blow . . . yet. The truth was far worse: the Son had come to destroy all that the dragon had worked for so long. And oh! he had indeed left an unfading scar upon the Everlasting Father, but not the scar he planned — man’s destruction. It was the scar of man’s redemption!

Waves of horror washed over him as he watched all his hopes collapse around him like a castle of cards in the wind. What he thought so wise proved foolish; what he thought so foolish was proved wise beyond comprehension. Whatever glory the dragon thought he had grasped in his terrible claws, the Son had just snatched away.

The human Son of the High King had indeed bruised his head, not with power, but with shame. The dragon’s great foolishness was now on open display for the entire host of the High King to see. And every fallen human the King would redeem and restore through the Son’s sacrifice of unsurpassed love would be another blow of shame upon his wicked head — and another ray of the King’s glory. Another surge of the King’s joy.

This was the worst possible sentence upon a being of such diabolical pride: the dragon would die a billion deaths of shame before the Dragon Slayer finally destroyed him. And with the great wrath of unfathomable humiliation, the dragon loosed a terrible roar.

Prostitutes, Mistresses, and the Messiah: Seven Great Women of Ill Repute

A strange thread runs through the most prominent women associated with Jesus: they are all women of, shall we say, ill repute. Most of their notorious reputations spring from sexual scandals. What does this say about Christ? An awful lot.

If your habit is to skip over the genealogies in the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, you may have missed a treasure buried in this list of forty fathers who comprise Jesus’s ancestry (if we count Joseph), stretching as far back as Abraham. The hidden treasure is the five women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Jesus’s mother, Mary. Why are they listed? And what makes them as valuable as any man mentioned? That’s precisely what Matthew wants us to ask.

Five Women of Ill Repute

First, Tamar (Matthew 1:3). Tamar is the sort of ancestor most of us wouldn’t mention when recounting our family history. Do you remember her story (Genesis 38)? She entered the messianic bloodline by disguising herself as a prostitute and seducing her father-in-law, Judah. The scene and story are complicated. Given the cultural mores of the time, she acted more righteously than he did, since he had treated her unjustly and she had little recourse. Still, there’s no denying how horrible a mess it was.

Second comes Rahab (Matthew 1:5). She didn’t need a disguise. She was a prostitute (or at least had been prior to her marriage). She was also a Gentile. And not just a Gentile, a Canaanite and a resident of Jericho, the first city Joshua set his sights on in the Promised Land. So, how did Rahab manage to become Jesus’s great, great, great, great — add another 24 greats — grandmother? She hid Jewish military spies and helped them escape, so Joshua spared her and her family (see Joshua 2 and 6). Once she was folded into Israel, Rahab married Salmon, which resulted in the genealogical appearance of . . .

Ruth, the third woman in our list (Matthew 1:5). She wasn’t personally embroiled in sexual scandal, but she came from a people that was. Ruth was a Moabite, a nation which had sprung from the incest between Lot and his oldest daughter (Genesis 19:30–38). Ruth’s people were polytheistic pagans, occasionally offering human sacrifices to idol-gods like Chemosh. Through personal tragedy and great loyalty, she wound up at Bethlehem and in the (lawful) arms of Boaz and also joined Jesus’s family tree. How did that happen, given that Jews were forbidden to marry Moabites (Ezra 9:10–12)? You have to read Ruth — an entire book of sacred Jewish Scripture named after this Moabitess! But catch this: Matthew records Boaz as the son of Rahab and Salmon. If that’s true (ancient genealogies sometimes skip generations), imagine how Rahab might have prepared young Boaz to see in a foreign woman a wild branch God wished to graft into the Jewish olive tree.

The fourth woman is “the wife of Uriah” (Matthew 1:6). We know her as Bathsheba, the woman Israel’s greatest king couldn’t — or better, wouldn’t — keep his hands off of. The account in 2 Samuel 11 doesn’t tell us Bathsheba’s side of this adulterous story. But given the fact that David wielded nearly absolute power as king, this was multilevel abuse, plain and simple. But its result was anything but simple. This single immoral “meal” (Hebrews 12:16) produced a cascading sequence of tragic events. Bathsheba became pregnant. Her husband was murdered in a major cover-up. David brought upon himself, and his entire household, a curse that resulted in horrifying suffering for many, particularly Bathsheba (see 2 Samuel 12). And yet there she is, foregrounded in Jesus’s background.

Last on the list, but certainly not least, is Mary, the mother of Jesus (Matthew 1:16). She became pregnant with Jesus before her wedding. The child’s father was not her betrothed, Joseph. The shadow of this “illegitimate” pregnancy would have lingered over her reputation (and her son’s) for their entire earthly lives.

Jesus’s First Women

Two more women figure prominently in Jesus’s life and are worth mentioning here. Both their reputations made them, in human wisdom, unlikely people to experience two astonishing firsts of Jesus.

In John 4, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman from Sychar at midday at Jacob’s well (John 4:6). Like Rahab and Ruth (and perhaps Tamar), this woman was not Jewish. And like Tamar, Rahab, and Bathsheba, this woman had known numerous men — five husbands and at least one uncovenanted “significant other” (John 4:17–18). And yet in John’s Gospel, this woman is the first person to whom Jesus explicitly discloses himself as the Messiah (John 4:25–26). The first person: this woman.

And then there’s Mary Magdalene. The Bible tells us little about Mary other than that she had seven demons cast out of her (Luke 8:1–3), was present at Jesus’s crucifixion (John 19:25), saw where Jesus was buried (Mark 15:47), and saw the resurrected Jesus (Matthew 28:1–10). History, however, has tended to remember Mary as a woman with a sordid sexual past. We’re not sure why. Perhaps it’s because she (likely) came from the disreputable town of Magdala. Or maybe those strange early Christian apocryphal writings are to blame. Or maybe Mary really did have a past (which is where I lean). It seems reasonable that a vague, lingering remnant of what was once her public shame clings to her reputation to highlight her Savior’s grace.

What is so astonishing about Mary Magdalene is that she was the first person Jesus appeared to after being raised from the dead (John 20:11–18). The first person! Jesus did not appear first to his mother, nor to Peter, but to a formerly immoral, formerly demonized woman.

A Gracious Sorority

Why Mary Magdalene? Why the woman at the well? Why unwed Mary of Nazareth? Why Bathsheba, Ruth, Rahab, and Tamar? Why did God choose to make these women of ill repute so prominent in redemptive history?

In order to place the emphasis of history on redemption.

All of these women share this in common: a disgraceful past. They either committed or suffered disgrace. Whether they deserved them or not, they each had a tainted reputation. They endured the contempt of others and felt the pain of very real shame. At least four of the six would have carried extremely painful, sordid memories.

But God no longer sees them as disgraceful, but grace-full. God changed their identities. Instead of women of ill repute, he made them ancestors or disciples of the Messiah. They are archetypes of what he does for all of his children. God is saying loudly through each woman:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17–18)

The Old Has Passed Away

In Christ the old has passed away! Jesus takes away the old reputation. In Jesus, your past sin or the abuse and injustice you’ve suffered, and the ways you’ve viewed yourself and others have viewed you because of it, is not who you are. In Jesus, your heavenly Father says,

You are my child (Ephesians 1:5). I have washed you and made you holy (1 Corinthians 6:11). You are clean, and no one has authority to say otherwise (Acts 10:15). And you are my beloved (Romans 9:25). I have removed all your scarlet letters (Psalm 51:7).

God has thousands of reasons for everything he does. One great reason he founded this gracious sorority was to remind us of his lavish, unmerited grace to the undeserved and unlikely and despised. It’s another way to tell us that he loves to redeem sinners, he loves to produce something beautiful out of something horrible, he loves to make foreigners his children, and he loves to reconcile his enemies. He loves to make all things work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28), even for prostitutes, mistresses, and men like me.

Bend Every Pleasure Back to God: Enjoying Gratitude with C.S. Lewis

God takes great pleasure in helping us grow in the happy grace of gratitude. And the almost unbelievably wonderful thing about this is that he uses pleasures to do it. This casts a whole new light on the blessing, often used as a table grace, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.”

One gift among many we can be truly thankful for today is the life of C.S. Lewis, who pointed so many of us to a life of joy-drenched faith and gratitude. Jack (as he preferred to be called) spent much of his adult life learning to look up the sunbeams of God to their Source, and write what he saw so we could learn to do this too. Such looking caused him to ponder,

What would it be to taste at the fountainhead that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy. (The Weight of Glory, 44)

Fifty-five years ago today, Jack Lewis drank at that fountainhead for the first time and finally saw unfiltered where all the beauty came from. And he experienced in full force what he knew here in part, that “joy is the serious business of Heaven” (Letters to Malcolm, 124).

Would you like to be a more joy-drenched, thankful person? Learn, with Lewis, how to bend every pleasure back to God.

A Cruel Twist on Grace

When I was in the fourth grade, I was in a local production of the musical “Oliver” (adapted from Dicken’s Oliver Twist). The musical begins with poor Oliver incarcerated in a dungeon-like London workhouse for orphans, managed by the terribly stern, even cruel, Mr. Bumble. Every meal the orphans eat is a single small bowl of thin “gruel” (think icky oatmeal). And before the orphans are allowed to partake of their pitifully meager meal, Mr. Bumble threateningly proclaims, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.”

Mr. Bumble’s version of this table grace is a tortured one. He believes “truly thankful” means something like a cowering, complaint-less, resigned subjection, and God’s way of making people truly thankful is via authoritarian decree with a not-so-subtle threat of punishment — such as taking away what little one has. The “Lord” to whom Mr. Bumble refers bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Bumble himself — “a hard man” (Matthew 25:24).

We too can be tempted to think of God as an austere, severe overlord, who, when he commands us to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18), is expecting his poor, oppressed subjects to wring thanksgiving out of the dry rags of their weary, malnourished souls for the rather parsimonious portion of gruel he gives them. This, of course, renders the act of thanksgiving about as pleasurable as paying taxes to Caesar.

At one time, C.S. Lewis held such suspicions of God. But the more he delved into Scripture and the world, the more he saw how wrong such views are.

Shafts of Glory

Lewis discovered that God doesn’t make us truly thankful by threatening us; he draws it out of us with pleasures. And these pleasures are pointers to something greater — they become our tutors in thanksgiving.

I was learning the far more secret doctrine that pleasures are shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibility. As it impinges on our will or our understanding, we give it different names — goodness or truth or the like. But its flash upon our senses and mood is pleasure. (Letters to Malcolm, 119)

Pleasures are shafts of God’s glory. What kind of pleasures? “No pleasure [is] too ordinary or too usual for such reception; from the first taste of the air when I look out of the window — one’s whole cheek becomes a sort of palate — down to one’s soft slippers at bed-time” (120). No pleasure is too small to be a preacher of the kindness and mercy and goodness of God. This means we are bombarded by shafts of the glory of God all the time. All around us is fuel for the fire of thanks, if we will but notice.

Objections should come quickly (if we’re thinking). Surely, not all pleasures are shafts of glory. We’ve indulged in too many forbidden pleasures to believe that. Lewis agrees, but clarifies something important:

Certainly there are [bad pleasures]. But in calling them “bad pleasures” I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean “pleasures snatched by unlawful acts.” It is the stealing of the apple that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory. That does not palliate the stealing. It makes it worse. There is sacrilege in the theft. We have abused a holy thing. (119)

Looking Up the Sunbeam

So how exactly do pleasures — these shafts of God’s glory — become our “tutors” in gratitude?

We learn very early in our Christian life that Scripture commands us to feel grateful to God (Psalm 106:1; Colossians 3:15). Very often, we learn this before we really understand how thanksgiving works. So we try to work up a sense of thankfulness and worship over abstract things like “God’s beauty,” or goodness, or blessings, or love, but we wonder at the wispy, ephemeral quality of our gratitude. The problem is, we can’t emotionally connect with an abstraction that isn’t sufficiently grounded in specifics. As Lewis said,

[We] shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have “tasted and seen.” Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are “patches of Godlight” in the woods of our experience. (122)

Pleasures teach us about God like patches of forest sunlight teach us about the sun. The golden glow in an autumn wood, the happy laughter of a beloved child, the bright red cardinal alighting in the snowy white bush just outside the kitchen window, the savory bite of hot Thanksgiving turkey with just the right amount of cranberry sauce — these are patches of Godlight.

And it’s in glimpsing these “shafts of glory,” these specific pleasures, for what they are, that the glory of the greater abstract realities begins to dawn on us. We discover that “to experience the tiny theophany is itself to adore” (120). And it makes us wonder, “What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this! One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun” (120).

Tutors in Thanksgiving

That’s the key to understanding pleasures as tutors in thanksgiving. They are sunbeams filling the woods of our experience with patches of Godlight. And as we follow their beams up to their Source, they point us to far greater glories. When Lewis made this discovery, he made it his goal “to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration” (119). And he has been so helpful to us in seeking to do the same, thanks be to God!

Does God command our thankfulness? Yes. But it is not the exacting command of a tyrant. It is the loving command of a father whose desire is his children’s highest happiness. Therefore, unlike Mr. Bumble, God does not coerce thanks out of us with threat. He draws it out with pleasures. For he takes pleasure in pleasing us. And the more pleasure we have in him (resulting in more thanksgiving to him), the more glorious he becomes to us. That’s the purpose for all these patches of Godlight.

Fill Your Wandering Heart with Thankfulness

Do you know what’s stronger than lust? Thankfulness.

Let me illustrate before I explain. When Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph, why didn’t he succumb to her advances? He explains,

“Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:8–9)

Joseph received Potiphar’s remarkable favor on him as a gift from God. Gratitude was occupying so much space in Joseph’s heart that there was not enough room for the ingratitude of sexually sinning with Potiphar’s wife.

Too Full to Indulge

Now look at your own experience. You have not indulged in lust when your heart has felt full of thankfulness to God. Why? Because lust is a form of coveting: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Exodus 20:17). And coveting, in all its forms, is a fruit of ingratitude. It’s a desire for something you want but don’t have, or can’t have; it’s a desire for something God has not provided for you or forbidden to you (James 4:2).

So lust, being a form of ingratitude, is incompatible with gratitude — they cannot cohabit the same space at the same time. It’s one or the other. And thankfulness is the stronger power. Lust might feel powerful, and thankfulness might feel meek. But when thankfulness is truly present, lust is no match for it.

Thanksgiving is not merely a “nice” Christian character trait. It is a sin-conquering force. Gratitude is both a vital indicator of our soul’s health and a powerful defender of our soul’s happiness. Which means we should intentionally cultivate the healthy, happy habit of thanksgiving.

What Thankfulness Says About Us

How thankful we are reveals the health of our souls. When the apostle Paul describes what our being filled with the Spirit looks like, he doesn’t point to ecstatic experiences or miraculous spiritual gifts; he points to thankfulness:

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:18–20)

When Paul describes what our being governed by the peace and word of Christ looks like, he doesn’t point to an absence of conflict or our level of theological sophistication; he points to thankfulness:

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:15–16)

When Paul describes what our living in the will of God looks like, he doesn’t point to how well our rolls match our strengths and aspirations; he points to thankfulness:

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

When Paul describes what our freedom from sexual sin, or other kinds of defiling sin, looks like, he doesn’t point to the absence of temptations; he points to thankfulness:

Sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. (Ephesians 5:3–4)

If we want to know how healthy our souls are, we should check our levels of gratitude.

How Thankfulness Protects Us

We should monitor our gratitude, not merely for our spiritual health, but also for our spiritual protection. Gratitude is immensely (and subtly) powerful.

Gratitude is what we experience when we perceive that what we have received is an undeserved gift of God’s grace. It is a fruit of humility; it’s inherently unselfish. We don’t feel true gratitude toward ourselves, but only towards someone else who treats us better than we deserve. That’s how Joseph felt being entrusted as Potiphar’s chief steward.

Sins like sexual lust, however, are a fruit of pride; they’re inherently selfish, exploiting others for our own narcissistic purposes. That’s how Potiphar’s wife felt looking on the attractive Hebrew house slave.

Pride always looks more powerful than humility on the outside. But in reality, it’s not. It’s not even close. Humility is stronger than pride like heaven is stronger than hell. Like the cross was stronger than the Roman Empire. Like the Resurrection and the Life was stronger than the grave. In the same way, thankfulness is stronger than lust, and serving is stronger than exploiting.

The more thankfulness is present in us, the less vulnerable we are to sin. That’s why the Bible talks so much about thanksgiving. Thankful people have set their eyes on God (Hebrews 12:2), recognizing to some degree how much grace we are receiving right now (2 Corinthians 9:8), trusting him to cover all our sin and work our painful past for good (Romans 8:28), and looking to him for all we need tomorrow and into eternity (Philippians 4:19). Souls that learn to be content in God “in whatever situation” (Philippians 4:11) are souls that are the least vulnerable to temptation, particularly covetous temptations.

Be Thankful

Therefore, cultivating thankfulness should be one of our core strategies in helping each other fight sin. In our small groups and accountability groups, we should encourage each other to “be thankful” (Colossians 3:15). Not out of guilty obligation, but out of an unashamed desire to be happy! Thankful people are not only the most spiritually healthy and spiritually protected, but very often the happiest.

Cultivating thankfulness is not easy. We all need help, and thank God help is available. But there is no thankfulness hack — no four easy steps to a grateful heart. It’s as hard as habit-building. We begin to train our heart-eyes to look for God’s grace — in all circumstances. This looking must become habitual. And habits are built by doing them every day. We get incrementally better at them as the days gradually accumulate to months, and months to years. They become more and more a part of us over time.

But it is worth the effort. Thankfulness is one of the most powerful affections God has given us the capacity to experience. It is far stronger than lust or any bondage of sinful pride. The more it grows in you, the more spiritual health you will experience, and the less power sin will wield over you.

Do You Work When You Should Rest?

Jesus often calls us to rest in the areas of life where our flesh wants to work, and to work in the areas of life where our flesh wants to rest.

The gospel is an ingenious work of salvific engineering. The Engineer knew what he was doing. The gospel turns out to be good news to us in precisely the ways we need most. If we trust it, the gospel simultaneously frees us from the despair of trying to save ourselves through our own effort, while also working to free us from the despair of slavery to our remaining sin.

However, the best news for our souls often doesn’t feel like good news to our flesh.

Rest Through Repentance

We hear Jesus’s call to rest in Matthew 11:28–30:

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Few words are more beautiful and wonderful and comforting and inviting. But if we want to truly understand them, we need to read them in the context.

In Matthew 11:7–18, we hear Jesus challenge his listening crowd with how many of them were rejecting both the more ascetic John the Baptist as a demoniac (Matthew 11:18) and the more indulgent Jesus as a degenerate (Matthew 11:19). He said they were like fickle, discontented children, because “we played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn” (Matthew 11:17). Both John and Jesus were inviting people to receive the gift of eternal life through repentance and faith in Jesus (John 3:16, 36), but they were refusing to come to Jesus that they may have life (John 5:40).

Come and Rest

Then we hear Jesus deliver scathing rebukes of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, cities in which he had preached and performed “mighty works,” because they wouldn’t repent (Matthew 11:20–24). They too refused to come to Jesus that they may have life.

It’s at this point we hear Jesus utter his great invitation: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” But he also tells us that only “little children” — the humble and helpless — accept it, while the “wise and understanding” reject it (Matthew 11:25).

Why? Because to receive the gospel rest Jesus offers requires us to trust him fully and hand him back the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — ceasing the evil work of trying to be like God (Genesis 2:17; 3:5). We must cease trying to atone for our own sins. We must cease trying to qualify for heaven or God’s approval on our own merits. We must cease putting God on trial. And we must cease considering ourselves our own (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

To come to Jesus to find the rest we so desperately need requires the surrender of our autonomy and self-perceived rights to anything. To be God’s means to no longer be gods. And this is something our sinful flesh hates.

Come and Die

We hear Jesus’s call to work in Matthew 16:24–26:

“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?”

Jesus’s call here is to a life of redemptive, self-sacrificial labor. However, it is not atoning work, but the “the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26). It is the kind of work that can be performed only by those who have received rest for their souls from Jesus. Because they trust him and believe that they will receive all they need (Matthew 6:33), they take up their cross daily and follow him in living lives of loving labor (Luke 9:23).

This is a Philippians 2 way of living, having the “same mind” as Jesus (Philippians 2:2, 5): humble, servant-hearted, not grasping at status and power and privilege and admiration — things humans love so dearly. And this too is something our flesh hates. Because it is fiercely proud, loves to be served by others, counts itself more significant than others, and grasps so tightly to all those things Jesus refused to grasp, for the love of his Father and the love of rebels he’d redeem.

Just as coming to Jesus for gospel rest requires surrender of what our sinful flesh loves, following Jesus into gospel work requires surrender of what our sinful flesh loves.

The Way That Leads to Life

Both the rest Jesus offers and the work he assigns require us to live by faith and die to sin. And though we often experience it as a war waging in our members between the Spirit and the flesh (Romans 7:23), it is “the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12) in which we learn to deny our sinful flesh — and thus deny the way of death — and choose the Spirit, the way of life and peace (Romans 8:6).

The Christian life is significantly counterintuitive. It is not easy. Jesus didn’t promise it would be. In fact, he said,

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13–14)

The way is hard. But it leads to life. It leads to joy. It leads to freedom. For to surrender our desire to be gods so that we can become God’s, and to surrender our desire to be ruled by our pride so that we can humbly serve the purposes of God and the good of others, is to begin living now in “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

This is an ingenious design, calling us to rest and work precisely in the ways our souls most need, and yet our sinful flesh least wants. And it is pure gospel. For its purpose is for our freedom. And “if the Son [sets us] free, [we] will be free indeed” (John 8:36). We will find rest for our souls and have spiritually fruitful lives.