Jon Bloom's Blog, page 20

You Were Born for Friendship

Each of us is designed for deep, experienced, intimate friendship with God. It’s what we all long for most in the core of our being.

We are never more spiritually healthy than when we not just know about, but really know by experience, the profound love and acceptance of our heavenly Father. And when we are unsure of his love and acceptance, or reject it as being either unreal or beyond our reach, we look for substitutes to fill the void of God’s friendship. But these substitutes only do damage to us and others — and still leave us with the aching void.

“Where Are You?”

How do we know that we’re designed for intimate friendship with God? We know it because of the way Adam and Eve fractured this friendship.

We get a glimpse of the nature of their relationship with God when they hide themselves from him in the garden over shame for what they have just done. We know something is very wrong, something precious has been defiled, because of God’s question: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:8–9).

That may be the saddest question in the Bible. It was a relational question, not so different from what a heartbroken spouse asks a wandering, relationally distant spouse, or a heartbroken parent asks a withdrawn prodigal child, or a friend asks a friend who was once very close but now is relationally cool and aloof. Where are you? Why is this distance between us?

Adam and Eve suddenly, uncharacteristically no longer wanted to be with God. They had cheated on him. They had rejected him and all they once shared together. They had ceased to trust him. He was no longer safe. His very presence exposed their shame. They were choosing separation.

Separation was indeed inevitable. Holiness cannot abide with sin, nor vice versa. God would remain faithful (2 Timothy 2:13), but they would not. And their progeny would take faithlessness to then unimaginable levels, growing in their alienation from him, increasingly futile in thinking, dark of heart, and ungrateful (Romans 8:21).

In the Absence of Friendship

In the absence of God’s friendship — and the ocean depth of love, purity, peace, and security it provided — evil began to grow and take root in the human soul. As people’s identity became increasingly unhinged from God, they became increasingly and profoundly selfish, insecure, fearful, and indulgent.

This gave rise to all manner of pride-fueled sins to fill the void. People became boastful and posturing and domineering. They became overly self-conscious and deferential out of fear of what others would think. They developed an inconsolable soul-loneliness no earthly relationship could satisfy, though they tried. They developed a chronic sense that no matter what they achieved, it was never enough. They lived with a relentless shame that drove them to maintain an appearance of success in others’ eyes while hiding their dark depravity, no matter what. And when in positions of power, they learned to manipulate and use others for their own sensual pleasure as ways to enhance their self-perception as significant, alluring, and glorious.

In other words,

Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (Romans 1:28–31)

These are what grow in the human soul — our souls — in the absence of God’s friendship.

God and Sinners Reconciled

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us” (Ephesians 2:4), did not just leave us here in our wretchedness, like he could have. He conceived the plan and took the initiative that we not only couldn’t take, but in our condition never would have taken even if we could — to bridge the great divide separating the Holy from the defiled.

Advent is God coming after us — unfaithful, ungrateful, insecure, over-achieving, indulgent, lonely, deceitful, posturing, shy, manipulative, abusive sinners — in order to reconcile us to himself. The Word became flesh to heal the friendship fractured in Eden. Jesus came to make us friends of God once again.

That’s what Advent is all about: God wants you to have deep, experienced, intimate friendship with him.

God’s Gift to You

If you’re a Christian, you know this theologically, which is good. But Jesus didn’t come, die, and be raised again merely for your theoretical understanding, nor merely for your ability to teach the truth of a restored friendship with God. Jesus came, died, and was raised that you might experience friendship with God — not just in heaven, but now:

“He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him . . . and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:21–23)

This is what God wants: to manifest himself to us. This is the ministry of the Holy Spirit: that we might have the very presence of the Father and the Son dwelling in and with us.

The filling of the Holy Spirit is not merely power to perform works of ministry, but to experience God’s friendship to the extent that we can’t stop speaking about him to others (Acts 4:20). The gifts of the Holy Spirit are not given to us to enhance our identities, but to mediate God’s gracious friendship to others.

Advent is about your friendship with God. It is God in Christ pursuing you to the furthest end that you may have his friendship forever. He means it to be a real friendship — deep, intimate, and experienced. Advent is God’s offering you the gift you long for most in the core of your being. Believe it, receive it, lean into this friendship this Christmas. Soak in the Scriptures and listen to him speak to you.

For those who trust in Jesus, the cross removes the relational distance. The Father says “come” (Isaiah 55:3), the Son says “come” (Matthew 11:28–30), the Spirit says “come” (Revelation 22:17). Draw near to your greatest Friend and he will draw near to you (James 4:8) and give you the grace you need (Hebrews 4:16).

What Should We Wear to Church?

When I was a little boy, probably 80% of men wore a coat and tie to our church, and 90% of women wore dresses. By the time I was in high school, 40% of men wore a coat and tie, and 50% of women wore dresses to church — the majority of both genders being middle-aged and elderly. Everyone else dressed “business casual.” Jeans were rare. Tee shirts even rarer. Shorts were never seen outside the nursery, even in mid-July.

Today, in the church I attend, no man wears a suit or sport coat unless it’s a special occasion. And ties are seen less than coats. I’d say less than 5% of women wear dresses on Sunday. Shorts, tee shirts, and sandals are commonly worn in warmer weather. My young son wonders why he has to “dress up” for church if I tell him to change into better jeans and a nicer tee shirt.

In the small Protestant denomination I belong to, no pastor I know of preaches in a coat or tie on a typical Sunday. Pastors, worship team members, and other platform participants dress pretty much like everyone else minus the shorts, tee shirts, and sandals.

These changes in what people wear to church reflect the wider cultural changes over the past fifty years regarding clothing. The whole of American culture has dressed down. This has produced largely generational debates over appropriate church attire. Those who favor more formal dress suspect casual clothes reflect a disrespectful, irreverent attitude toward God. Those who favor casual dress feel it reflects a more authentic approach to God. Does either have a biblical case?

Does God tell us what we should wear to church?

More Respectful?

The debate over formal versus casual church clothing is a shrinking one for at least two reasons: 1. the pro-formal party is shrinking, and 2. the pro-formal remnant is now so outnumbered it hardly seems worth the effort to argue.

Most folks who lament the casual trend came of age in an era where public dress in general was more formal. They, like most people in every era, simply assumed their own cultural norms. It just wasn’t “right” to wear casual clothes in certain places, especially in church.

So, as the cultural clothing norms changed, and people — typically younger people — started wearing casual clothes to those places, including church, it felt “wrong.” It felt like a form of disrespect, even rebellion, toward the older generations. In church, it felt like disrespect, even rebellion, toward God.

But is this true? Certainly, on the microlevel of sinful individuals, plenty of rebellion toward elders and God took place, just as it has in all generations. The pro-formal crowd had their own generational expressions of rebellion. But from a biblical standpoint, there is no compelling exegetical case to be made that more formal dress is de facto more respectful toward God than casual dress. Church clothing is a preference formed by culture and tradition.

More Authentic?

On the other hand, many of those who embrace the trend toward more casual have come of age during the dressing-down decades, and they are just as vulnerable to assuming the cultural norms that have shaped them. It feels “fine” to wear jeans and a tee shirt to church, perhaps the same ones worn on Saturday. But why does it feel okay?

As I mentioned before, “authenticity” is the most popular answer. We are coming to God as we are, putting on no airs or masks with him.

It sounds good, but I don’t really buy it. Wearing casual clothes is no more de facto spiritually authentic than formal clothes are de facto spiritually respectful. We might not be at all authentic standing before God in our jeans. We may choose casual clothes primarily to fit in socially, or to attract attention to ourselves, or to nurture a “cool” image. In other words, we may wear casual clothes to church and worship God with our lips, while our hearts are far from him (Isaiah 29:13).

Perhaps casual clothes can help us approach God more authentically in ways formal clothes don’t. Perhaps formal clothes can help us express respect and reverence toward God in ways casual clothes don’t. I have significant doubts about both.

What God Wants Us to Wear

God does not explicitly endorse either formal or casual clothes in corporate worship. He doesn’t even enter the debate. In fact, outside of ritual Levitical laws that no longer apply in the new covenant, God says virtually nothing regarding how we should dress when we come together to worship him.

It’s not that clothing doesn’t matter to God. Clothing matters a great deal to God — just not in the same ways or for the same reasons it typically matters to us. God refuses to decide the formal-casual debate, but he does explicitly tell us what he wants us to wear to church:

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (1 Peter 5:5)

What are we supposed to wear? Humility.

All clothing — formal, casual, work, sport, beachwear, sleepwear, underwear, headwear, every other kind of wear — can be a source of great pride. There isn’t a clothing item or style that we can’t turn into an expression of self-centered, self-exalting self-worship.

But if we clothe ourselves with humility, if we “count others more significant than [ourselves],” and “look not only to [our] own interests, but also to the interests of others,” then no matter how we dress, we will honor and reflect Christ (Philippians 2:3–4).

The Clothes Inside Us

God doesn’t specify what external clothes honor him most, because he cares what our hearts wear. What’s inside of us either honors him or dishonors him — either approaches him with authenticity or with inauthenticity. If our hearts are wearing humility, no matter what we wear, we will dress in loving ways. If our hearts are wearing pride, formal clothes will always be disrespectful and casual clothes will always be inauthentic.

If our hearts are wearing humility, what will matter to us is whether God is glorified and others are loved. But if our hearts are wearing pride, we will disregard God’s glory and others’ spiritual health in favor of our personal preferences and freedoms.

And, in the end, if our hearts are wearing humility, we will think of our clothes as little as possible when we draw near to God together in worship.

How to Find Joy in Your Work

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

One of the sadder experiences in our fallen states is so easily losing our sense of wonder in the most familiar things — like the first verse in the Bible, as laden with glory as it is. We easily stop pondering it because we think we understand it, even though we may have only scratched the surface of its meaning.

Has it ever hit you that the first verse in the Bible is about work — what God calls his creative activity (Genesis 2:2)? Or that the very first work undertaken is described as creative — not drudgery to avoid? Or that God really enjoyed his work?

The more we think about the whole first chapter of Genesis, the more glorious things we see regarding how God views his work, and the wonderful, liberating implications it has on how we are to view our work.

God Works for Joy

So where do we get the idea that God enjoys his work? From the last verse of the first chapter in the Bible:

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31)

No, the word “joy” isn’t explicitly there, but it’s there. God doesn’t have sin-disordered affections and emotions like we do. God always experiences the appropriate joy from good work (Philippians 2:13) — even his brutal work on the cross (Hebrews 12:2). And being made in his image, we also receive joy from his work (Psalm 92:4).

It’s amazing to think about: the very first thing the Bible teaches us about God is that he engaged in incredibly vigorous, prolonged, creative work, and he enjoyed it— both the work itself and the fruit of his work.

God never works just to get a paycheck. God never works to prove himself out of some kind of internal insecurity. He never works to get something he needs, for he provides everything for his creation out of his abundance (Acts 17:25). God’s work is always the overflow of his joy in being the triune God. And as Jonathan Edwards said, “It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain that it is inclined to overflow” (God’s Passion for His Glory, 165).

God works for the immediate and ultimate joy of it!

We’re Designed to Work for Joy

And here’s where the wonderful, liberating implications for us come in. God made us in his image and gives us work to do — work that’s like his:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:27–28)

God created us to do work similar to his work and to experience from work similar benefits, appropriate to our capacities. Our work is to be creative (“be fruitful and multiply”), vigorous (“have dominion . . . subdue”), and give us joy (God “blessed” us with his mandate). God always meant for our work to be sharing with him in his work, and sharing his joy.

We aren’t meant to work just to get a paycheck, or to prove our worth, or to gain our identity because we’re insecure or prideful. God didn’t design work to be a drudgery, or a necessary evil. That disease infected our work when we fell from grace.

What Destroys Our Joy in Work

A curse infected our work the day our original forebears trusted the viper’s promise over God’s:

“Because you have . . . eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17–19)

This is work as we experience it in this age: lots of sweat-producing effort yielding lots of thorns and thistles. The ground (or its equivalent for us) fights us, our tools fail us, our indwelling, prideful or slothful sin inhibits us, our frail bodies weaken us, other sinners impede us, demons assail us. Like all of creation, our work is subjected to futility by God (Romans 8:20).

This is why we often resent or even hate work: our sin and the curse make it so hard. So we avoid work, or we turn it into a pragmatic, mercenary enterprise to buy something or to give us an identity we believe will bring us joy.

But that’s not what work is for. We are not meant to prostitute our work to get money or status. God meant our work to creatively and vigorously steward some part of his creation, to be a means of providing for our needs and serve others, and to bring us joy. And God has made that possible, even in this futile age, no matter our circumstances.

What Restores Our Joy in Work

Here is stunning good news, which brings unconquerable hope, for every worker who will believe it:

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

Wait, our labor is not in vain? Isn’t that what futility is? Yes! And part of the gospel is that labor done “in the Lord” is not in vain because it cannot ultimately be derailed by the curse of sin.

What is labor done “in the Lord”? Does that only apply to “kingdom work”? Yes. But “kingdom work” encompasses everything Christians do:

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. (Colossians 3:23–24)

This means God wants every work we undertake, no matter who we are or what we do, to be a “work of faith” (2 Thessalonians 1:11), done in the strength he supplies (1 Peter 4:11). We give ourselves wholly to God, knowing he bought us with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20), and we do the work he gives our hands to do for his sake.

For we serve the Lord Christ, not men and not money.

Wherever You Work

Even though we still suffer the effects of the curse, the death and resurrection of Jesus, which redeems all things for Christians, liberates our faith-fueled labors from being in vain, and causes them to work for our eternal good and joy (Romans 8:28). He restores our joy in our work.

Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, whatever God gives your hands to do today, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the creative, vigorous, joy-producing work of the Lord.

The Most Repeated Command in the Bible

What do you think is the most repeated command in the Bible?

It’s not any of the prohibitions or warnings. It’s not about sex, or money, or power. The most repeated command in the Bible will probably surprise you: Be happy. God tells us more than anything else, in different ways, to “praise the Lord,” “do not be afraid,” “rejoice,” and “give thanks” — all of which are commands, in essence, to be happy.

Don’t move past this too quickly. Let it sink in: more than anything else, God commands us to be happy. God wants you to be truly, deeply happy. Not just in heaven someday. Not when circumstances take a turn for the better. Not when the sorrow or the darkness finally lifts. God wants you to taste real joy today. Now.

I in no way mean to trivialize the trials you may be experiencing. The suffering may be exquisite, the sorrow almost drowning, the fear near paralyzing. The Bible is as real-life as it gets. God says a lot about sin, sorrow, grief, pain, betrayal, failure, fear, horror, and wretchedness. But if you can believe it, God’s dominant theme is joy.

God wants us to know the kind of hope that has the power to produce joy in us even in painful places. He repeatedly commands us to be really, truly, deeply happy.

Why Does God Repeat Himself?

When God repeats himself, pay attention. Repetition implies importance.

That doesn’t mean that the most repeated commands are necessarily the most important commands. We know from Jesus that the most important commandments are that we love God with our hearts, souls, minds, and strength and our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:29–31). But most repeated certainly means something important. And if we’re paying careful attention, we’ll recognize that the most repeated commands are means of obeying the most important commandments.

That bears repeating because of how important it is: God’s most repeated commands are means of obeying God’s most important commandments. This is amazing. There is a direct connection between loving God supremely, loving others as ourselves, and our being authentically happy. We don’t sacrifice one for the other. When God commands us to love him with all we are, or to love others with the same care and concern and grace and compassion and patience with which we love ourselves, he is not commanding us to sacrifice real, lasting, true, satisfying happiness. He’s commanding us to pursue our real, lasting, true, satisfying happiness.

Is this true? Let’s examine four oft-repeated commands in Scripture and ask what God really wants from us.

“Praise the Lord”

When God commands us to praise him, what does he want? We know he’s not after our empty lip service while our hearts wander off somewhere else (Isaiah 29:13). He’s commanding us to look at him, through what he’s revealed to us about himself, until we see some aspect of his glory that transcends the paltry or corrupt things clamoring for our attention right now — glory that produces an awe-filled joy we can’t help but express in praise.

Our delight-filled praise not only glorifies God and gives him pleasure, but also lovingly points others to the same glory we’re seeing and the same delight we’re feeling — because we always praise (to others) what delights us. God is commanding us to love him, love others, and be happy.

“Do Not Fear”

When God commands us to “not be afraid,” what does he want? He wants us to meditate on some promise he’s made us until we experience the paralyzing effects of fear melting away and our courage rising.

This bold, happy confidence in God is not only an expression of trusting love in him; it also makes us feel lovingly expansive and encouraging toward others because we’re filled with hope in God. We can’t help but want to comfort and encourage others with the comfort and courage we have received from God (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). God is commanding us to love him, love others, and be happy.

“Rejoice”

When God commands us to rejoice, what does he want? He wants us to remember that no matter what happens, nothing will separate us from his omnipotent love for us in Christ (Romans 8:38–39), that he will work all these things for our good (Romans 8:28), and that he will rescue us from every evil deed and bring us safely into his heavenly kingdom (2 Timothy 4:18).

We express our love for God as we faithfully rest in his sovereign reign over all things — the sweet and the bitter — and we love others as we help them also faithfully rest in God’s sovereign reign too. God is commanding us to love him, love others, and be happy.

“Give Thanks”

When God commands us to give thanks, what does he want? Like John Piper says, God is not after the kind of thanks a six-year-old is forced to say to his grandma after getting black socks for Christmas. God wants us to look past the things that frustrate, anger, disappoint, discourage, sadden, and depress us, and to see his grace — his all-sufficient, abounding grace (2 Corinthians 9:8) — the grace flowing to us right now, whatever our circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

When we see his grace and trust his wise purposes, loving thankfulness rises toward him and pushes out our negative, sinful emotions and grumbling, replacing them with peace. And this gratitude-inspired peace lovingly overflows to everyone else we interact with, often helping them overcome their own temptations to grumble. God is commanding us to love him, love others, and be happy.

Secret Code

Once we put these lenses on, we begin to see that this secret code is contained in all of God’s commands, not just the most repeated ones: faith-filled obedience leads us to joy. God only commands his people what will bring them ultimate happiness. That’s why, for those who discover the secret, “his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). David discovered this secret and broke out in a love song to God’s commands:

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. (Psalm 19:7–11)

The commands of our Lord are more to be desired than gold because they make us happier than gold. In keeping them there is a far greater reward than gold: loving, enjoying, admiring, praising, thanking, and rejoicing in God forever (Psalm 16:11).

That is why God has filled the Bible with repeated commands to praise him, to not fear, to rejoice always, and to give thanks always, and every other command that pertains to us. He wants us to be happy. “The God of hope [wants to] fill [us] with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit [we] may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13). Today. Now. And forever.

The Blessing of a Bad Reputation

How important to you is people’s approval? How important to you is faithfully obeying God? Sometimes we’re forced to sacrifice one in order to have or do the other.

The last time you faced this choice, which did you choose? Was your choice an anomaly, or did it follow a pattern of previous choices?

A good reputation is a very good thing — better than silver or gold, the Bible says (Proverbs 22:1). The apostles required people’s approval of the seven men chosen to ensure Hellenistic widows stopped being neglected (Acts 6:3). They required a good reputation of elders, both inside and outside the church (1 Timothy 3:2, 7), as well as of widows supported by the church (1 Timothy 5:9–10). Cornelius (Acts 10:22), Timothy (Acts 16:1–2), and Ananias of Damascus (Acts 22:12) are documented, in Scripture, as men who had good reputations.

We should want to be thought well of by others because of our integrity and the purity of our conduct. But it’s evil to want to be thought well of by others so much that, when push comes to shove, we compromise the integrity and purity of our conduct to get it.

And herein lies our significant battle: one we must wage against our pride. In order to follow Jesus faithfully, we must repeatedly die to our desires for people’s approval in order to be truthful and obey God.

When Good Is Very Bad

Consider this: the same God who commends a good reputation, also made this statement:

“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” (Luke 6:26)

What exactly did Jesus mean? He meant what the Spirit said through the prophet Jeremiah:

“From the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:13–14)

In Jeremiah’s day — like in ours — prophets were saying false things in order to win the approval of people, especially the social and financial gatekeepers. Their goal was to obtain “unjust gain” — financial and likely a wide range of other benefits. Anything we value as a benefit we count as gain (Philippians 3:4–8).

What makes a good reputation a very bad thing? When a good reputation is a result of manipulating others for selfish ends. That’s what made the false prophets false.

Jesus’s point was this: anytime we sacrifice truth for the sake of our reputation, anytime we sacrifice obedience to God for the sake of others’ approval, we’re doing it for unjust gain — to obtain some benefit through dishonesty. And it is a spiritually dangerous transaction.

Jesus knows we face this temptation regularly. Our sinful pride is “greedy for dishonest gain” of all kinds (1 Timothy 3:8), and fearful to lose what gain we have. That’s why he warns us that if everyone speaks well of us, something is very likely wrong. We may not be following Jesus faithfully. We may be valuing the benefits we gain by pleasing people more than the benefits Jesus promises us.

When Bad Is Very Good

To help us test what we really value, Jesus juxtaposes his woe on bad good reputations with his blessing on good bad reputations:

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” (Luke 6:22–23)

Happy are we when our name is mud for Jesus’s sake. That’s a strange sort of happy. Exactly. It’s an otherworldly happy. It values the promise of heavenly reward more than the benefits we gain by pleasing the people who don’t love Jesus.

What makes a bad reputation a very good thing? When a bad reputation is a result of faithfulness to the truth and faithful obedience out of love for Christ. That’s what made the true prophets true.

Loving the promise of gaining the reward of God more than people’s approval has been the mark of God’s people in all of history. It is the testimony of nearly everyone listed in the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11. They were people who sought a better country than exists on earth (Hebrews 11:16), who chose “to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:25), and who “considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of [the world]” (Hebrews 11:26).

Test Yourself

The woe and the blessing are tests. This is one test: Are we happy, even when our reputation is trashed and our social and perhaps financial capital is devalued, because we choose the truth (John 14:6) and demonstrate our love for him by obeying him (John 14:15)?

This is another test: Do we ever experience this?

How we answer these questions reveals to some extent what we treasure. And if our answers are not what we wish they were — what we know Jesus wants for us — they can become, if we respond in faith, not condemnations but invitations. There are many more and deeper joys to be had than the paltry, hollow unjust gain we receive from cultivating bad good reputations. Jesus wants to give us, and is inviting us to receive, the eternal blessing of a good bad reputation. With all his heart he wants to say to us, “Rejoice and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven!” (Luke 6:23).

Desperate Is Normal: A Field Manual for Overwhelming Anxiety

The normal Christian life is embattled. It’s full of strange and difficult conflicts with sin and weakness within, and strange and difficult conflicts with spiritual and human adversaries and a world subjected to futility and frail brokenness without.

These experiences typically feel anything but normal. Battles with our sin, our frailty, other people, demons, and a broken world infected with evil can, at times, feel surreal, making us feel desperate. They trigger emotions connected to our particular fears, past hurts, sinful pride, griefs, and hopes that are distracting and sometimes debilitating.

That means a crucial and significant part of the normal Christian life is learning the humble discipline of casting our anxieties on God, who deeply cares for us. Even, or especially, in the heat of battle and the fury of the storm, so that “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard [our] hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (1 Peter 5:6–7; Philippians 4:6–7).

The Bible is a field manual for the normal, embattled, desperate Christian life. God has mercifully packed it not only with examples and teaching, but also with songs and prayers for our trials. And we need songs and prayers to provide us words for the chaos, when anxiety and confusion fragment our thoughts.

Psalm 27 is that kind of song. David states his confidence in God, but he also confesses his anxiety and bewilderment and desperation. It’s a song for the normal Christian life.

Your Source of Hope

David begins with the source of his hope:

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1)

By “light,” David means the same thing written in Psalm 119:130: “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.” By “salvation,” David means God is his hope to rescue him from his greatest dangers (Psalm 34:6).

This is our song too. For God must be our hope, our light in a dark world, and our salvation from the most fearsome things.

Your Source of Courage

Next, David declares the source of his courage:

Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident. (Psalm 27:3)

David was under frequent threat from treacherous countrymen (Psalm 27:2), and from enemy nations. We too are under spiritual attack (Ephesians 6:12). And these attacks can be fierce — spiritual forces of wickedness are out to destroy us (1 Peter 5:8).

But if God is our hope, then these “adversaries and foes [will] stumble and fall” (Psalm 27:2). Singing or praying this truth when fear rises reminds us of why we have good reason to be encouraged and provides us words to quiet our fear and squash the intimidation.

Your Source of Delight

Then David describes the source of his delight:

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4)

David’s deepest desire — his one thing — is not for safety, military dominance, or prosperity. David wants God — to be near God, to see and be satisfied with God’s glory, and to live by God’s wisdom and guidance.

In the embattled, desperate moments of the normal Christian life, when our felt needs can be focused on being delivered from particular troubles, it is helpful to have words ready to remind us of the only ultimately necessary thing we need (Luke 10:42).

Your Source of Help

After David declares his confident hope and deepest delight in God, then he shifts the tone of the psalm to reflect the desperate moment he’s experiencing:

Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me! (Psalm 27:7)

Even though God is his source of hope, courage, and delight, at that moment, David is feeling some fear-induced perception that God doesn’t want to answer him, perhaps is even angry at him (Psalm 27:9–10). His needs feel very urgent and he’s pleading with God for help and comfort.

This is exactly how we feel in embattled, desperate moments. Our emotions are not in sync with our beliefs about God, and it’s okay to tell him. David’s words give us a prayer to One who understands exactly what we’re experiencing and invites us to come to him for help (Hebrews 4:15–16).

Your Source of Understanding

David’s confusion and desperation make him aware of his ignorance, and so he then turns to God as the source of understanding:

Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. (Psalm 27:11)

David didn’t know the plots of his enemies, which made him feel vulnerable. But he knew that God knew. And he knew that if he walked in the obedience of faith with God, it would be the safest place.

We don’t need to understand all the complexities of our trials. Neither do we necessarily need to deep dive into our psychological labyrinths to figure out all our fears (though in certain cases this is necessary). What we need to know most is God’s way, and then we must follow it.

Your Source of Certainty

Lastly, David applies his strong confidence to his weak desperation in a firm exhortation to his soul:

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord! (Psalm 27:13-14)

David is declaring the source of his certainty while living in an uncertain world. And it is a beautiful, strengthening way to end his psalm.

This is also a healthy climax to the song of the normal Christian life. Regardless of the way things appear or feel, we will know the goodness of God in the land of the eternal living! We do not need to panic; we need to be strong. And we need to tell ourselves: Soul, don’t cow to intimidation, don’t wallow in hopelessness, and don’t cave in to fear. Wait for the Lord and let your heart take courage.

Fourteen Verses to Memorize

Your normal Christian life doesn’t always feel normal. It is frequently hard, embattled, and desperate. But the Bible teaches us that this is, in fact, normal. And the Bible not only teaches us about these trials, but also equips us with songs and prayers to help us keep our heads and find our bearings.

Psalm 27 is one of God’s precious equipping gifts to us. And, at only 14 verses, it’s worth memorizing, because, in the heat of the fight for faith, it can be brought out quickly as both a “sword of the Spirit” and as a shield from “the flaming darts of the evil one” (Ephesians 6:16–17).

Let it be a short song for your normal Christian life.

Whatever Is Lovely: How to Overcome Demanding Thoughts

Where do your thoughts come from?

Our conscious thoughts always come from somewhere. That’s obvious enough, you might think. My guess, though, is that much of the time it’s not obvious to you at all where your thoughts are coming from.

Of course, sensory and information input give you frequent food for thought (like this article is doing right now). But what about the thoughts demanding your attention first thing in the morning, or last thing at night, or the compulsive thoughts that dictate your behaviors?

I’ll give you a personal example. During my morning prayer time, it’s not uncommon for me to suddenly realize I’ve stopped praying and am now engaged in an imaginary conversation with myself or someone else regarding something I’m currently concerned about. When I try to stop and get back to praying, it can be very hard — my thoughts are demanding my attention.

You know what I mean, because you experience this too. Such thoughts often have what feels like a gravitational pull on our attention, almost like we can’t resist going where they want to lead us, even if we don’t want to go there. Where are these coming from?

Thoughts, Emotions, Beliefs

If we want to know where our thoughts are coming from, the first thing to examine is our emotions. What specifically are we feeling — fear, anxiety, anger, disappointment, discouragement, grief, sadness, hope, excitement, pride, joy, desire, anticipation? Sometimes powerful emotions like these push us down a certain train of thought. Other times certain thoughts stir up such emotions. It doesn’t really matter which comes first, because our emotions always point to what’s feeding our thoughts.

And what our emotions point to are our underlying beliefs. What we believe is what feeds our thoughts — the thoughts that really matter to us and guide how we live.

We all have official beliefs and functional beliefs, and the beliefs I’m talking about are the latter. Our official beliefs are like a company’s formal mission statement, core values, and policy handbook. Functional beliefs are like how a company actually operates. If we want to know what a company really values, we look at its operations. If we want to know what we really believe at any given moment, we look at our functional beliefs.

And the quickest way to see our functional beliefs is to look underneath our emotions. That’s what’s feeding our dominating, behavior-dictating thoughts.

Think About These Things

But is any of this in the Bible? Yes. God, having designed the human psyche, is the supreme Psychologist, and the Bible is an incredible psychology text. Functional belief-fueled emotions and thoughts are all over the Bible. Why did Gideon think to hide his wheat in the winepress (Judges 6:11)? Why did David think sleeping with Bathsheba was a good idea (2 Samuel 11)? Why did Peter think he should deny Jesus to the servant girl (Matthew 26:69–70)? Why did the anguished father think to say to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24)?

But the text I’ve found most helpful recently is Philippians 4:8:

Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Note the last four words: “think about these things.” That’s a strong statement. Paul isn’t offering us counsel; he’s giving us a command. This is something we must obey. God is saying something profound to us through Paul: there is a way to change how we think, and we must choose that way. What way?

Look at the list. Have you ever stopped to think how abstract the concepts Paul lists are? The last time you struggled to escape a compulsive train of thought, how much help were concepts like truth, honor, justice, purity, excellence, and the rest? To the degree they remained abstract, probably no help at all.

Paul never intended these concepts to remain abstract. That’s why he wrote “whatever is” before each one. Paul knew that giving rise to our negative, sinful thoughts are specific false, dishonorable, unjust, impure, ugly, disgraceful, and detestable functional beliefs. Wherever these functional sinful beliefs (or unbeliefs) exist in us, manifesting in our demanding sinful thoughts and emotions, they must be confronted and replaced with “whatever is” the appropriate, God-dependent belief.

Fight for Joy

When we are struggling with distracting, demanding thoughts and emotions, God wants us to know that we are not victims who must simply endure the miserable ride on the train of our thoughts. He wants us to seize the controls he’s given us, switch tracks, and head in a faithful, joyful direction.

And we do this by remembering that superficial thoughts and emotions are the offspring of our deeper functional beliefs. Those false beliefs are based on false promises — any promise that doesn’t have its origin in God through his word. Therefore, when we unseat specific false promises by trusting true promises, we unseat the false belief giving life to dominating emotions and thoughts. When we do this, it produces spiritual peace and joy, even if nothing has changed in our circumstances.

This is hard work, especially if we’re out of practice or have never really made this a consistent practice. It’s a fight of faith, one we engage numerous times a day. And in habits of sinful thought and feeling we’ve conditioned ourselves to indulge, we should expect it to be particularly difficult.

But difficult doesn’t mean impossible, for “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). Yes, learning the habit of not being pushed around by our thoughts and emotions requires us to exercise discipline. But biblical discipline is not in the long run the denial of pleasure, but the pursuit of pleasure (Hebrews 12:10–11).

It is for joy and freedom and love that God is calling us to fight with all our might to “think about these things.”

The Proven Path to Mental Health

Is religion bad for our mental health? Popular atheists often say so. Some go as far as to say that teaching children religion is really a form of abuse — at least any religion that teaches a doctrine of sin and divine punishment. They claim such teaching heaps a load of guilt on people, and then traumatizes them with the terrible fear of the threat of hell. How could this not psychologically damage people?

I’m glad the question is being raised, especially by those whose own worldview demands that people come to terms with their ultimate existential meaninglessness: that life is fundamentally a brutal fight to survive and pass on one’s genes. That love, compassion, and psychological well-being are at root naturally selected adaptations to encourage one to preserve DNA. That good and evil are only human psychological constructs. That all our frenetic activity and gene-passing is ultimately futile since sooner or later homo sapiens will undergo species extinction. And that the cosmos cares absolutely nothing about any of this.

Life is a genetic conveyor belt toward extinction — and this promotes psychological well-being? If atheism is true, it makes sense why humans are nearly universally religious: a “God delusion” would help people cope with a hopeless reality.

In fact, it’s hard to overstate how important hope is to human mental health. In this light, we need to ask what worldview gives people the most mentally healthy hope. Because the human psyche’s need for hope, while not itself a proof, is a pointer to ultimate reality.

Why Things Fall Apart

To address this, first we need to begin with a different dichotomy. Drawing the line between religion and non-religion is simply a way for atheists to frame the argument to their own advantage. The line needs to be drawn between truth and falsehood.

I think we can all agree (except, perhaps, extreme postmodernists) that believing any false worldview is going to have a detrimental psychological effect on us, because our worldview shapes how we live and relate to others. So, any false worldview belief — religious or nonreligious — is going to damage us. If atheism isn’t true, and there are powerful arguments against it and growing scientific evidence weakening its claims, it still leaves a world of diverse and contradictory religions to discern between.

Asking the question about mental health really helps at this point because, again, what best addresses our psychological needs may not prove a worldview’s validity, but it’s pointing to something. And if we had to capture in one word what makes us, in all our psychological complexity, most mentally healthy, it would be this: hope. The human psyche is designed to operate on hope. The more hopeful we are, the more mentally healthy we are. The less hopeful we are, the more things fall apart for us.

Healthy Pointer of Hope

Our psyches, our inner selves, our souls, are hope machines. Our psyches burn hope like our bodies burn energy. And like our bodies grow faint when we run low on energy, when we run low on hope we start feeling discouraged, even desperate. All the wonderful things that have happened to us in the past will not fuel our hope if our future looks bleak. We can be grateful for the past. But we must have hope for the future in order to keep going.

When we’re hopeful, the world is full of wonder and possibilities. We have drive and curiosity. We don’t want to waste our lives. We take on challenges and see adversity as something to be overcome. But when we run low on hope, the world becomes a fearful, threatening place, full of chaotic futility. Hopelessness saps our desire and drive. It robs us of interest and appetite. We just want to curl up and protect our inner selves, our souls.

This makes the mental health of hope a powerful pointer to reality. It means we are designed to be hopeful. And hope is what we feel about the future. But the only way we can have hope for the future is if we believe the future is promising. Which means, we are designed to believe in promises.

Designed to Live by Faith

In other words, we are designed to be creatures who live by faith. And this is where atheism really falters as a pointer to ultimate reality. All it has to offer by way of mental health is autonomy. You’re free to do as you wish, but you must build your autonomous house, in the words of Bertand Russell, on “the unyielding foundation of universal despair.” This does not work for us psychologically. Those who believe God is a delusion, then, must construct some kind of hope delusion, or suicide will become increasingly appealing.

What keeps us going is hope in a future fueled by promises about the future. We, by nature, are not designed to “live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4). So, from a general human-mental-health standpoint, the issue becomes, What promises give us the most healthy, robust hope?

We Long for Redemption

That question is not hard to answer. It courses through us every day, and runs through the myths, legends, stories, songs, and poems we have loved most in all cultures and in every era: redemption. We long for good to triumph over evil. We long for justice to triumph over injustice. And we long for personal forgiveness and freedom from guilt — not guilt that man-made religion has heaped on us, but guilt from the depravity inside us and the things we have done, said, and thought that we would be mortified for anyone else to find out.

The doctrines of sin and divine punishment are only psychologically damaging if they are false. But if they are true — if God exists, and we are sinners, and God is going to bring the triumph of good over evil and the triumph of justice over injustice, including giving us sinners what we deserve — they are not damaging, but they are urgent necessities.

And no religion or system of beliefs in the history of mankind addresses human depravity and injustice in ways that so align with our experience of reality — while at the same time holding out such hope to us in such wonderful, almost incredible, precious promises — as Christianity.

Christianity names us as what we already know we are: sinners. It tells us what the wages of our sin deserves — and that our sins are even worse than we thought because our Creator is far holier than we thought. It tells us that our Creator is not only holy and perfectly just, but that he is gracious beyond our comprehension and has made a way for us to escape his righteous judgment against us by himself paying the debt of our sin and himself absorbing his wrath, making it possible for us to have what every one of us longs for: redemption and eternal life, free from sin and in full, restored fellowship with our Creator and Redeemer.

Christianity turns out to be the greatest, most beautiful story of redemption ever told. It addresses all our greatest and deepest needs and longings. It offers all of us the most hope, no matter who we are and how horrible we’ve been. When holistically believed and consistently lived, Christianity produces the most mentally healthy people history has ever known.

Heart of Mental Health

The heart of our mental health is found here: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23–24).

And here: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:31–32).

And here: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6).

And here: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7).

And here: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1).

And in hundreds of other hope-giving promises in the Bible.

Unhinged from God

It’s not religion that damages us; it’s unbelief. Things fall apart for us when we disbelieve God because the foundation of our hope erodes. Unhinged from God, our hearts, minds, and bodies are restless. The more unbelief is operating in us, the more disordered and mentally unhealthy we become. But the more we trust God, the more we abound in hope — no matter what our circumstances are, no matter how bleak things look at the moment (Romans 15:13).

The human heart is designed to love God most, and is never happier than when it does. The human soul is designed to find its rest in the promises God himself makes to us. The human psyche is designed to find its security in the unconditional acceptance and love of its Creator. And the human body is designed to work best when the heart, soul, and mind are functioning in a harmonious love for and trust in God.

The proven path to our soundest mental health is a robust, holistic trust, in everything and every circumstance, in the triune Christian God.

If Only

If only I could find my soulmate to marry. If only my mate felt like my soulmate. If only I could find that friend who really understands and accepts me for who I am. If only I could pursue the career I really want. If only my church were more [fill in the blank]. If only I weren’t so [fill in the blank]. If only I lived [fill in the blank]. If only I had [fill in the blank]. If only my family [fill in the blank]. If only [fill in the blank] hadn’t happened to me.

What are your if only’s? We all have them, because if only’s are a form of regret, and regrets are simply unavoidable in our experience — though not all of them are unavoidable. Some are nothing more than delusions.

Either way, we must take care with our regrets, because, whether based on something real or fantastic, they can erode our faith in God by subtly shifting our faith from God to our regrets — and that is truly regrettable.

Real Regrets

When I say that some of our regrets are unavoidable, here’s what I mean:

1. We are sinners who, even as regenerate believers in Jesus, are committing or omitting sin in greater or lesser degrees all the time, and this scorns God and damages ourselves and others to greater or lesser degrees.

2. We live our lives intertwined and interacting with other sinners whose God-scorning sin affects or damages us in greater or lesser degrees.

3. We live in an age riddled with futility, so things are always breaking down or not working out the way they should (Romans 8:20).

4. And we live in a world under the power of the evil one, so we are frequently affected by the oppression and opposition of demonic forces (1 John 5:19).

This means we all have legitimate regrets for past occurrences that have detrimentally influenced who we are and where we are. It’s right to regret ways we have harmed or been harmed by others. And it certainly isn’t wrong to feel some if only’s over certain effects of the fall that we or others have suffered, resulting in terrible grief and loss.

There are numerous appropriate reasons we might wish things could have been or could now be different. And having a robust belief in the sovereignty of God does not necessarily preclude our feeling regret. Paul even begins Romans 9, the Bible’s most clear defense of God’s sovereignty in election, with an anguished “if only” lament over his fellow Israelites’ rejection of Jesus as the Christ (Romans 9:1–3). It’s just that confidence in God’s providence allows us to faithfully rest in God’s power and wisdom to work all things together for his children’s good, even if, like Paul, on a human level we really wish things were different (Romans 8:28).

Fantasy Regrets

But not all our "if only" regrets are legitimate and unavoidable. Some of our if only’s are rooted in imagined ideals or fantasies we believe because we’ve absorbed messages from our family, friends, and cultures (or indulged selfish desires).

Fantasy Ideals are not as easy to spot as our real regrets, because they are not as poignant. Unlike real regrets stemming from painful events we’ve endured or caused, we often can’t identify the genesis of fantasy regrets because they are amalgamations of various messages, impressions, aspirations, envies, and hopes we’ve picked up along the way, some extending back into childhood.

These are often unexamined, uncritical assumptions about what will make us happy that wield remarkable power over us because they keep forming mirage dreams we end up chasing. We don’t recognize them as fantasies; they just impress us as the way things should be. And when they keep dissipating as we approach them, they become sources of chronic “if only” discontentment.

The End of If Only

Whether we’re dealing with real or fantasy regrets, the way we know we are focusing too much on them is that we find them draining our hope and sapping our joy. They lead us into a wasteland of discouragement or sitting in the dungeon of despair.

What’s happening is that these regrets are shifting our focus away from trusting the promises of God — the grounds and fuel of our future hope — to trusting the promises of our regrets. Discouragement and despair set in because we feel trapped by regrets we cannot seem to change.

The path out of the wasteland, the key out of the dungeon, lies in two small words that convey omnipotent power to deliver us from every regret: “But God.”

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:1–7)

You were once spiritually dead, living in regrettable sin, no matter how sordid or relatively well-behaved you were. But God! He loved you, he saved you, and he has made your future brighter than your heart has yet imagined (1 Corinthians 2:9).

The gospel truth is this: you are not trapped by any “if only” regret — real or fantasy, legitimate or illegitimate, past or present. All of your if only’s will find their end in your God, who is rich in mercy and abounding in a love for you so powerful, it conquers death and hell. All of his promises to you are yes in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). All your real, deep longings for joy he will fulfill, to some degree in this age, and in the age to come with all joy you will be capable of experiencing (Psalm 16:11).

So if you’re regrets are weighing you down, examine them. What is giving them life? Once you know, lay them aside and turn your gaze to Christ (Hebrews 12:1–2) and seize some of his promises. Remember: But God. Let him work your regrettable past for good, and let him blow away the fog of any fantasies.

At Least as Dangerous as Porn

When you think of the kind of trials that test your faith (James 1:2), do you ever think of material prosperity as one of them? Most of us don’t. We tend to think of suffering, adversity, and loss that put us in places of significant need.

And we try to avoid experiencing such needs if at all possible. If such experiences come, we really want, and therefore pray, for God to deliver us from the needy seasons as soon as possible. For surely a God who loves his children would not want them experiencing need, right? He’d want to bless us, right? Right. Unless need happens to hold greater, richer spiritual blessings than plenty. In that case, needy seasons would be greater gifts to God’s children than plenteous seasons.

Think about the testimonies you’ve heard of people’s powerful encounters with God. Ask yourself how many of those stories of powerful, transformational, life-altering, love-producing, sanctifying encounters with God were the result of being lavished with worldly prosperity. If you’re like me, you come up empty. But if you know any, you can probably count them on one hand with fingers left over.

On the other hand, how many of those stories involve people in some way being, as we say, brought to the end of themselves? Let that sink in for moment: we tend to encounter God more profoundly in our places of need than in our places of prosperity.

At Least as Dangerous as Porn

In fact, if we take the Bible seriously, material prosperity should frighten us, in some sense, because the Bible says frightening things about it:

Jesus: “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:24–25)

Paul: “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. But as for you, O man of God, flee these things.” (1 Timothy 6:10–11)

James: “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.” (James 5:1–3)

Not to diminish the dangers of sexual sin (1 Corinthians 6:9–11), but have you ever noticed that the New Testament issues more dire warnings against the spiritual dangers of material prosperity than sexual immorality? Jesus didn’t say it’s harder for a sexually immoral person to get into heaven than a camel to squeeze through a needle’s eye. He said it about rich people. And most people who read this live in one of the richest nations in the history of the world.

Do we tremble? Why is it that prosperous Christians aren’t forming accountability groups like crazy to help us keep our lives free from the love of money (Hebrews 13:5)? We know that desensitization to sexually immoral images or videos is dangerous to our souls, but are we at all in touch with the effects of wealth after many decades of being immersed in a prosperous culture? How has it affected us? How desensitized are we — especially in light of the fact that, according to the Bible, prosperity is at least as spiritually dangerous as pornography?

Trial of “Facing Abundance”

Another thing to notice: listen to how Paul speaks of abundance when writing his thank-you letter to the Philippian Christians for providing for his needs in prison:

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:11–13)

Does it strike you as strange that Paul speaks of abundance in the same way he speaks of need? He speaks of both as requiring faith, which means both are distinct kinds of faith-trials. Over years of trial and testing, he learned the secret of facing both circumstances.

We know that being materially “brought low” is a trial. But do we think of materially “abounding” as a trial? If we don’t, it may be that we are too accustomed to it, too comfortable with it — desensitized to it. And if this is the case, we’re in a dangerous place.

Abundance easily obscures our vulnerabilities, giving us a misleading sense of security, and often a false sense of independence. The danger lies precisely in the fact that it doesn’t feel dangerous. We tend to like the feeling it gives. Being people whose sinful, self-centered pride is far more pervasive and powerful than we are usually aware of, we love the sense of autonomy and indulgent opportunities wealth affords. We love not feeling needy. We consider that normal.

But according to Jesus, we are completely needy. We need him like branches need the vine (John 15:5). The problem is that prosperity has a tendency to mask that need. And this is why for most people, abundance is spiritually harder to face faithfully than need. In need, we are likely to be more in touch with our true need before God. Need has a way of humbling us. But in abundance, we are less likely to be in touch with our true need and it has a way of fueling our pride.

Strength to Abound

If we live in prosperity, we must take the Bible’s warnings earnestly to heart. For the sake of love, we must help each other keep our lives free from the love of money and what that means for us. We must be as vigilant to be prosperously pure as we seek to be sexually pure. Both money and sex are gifts from God, but both can also destroy us if we are not careful.

It takes tremendous spiritual strength to not be seduced by material wealth, to not transfer our trust in God to the material abundance wealth affords. Stay alert for prosperity’s seduction. It promises happiness and security and independence, but without the grace of God — without a mature, wholehearted faith in God — it will lead to many pangs (1 Timothy 6:10). For money is as seductive as sex, perhaps more so.

Remember Paul’s lament over those whose love of money caused them to wander away from the faith (1 Timothy 6:10). Remember Jesus’s lament over the rich man who could not follow him because he owned many possessions (Mark 10:21–23). And remember Paul’s example:

In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:12–13)

We need strength to abound. We need strength to resist prosperity’s siren song. And therefore, we need as much of God’s strength in abundance as we do in need, and very likely more.