Jon Bloom's Blog, page 29

Lord, Keep Me Desperate

Many of us love Robert Robertson’s hymn “Come Thou Fount” because of these lines:

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it;

Seal it for thy courts above.

We understand this. We all keenly feel our proneness to wander from the God we love. And we all want this terrible proneness to decrease.

So if we sing this hymn seriously and in faith — really wanting God to keep us from wandering so we persevere and make it to his heavenly courts — what are we asking God for? What does losing our proneness to wander look like?

A Severe Mercy

God has left us plenty of mystery in how he “keep[s] [us] from stumbling and . . . present[s] [us] blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 1:24). But it’s not all mysterious. From Genesis to Revelation, we find a consistent element present in the lives of persevering saints of God. And it is captured in this brief sentence in Psalm 119:67: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.”

What cured, or at least decreased, the psalmist’s proneness to wander? Affliction. If the writer of Psalm 119 was working with Robert Robertson on composing “Come Thou Fount,” he may have suggested the last sentence to read something more like,

Here’s my heart, O take and break it;

So I love thy courts above.

To borrow a phrase C.S. Lewis used when comforting a suffering friend, God uses affliction as “a severe mercy” to help keep his saints from going astray.

The Effects of Affliction and Prosperity

This is a paradox. Affliction is typically an evil we experience in our bodies, relationships, circumstances, achievements, or religious persecution. Prosperity is typically a good we experience in our bodies, relationships, circumstances, achievements, or religious freedom. Yet, we have a tendency to move toward God in affliction and wander from God in prosperity.

The Bible is full of examples of this paradox, but let’s look at two: 1) when good came through the evil of affliction and 2) when evil came through the good of prosperity.

The Blessing of a Satanic Thorn

The revelations and power granted to the apostle Paul by the Holy Spirit in order to fulfill his apostolic calling to plant and oversee many Gentile churches, as well as function as the global-historical church’s foremost theologian, were overwhelming for any fallen human being. How did God help Paul remain faithful? Paul tells us,

To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. (2 Corinthians 12:7)

What specifically this “thorn” was isn’t important (I thank God we don’t know for sure). What is important is that we see how God used an evil affliction, a messenger of Satan, to keep Paul humble and faithful.

None of us bear the same responsibility as Paul. But if we think we therefore need fewer afflictions, we are significantly wrong. We are tempted to unbelief in ways Paul wasn’t because of the things he saw and we haven’t. Just like Paul, we need God to do whatever it takes to keep us desperate for him so we don’t wander.

The Peril of Prosperity

David knew by experience the truth of Psalm 119:67. When he was afflicted with King Saul’s plots to assassinate him, with barely one step between him and death (1 Samuel 20:3), David did not go astray. He kept close to God and would not sin against him (1 Samuel 26:10–11).

But David also experienced the flipside of the paradox. When David was the unrivaled king of Israel, and God had prospered him in every way, that’s when he strayed from God into bed with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11).

Why did David’s affliction result in faithfulness and his prosperity result in sin? We all know. David was desperate for God when Saul (acting as a messenger of Satan, it would be fair to say) afflicted him. This experience even resulted in glorious psalms of worship (like Psalms 18, 54, and 57). But when David was not desperate for God, he was more vulnerable to his self-destructive depravity.

Whatever It Takes, Lord

The same is true of us. When are we most prayerful and faithful? When we keenly feel our desperation for God, like we can’t live without him. And we are most vulnerable to sin when we don’t feel that way.

We don’t romanticize affliction, just like we don’t romanticize death. Evils themselves are not to be loved, but resisted. God is to be loved and trusted. Only he is wise and strong enough to work for good what is meant for evil (Romans 8:28; Genesis 50:20). Paul pled with God for his thorn to be removed (2 Corinthians 12:8), and so did David (Psalm 7:1–2). They were good prayers. God simply had something better in store for Paul and David and us by letting the thorns remain, and supplying his sufficient grace (2 Corinthians 12:9).

What was the better thing he had in store? Desperation for God. Affliction makes us feel our real desperation for God, and we cry out for him. That’s why Paul boasted more in his weaknesses than his strengths. He knew that when he was weak, he was strong — because when he was weak, God was his strength (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).

In all our proneness to wander astray from the God we love, we don’t need to ask our loving heavenly Father for affliction. Instead, let us ask him for the merciful gift of desperation, for that is what we really need.

We do not need to be afraid to ask him to make us desperate for him, because our Father loves to give good gifts to us (Luke 11:13). We can trust him to do for us what we need most. Therefore, we can make this our prayer:

Whatever it takes, Lord, decrease my proneness to wander from you by keeping me desperate for you.

The True Wealth of the Suffering Church

You have probably seen one of the paintings. Perhaps Warner Sallman’s or William Holman Hunt’s. Jesus is standing outside a door holding a lantern, knocking. The paintings were inspired by this famous verse:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20)

The paintings look peaceful, and Jesus looks meek and gentle. But this is misleading.

The Mercy of Hard Words

When Jesus spoke these words through the apostle John, he was addressing Christians in the church at Laodicea. Do you know what was on the other side of the door? Wealthy, prosperous Christians whose love for Jesus had grown lukewarm — Christians who thought they were doing fairly well, but didn’t know they were actually “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:16–18). And it was no meek Jesus that came knocking. He had come to “reprove and discipline” (Revelation 3:19).

And Jesus’s hard words were a great mercy. The Laodiceans didn’t seem to be aware of the danger they were in or, if they had some idea, didn’t grasp just how serious it was. Jesus came to wake them out of their prosperity-induced stupor with a dose of reality. They needed to see what they had become; they needed to see their true poverty. And then he invited them, through repentance, to open the door to him and receive his incredible grace.

True Wealth, Real Poverty

Jesus’s word to the church at Laodicea is a haunting one to us prosperous, Western, twenty-first-century Christians. What is it about prosperity that tends to have such a spiritually deadening effect on us?

We know that prosperity itself is not an evil. If it were, Jesus would not have promised us “treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:20). Whatever that will be, we are to understand it in terms of how we understand treasures on earth.

But Jesus is clear that treasures on earth tend to have a dangerously seductive power over our fallen nature. Our tendency is to fall in love with earthly treasures instead of God, making them a great danger to us (1 Timothy 6:10). So Jesus tells us not to lay them up on earth (Matthew 6:19), but to keep our lives free from the love of money (Hebrews 13:5).

It is a great irony that earthly material wealth can lead to the true poverty of faith (James 5:1–3), and material poverty can lead to the true wealth of faith (James 2:5). It’s ironic because wealth is not itself an evil (unless attained unjustly), and poverty is an evil of the age in which we now live.

Something about the deprivation of earthly comfort encourages us to seek true wealth by trusting God in Christ for everything (Philippians 3:7–8; 4:11–13). And something blinding about earthly wealth can cause us not to see true wealth when it is looking us in the face (Mark 10:21–22).

Look to the Suffering Church

How do we know how much we resemble the Laodicean Christians? We don’t get much help by relative comparisons with other prosperous Christians (“I don’t love money that much”). But it is very helpful for us to look at and listen to Christians who suffer, or have suffered, for the sake of Christ.

Nik Ripken has served us wonderfully in his book The Insanity of God. He tells stories of Christians who have paid a high price to follow Jesus — from hundreds of interviews he’s conducted throughout the former Soviet Union, China, the Middle East, West Africa, and elsewhere. What he reports is both beautiful and convicting.

This is no collection of hagiographies; it is no romance of persecution. It is a real look at real people who have really suffered and have known the reality and provisions and interventions and sustaining grace of God in ways that seem to be very rare in the West.

It is like stepping into the world of the New Testament, where it seems insane that God would choose a handful of seemingly weak, foolish, politically unconnected, often materially disadvantaged people (1 Corinthians 1:26–27) to preach his gospel in societies that sought to violently stomp it out. The societies ended up disappearing. The gospel endured.

And now Nik has served us again by producing the film The Insanity of God. It is playing in theaters across the United States this Tuesday, August 30. I viewed a pre-release version, and it affected me almost as deeply as the book.

Is Jesus Worth It?

I rarely recommend a book or movie so highly. The book and the movie help us breathe a different air — much more like Jerusalem in AD 35 than Minneapolis in AD 2016. Much more like the air of the church in Smyrna (Revelation 2:8–11) than Laodicea (Revelation 3:14–22).

Ripken says this near the end of the film:

The gospel continues to be authenticated by what people are willing to suffer for the cause of Jesus Christ.

This is true. And it’s convicting. Looking at the price that suffering Christians are willing to pay for Christ makes us ask what we are willing to pay. What risks are we willing to take to bring Jesus to the unreached? Is Jesus worth it?

Our response to these questions in light of the testimonies of persecuted believers will help us more than almost anything else assess how much we are infected by the Laodicean illness. The more we don’t want to look, the more we need to. And if it turns out that we are more lukewarm than we thought, to receive Jesus’s rebuke is a great healing mercy to us.

Don’t let this opportunity pass. See the movie. Read the book. Let the suffering church show you what true wealth is. It will increase your desire to leave the poverty of earthly treasures in order to experience more profoundly, and to show more boldly, that Jesus truly is worth it.

Lord, Enlarge My Love for You

It all begins with delight. The Christian life the New Testament describes simply cannot be lived if our hearts do not love and treasure God.

No one sells all they own for a field, unless it holds a much more valuable treasure (Matthew 13:44).

No one forsakes sin to trust and obey Jesus, unless his salvation holds out far more pleasure than sin (Luke 19:8–10).

No one will — and no one can — draw near to God without believing he richly rewards those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6).

No one counts their own righteousness as loss, unless they believe Jesus’s righteousness is the only thing that grants him the inexpressible joy of knowing the Father (Philippians 3:9–10).

No one leaves “houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands” for Jesus’s sake without the incentive of a far greater reward (Matthew 19:29).

No one willingly suffers for Jesus’s sake, unless he believes his afflictions aren’t worthy to be compared with the eternal weight of glory awaiting him (2 Corinthians 4:17).

No one willingly embraces martyrdom for Jesus’s sake, unless he considers death as gain (Philippians 1:21).

What drives the Christian life is the great joy set before us (Hebrews 12:2), causing us to forget what lies behind and press on toward the goal for the eternal prize of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13–14). The Christian’s approach to life is to attain the resurrection from the dead “by any means possible” (Philippians 3:11). Whatever it takes.

And we can only live this way when the Resurrection and the Life is the chief delight of our hearts (John 11:25). For it is impossible to love with all our heart one our heart does not delight in (Luke 12:34).

Every act of obedience to God, including loving our neighbors as ourselves and loving our enemies, is contingent upon obeying the greatest commandment to love God with all our hearts (Luke 10:27; Luke 6:35). That’s why the Bible speaks of delight in God as imperative, not optional: “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4).

God Wants to Enlarge Our Hearts

You might be discouraged at this point, because your capacity to delight in God seems so small. Don’t despair or beat yourself up with condemnation. I feel the same way, and so does every Christian I’ve ever met. We all need and want more love for God.

And here’s the great good news: God wants to enlarge our capacity for joy-filled love for him. He expresses this clearly through prayers in Scripture. The apostle Paul loves to pray for more, both for himself and for his churches. Here’s how he prayed for the Philippians:

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9–11)

And listen to him pray for the Ephesians:

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe. (Ephesians 1:16–19)

Isn’t that hopeful? Paul wants the Ephesians to see and know more glory so that they will experience more joy in the gracious, generous inheritance that God is lavishing upon them. And later in the same letter he prays,

that according to the riches of [the Father’s] glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith — that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16–19)

This was not only Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians; it’s God’s desire for us today. He wants us to have more strength, enlarged capacities, to know Christ’s love and enjoy more of his fullness. Because more of God’s fullness means greater love for him. And greater love for him means more delight in him. And the greater our delight in him, the easier his yoke and the less burdensome his commandments become (Matthew 11:30; 1 John 5:3), for God has enlarged our heart (Psalm 119:32).

Whatever It Takes, Lord, More Delight

We are not fated to live the rest of our lives with small love and small faith. God wants more for us, and he wants us to ask him for it with persistence, even impudence (Luke 11:8–9). So let’s ask and not lose heart until he answers (Luke 18:1).

Heavenly Father, forgive us for falling so short in loving you like you deserve (Romans 3:23), and thank you for covering this grievous sin by the precious blood of Jesus (1 John 1:9). We repent! Give us the grace to love you, your Son, and your Holy Spirit with all our hearts. But we do not merely wish to love you with our hearts’ current capacities; we want our hearts enlarged. So whatever it takes, Lord, increase our delight in you as the greatest treasure of our hearts. In the mighty name and for the sake of Jesus, Amen.

Lay Aside the Weight of Moodiness

Living in a fallen age, in fallen bodies, in which our fallen natures vie with our regenerate natures for control, we unfortunately cannot avoid the plague of bad moods.

We are not, however, victims of these moods, and we certainly must not make others victims of them, either. Instead, we must develop the skilled habit of challenging them, ruling over them (Romans 6:12), and laying them aside so that they don’t weigh us (or others) down in the race of faith (Hebrews 12:1).

You Are Never “Just” in a Bad Mood

When we feel irritable or cynical or discouraged or sad, we sometimes excuse sinful attitudes by saying, “I’m just in a bad mood.” But we are never “just” in a bad mood. Moods never come from nowhere. We may not always be conscious of what’s fueling our mood, but we can be sure something is.

Our moods are at times affected by our body chemistry. A chemical or hormonal imbalance in our bodies can cause irrational emotions. I’ll touch on this more shortly.

But when our bodies are functioning correctly, our moods are fueled by our beliefs. I’m not referring to our creeds or statements of faith, though hopefully these inform and shape our beliefs. I mean our functional beliefs, the truths or lies we believe at any given time.

Emotions Are Gauges, Not Guides

God designed our bodies to work in sync with our spirits — to live by faith. He designed our emotions to be governed by our beliefs. Our beliefs frame our thinking and express themselves through our emotions. We commonly call these emotional manifestations “moods.”

Here are three examples from Scripture that illustrate how this works:

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you (Psalm 42:5–6).

My soul continually remembers [my affliction and my wanderings] and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him” (Lamentations 3:20–24).

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

In each case, someone responded to adverse circumstances with wrong beliefs, resulting in the negative emotional manifestations of turmoil, depression, and anxiety (bad moods). The remedy was remembering, calling to mind, believing the truth of God’s promises. Bad moods revealed wrong beliefs, and right beliefs altered (or were supposed to alter) those bad moods.

This is why we say emotions are gauges, not guides. They are (usually) reliable as gauges, telling us what we believe. But they are unreliable as guides to direct us what to do or where to go.

The Manipulative Power of Moods

But we’re all still guided by our moods too often — by certain emotions we like, and others we don’t like. We forget that these emotions are gauges, so we don’t trace our moods back to their cause. Rather, when we feel emotions we don’t like, we quickly look to anything that might alter them to something more pleasant.

This makes us vulnerable to all sorts of temptations. Satan can easily manipulate us when we would rather superficially alter our mood than address its underlying beliefs. All we have to do is think about our own besetting sins. They are often habitual sinful reactions to emotions and moods we’re desperately trying to alter or escape.

But we’re not only manipulated by our moods; we also use them to manipulate others. We know that others dislike and resist unpleasant emotions just like we do. So our sinful, selfish natures seek to use this to our advantage. We leverage our bad moods to make others unhappy in order to get them to do what we want or to punish them for hurting us.

Moods become sinful weights for us when they do not help us identify our beliefs and align them with God’s promises. We weaponize our moods when they become a means of Satan either to emotionally manipulate us and to allow us to emotionally manipulate others.

Query Your Mood

The quickest way to lay aside the weight of manipulative moodiness is to wield our mood in the way God designed it: as a gauge of our belief. We must query our mood. What is fueling it?

First, determine whether or not it’s a body chemistry issue. Menstrual cycles, pregnancy, and post-partum hormonal imbalances are famous mood influencers. So are sickness and disease. Sometimes the first indicator that I’m coming down with the flu or a nasty cold is a vague discouragement or low-grade depression. Prescription medication, disease treatment, caffeine, sugar, “mood enhancing” illicit drugs (obviously) all can alter our body chemistry and affect our moods. So do mental illness, chronic pain, and sleep deprivation.

We must still fight to trust God’s promises even if our bodies aren’t working right. But a chemistry issue typically must be addressed with a chemistry solution, including prayer for God’s healing of the chemistry issue.

A Built-In Alarm for Beliefs

But more often than not, for most of us, our bad mood is being fueled by a wrong belief. And the mood, though likely sin-infected, is a mercy. It is God’s designed gauge to alert us that a sinful or defective functional belief is governing us at the moment and must be corrected with God’s truth.

When our souls are “cast down” and “in turmoil” within us, we must ask, “Why?” And then we must preach to our souls to “hope in God,” our salvation and our portion, whose mercies are new every morning (Psalm 42:5–6; Lamentations 3:22–24).

Whatever It Takes, Lord

We want to be people who love Jesus with all our heart, who trust him fully, follow him faithfully, and bear maximum fruit for his name. We want to be filled with as much God as we can possibly hold (Ephesians 3:19). We don’t want to be lukewarm (Revelation 3:16), or waste our brief life here on earth (Ephesians 5:16).

So let’s lace our prayers with whatever it takes requests.

The Safest Prayer

Over the years, many people have told me they fear praying “whatever it takes” because God just might actually answer. And if he does, he might make them do hard things or go to hard places where they might suffer. He might take away people and things they love. He might make them miserable. Praying whatever it takes feels dangerous.

I understand this fear. I used to feel it, too. We look at what some saints endured and we think, “No thanks.” But if we read Hebrews 11, we find that saints who seemed to pay a significant cost to fully follow God were not holy stoics who chose obedience over joy, but holy hedonists who, like Jesus, chose costly obedience for the sake of their joy (Hebrews 12:2). They considered any hardship they endured worth the cost because the joy of their reward was so great (Hebrews 11:26).

After years of praying whatever it takes, I can tell you my former fears were misplaced. I used to fear the wrong thing. It isn’t dangerous to pray this way; it’s dangerous not to pray this way.

Whatever it takes praying is a means to experiencing inexpressible joy (1 Peter 1:8), not misery. I’ve learned that choosing not to ask God to do whatever it takes out of fear I might lose something is like declining Thanksgiving dinner because I fear giving up my bag of Cheetos.

We are never safer than when we are in Jesus’s hands (John 10:28). And the safest way we can pray is to ask God to do whatever it takes for Jesus’s joy to be in us and for our joy to be full (John 15:11).

God Only Wants to Give You Good Gifts

I don’t want to mislead you. God’s answers to my prayers have resulted in some of the most difficult experiences of my life. But hear me: I would not trade any of those experiences for the world. They’ve only encouraged me to pray all the more because of the joy-infused hope I’ve tasted through them (Romans 5:2).

It is true that God frequently answers our prayers in ways we don’t expect. But he only does this for our joy. God is always pursuing us with goodness and mercy (Psalm 23:6). Listen to how Jesus describes the Father’s disposition toward us when he encourages us to pray:

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11)

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7)

The Father has no desire at all to give us misery when we ask for joy (Matthew 7:9–10).

Don’t Be Afraid to Pray, “Whatever It Takes, Lord”

So don’t be afraid to pray, “Whatever it takes, Lord.” All we are doing is asking our Father for what will make us and others most happy (Luke 11:13; Matthew 13:44; Ephesians 1:17–18; Ephesians 3:19; Colossians 4:3). This will not endanger our joy, but result in more of it (John 15:11; Psalm 16:11).

Any suspicion we have that God will make us miserable in answer to our earnest prayers for more of him is a demonic deception. Satan is casting a lying light on Scripture and our experience, playing on our fears, so that he can cheat us out of the joy God wants to give us. We must not let our unbelieving fears determine the nature of our prayers.

That’s why it’s actually more dangerous not to pray such prayers. We live in a cosmic war zone, opposed by spiritual forces of evil far beyond our strength (Ephesians 6:12). We really need God to do whatever it takes to defeat them. And he chooses to do so often through our prayers (Romans 15:18; Philippians 1:19).

So let’s boldly approach the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16), and ask for as much of it as we can get, whatever it takes. For it is asking the One we love most to give us what we need most that will make us most happy. We should not fear, for there is no safer prayer.

The Cost of Nondiscipleship

We hear a lot about the cost of discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the beloved book The Cost of Discipleship, where he says so memorably, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

This is true. Jesus said, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. . . . Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27, 33). To be Jesus’s disciple is costly.

But, according to Dallas Willard, the truth is that “the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater.”

The Cost of Discipleship

One day, just as Jesus was leaving town, a young man ran up to him, dropped on his knees, and blurted out, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17–22). It turned out this man was both wealthy and religious. I imagine most observers assumed God blessed the man’s piety with wealth. But something troubled him; something wasn’t right.

So he came to Jesus for the answer. And Jesus loved him for his earnestness, so he gave him the answer in the form of an invitation: “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mark 10:21). This invitation devastated the young man. Suddenly he understood he could not serve God and money (Luke 16:13).

The result: he walked away sorrowful because the cost of discipleship was too high.

The Cost of Nondiscipleship

On another day, while walking through Jericho, Jesus saw a short man sitting in a sycamore tree (Luke 19:1–10). Zacchaeus was also wealthy — but religious? Not so much. I doubt most observers considered Zacchaeus’s wealth to be God’s blessing, since he was a Roman tax collector, and a fraudulent one at that. But something troubled and intrigued this man enough to make him climb a tree to get a glimpse of Jesus.

When Jesus saw him up there, the Spirit moved him to say, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5). The result of this encounter was that Zacchaeus also suddenly understood he could not serve God and money.

The result: he joyfully gave half of his wealth to the poor and repaid his fraud victims four times what he had stolen — I imagine there was not much left over. For Zacchaeus, the cost of nondiscipleship was too high.

Don’t Count the Wrong Cost

Two men both encountered Jesus. One was unwilling to lose his possessions; the other was unwilling to keep them. What made the difference? The thing they each treasured most. They each counted the cost and made their choice.

Jesus tells us to count the cost of discipleship (Luke 14:26–33). But if we count the cost primarily in terms of what we will lose on earth, we’re focusing on the wrong cost. Jesus wants us to count the cost of nondiscipleship: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

So let’s think about what it cost the rich young man to keep his possessions:

He lost the forgiveness of all his sins and reconciliation with the Father.

He lost the joy of having fellowship with the Father and the Son (1 John 1:3).

He lost the empowering presence and joy of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:52; 1 Thessalonians 1:6).

He lost the profound sign and wonder and joy and strength and comfort of being part of Christ’s body, the church, and the everlasting fellowship of the saints (Colossians 1:18; Acts 2:42; 1 John 1:7).
He lost the provision of God’s sufficient grace for every need (2 Corinthians 9:8; Philippians 4:19).

He lost the privilege of participating in the destruction of the devil’s works (1 John 3:8).

He lost the unspeakable joy of knowing every precious and very great promise of God found their yes for him in Jesus (1 Peter 1:8; 2 Peter 1:4; 2 Corinthians 1:20).

He lost the triumphant joy of seeing others delivered from the domain of darkness (Colossians 1:13).
He lost the abundant life Jesus would have given him (John 10:10).
And he lost eternal joy! He walked away from the heavenly treasure of eternal life with God and an inheritance so great that the worst suffering of this age is “light” and “momentary” by comparison (John 3:16; 1 Peter 1:4; 2 Corinthians 4:17).

He lost God! He chose money over God, and so chose inconceivably destitute poverty. This is the tragedy of any idolatry. Don’t let it happen it you!

Don’t Walk, Climb!

We count the cost of discipleship based on what we treasure most. Our hearts stay with our treasures (Luke 12:34). We will not part with what captures our heart.

What’s capturing your heart? If, like the rich young man and Zacchaeus, something’s troubling you, go to Jesus. That’s the right thing to do.

If Jesus exposes an idol, something you feel you can’t give up in order to follow him, don’t walk away. You don’t have to walk away. Your story can be different than the rich young man’s. Don’t choose the poverty of any worldly gain over eternal gain, for you will find it no gain at all (Matthew 16:26).

Instead of walking away, climb. Climb whatever sycamore you must in order to get a glimpse of Jesus. Christ is the real gain (Philippians 3:8). Christ is the real treasure (Matthew 13:44). The Spirit causes a treasure-transfer to happen as we look to Jesus. Look until you see him. Ask, seek, knock (Luke 11:9). Climb. And when you see him, like Zacchaeus, you will with joy give away what used to capture your heart rather than lose the treasure of Christ.

Count the cost, the right cost. Don’t walk away. The cost of nondiscipleship is much too high.

Being Real About Being Real

Millennials value and promote authenticity. That’s one of the purported characteristics of the generation born from roughly 1980 to 2000, the last twenty years of the old millennium — the first generation to come of age in the new.

If it’s true that Millennials, in general, do indeed value and promote authenticity, I think it’s a spiritually healthy and hopeful sign, both inside and outside the church. The last generation that focused on authenticity also was the last generation to experience a significant spiritual awakening.

When the first wave of Baby Boomers (born from 1946 to roughly 1964) came of age in the late sixties and early seventies, young adults famously threw off all sorts of social conventions in pursuit of a more meaningful, authentic life. Some of those efforts were foolish and destructive, and still affect us today.

But also many showed a real spiritual earnestness and openness, and God responded powerfully. Millions of men and women found real love and peace in Jesus Christ. Today the cultural, political, economic, global, and church contexts are different for you who are Millennials, but your remarkable desire for honest, authentic, transparent living has similarities. It means God is doing something among you, and I’m jealous for you to experience as much of his grace and power as possible.

Being Real

The colloquial shorthand for honest, authentic, transparent living is “being real.” You want people, companies, and especially churches to be real. That’s a very good desire. Jesus, who is the Truth (John 14:6), wants us to be real.

But allow me to offer you a word of caution from experience: be careful not to merely adopt society’s definition of what being real means. We Boomers and Xers (born from the mid-sixties to late seventies) have repeatedly fallen into this subtle error. It happens easily, almost without thinking, which is part of the problem.

We formulate an intuitive, somewhat vague ideal of what being real looks like from our cultural influences, influences inside and outside the church. These ideals, if we don’t subject them to careful biblical scrutiny, can develop into flawed assumptions and expectations that we bring into our friendships, churches, and small groups.

When this assumed ideal of what real living in community should be like doesn’t match our friendship or church experience, we grow frustrated and disillusioned, and often either give up or go looking elsewhere.

There are a lot of jaded Boomers and Xers who still haven’t found what they’re looking for, because they’ve been looking for some imagined ideal of being real rather than the messier, harder way God has provided in the real, less-than-ideal community around them.

God’s ways are often not our ways (Isaiah 55:8–9). And the experience of being real that he wants for us is often deeper, broader, and more demanding than our ideals. Our ideals tend to be shaped by our limited experiences, temperaments, and preferences, which means they are often more about us than others. But Jesus wants us to become more real than we typically imagine. He’s after something higher than authenticity. He wants us to love one other (John 15:12).

Aim for Honest Love

Again, the desire to be real is a very good one. But if we aim at being real, we will miss the mark because we aren’t aiming high enough. We can be authentic (as in being honest and unpretentious), and yet not love God or others. But we can’t love either without authenticity.

That’s why God wants our aim to be love from a pure heart and a sincere faith (1 Timothy 1:5). Love demands more from us than honesty. It demands patience, kindness, humility, and gentle words (1 Corinthians 13:4). Love demands dying to our own expectations and the irritation and resentment we’re tempted with when we don’t get our way (1 Corinthians 13:5). Love demands forbearance, faith, hope in God for others’ growth, and, one of the hardest, a willingness to endure the long process of becoming real together (1 Corinthians 13:7).

None of us is fully real yet. We are all in the process of God helping us become real, like Jesus (Romans 8:29; Ephesians 4:13). He will complete this good work in each of us (Philippians 1:6), and he will use others to accomplish it in us and vice versa. The process and context he chooses to do this in and through us often look much different than our imagined ideal. It’s usually harder and takes longer than we expect. But his ways are better than our ideals.

My Prayer for You

Millennials, in no way do I wish your desire for authenticity to diminish. I want it to increase, and mine with yours. It is spiritually healthy, and as a generational value could be a harbinger of a new outpouring of the Spirit. I only long for you to avoid sacrificing love on the altar of your ideals, a mistake we, your predecessors, have made.

Perhaps the best way I can close is simply to pray a blessing on you:

Father in heaven, I am so grateful for my Millennial brothers and sisters. Their earnestness to live real honors you and is a pointer to your existence — that there is such a thing as ultimate Reality. I pray that their “love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment” (Philippians 1:9). I pray that they will “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge [and] be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). And I pray that they will ultimately experience more profoundly authentic community than they have imagined and that you will use this precious generation that’s as big as (or bigger than) the Baby Boomers to make an even bigger impact for the global glory of Jesus Christ and the completion of the Great Commission. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

Lay Aside the Weight of Tomorrow’s Trouble

Fear for tomorrow kills our faith for today. So, having faith for today often means killing fear for tomorrow.

That’s why Jesus said,

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matthew 6:34)

Anxiety over our uncertain, and as yet unreal, future is a heavy burden. It’s a burden Jesus doesn’t want us to bear, because it’s not ours to bear. It’s God’s burden, and for him it’s very light.

In this command, Jesus wants to give us an easy yoke (Matthew 11:30). He is showing us how to lay aside the unwieldy weight (Hebrews 12:1) of tomorrow’s trouble by freeing us to only be concerned about today’s trouble.

The Only Place We Experience Grace

The past grace of God in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is unspeakably precious to us because of all the benefits it provides us now and into eternity. The future grace of God, all that he promises to provide us in the future, is unspeakably precious because it’s what fuels our faith to keep us moving forward with joy and courage.

But the only place we experience the grace of God is in the present.

And the grace God provides us today is designed for today’s needs, or as Jesus says, today’s troubles. In Matthew 6:34, Jesus is letting us know, as he does elsewhere (John 16:33), that we’re going to have daily troubles. However, as John Piper says, “tomorrow’s troubles are not designed to be dealt with by today’s grace.” The grace God makes available to us today is designed to be completely sufficient for today’s troubles (2 Corinthians 9:8). That’s why Jesus wants us focused on today.

But Satan, as well as our sinful unbelief, wants us focused on the future — not the real future as defined by God’s promises, but an imaginary future as defined by our fears. From the context of Jesus’s command (Matthew 6:19–34), we know this is the issue Jesus is addressing: the imagined fear that God will not provide for us.

Our anxiety about tomorrow messes up our lives when we allow it to govern us. It distracts our attention away from God’s gracious provision for us today to an imagined fear in an unreal tomorrow. And it disorients us by turning us away from seeking the kingdom of God to seeking earthly protection from the future we fear (Matthew 6:19–20; 33).

What Jesus Isn’t Saying

Now, Jesus isn’t saying we shouldn’t make provision for our future. We know this because a few sentences earlier he tells us to “lay up . . . treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:19–20). He simply wants us making provision for the right future — the only future that ultimately matters.

Jesus also isn’t saying we shouldn’t plan for the future. When he tells us to look at the birds and consider the lilies he’s not saying, “make no plans” (Matthew 6:26, 28). He’s simply reminding us of our Father’s care and his power to provide for the essential needs of all of his creatures, so that we don’t waste our brief lives trying to do God’s job. There is a division of labor. We are to focus on the kingdom work Jesus assigns us (John 15:16; Ephesians 2:10), and the Father is to provide all we need (Matthew 6:33).

Jesus wants our planning mainly focused on the effort of making disciples (Matthew 28:19–20) — all under the banner of “if the Lord wills” (James 4:15). And he wants us to make financial provision for our future by mainly investing our earthly wealth in the advancement of his kingdom (Luke 12:32–34).

Receive God’s Grace and Cast Your Cares

This way of life is not meant to be a lofty ideal. Jesus wants it to be our daily reality. His command that we “not be anxious about tomorrow” is a great mercy to us. If we obey him, he will relieve us of a burden too heavy for us to carry. We lay aside the weight of tomorrow’s trouble by exercising two simple acts of faith: we receive and we cast.

We receive from God his sufficient grace for today. His grace does not always come in the packages we expect. Sometimes his grace looks like abundance and sometimes it looks like need (Philippians 4:12). We must learn that there is sufficient grace for prosperity and affliction, for joy and sorrow, for freedom and prison, for life and for death. They look different, but God will always provide enough grace for what we really need.

And we cast our anxieties for tomorrow on God because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). Our fears for the future are immensely unreliable. We are fools if we allow them to govern us. We don’t know the future, and neither does Satan — and he wouldn’t tell us the truth even if he did know (John 8:44). But God completely knows the future (Isaiah 46:10), so we are wise to trust him with it. We cast our cares on him by bringing our requests to him and letting his peace guard our hearts and minds (Philippians 4:6–7).

“Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34). And sufficient for today is today’s grace. Today’s grace won’t solve tomorrow’s troubles. The only way today’s grace addresses tomorrow is by helping us cast our anxieties on God. But this is a huge help, because it frees us to focus on the one place we will experience God’s grace today: today.

Satan’s Favorite Weapon Against You

Superman is almost unstoppable. I say “almost” because he does have one vulnerability. Kryptonite weakens him, and too much of it can destroy him. Tony Reinke is exactly right when he says, “unbelief is our Kryptonite” (Newton on the Christian Life).

Nothing on earth is more powerful than the Holy Spirit flowing through the faith of a born again disciple of Jesus (1 John 5:4). Nothing. It is the greatest superpower available to anyone anywhere. Through faith nothing is impossible (Matthew 17:20). When a Christian is full of Spirit-empowered faith, he cannot stop and cannot be stopped speaking about what he has seen and heard (Acts 4:20). Not even death can silence him (Hebrews 11:4).

This means that nothing is more humanly destructive to the domain of darkness than a faith-filled Christian. Through him, Jesus destroys the devil’s works (1 John 3:8). The only thing Satan’s forces fear more than the vibrant faith of a Christian is the unified, collaborative, vibrant faith of a community of Christians.

But we do have one vulnerability: unbelief. It weakens us and can destroy us. And Satan knows this very well.

Satan’s After Your Faith

Therefore, Satan’s primary goal in the thousands of his various attacks on us is to take down our faith. His primary goal against the church is to fragment the formidable force of united faith and isolate believers, weakening the church and making individuals more vulnerable (Hebrews 3:12–13, 10:25). His forces are hell-bent on these strategic objectives (Ephesians 6:11–12).

The faith of a Christian is God’s chosen channel to bring his saving, sanctifying, strengthening, healing, and delivering grace to the world. If Satan can weaken our faith, he can immobilize us. If he can destroy our faith, he can destroy us. But if he can’t disarm our faith, Jesus will destroy him through it.

This is why we find the fight of faith and the unity of faith so hard (1 Timothy 6:12; Ephesians 4:13). The stakes are very high in this spiritual war and the battle line is drawn over our faith. Satan is doing everything he can to employ the Kryptonite power of unbelief against us. This is what’s taking place in all our temptations to disobedience, discouragement, doubts, distractions, and divisions. Satan’s trying to weaken and destroy our faith and, through us, the faith of others.

Four Helps to Escape the Kryptonite Power of Unbelief

I fight this battle every day. And I have certain vulnerabilities to unbelief that are so disorienting and discouraging that sometimes I want to despair and just give up. I need help.

Superman can’t fight Kryptonite on his own. He needs someone to help him escape its power. When it comes to unbelief, so do I. And that helper is the Holy Spirit. Through the word of God, often mediated through another believer, the Holy Spirit seeks to focus my faith on Jesus’s truth and away from Satan’s lies. When this happens faith ignites and unbelief evaporates.

Since unbelief is so dangerous to us, when we suffer its effects, we must take urgent steps to receive the Spirit’s help. In a recent battle with unbelief, the Spirit used the four following means to help me. Perhaps they will help you.

1. I looked to the source of my power.

Peter’s walk on water is frequently helpful to me (Matthew 14:28–31). As long as his faith was focused on Jesus, he was able to do the humanly impossible. When his focus shifted to the wind and waves, he sank. When I find myself sinking, it’s always evidence of unbelief.

So I asked a friend, in this case my wife, to help me get my eyes on Jesus. I did this right away. And the Spirit helped my unbelief (Mark 9:24) through promises my wife helped me remember.

2. I soaked in the promises that addressed my unbelief.

I laid aside distractions, repented of my unbelief, and bathed in those particular promises until their comforting power took effect in my soul.

3. I continued “steadfastly in prayer” (Colossians 4:2).

I turned the promises into requests and didn’t stop praying them. Jesus says that when we abide in him and his word abides in us, we can ask whatever we wish and it will be done for us (John 15:7). I have always found this promise true, but I’ve also learned not to lean on my own understanding regarding his timing and ways (Proverbs 3:5).

God will answer. But since he usually is doing more in us and through us than we are aware of, we must trust him. Remain steadfast in prayer until the answer comes.

4. I remembered that my weaknesses show Christ’s strength.

This particular battle with unbelief involved weaknesses I wish I didn’t have and tempt me to feel worthless (I’m not talking about sins, though I have plenty of those, too). But the Spirit helped me remember that my weaknesses are where Jesus loves to show his strength (2 Corinthians 12:9–10). But no matter what unbelief uses against us, even when we give in to sin, there are superpower promises that the Spirit brings to mind to help us escape (1 Corinthians 10:13).

You have other ways that you’ve found helpful in the fight for faith, and I hope you share them with those around you.

Ferocious battles with demonic unbelief are part of the normal Christian life. This is war. If the fighting doesn’t get fierce, we are likely not engaged or doing anything threatening to Satan. But if Satan is fighting us with the Kryptonite of unbelief, he perceives a threat. When you feel yourself wilting, take heart. Through the promises of Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus will help you overcome your enemy’s most lethal weapon (John 16:33).

Breaking the Power of Shame

Her life was a wreck. After five failed marriages she stopped with the formalities. She came to the well when the sun blazed so she could draw water alone and hide from the comments, the whispers, and the condemning looks (John 4).

He was a powerful man who abused his power to sleep with another man’s wife. But he got her pregnant. And out of fear of exposing his wickedness he tried to hide behind a cover-up that turned murderous (2 Samuel 11).

She had suffered from a vaginal hemorrhage for twelve years. All that time: unclean, uncomfortable, and uncomforted. She saw Jesus heal others and longed to receive his touch. But how could she ask him in front of the whole crowd? So she sought to hide in anonymity by just touching the fringe of his robe (Luke 8:43–48).

These are three biblical portraits of people who tried to hide their shame in the wrong places. But the wonderful thing is that all three experienced God’s power to break shame’s hold over them and set them free. And this wonderful experience can also be ours.

What Gives Shame Power

Shame has plagued us since Adam and Eve bit into the fruit and realized they were naked. Their first instinct was to hide from each other and God (Genesis 3:7–11). And no wonder. They now stood guilty before God and were vulnerable to each other and Satan in a whole new horrible way. Suddenly, they were sinful, weak, damaged people living in a dangerous world. They found themselves under God’s righteous judgment (Genesis 3:17–19; John 3:19; Romans 6:23), exposed to other sinners’ sinful judgment and rejection, and wide-open to the condemning accusations of the evil one (Revelation 12:10).

We also live in this dangerous world and have the same instinct to hide ourselves.

Because sin is alive in our bodies (Romans 7:23) and because we are beset with weakness (Hebrews 5:2), the kind of shame we often experience is a potent combination of failure and pride. We fail morally (sin), we fail due to our limitations (weakness), and we fail because the creation is subject to futility and doesn’t work right (Romans 8:20). We also fail to live up to other people’s expectations. And because we are full of sinful pride, we are ashamed of our failures and weaknesses, and will go to almost any length to hide them from others.

This means pride-fueled shame can wield great power over us. It controls significant parts of our lives and consumes precious energy and time in avoiding exposure.

Hiding in the Wrong Place

Like the woman at the well, King David, and the hemorrhaging woman, our shame frequently encourages us to hide in the wrong places.

We hide in our homes or away from our homes. We hide in our rooms and in our offices. We hide in housework, yard work, and garage puttering. We hide behind computers and phones and newspapers and magazines. We hide behind earphones and Netflix and ESPN. We hide behind fashion facades, education facades, career facades, Facebook facades, and pulpit facades. We hide in busyness and procrastination. We hide in outright lies or diversionary conversation. We hide behind sullenness and humor. We hide behind bravado and timidity. We hide in extroversion and introversion.

You see, we have our own noontime well visits, our sin cover-ups, and our anonymous touches. Pride moves us to use whatever we can to hide our shame.

The Key to Breaking Shame’s Power

But just because pride moves us to hide our shame in the wrong places doesn’t mean that our instinct to hide is completely wrong. It isn’t. We do need a place to hide, but we need to hide in the right place.

And there is only one place to hide that offers the protection we seek, where all our shame is covered and we no longer need to fear: the refuge of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 6:18–20). Jesus’s death and resurrection is the only remedy for the shame we feel over our grievous sin-failures (Hebrews 9:26). There is nowhere else to go with our sin; there is no other atonement (Acts 4:12). But if we hide in Jesus, he provides us a complete cleansing (1 John 1:9). And when that happens, all God’s promises, which find their yes in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20), become ours if we believe and receive them. And the grace that flows from these promises to us through faith are all-sufficient and abounding and provide for all our other shameful weaknesses and failures (2 Corinthians 9:8).

The key to breaking the power of pride-fueled shame is the superior power of humility-fueled faith in the work of Christ and the promises of Christ. Shame pronounces us guilty and deficient. Jesus pronounces us guiltless and promises that his grace will be sufficient for us in all our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 12:9–10). Christ is all (Colossians 3:11). As we trust Jesus as our righteousness (Philippians 3:9) and our provider of everything we need (Philippians 4:19), shame will lose its power over us.

That’s what happened to the woman at the well. She listened to Jesus and believed in him, and her sin-wrecked life was redeemed and her shame destroyed.

That’s what happened to King David. He confessed his sin and repented (2 Samuel 12:13) and trusted the pre-incarnate Christ, and his guilt and shame, which was great, was imputed to Christ and paid for in full.

And that’s what happened to the hemorrhaging woman. Jesus did make her tell the crowd about her shame, and in doing so she received the healing and cleansing she needed. Jesus made her shame a showcase of his grace.

And this wonderful experience can also be ours. All it requires is child-like, wholehearted belief in Jesus (John 14:1).