Jon Bloom's Blog, page 26

Find Your Self-Esteem in Someone Else

The self-esteem movement as we know it really began when Adam and Eve ate the fruit in Eden.

Before that, self-esteem wasn’t an issue. Adam and Eve were not lost, and so had no need to “find themselves.” They had healthy self-esteem because they knew God and esteemed him above all things, certainly above themselves. This made them healthy selves, secure in their identity as children of God and complementary members of each other. Their self-esteem was rooted in a glorious humility, and defined and experienced in a God-designed community where they both knew and were known by God.

But that changed when they (and all of us since) detached themselves from God in their effort to be “like God” (Genesis 3:5). Self-esteem became rooted in pride, and seeking it became infected with selfish ambition. It mutated from a God-glorifying, complementary pursuit into a self-glorifying, competitive pursuit.

Looking in the Wrong Places

Around the turn of the twentieth century, theories of “self-esteem” emerged in the realms of psychology, and by the 1960s self-esteem was accepted by Western popular culture as one of the primary roots of mental health.

But because it didn’t address the fundamental problem — detachment from God — after more than fifty years of trying to apply self-esteem as a remedy for our identity-ailments, we find ourselves only more isolated as individuals and our relationships, communities, and societies only more fractured. And that’s because we’re looking for our self-worth in the wrong places, and for the wrong reasons.

We tend to think self-esteem comes from each of us being a star shining forth our own unique glory. The way we measure our glory is in how it is reflected back to us in the approval and admiration of others. We figure the more approval and admiration, the brighter our glory, and the greater our self-esteem. But anyone who’s really experienced those things knows this is not true.

Healthy self-esteem doesn’t come from prominence; it comes from being who we are designed to be. And we’re not designed to be stars; we’re designed to be parts of an organism. We see this in Romans 12:3–6:

By the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.

Where We Find Ourselves

A body is Paul’s favorite metaphor for the church because it so beautifully illustrates who we are in relation to God and one another. Jesus is our head (Ephesians 5:23), and we are all members or parts of his body.

It all begins with grace: “by the grace given to us” (Romans 12:3, 6). None of us deserves our “membership” in the body. It comes to us from God as an incredible gift of his grace through faith in Christ.

Neither do we choose what parts of Christ’s body we’ll be. God assigns us our roles (Romans 12:3; 1 Corinthians 12:18). He places us just where he wants us for the purposes he has planned. Therefore each of us is needed where God has placed us.

And “as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Romans 12:4–5). Just like a human body, no particular part of Christ’s body is more or less important based on how visibly prominent its role (1 Corinthians 12:22–24). None of us can do without the other (1 Corinthians 12:15–16). We are each very limited in what we can do and therefore beautifully interdependent upon each other.

That’s why, when trying to discern God’s will for our lives, we get confused if we look at ourselves in isolation. Just like a body part separated from the body looks strange, so do we out of the context of the church. It takes the body of Christ to understand the function of a part, and it takes all the parts working together to make the body function.

Sober About Ourselves

Understanding and believing that our unique place in the body of Christ is a gracious, sovereign gift to us from God, that it’s function is crucial for the good of others, and that their function is crucial for our good is what “sober judgment” looks like (Romans 12:3).

Pride is the knife that dissects the body of Christ into isolated parts to determine the value of each. The pride of conceit makes us consider our role or function more important than others. The pride of envy makes us covet the function of a part we consider better than our own (1 Corinthians 12:23–24).

But humility helps us see our function in relation to God and others. It unites the body because we don’t “think of [ourselves] more highly than [we] ought to think” (Romans 12:3). In fact, because we more clearly see how others benefit the body than we see how we benefit the body, humility causes us to think of others more significant than ourselves (Philippians 2:3).

And yet, our humbled and sobered mind still sees our identity and function in Christ’s body as a divine calling with more significance and nobility than any achievement or promotion in this world.

Healthy Self-Esteem

Only God could create such a glorious design, where each of us, no matter what our function in the body, can experience the beautiful depths of humility in receiving our calling as undeserved grace, while at the same time having it be more exalted and infused with meaning and dignity than we yet have capacity to comprehend.

Humility and exaltation: it is God’s way (1 Peter 5:6); it is Christ’s way (Philippians 2:5–11). In Christ, God once again calls us to find security in our identity as his children — esteeming him supremely — and as complementary members of one another— esteeming others more than ourselves.

This is where we find the restoration of healthy self-esteem: in a glorious humility and defined and experienced in a God-designed organic community — a community in which we know God and know each other: the body of Christ.

Lay Aside the Weight of Insecurity

When people are insecure, they can express it in very different ways, depending on their temperament, values, and conditioned habits, all often shaped by past experiences. In some, insecurity looks like meekness, compliance, and always assuming blame. In others, it looks like bravado, defiance, and never admitting wrong. In one person, insecurity moves them to avoid attention if at all possible; in another, it moves them to demand as much attention as possible.

We’re all familiar with insecurity, but what’s making us feel this way — and how do we get free from it?

What Is Insecurity?

Insecurity is a form of fear, and God does mean for certain things to make us feel insecure.

If we walk out on someone’s second-story deck and notice the wood is rotting, we should feel insecure. If we live or work with someone who’s dishonest or abusive, we should feel insecure. If we’re riding in a military convoy along a lonely Afghan road through Taliban territory, we should feel insecure. When we first come under conviction of sin and realize we’re under God’s wrath because we’re not reconciled to him through Christ, we should feel insecure.

God designed insecurity as a warning that we are vulnerable to some kind of danger. It instructs us to take some protective action.

But in the current American vernacular, what we typically mean by “insecure” is not just a circumstantially induced fear, but a fear so recurrent that we refer to it as a state of being. We talk of “being insecure” or we might say so-and-so is an “insecure person.” And what we mean by insecure is feeling a significant lack of self-confidence, or a powerful fear of others’ disapproval or rejection, or a chronic sense of inferiority.

But what are we afraid of? What danger is this kind of insecurity warning us against? It’s telling us that our identity is uncertain or threatened.

Where Do You Find Identity?

Our identity is who we understand ourselves to be at the core. It’s our essential self. Or it’s what we want to believe (and want others to believe) is our essential self, even if it’s not who we really are.

Where does our sense of identity come from? This is the crucial question, the pinnacle of the problem. How we answer it decides whether or not we will ever be free from being insecure.

And it’s not primarily an intellectual answer. We all know that we can “know” the right answer, but not know the right answer. We answer this question from our heart, because our identity is tied into what we really love, what we really want, what we really believe offers us hope. In other words, we always find our identity in our god.

Our god may or may not be the god of our creed. We may say our god is the Lord, but that may not really be true (Luke 6:46; Isaiah 29:13). Our god is the person or thing we believe has the greatest power to determine who we are, why we’re here, what we should do, and what we’re worth. Our god is what we can’t help but seek and follow, because we believe our god’s promises will bring us the greatest happiness.

What Does Insecurity Say?

So when we feel insecure because something threatens our sense of identity, it is telling us something about our god. This makes insecurity a mercy, though it almost never feels like a mercy. It feels like inadequacy or failure or condemnation. It weighs us down and makes us feel vulnerable and uncertain.

That’s why our response to this kind of insecurity is often avoidance. We try to reduce our exposure to people or situations that stir it up, or we try to assuage it by seeking various forms of self-affirmation from others, or we try to escape into other things — often habit-forming or addictive things — that dull or distract or fantasize away our identity-fear, at least temporarily. Or all of the above.

Fleeing insecurity is the right idea, but these kinds of avoidance are almost always fleeing in the wrong directions. Or to say it another way, they are almost always pain-killers, not cures. They do nothing to address our identity-related fear.

God designed insecurity to be examined in order that we might escape danger. That’s why it’s a mercy. This kind of insecurity is a God-gauge in our soul. It’s reporting to us that something is wrong with what we hear God or some other god telling us about who we are. Either a true belief is being challenged and perhaps refined, or a false belief is finally being exposed.

The Invitation in Insecurity

Exposure. We hate exposure, which is why we tend to avoid rather than examine our insecurity. We fear taking a good look at our identity because we’re afraid the gauge is going to confirm our worst fears about ourselves: inadequate, insignificant, failure, condemned.

We know instinctively that “nothing good dwells in [us], that is, in [our] flesh” (Romans 7:18). And we know that our souls stand “naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). We still carry the fall-induced instinct to cover our shame in front of God and everyone else (Genesis 3:8–21).

But, believe it or not, insecurity is not only a warning; it’s also an invitation. When we feel insecure, God is inviting us to escape the danger of false beliefs about who we are, why we’re here, what we should do, and what we’re worth, and to find peaceful refuge in what he says about all those things.

The more we understand the gospel of Jesus Christ, the more we find it is the end of insecurity — not the perfect end in this age, but the increasing and ultimate end.

Have we sinned and sinned greatly? In Christ “we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:14).
Do we feel like orphans, strangers, and aliens? In Christ we have been adopted by God to be his children and are now members of his household and heirs of all things with Christ (Ephesians 1:5; 2:19; Romans 8:17).
Do we feel like miserable failures? In Christ, almost incredibly, every failure will work for an ultimate good (Romans 8:28).
Do we feel weak and inadequate? In Christ God loves to choose the weak and foolish things because, when we are weak, he promises that his grace will be sufficient for us — so much so that we can learn to boast in our weaknesses because of how they showcase his strength (1 Corinthians 1:27–31; 2 Corinthians 12:9–10)!
Do we feel insignificant and unimportant? In Christ we were chosen by God (John 15:16), who purposefully assigned us a unique and needed function in his body (1 Corinthians 12:18).

Christ is now our identity — that’s what it means for us to be Christians! But in Christ we do not lose our true, essential selves; we become our true, essential selves. In Christ we are born again and become a new person, which is why in the coming age he will give us a new name (Revelation 2:17). So much more could be said.

Lay Aside the Weight

But if those promises are not satisfying to us — if we need other people’s approval to feel validated, if we find criticism or rejection debilitating, if we see a pattern of regularly disobeying Christ because we’re trying to escape or demand attention, or if we are caught in habitual or addictive sins through which we seek relief from our fears — then our insecurity is telling us we have an idol problem. We have a false god that needs to be knocked down, a sin-weight that must be laid aside (Hebrews 12:1).

Avoiding it will not free us from it. God wants us to examine it, even though we fear doing so. But we must not listen to our fears, for they don’t tell us the truth. If we come to Jesus with our sin desiring to repent, he says to us:

I will not condemn you, for I was condemned for you (John 8:10, 2 Corinthians 5:21).

Come to me, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28).

I will love you forever and unfailingly (Psalm 103:17).

I will fill you with peace that surpasses understanding (Philippians 4:6–7).

And I will make you more secure than you have ever dreamed (Psalm 27:5; 40:2).

There is an end to insecurity and all the fleshly striving it produces. It ends in Jesus. Let us bring all our insecurities to him and in exchange take his light burden of grace (Matthew 11:29–30).

Lord, Increase My Capacity to Love

Do people know that we are Jesus’s disciples by the way we love one another (John 13:35)?

This is a good question, though perhaps not the best way to ask it. The use of the plural “we” can have an unhelpful distancing effect.

For instance, I might be prone to answer with a general critique of the state of love in “the church” and shake my head and lament how far “we” have drifted from the New Testament standard. In doing so, I can make myself appear to be more earnest about the New Testament love commands than others, and feel a subtle, false sense of superiority to the faceless mass of corporate “we” failing to love as Jesus instructed.

This kind of mindset typically results in nothing productive.

Me, Not We

I need to watch myself carefully when it comes to critiquing the church, because it’s so easy and cheap, yet can feel deceitfully significant. Analyzing and evaluating “the church’s” failure to love — and diagnosing, however correctly, large-scale theological, historical, cultural, and sociological forces contributing to this problem — can feel profound, when I’m actually not doing anything. Talking about the lack of Christian love mainly as an external problem places no personal, specific demands on me. This is not good, because Jesus doesn’t approve of love-talk with no love-deeds or love-change (1 John 3:18).

So, the way I need to frame the question is this: Do people know I am Jesus’s disciple by the way I love others?

I confess that my flesh wants to dodge this question because it places me alone in the spotlight — but that’s right where I need to be. It forces me to stop comparing myself with my own conception of “the church” at large and start comparing myself to Christ who said, “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). And it helps me see the log of love-lack in my own eye, and my desperate need for God’s help to remove it.

Distinguishing Mark of a Disciple

Jesus, being God, is love (1 John 4:8). And his love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). His love seeks to serve, rather than be served (Matthew 20:28). His love seeks to save the lost (Luke 19:10) and lavishes the returning prodigal with grace (Luke 15:11–32). His love is patient and kind; it’s not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude. His love is not irritable or resentful, does not insist on its own selfish way, rejoices only in the truth, and bears all things (1 Corinthians 13:4–7).

The love of Christ transcends every other virtue; it is the most excellent way (1 Corinthians 12:31; 13:13).

And Jesus said this kind of love would be the distinguishing mark of his followers, the most remarkable thing about them (John 13:35). Because they would love like he loved, they would be his love-ambassadors on earth (2 Corinthians 5:20). So, Christians are meant to be the most love-focused, love-pursuing, love-dispensing people on the face of the earth.

Is this me? Is this you? Do people describe you and me as remarkably loving?

Growing in Love

Oh, how we all need the merciful exposing spotlight of the Holy Spirit to illumine our levels of love. We have no higher priorities in life than loving God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, as well as loving our neighbor as we love ourselves (Luke 10:27). We should not waste one more day allowing anything to impede our pursuit of those two loves. And if we’re reading the great commandments carefully, the words “all” and “as” should drop us to our knees. They are there to make us desperate for God.

This kind of desperation — utter helplessness — is what drives us to prayer. People who pray are people who know that apart from Christ they can do nothing (John 15:5). They seek to abide in him because they desperately need him. Christians don’t always — in fact, shouldn’t always — feel the emotion of desperation when they pray. Saints who learn to rest most in God’s promises have learned most profoundly how utterly they depend on God for everything. And how faithful he truly is.

But none of us will prayerfully press into loving God with our entire beings, or loving our neighbor as ourselves, until we see clearly our profound lack of such love — how much we need to be filled with the Spirit of Christ in order to love like Christ. We will likely keep comparing ourselves against the low-bar of one another, and often feeling like we’re doing relatively okay, until we invite the Spirit of Jesus to examine us. His questions always penetrate deeper. “Do you love others as I have loved you?” “Do unbelievers know you are my disciple by the way you love the Christians I have given you to love?”

Do we really want to know how he views our love levels? He invites us to ask him, and he promises to answer us if we want to know (Luke 11:10). His answer may be devastating. But that will produce the prayerful desperation that brings the growth.

Whatever It Takes, Lord

Jesus is utterly serious about his commandment, perhaps more than we may think (John 13:34). He did not command us to love one another relatively well. He commanded us to love one another divinely well — to love as he loved.

It does not matter that this is impossible for fallen human beings, for we have a God for whom all things are possible (Mark 10:27). And since the Father promises to give his Spirit to those who ask (Luke 11:13), let us ask boldly (Hebrews 4:16) and persistently (Luke 11:5–8):

Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my capacity to love until I love you with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love my neighbor as I love myself.

Four Reasons to Slow Down

A few years back, I began tracking how many books I read during the year. After the first year, dissatisfied with how little I read, I figured a good goal would be to read more books the next year. So I set a goal and read more books.

But after that year, I realized a defect in my goal: aiming to read more books in a year incentivized me to read shorter books and avoid longer ones, since that would reduce my total book count. That’s silly, I realized. The point of reading books is reading books worth reading, not reading as many books as possible. So I changed my reading goal from books-read per year to pages-read per year. That meant I could read any book of any length I thought worth reading without affecting my goal.

But after a couple years of this, I’ve realized another goal defect: aiming to read more pages per year has incentivized me to read or listen to books faster and resist lingering and meditating over what I’m reading, since that would reduce my total page-count. That’s silly, too. The point of reading is learning in order to increase understanding, not reading as many pages as possible. Again, I hit respectably close to my goal, but I’m still shooting wide of the mark.

So I’ve made another goal adjustment. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Why Slow Down

Reflecting on this little experiment highlights four reasons why we need to slow down and cultivate the spiritual fruit of patience, especially in the twenty-first century.

1. We are pursuing transformation, not information.

As Eugene Peterson says, “A disciple is a learner, but not in the academic setting of a schoolroom, rather at the work site of a craftsman.” God’s purpose in our learning is that we become Christlike (Romans 8:29), not that we become information databases.

People might be impressed by how much information we have stored away. God is concerned with how much we’ve been transformed into the image of his Son. The point of all our reading, praying, worshiping, small-group participation — everything — is not that we merely learn about the craft, but that we actually learn the craft of Christ, so to speak; that we truly learn to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).

There are vital and even priceless things we will only learn about God, ourselves, others, and the Evil One through God’s time-consuming, arduous, incremental, repetitive, trial-error-correction process of learning.

2. Real growth takes a long time.

We live in an age of fast transportation, fast computers, fast Internet access, fast food, fast videos, and fast social-media scrolling — and they’re all only getting faster. This is shaping our assumptions. We expect to be able to do everything at faster speeds and greater volume.

But this is not a biblical assumption. If we look at creation, redemptive history, and our own spiritual growth, we see a God who is not in a hurry. We see a God whose patience almost exasperates us at times. If we look carefully, we see that the most important things take a long time to grow and mature. They can’t be rushed.

This is painfully true of our spiritual progress. There are no life-hacks for holiness.

3. Goals matter and develop over time.

We set goals in an effort to obtain what we value, which means they are very important. Goals reveal how godly or ungodly our desires are. They also determine the strategies we choose to achieve them. And these strategies determine how we spend our time. Goals dictate how we spend our lives.

But we rarely determine the best goals with one shot. It often requires the slow, iterative process of learning to clarify exactly what we want and what that requires. Setting imperfect goals is okay. If we prayerfully and humbly pursue them, God will guide us in figuring out better goals, and he will use the process to cause us to grow in holiness and faith.

4. We cannot love what we do not linger over.

And we cannot know what we do not comprehend. Lingering, by definition, takes time. Comprehension requires time-consuming concentration and meditation. This is true in nearly all areas of life. And the implication is that the real or perceived societal pressure we feel to get more and more things done, and process more and more information, can be an enemy to real love and true learning.

God Speed

God is not slow — though to us as hurried, harried modern disciples, he might seem that way. He is patient (2 Peter 3:9). Apprentices must patiently learn their craft from the master. Lovers linger over what they love. So God is calling us to grow the spiritual fruit of patience and love (Galatians 5:22). And growth takes a long time. God is not in a hurry, so we don’t have to be either.

That’s why this year I’ve decided to set my reading goal by hours spent, rather than pages read. I want to stop aiming at volume so I’m freer to linger, meditate, memorize, and record what I need to press deeper into my soul.

I may get to the end of this year and realize that once again my reading goal needs to be tweaked. Perhaps I’ll need a hybrid of time and quantity. Or perhaps new life-demands will require a different goal altogether.

That’s okay, because my aim is to be changed. I want my reading to help me better learn the craft of Christ and not just about the craft of Christ. And one thing my defective goals have taught me is how much I have to learn about moving at the patient speed of God.

One Thing Worth Everything

A resolution is not a good intention. It is not a half-hearted “maybe I’ll give this a shot.” We all know how such intentions end: aborted. And quickly. A half-hearted intention is usually a functional intention to quit. A resolution is a tenacious yes to something you really want.

Resolved people are, by definition, resolute. They are willing to pay a strenuous and demanding price to achieve a desired joy set before them. Resolved people will not allow deterrents and distractions to ultimately prevent them from their goal, whereas irresolute people end up being driven and tossed by circumstantial winds and whims.

Necessary, Revealing, Costly, Dangerous

Resolutions are necessary. Nothing difficult is accomplished without them, which includes almost everything worth doing or having.

Resolutions also are revealing because they demand devotion, and we cannot willingly devote ourselves to something we don’t really want (at least not for long). So, what we resolve to pursue reveals what our hearts really desire.

And since we are so finite, we are forced to choose only a few serious pursuits. That means a resolution is costly, because it demands a portion of our most valuable assets: love (devotion) and time. It requires us to say no to many other enjoyable things in order to say a tenacious yes to a joy and prize we consider superior to others.

The necessary, revealing, and costly nature of resolutions makes them dangerous. For not all strenuous, time-and-attention-demanding, and promising achievements are ultimately worth doing or having. Some promises turn out to be empty. Some impressive feats are a waste of life.

What Do Your Resolves Say?

To not resolve anything puts us in danger of drifting. To resolve something puts us in danger of wasting our time and devotion in vain. That’s life. It’s simply dangerous.

But this should not paralyze us. We must let it force us to ask the hard questions over and over again. Before we decide to spend precious, fleeting life on anything else, perhaps we need to take a good look at our spending habits. Like money, but even more than money, how we spend our time reveals what we think is worth spending our valuable life on. Sometimes our resolves (or lack of them) reveal how we’re deceived, living as if we have an endless amount of hours to spend pursuing what we enjoy, when we only have a relative handful. We’ll get to those harder, more demanding resolves someday. Someday.

Before I let any more somedays pass, I’ve decided I need a resolve audit. I need to tighten up my time budget. I need to refocus my resolves. I need to pursue less resolves more — and many resolves less.

One Thing

Actually, what I want to pursue more seriously than I ever have is what Jesus told Martha is the one necessary thing.

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41–42)

Mary sat quietly listening carefully to Jesus while “Martha was distracted with much serving” (Luke 10:39–40). I’m haunted by this brief story because as much as I wish I were like Mary, I’m too much like Martha. I fear I would have chosen the same distractions if I had been in Martha’s place.

How do you have all those guests in your house and ignore how the place looks and what you will serve and what everyone needs? There’s only one way: if the one necessary thing enthralls you more. If he does not enthrall you, you are likely to give yourself to distracting resolves. That’s certainly the way it works with me.

I find it somewhat troubling that Jesus let Martha give herself to lesser resolves, resolves that looked outwardly commendable but revealed inner anxiety and trouble, until Martha finally said something. We should not assume we’re giving ourselves to the best things, and that Jesus will tell us if we’re not. If we are not communing with God like we know we should, it is likely time to go to him and ask what’s wrong.

If we do, we must prepare to hear the worst. For asking Jesus what’s wrong will likely result in him revealing our affections and priorities — our resolves — to be more disordered than we thought. We must prepare to count the cost. The one necessary thing will demand all of our most valuable assets. The Pearl costs it all (Matthew 13:45–46). “Selling” what we have loved and given life to feels dangerous in the audit phase. But the truth is we must say no to our many joys to say a tenacious yes to the one great Joy. It’s in the selling that the worth of the Pearl is revealed.

What Will You Seek?

Our resolves are not necessarily the goals we have set. They are what we won’t allow other things to interfere with. They are not our good intentions; they are our determinations, the real life dictators of how we spend our time.

I’m not altogether sure how my reordered resolves will look yet. That’s okay; careful audits take time. And God is not bound by our calendars or clocks.

It seems wise to meditate on texts like these:

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)

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30)

The Bible makes it clear that there’s only one necessary thing. And it points us to one great resolve: to seek that One Thing with all our being. Which means all our resolutions should serve that one great, tenacious yes.

Is this what you’re seeking?

Next Year in Jerusalem

Every year the Jewish diaspora end their Passover Seder with this wistful prayer: “Next year in Jerusalem.” It expresses the deep longing for the promised Messiah’s long-awaited arrival, which will finally bring lasting peace and restored worship to Jerusalem. It is a profound yearning that perhaps next year those who have been strangers and exiles on the earth for so long will finally see an end to their sojourning and return to their promised forever home.

It seems to me that “Next year in Jerusalem!” is what we Christians ought to wish each other as we mark the closing of another year. It voices far more clearly the sort of happiness we long for than the generic and rather hollow “Happy New Year.”

A Nation Without a Country

Distinctly Christian happiness is meant to be fueled by a profound belief in the return of Jesus and the full inheritance we will receive. This kind of happiness declares our love for his appearing (2 Timothy 4:8) and our hope in the grace we will receive when he is finally revealed (1 Peter 1:13).

This means that Christians, no matter what circumstances God has placed us in this year, whether we are experiencing abundance or need (Philippians 4:12), now live as strangers and exiles on the earth (Hebrews 11:13). We know we are out of place. We are the diaspora, the one “holy nation” made up of the “children of God who are scattered abroad” (1 Peter 2:9; John 11:52). We are a nation without a country.

“Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14):

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” . . . And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:2–3, 5)

In this city, we will at long last know the peace each of us longs for deep, deep in our souls:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. . . . No longer will there be anything accursed.” (Revelation 21:4; 22:3)

The Joy of Every Longing Heart

And in this city, we will finally realize the fullness of the joy we seek incessantly here and yet find so elusive: the end of the longing that makes us so restless now, the healing of the homesickness for that place we’ve not yet seen, and the coming true of the dreams we’ve never quite been able to fully describe. We will finally experience adoration of the triune God with our entire being, in unfiltered glory and in dimensions of spirit and truth that are unimaginable to us now. And we will wonder that we ever used the phrase “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8) during our years of dimmed, muted, sin-impoverishing, defective worship when at last our faith gives way to the sight of this:

The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in [the city], and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelation 22:3–5)

In this city, New Jerusalem, God will dwell with us, we will see his face, we will live in his light, he will banish all that is accursed, and he will make all things new. This is what God wants us to set our hope fully upon. This is the inheritance Jesus is bringing to all who believe in him. This is what he longs for with all his heart (John 17:24). This is what Christians — real Christians — love, and what fuels their living: the appearing of Jesus (2 Timothy 4:8).

Hope That Makes No Earthly Sense

And this is what makes real Christianity fake-resistant. New Testament Christianity is something people can talk a lot about; they can study it, critique it, and write about it for a lifetime. But no one can live it very long if we don’t really believe it. Citizens of heaven live like refugees and sojourners on earth (Philippians 3:20); they live odd earthly lives — lives that make no sense unless Christianity is true (1 Corinthians 15:19).

As this year draws to a close, we find ourselves still peering into the dark glass (1 Corinthians 13:12), still experiencing tribulation (John 16:33), still hearing of “wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6), still walking “by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Still we find that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14).

But it will not always be so. Just as the Messiah’s long-awaited first coming occurred, his long-awaited second coming will also occur. It will happen “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:52). And that moment may occur next year. This is the happiness all Christians desire.

Next Year in Jerusalem!

May it be, Lord! Finish the work and return! You promised, “Surely I am coming soon.” We all say, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20)

And to you, my friend and fellow earth-weary exile: “Next year in Jerusalem!”

Come, Thou Unexpected Jesus

This Christmas, do not be surprised if you find yourself worshiping Jesus where you did not expect to find him.

Often, when we expect to find him in the inn of festive holiday celebration, we instead find him in the stables of our suffering and sin. Jesus tends to show up where, and when, we least expect him. Apparently, his ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8).

Unexpected Savior

We see Jesus breaking expectations throughout Scripture.

Although the people expected the Messiah, the Son of David, to appear in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), they did not expect him to appear there as if by accident. Although they expected the birth of a king, they certainly didn’t expect him to be born without dignity in a cave outside the city of David (Luke 2:4). Although they expected him to be hailed upon his arrival, they did not expect shepherds and pagan magicians to welcome him while the religious leaders — who knew the prophecies by heart — completely missed him.

The Jews did not expect him to grow up in Galilee (John 7:52), especially not in Nazareth (John 1:46), nor did they expect him to grow up the son of a simple tradesman. When he went missing for three days as a child, not even his parents expected to find him discussing theology in the temple with the rabbis (Luke 2:46–47).

Years later, no one expected him to suddenly appear as an itinerant rabbi with a school of disciples comprised of fisherman, tax collectors, and zealots. Nor did anyone expect him to confront the self-righteousness of pious Jews far more than the oppressive Roman occupiers. And they certainly didn’t expect him to find more faith in a centurion than in all the people of Israel (Luke 7:9).

The immoral Samaritan woman never expected him to show up near her well at midday, or be the first recorded person to whom he declared himself as the Christ (John 4:25–26). The hopeless paralytic never expected him to come to the pool and heal him (John 5:2–9). The man born blind never expected to see him and discover that the Pharisees, for the life of them, could not (John 9:35–41). The widow of Nain never expected him to show up during the funeral procession and raise her son (Luke 7:11–15). Mary and Martha never expected him to not show up when Lazarus fell ill (John 11:1–3).

No one expected the Messiah, the Son of David, to be convicted of blasphemy by the council and executed without dignity by the Romans outside the other city of David. And no one expected him to actually rise from the dead three days later.

All these things had been prophesied. Jesus was long expected. But when and how and where and why he came were all unexpected.

Worship in Unexpected Stables

We tend to fill our Christmases with all sorts of expectations. But the biblical pattern teaches us that Jesus is not particularly concerned with our expectations and may ignore them altogether because he’s mainly concerned with our most desperate needs. We typically do not choose our most desperate places — the places of our fears and sins — as places to encounter and worship Jesus, but he does. He knows that these are the places we most need the thrill of hope.

This is why I expect to find Jesus in the sober celebrations of dear friends who, due to an aggressive cancer, may be sharing their last Christmas together.

This is why I expect to find him at the hospital bedside of a precious little boy, where his parents have kept faithful vigil since the traumatic brain injury three months ago.

This is why I expect to find him in the heartbroken home of a pastor I love who broke his marriage vows and in the heartbroken church whose Christmas worship will be full of unexpected disappointment and tears.

And this is why I expect to find him in the places of my own groaning: my sinful stumbling, persistent weaknesses, perplexing questions, and parenting quandaries that I am not wise enough to think my way through.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying pleasant holidays. But often it is not pleasant holidays that we need as much as we need profound hope. What we really need is hope that our devastating sins can be forgiven, that our shattered trust can be rebuilt, that our broken child’s suffering isn’t in vain, and that though our bodies waste away (2 Corinthians 4:16), death will be swallowed up in victory and destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26, 54).

Love Exceeding Expectations

Jesus came into the world at a desperate time in a desperate way. It wasn’t the way people expected him to come. It wasn’t for the reasons they expected him to come. He did not come to meet their expectations but to love them in the ways they most desperately needed.

For Christ, Christmas is not about tradition but salvation; it’s not about expectations but sanctification. Christmas is about love — earthy, gritty, sacrificial, even bloody love. When Jesus came, he did not come “to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). This was a love that no one expected — a love that exceeds all our expectations.

And this is the way he comes to you this Christmas: to love you in the ways you most need. That may, in fact, be why some of your expectations are not met: they aren’t what you really need.

So look for him in the unexpected place. And it may be in the most desperate place, yours or another’s. But know this: he will meet you in the place that will, if you trust him, cause his good news to eventually bring you the greatest joy (Luke 2:10) — the place you are most likely to really adore him.

Lord, Deliver Me from Indifference

Passion, like many important words, has been overused, and therefore, devalued. It’s a victim of that inescapable English idiosyncrasy — the inclination to use one word for too many things.

Zeal is the word in our English Bibles that perhaps gets closest to what we typically mean when we talk about “passion.” Well-known examples include

[Jesus Christ] gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (Titus 2:14)
[Jesus’s] disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” (John 2:17)
[Let] the one who leads, [do so] with zeal.” (Romans 12:8)
Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. (Romans 12:11)

At this time of year, this is the kind of zeal Christians hear most about:

To us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 9:6–7)

In modern English, we’d say the consuming passion of the Lord of hosts is to redeem lost sinners through the Messiah’s sacrifice (Isaiah 53), and to establish and uphold the Messiah’s eternal kingdom. This is God’s main thing, his primary focus for mankind.

If we share God’s passion in this sense, it is a very good thing. It is a godly thing.

Passion from the Heart

In fact, it is such a good thing that the Bible commands it. Did you notice the command in Paul’s statement, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord” (Romans 12:11)? This means being passionate is not an option for the Christian.

Here is where we must let the Bible, rather than our society, define our terms, set our standards, and develop our expectations. The Bible doesn’t see what we call passion as something rooted in our temperaments. Laid-back personalities are called to lives of fervent, dedicated focus every bit as much as intense, driven personalities. Neither does it see passion as something rooted in our ethnic background. Those of Scandinavian heritage (like me), who might tend toward being emotionally reserved, are called to feel deeply and strive intensely every bit as much as those whose ancestors were “passionate Latins.”

No, the Bible sees zeal as a heart issue. When Paul says, “Do not be slothful in zeal,” we need to remember that Jesus called the slothful servant in his parable “wicked” (Matthew 25:26). Slothfulness is not a personality quirk; it’s a sin. It’s a sin because to not “be fervent in spirit” as we serve the Lord is to be at some level indifferent to what he cares most deeply about. Such indifference is evil.

In God’s mind, fervency, zeal, or passion aren’t descriptions of how emotive we are. They’re gauges that display what our heart treasures, and therefore what fuels our lives. Just like God is far more impressed by sincere prayers in secret than longwinded public prayers (Matthew 6:5–6), he is far more impressed (or not) by what truly enthralls us than by any outward emotional exhibition. For what enthralls us determines how we prioritize our lives.

No matter how genetics and environment have influenced our emotive natures, few things expose our true selves more than comparing what God is passionate about with what we are passionate about. Frequently the zeal we need most is the zeal to repent (Revelation 3:19).

Whatever It Takes

We are emotionally and affectionally disordered by our indwelling sin. We find God’s command for us to passionately serve him impossible to obey in our own strength. Of course we do, just like many, many other impossible commands, such as “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) and “do not fear those who kill the body” (Matthew 10:28).

But God’s impossible commands are actually mercies to us. They humble us in ways we desperately need (1 Peter 5:6) and push us to rest more and more in the finished work of Christ for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). They call us to deeper levels of prayerful dependence and drive us to ask God for our every need (Luke 11:9) and to live on every word from his mouth (Matthew 4:4). In other words, they work to teach us to follow Jesus in living the way humans were always meant to live: by faith (Hebrews 12:2; 2 Corinthians 5:7).

No, we are not as passionate as we should be about the things we should be. But that sin is covered (1 John 1:9), and God will complete his good work in us so that someday we’ll perfectly share his passions (Philippians 1:6). Today, he wants us to ask him for the zeal we are meant to have. And he wants us to ask him boldly (Hebrews 4:16), and with faith (James 1:6). Therefore,

Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my zeal to do your will and my urgency to make the best use of my time during these evil days. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

When Darkness Falls at Christmas

Bethlehem, at the time of Jesus’s birth, was a little town with a population of only about three hundred. Yet within a period of just a few months, it saw the gloriously humble entrance of God the Son into the world, as well as the brutal deaths of baby boys by the command of Herod the Great, who tried to kill the Son. It’s not unlikely that a few inhabitants witnessed both events firsthand.

In the fictional scene below, Lemuel, a shepherd who witnessed the angels, visits his brother-in-law Jacob, the innkeeper who had provided the Holy Family the only available place he had at the time. Nine weeks have passed since the Slaughter of the Innocents, where Lemuel suffered the loss of his own boy, Zabdi. Jacob had lost his wife Rachel, his sons, Joseph and Benjamin, and most of his right arm (their story is told in John Piper’s fictional work, The Innkeeper). Both are trying to come to grips with the incomprehensible grace and grief they experienced when caught in the cosmic crossfire that ensued that first Christmas.

“How’s the arm?” asked Lemuel. “Oh, the pain’s getting better every day now,” replied Jacob, holding out the bandaged stump of his right arm. “The strangest thing is that sometimes I can feel my fingers, as if they’re still there.”

Then he squeezed his eyes tight as he choked back a sob. “It’s like that with Rachel and the boys, too.” Both men wept, as they often had over the past two months. When the convulsions of grief passed, Jacob said, “Sometimes I can hear their voices. I find myself looking for them in the next room or out the window.” Lemuel nodded, wiping his nose. “I know. Me too.”

Lemuel had been out in the fields the day the soldiers came. When the sound of women wailing reached his ears, he had come running. But it was too late. He found his wife, Deborah, on her knees outside their door clutching their lifeless son to her breast and rocking in silent agony. Zabdi’s blood covered them both. He was only sixteen months old.

Miriam walked in the room with water for the two friends. “My sister, what a mercy from God!” said Jacob. “She’s kept me alive, and kept the inn in business these nine weeks. Fresh bandages for my arm, cool cloths for my fevered head, hot food for the guests, clean straw for the beasts, and who knows how many trips to the well!” Miriam smiled. “You can’t count that high,” she said, “Can I get you anything?” “I should be asking you that!” said Jacob. “Your time is coming,” she said, leaving with the depleted fruit plate.

“How’s Deborah?” asked Jacob. “That’s hard to say,” said Lemuel, “She’s still not talking much. But I think she’s doing as well as anyone could whose baby and best friend were murdered on the same day. Your Rachel was my sister, but she was much closer to Deborah than to me.”

“And how are you doing?” asked Jacob. Lemuel gently swished his water bowl in circles. “It’s hard to imagine this dark sadness ever lifting,” he said. “It’s like a heavy blanket covering everything.” Jacob nodded and said, “But someday it will. The psalmist says, ‘Light dawns in the darkness for the upright’ (Psalm 112:4).”

This tapped into a deep well of frustration for Lemuel, and he blurted out, “But why did the darkness come in the first place? Four months ago I was so full of joy. The angel flooded us with light when he announced the Messiah had come. And then I saw him, the Messiah — in your stable! We danced together because of this ‘good news’ of ‘peace on earth.’”

“But two months later: darkness. We got violence, not peace. Zabdi and Rachel and Joseph and Benjamin, all killed by that devil, Herod, because he was trying to kill the Messiah. Why? Why would God allow such wonderful light to be swallowed up by such horrible darkness?”

“I don’t know why that evil was allowed,” replied Jacob. “I’m no theologian, but I don’t think God ever answers those kind of ‘why’ questions, at least not in the way we want him to.

“Since Rachel, Joey, and Ben died, Job has become my familiar friend. I’ve thought a lot about Job, about his losses and grief. When his pain raged he asked lots of why questions too, and God didn’t answer any of them. One thing’s clear from Job’s story, though: there was a lot more going on than Job could have understood. And that’s been helping me. How much more true must that be about the Messiah’s coming?

“What happened to our precious ones was evil. It was wrong, just like what happened to Job was wrong. Satan afflicted him and killed his children. I think Satan killed ours too. But God wasn’t out of control when evil struck Job and he wasn’t out of control when evil struck our families.”

Lemuel was quiet for a moment, then said, “So God is in control, but that doesn’t change the fact that your wife and our children are still dead.” “I know,” said Jacob. “And as long as we live we’ll feel the pain of their deaths, and their empty places — like missing limbs that are supposed to be there.

“But the reason this seems so dark to us now is because we don’t yet understand why God allowed it. All the great stories of God’s salvation in the Tanakh contain moments of terrible evil and darkness like this. Part of what makes them great is how God overcomes the darkness with light. His sovereign goodness is so powerful that the worst evil cannot overthrow it, even though sometimes generations pass before God’s victory becomes clear.”

“But it’s so sad that our dead will never know the Messiah’s peace on earth,” said Lemuel, tearing up again. “You don’t know that,” said Jacob, gently. “You and I might not even live to see this peace in our lifetimes. That’s why Job’s hope has to be ours. He believed he would live to see his Redeemer even after he had died (Job 19:25–26). He believed in the Resurrection. That’s our only hope too. The angel said this good news is for all the people, didn’t he (Luke 2:10)? God’s Messiah will overcome all darkness for all his children for all time. All his saints will know the blessing of his peace, Rachel, Joey, Ben, and Zabdi, and everyone who didn’t live to see it come.”

We too are caught in the cosmic crossfire of Christmas. We experience both “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8), as well as burdens so great we despair of life itself (2 Corinthians 1:8). Both are beyond our powers to comprehend because there is so much more going on in reality than we can yet understand.

When the deep darkness falls and never seems like it will ever lift again, that’s when we must pray for strength to comprehend what is beyond us (Ephesians 3:18), and trust in the Lord’s promises, not the way things appear to us (Proverbs 3:5). For this is what Christmas is all about: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

No matter how dark the current chapter, all our stories in this age will end in everlasting joy in the omnipotent Light that shone first from the little town of Bethlehem.

The Wisdom in What God Doesn’t Say

We know that God is very wise in the things he says, even if they can be very difficult to understand (2 Peter 3:16). But I think it’s the things God doesn’t say that cause us the most difficulty.

It’s what God doesn’t say that makes us ask, “Why, O Lord?” (Psalm 10:1) “Why is my pain unceasing?” (Jeremiah 15:18). “Why then do I labor in vain?” (Job 9:29). “Why do you forget us forever?” (Lamentations 5:20). “Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?” (Job 21:7). Why is there so much oppression (Ecclesiastes 4:1)? “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul?” (Job 3:20).

Living by faith requires we grow in our trust that God is just as wise in what he chooses not to say as in what he chooses to say. He’s as intentional with the information he excludes as he is with information he includes.

We might call the wise silence of God the “dark matter” of divine revelation. There is real substance in what we can’t see, but it’s detected with a different kind of inquiry. “Why didn’t God say that?”

Let’s look at a few macro examples and explore some of the dark matter of divine wisdom so that we might better understand our own experience of the silence of God.

The Creation Story

God says so little about his creation of the cosmos. Genesis 1 is a massive biblical example of the fact that “now [we] know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Thirty-one simple, Spirit-inspired verses tell us God created the world in a certain sequence, but they gloss over an astronomical amount of detail. They resemble ancient creation myths in certain ways, and yet they make remarkable sense the more science discovers about the universe. The ambiguities in the account and in the Hebrew language have spawned debate inside and outside the church for 2,000 years.

Why didn’t God say more? One reason is to humble us. Genesis 1 shows us indeed “the foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

God chose a creation account that would provide a basic, accurate understanding of creation for his people over the course of multiple millennia, in thousands of radically different cultures with many different worldviews, conceptions of time, levels of education, and stages of technological advancement. It had to be understandable to pre-scientific, primitive, and illiterate peoples, and able to withstand withering critique by the most brilliant, educated minds of antiquity, as well as those in the modern scientific age. Its framework had to be simple enough for a child to understand and complex enough to account for a paleontologist’s discoveries.

And that’s what we have. The Bible’s explanation of creation has taken an incessant beating and is still standing. Its apparent simplicity contains carefully designed ambiguities, making it the most resilient, and most culturally and scientifically adaptable religious account of origins in human history. And it has continually humbled both believers and unbelievers since the time it was written.

How Far Is Too Far?

The Bible is very clear in both Testaments that sexual immorality profanes God’s holiness and therefore is prohibited (1 Corinthians 10:8; Numbers 25:1–9). Intercourse is clearly forbidden outside of marriage between a man and woman, but what else? For a dating or courting couple, how far is too far? The Bible isn’t highly detailed in its description of where the line of immorality is crossed. Is any kind of touching allowed? What about kissing? What about embraces and hand holding and intimate conversation?

Why didn’t God say more? One reason is because God’s will for us is our sanctification (1 Thessalonians 4:3), which means God wants hearts, not just behavior. And what our hearts really want can be revealed as much in how we respond to moral ambiguity as to how we respond to moral clarity. God wants us to wrestle with the grey areas in light of knowing there’s a “holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). How will we seek to love Christ by obeying his commandment to love each other (John 13:34; 14:15), and help one another pursue a “pure heart and good conscience” (1 Timothy 1:5), when we must discern what purity means for us in our place in the world and in history?

To encourage Christians to pursue holiness and make this pursuit most adaptable to culture, time periods, and individuals, God wisely determined we should not be governed by detailed rules of sexual purity, but by the principles that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23) and that we must “love one another earnestly from a pure heart” (1 Peter 1:22).

The Second Coming

The first coming of the Messiah was cloaked in prophecy. Jesus came just as it was written about him and yet so few recognized him. He came in a way no one expected and did what no one expected. It was all there in the Scriptures, but even his closest friends who listened most to him didn’t fully see it until he helped them see (Luke 24:27).

The second coming will be similar. We have the prophecies, but the timing, events, and meaning of symbolism in Scripture have provoked much debate throughout church history.

Why didn’t God say more? One reason is because God always wants Christians to live in dependent expectation of Jesus’s imminent return. “The Son of Man is coming at an hour [we] do not expect” (Luke 12:40) because he means for us to “stay awake at all times” (Luke 21:36), and keep our lamps trimmed (Matthew 25:1–13). God knows our fight against indwelling sin, and our sense of urgency for the mission is better served by knowing Christ’s return could be at any time than that he will be long delayed (Matthew 24:45–51; 1 Corinthians 7:29).

Wisdom in the Silence

So much more could be said about what God doesn’t say. But what’s important to remember is this: God is very wise and intentional in what he makes clear to us and does not make clear to us.

Jesus understands the cry of “why?” that pours out of a heart in pain. He too made this cry in the hour of his greatest agony: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). And there was no thunderous answer. So in dark silence he endured the cross in faith for our salvation and our example (Hebrews 12:2).

God wants us to live by faith, trusting his reliable promises more than our unreliable perceptions (2 Corinthians 5:7). But a thorough, careful reading of the Bible causes us to detect in God’s wise silence the dark matter of divine revelation: God’s trustworthy purposes in not telling us everything.

Because of what he does make clear, we can learn to trust him just as much in what he does not make clear. God is silent for only very good reasons.