Jon Bloom's Blog, page 33

How Can We Be Angry and Not Sin?

“Be angry and do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). Is this even possible?

Not if perfect, sinless anger is the requirement, since sin infects everything we think, say, and do.

But I don’t think Paul had perfect, sinless anger in mind when he quoted King David from Psalm 4:4 to the Ephesians. Paul’s point seems to be that not all anger Christians experience is rooted in the prideful, selfish soil of our sin nature.

There is a kind of anger that comes from our regenerate, Spirit-directed nature, even if it is unavoidably tainted by our indwelling sin as it passes through the defective filters of our minds and mouths. And because the Holy Spirit through David and Paul instructs us to “be angry,” it means some things must make us righteously angry.

So what does righteous anger look like in a Christian?

What Is Righteous Anger?

First, let’s ask: What is righteous anger?

Righteous anger is being angry at what makes God angry. And “righteous anger” is the right word order. Because God is not fundamentally angry. He is fundamentally righteous. God’s anger is a byproduct of his righteousness.

God’s righteousness is his being perfectly right in all his ways, all of his manifold perfections operating together in perfect proportion, consistency, and harmony. God is the very definition and standard of goodness (Mark 10:18). What God says (Hebrews 6:5) and what God does (Micah 6:8) are good because they are “righteous altogether” (Psalm 19:9) — they perfectly represent his comprehensive perfection.

So, what makes God angry is the perversion of his goodness; the turning wrong of what he made right. God calls this perversion evil. Evil twists and disfigures God’s glory, vandalizing what is most valuable, and profaning what is most holy. Evil poisons and distorts reality, resulting in the destruction of joy for every creature that chooses the perversion over God’s good.

God’s righteousness demands his anger over such destructive perversion and that he mete out commensurate justice against those who commit such evil.

So our anger is righteous when we are angered over evil that profanes God’s holiness and perverts his goodness.

What Is Sinful Anger?

But humans, being evil (Luke 11:13), are not characterized by righteous anger but sinful anger, we Christians too often included. “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” because the anger of man is more concerned with man than with God (James 1:20).

I scarcely need to make this point. You know exactly what I mean. We tend to get angrier over our slighted pride than over the marring of God’s glory. We tend to get angrier over a minor inconvenience than a grievous injustice. We are often self-righteously angry like the older brother over his prodigal sibling (Luke 15:28), or selfishly angry like Jonah over the death of a plant while not caring about the welfare of 120,000 people (Jonah 4:9–11).

Anger rooted in our sin nature produces “quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder” (2 Corinthians 12:20). It produces “enmity, strife . . . fits of anger [i.e. tantrums], rivalries, dissensions, [and] divisions” (Galatians 5:20). Sinful anger is so common in us that we must be regularly reminded to put away “anger, wrath, [and] malice” (Colossians 3:8) and that “everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:22).

The Loving Slowness of Righteous Anger

Righteous anger doesn’t look or feel like sinful anger because godly righteous anger is governed and directed by love. God is righteous, but he is also love (1 John 4:8). And love is patient (1 Corinthians 13:4).

That’s why God repeatedly describes himself in Scripture as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Nahum 1:3).

God is slow to anger, “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). God will bring his righteous judgment to bear on the unrepentant guilty (Exodus 34:7), but he “does not afflict from his heart” (Lamentations 3:33). And he moves with a measured, merciful, loving slowness.

If you want to see love-governed anger in operation, look at Jesus.

Jesus knew a day of judgment was coming when he would come to earth as the King of kings and “tread [his enemies in] the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God” (Revelation 19:15–16). But long before bringing judgment, he came to bring salvation to his enemies (John 12:47; Romans 5:8). And when he came to save, he rarely expressed anger.

And those who walk closest with Jesus are also marked by this remarkable patience with sinners. They too are “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19). They do get angry, but like Jesus, their anger is laced with grief (Mark 3:5). Occasionally they flip tables in the temple (John 2:15–17), but they also weep over Jerusalem (Luke 13:34).

How Should We “Be Angry”?

Being angry and not sinning requires the discernment of constant practice (Hebrews 5:14) because so much of our anger is rooted in our prideful, selfish sin nature. And if we’ve suffered under the tyranny of a sinfully angry person, emotionally it can be very difficult to distinguish between sinful and righteous anger. But because it is something God calls us to, we must press into it.

So what does righteous anger look like in a Christian?

Righteous anger is roused by evil that profanes God’s holiness and perverts his goodness. Increasingly we become “greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked,” and find “their lawless deeds” tormenting (2 Peter 2:7–8). Increasingly we care more about God’s reputation than our own. Wherever we lack in these is where we must focus our repentance, prayers, fasting, and biblical meditation.

Righteous anger first sees the logs in our own eyes (Matthew 7:5). We are humbled, grieved, and angered by our own perverting of God’s goodness and we repent before addressing anyone else’s.

Righteous anger is grieved, not merely infuriated, by evil. Jesus did flip tables in the temple, but he was deeply grieved over the sin that made it necessary (Matthew 23:37). Anger with no tears over evil is often evidence of a lack of love in us.

Righteous anger is governed by God’s love and therefore slow to be expressed, allowing redemptive acts of love to be pursued first if at all possible. We truly want mercy to triumph over judgment for others (James 2:13), remembering Jesus’s mercy toward us and that he first came carrying a cross before coming bearing a sword.

Righteous anger acts swiftly when necessary. Some forms of evil require us to be quick to speak and quick to act. The slaughter of unborn children, ethnic and economic injustice, abuse (emotional, physical, sexual), sex trafficking, human slavery, adultery, refugee plight, persecution, and other such evils call for urgent, immediate rescue (Proverbs 24:11).

We will never be perfectly angry in this age. But we can grow in the grace of righteous anger. God means us to. It is part of being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).

Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). And one of his Scriptural commands is, “Be angry, and do not sin.”

Related Resources

The Root of Sinful Anger | In this episode of Ask Pastor John, guest Dr. David Powlison answers the question, “What is sinful anger, and what does it express?”

What Our Anger Is Telling Us | Much of our anger is due to our disordered loves, the age-old problem of taking good things and making them ultimate. This article provides three steps to freedom from disordered loves.

Battling the Unbelief of Bitterness | In this sermon, Pastor John describes the serious danger of anger and provides practical help for fighting the forms of unbelief that often fuel it.

Rest in the Prince of Peace

I remember singing this old hymn in church when I was growing up:

O what peace we often forfeit,

O what needless pain we bear,

all because we do not carry

everything to God in prayer.

As a kid, I didn’t think very much about the words. Now I’m thinking a lot about them. They make a huge claim. And if true, they make a huge claim on us.

But are they true? Or are they just naive, simplistic Christian cliché? Do they hold up under the real world weight of complex pain we suffer in the varied afflictions we endure?

All Because We Do Not

To test its truthfulness, we need to peal back the poetic skin and see if it has a Scriptural skeletal structure. And as it turns out, it does:

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

God’s amazing promise to us through Paul is the power behind the hymn’s simple poetry.

And the promise really is amazing! We must not let the familiarity of these verses make us dull to their edge. God is promising us peace in everything and freedom from controlling anxiety! Peace is ours for the taking.

So if we don’t have the peace of God guarding our hearts and minds, it’s all because we do not . . . do something God calls us to do.

Carry Everything to God in Prayer

The wonderful thing is that what God calls us to do is easy! His is an easy yoke, a light burden (Matthew 11:30). He’s calling us to pray.

And what is prayer? Prayer is asking our generous heavenly Father for whatever it is we wish (Luke 11:13; John 15:7), trusting that he will answer with whatever we need (Luke 11:10; Philippians 4:19). It is casting our anxieties on him, because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7).

But the only problem with bearing this easy yoke of asking God in faith for what we need is that we often find it hard. And what we find hard about praying is believing God — believing that it’s making any real difference.

Prayer is the native language of faith. That’s why a soul full of trust in God finds prayer almost effortless. But a soul full of doubt finds prayer a heavy burden. Prayerlessness is the muteness of unbelief.

An accurate gauge of our level of faith is how and how much we pray. A growing prayerful dependence on God is evidence of our growing spiritual maturity. And the more we pray in faith in everything, the more we experience the peace of God.

The Secret to Prayerful Dependence: Resting on the Faithful One

Why do we find faith so frequently difficult and therefore prayer such a labor? And what is the secret to realizing the promised peace Paul wrote about and experiencing what it means to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17)?

Hudson Taylor, the great 19th century missionary to China, struggled with this very issue. Here’s how he described his struggle:

I strove for faith, but it would not come; I tried to exercise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fullness of our precious Saviour, my guilt and helplessness seemed to increase. Sins committed appeared but as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief which was their cause, which could not or would not take God at His word, but rather made Him a liar! Unbelief was, I felt, the damning sin of the world; yet I indulged in it. I prayed for faith, but it came not. What was I to do?

Then he experienced a breakthrough that changed his life:

When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from [his missionary colleague, John] McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never know it before. McCarthy, who had been much exercised by the same sense of failure but saw the light before I did, wrote: “But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.” As I read, I saw it all! “If we believe not, he abideth faithful.” I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, “I will never leave thee.” “Ah, there is rest!” I thought. “I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more.” (Spiritual Secret, 261)

The key for Taylor was that he stopped focusing on trying to exercise more faith and instead he looked to Jesus, “the Faithful One,” as revealed in the written word. While his focus had been on his lack of faith and trying to work it up, he was miserable. But when his focus turned to the fullness of Jesus, he discovered the peace surpassing understanding.

Faith is not a muscle that we need to pump up in order to be strong enough to trust Jesus. Faith is our response to what we perceive as trustworthy. The more trustworthy, solid, stable, dependable, unfailing, and secure something appears to us, the greater our trust or faith in it will be. When our faith is weak, it’s an indicator that our focus is on the wrong thing.

Taylor’s refocusing transformed him. For the rest of his life he was marked by the peace of God and a remarkable freedom from anxiety. It bore up under the real world weight of his excessive labors, financial stress, frequent dangers, disease, the deaths of his wives and children and colleagues — the sort of difficulties that Paul knew (2 Corinthians 11:23–28).

My Peace I Give to You

Jesus came to give us peace — not only a forensic peace with God through his substitutionary atonement for our sins (Romans 5:1), but also a deep, heart and mind-guarding peace in the midst of tribulations (John 16:33).

He said, “my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). It’s ours for the taking. All we need to do is ask in faith in everything. And the faith-key that unlocks the peace that surpasses understanding is seeing him as the Faithful One and resting in his ability to do what he has promised. It is an easy yoke.

Let us not forfeit this peace and bear needless pain. Let us carry everything to God in prayer and trust him fully to provide everything we need (Philippians 4:19).

Related Resources

Pray Without Ceasing

Was Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret the Same as Paul’s?

The Ministry of Hudson Taylor as Life in Christ

The Mosque on the Mount

On the ancient Temple Mount in Jerusalem there stands a mosque.

Observant Jews see a profaning of their most holy place and plead with YHWH to remove their disgrace. Observant Muslims see Allah’s favor, a sign that the true religion sits in ascendency.

The world sees a centuries-old religious/political drama being played out on the edge of a knife, with diplomats delicately working like a bomb squad to avoid a bloody explosion.

But most miss the real significance of the mosque on the mount.

When the Temple Occupied the Mount

When the temple stood on the mount it was the very heart of Judaism. More accurately, the temple housed the Heart of Judaism. The temple was the place where the presence of the one holy God dwelt among his people and where sacrifices were offered nearly continually to atone for his people’s sins.

But the presence remained inside the temple, in the Most Holy Place (Hebrews 9:3), mercifully separated from the people that God might not break out in judgment upon them because of their unholy sinfulness. No one was allowed to enter there except the high priest, “and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offer[ed] for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people” (Hebrews 9:7).

But that all changed “when the fullness of time had come” (Galatians 4:4) and Messiah appeared, just as God had promised in the Law and Prophets.

Why the Temple Was Removed

And Messiah “appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). Having accomplished that, he “entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself . . . to appear in the presence of God” on behalf of all who would believe in him (Hebrews 9:24).

Jesus became the one final sacrifice and the one final undying high priest (Hebrews 7:24). He opened a “new and living way” (Hebrews 10:19–20) into the Most Holy Place in heaven for all who would “draw near to God through him” (Hebrews 7:25). He became the mediator of the new covenant God had promised (Jeremiah 31:31–34).

At this point the presence of God moved out of the temple’s Holy Place into his people, whom Messiah had made holy. And he began to move his people to take the gospel of the new covenant to all the peoples of the world. The Presence was moving to the peoples.

The age of the temple was over. The “copy and shadow” was obsolete (Hebrews 8:5, 13). Therefore Jesus prophesied: “Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here [on the Temple Mount] one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2). This was fulfilled in AD 70 and the temple has never been rebuilt.

The Unwitting Guardian of the New Covenant

For the past 13 centuries the Al Aqsa Mosque has occupied the temple’s former site. It is not a sign of God’s endorsement on Islam. Rather, the mosque is an unwitting guardian of the new covenant reality.

God wants the temple gone, not because Judaism is destroyed, but because in Jesus it is fulfilled. The final sacrifice has been made. The eternal High Priest has assumed his intercessory office. The copy and shadow is no longer needed. The Presence now resides in the temple of his holy people (1 Corinthians 3:17).

So when you see the Al Aqsa Mosque, or its beautiful golden Temple Mount neighbor, the Dome of the Rock, or the ancient Western Wall of Jewish weeping, pray for both Jews and Muslims.

Pray that both Jews and Muslims will hear and believe the best news in all the world: The age of the new covenant has come and in Jesus they can be reconciled to God and become living stones in the true and holy house of God: his worshiping people, redeemed and made holy by the blood of the Lamb (1 Peter 2:4–5, John 1:29).

And pray that because of Jesus, Jews would cease grieving the absence of their ancient temple and that Muslims would cease rejoicing in the presence of the ancient mosque. For “the hour [has come] when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will [they] worship the Father” (John 4:21).

Related Resources

How Should I Witness to a Jew Who Rejects Jesus?

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same Deity?

Loving Muslims, While Rejecting Islam

Will You Wrestle with God?

What do you really need from God right now? What blessing do you want from him? How badly do you want it?

There are times when God only releases his blessings on us after a season of prolonged and even painful wrestling with him.

The Strangest Wrestling Match in History

In Genesis 32, Jacob is on his way back home to Canaan with his small tribe of wives and children after a 20-year sojourn in Paddan-aram. And he is scared to death, because his estranged brother, Esau, is coming to meet him — with 400 men (Genesis 32:6). This is no welcome party; it’s an army.

So after splitting up his household into two camps to try and avoid complete annihilation, Jacob, understandably suffering insomnia, intends to spend the night alone — no doubt in desperate prayer.

But a strange man who shows up and wrestles Jacob till daybreak rudely interrupts his plans. At some point during this weird contest Jacob realizes that he is wrestling God. And when God decides it’s time to end the match, he dislocates Jacob’s hip and demands to be released. And Jacob, in significant pain, replies, “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26).

This response clearly pleases God, who pronounces this blessing on Jacob: “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob [deceiver], but Israel [strives with God], for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28).

Jacob then limps toward his tense reunion with Esau with a weakened body and a strengthened faith. Having wrestled with God, he knows his prayers regarding Esau will be answered.

Multiple Blessings Came Through the Wrestling

Take note of what God did when he wrestled Jacob. Jacob began the night dreading Esau’s arrival. He was full of fear and desperation. But he ended the night of struggle with God’s blessing and a renewed faith. All of our struggling with God in faith leads to peace.

And isn’t it interesting that God did not simply speak to Jacob in a dream or vision as he had at other times (Genesis 31:13) and reiterate his promise and speak comforting words? This time God addressed Jacob’s fear by requiring him to wrestle all night. This probably felt to Jacob like a badly timed hassle when he just wanted comfort and assurance. But later he realized just how comforting it was. Sometimes when we want God’s comfort, he sends it in unexpected and even unwanted packages.

God even afflicted Jacob with a debilitating injury. This had the effect of making Jacob even more vulnerable to Esau, forcing Jacob’s faith to more fully rest on God and not himself. If necessary, God will cause us to limp to increase our faith.

Lastly, wrestling with God changed Jacob’s identity. He was no longer to be known as one who received his blessing by deception. This time he received God’s blessing by prevailing with God by faith. This struggle turned out to be a profoundly gracious gift of restoration that God gave Jacob, not unlike the gift Jesus gave Peter by letting Peter affirm his love for Jesus as many times as he had denied it (John 21:15–17). Jacob’s tenacious faith pleased God and he rewarded Jacob’s request (Hebrews 11:6). When God calls us to wrestle with him, there’s always more going on than we first understand and God always uses it to transform us for good.

God Is Not Reluctant to Bless You

When God makes us wrestle him for some blessing(s), it is not because God is reluctant to bless us, even if that’s how it first feels. It is because he has more blessings for us in the wrestling than without it.

Remember, God pursued Jacob for this match. God was the initiator. Jacob was stewing in his own anxiety over Esau and his approaching slaughter squad when God showed up. And the wrestling drew Jacob out of his fearful preoccupation and forced him to focus on God.

I doubt at first that Jacob wanted this forced focus or even believed he needed it. It wouldn’t surprise me if at the beginning Jacob had prayed, “God would you get rid of this guy? This is the last thing I need right now.” But what he discovered was that the wrestling was a means of God’s grace, a channel for God’s blessing on him.

The same is true for us.

Do Not Let God Go Until He Blesses You!

So I’ll ask again. What do you really need from God right now? What blessing do you want from him? How badly do you want it?

God will meet you in your anguish, fear, and uncertainty. But he may not meet you in the way you expect or desire. Your greatest ally may show up looking at first like your adversary, inciting you to wrestle with him.

If so, remember Jacob. There are multiple blessings in the wrestling. You may not need soft words of comfort, you may not need to be left alone with your thoughts, you may not need sleep, you may not even need a healthy hip! What you need is God’s blessing!

So when God calls you to wrestle with him in prayer, it is an invitation to receive his blessing. Stay with him and don’t give up. Do not let him go until he blesses you! He loves to bless that kind of tenacious faith and you will come out transformed.

Related Resources

I Will Not Let You Go Unless You Bless Me | God will answer your cries of desperation. But you might, like Jacob in Genesis 32, be surprised by his answer.

Praying for a Breakthrough | Are you praying for a breakthrough? Don’t lose heart. Grow determined. Intense opposition almost always precedes a breakthrough.

Winning Battles Through Prayer | God with infinite power and knowledge has ordained in His all-encompassing foreknowledge and infinite wisdom to respond to the pleading of His people.

Prayers for Christ’s Increase and Our Decrease

When John the Baptist said, “Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:29–30), he wasn’t talking about his inner life. He was talking about his ministry calling as a prophet and his public influence. He delighted that Jesus’s influence was eclipsing his own.

But he could only delight in his public diminishment because in his private life, in his heart, Christ had become supreme. And since the Bible shows that it is never easy for a sinful person to come to such a place of joyful submission, it is safe to assume that John’s public joy was likely the result of much wrestling with God and hard fighting against sin in the private place.

A mark of our increasing maturity as disciples is an increasing experience of joy in Jesus’s influence eclipsing our own, both internally and externally. And God delights in such humble joy, which is one reason Jesus said that no one born of women was greater than John the Baptist (Luke 7:28). So we should not only desire this increasing joy, but also specifically ask God for it and be willing to endure whatever it takes to produce it.

14 Prayers for Christ’s Increase

At the risk of appearing more impressive than I really am, I’ll share with you the list I’ve compiled over the years of things that I regularly ask God for so that Christ will increase and I will decrease. Perhaps you will find it helpful, or it will encourage you to compile your own list.

All the requests begin with “D” to help me remember. And I’ve ordered them not so much in sequence of priority but to roughly move from heart to action. And since there are fourteen, I’ve grouped them so that I can pray for two similar or related requests per day each day of the week.

Please know that these are prayers of aspiration, not achievement. I am very far from having arrived.

But I can say that I have seen God answering these prayers over twenty plus years, some more than others. And I can also say that I have never once regretted praying “whatever it takes,” even though many answers have come through pain or adversity. Increased joy and hope in Christ’s increase, whether in us or around us, is worth far more than whatever it costs.

Delight: Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my delight in you as the greatest treasure of my heart.

“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)

Desires: Whatever it takes, Lord, increasingly align the desires of my heart with yours.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9–10)

“I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” (John 5:30)

“Not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42)

Dependence: Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my awareness of my dependence on you in everything so that I will live continually by faith.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

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

“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.” (Psalm 119:67)

Discipline: Whatever it takes, Lord, discipline me for my good that I may increasingly share your holiness and bear the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

“He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:10–11)

Discernment: Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my ability to discern good from evil through the rigorous exercise of constant practice.

“But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” (Hebrews 5:14)

Diligence: Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my resolve to do your will with all diligence.

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:15–16)

Drive: 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.

Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. (Romans 12:11)

Distraction: Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my resolve to pursue only what you call me to do and deliver me from the fragmenting effect of fruitless distraction.

“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)

Distress: Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my distress for perishing unbelievers, the persecuted church, and destitute poor and my resolve to do what I can to bring them the deliverance and relief of the whole gospel of Christ.

“I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.” (Romans 9:2)

“Remember those in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” (Hebrews 13:3)

“Remember the poor.” (Galatians 2:10)

Declare: Whatever it takes, Lord, decrease the hold that unbelieving fear has over me and increase my boldness to declare the gospel to everyone you send me to or bring to me.

“Grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.” (Acts 4:29)

“He . . . welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness.” (Acts 28:30–31)

Dynamis (Greek for “power”): Whatever it takes, Lord, fill me with the power of the Holy Spirit and any gifting you might be pleased to give me that I may be an increasingly fruitful witness to the reality and gospel of Jesus Christ.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses.” (Acts 1:8)

“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” (Acts 4:31)

Decrease: Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my love for your supremacy and trust in your wise purposes so that when it’s time for me to step out of a role to which you had appointed me for a season, I will receive the decrease in personal influence with joyful faith.

“Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:29–30)

Death: Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my faith and joy in the truth that death is gain for me so that I can “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.” Do not let the fear of death cause me to resist your will for me and enable me to die in a way that declares that Christ is gain.

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” (John 17:24)

“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)

“So we will always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:17)

He Must Increase, But I Must Decrease

15 Prayers for God’s Power

Seven Things to Pray for Your Children

Why We Pray for Our Meals

Praying before we eat a meal is a beautiful thing — or should be a beautiful thing. It is gloriously appropriate to give thanks and praise to God from whom all blessings flow. And to have food to eat is a merciful blessing.

The Dark Side of Abundance

Those of us who live in prosperous regions of the globe and have never known food scarcity perhaps don’t feel much awe in it. That is a sad thing: a lack of awe. It’s the dark side of abundance. We sinners tend to grow blind to glory when there’s a lot of it. God is kind not to give us heaven yet. We would not appreciate more than a fraction of it.

Assuming there will always be way more food available than we need is a luxury very few have experienced in world history. Complaining about the food we have is a luxury hundreds of millions don’t experience now. If we lack gratitude, repentance is the only appropriate response.

Every Meal Is a Miracle

It should shock us that we don’t bow down in worship every time we come to a table full of food. God’s design in our experience of eating is simply marvelous.

Receiving strength by eating food is itself an astonishing concept. But God made eating more than pragmatic; through smell, taste, and texture he made it enjoyable for us! And he made it even more enjoyable when we share the experience with others — wherever two or more are gathered, there (typically) food is in their midst. He also made the preparation of food to be an art as well as an act of servant-hearted love. Strength. Joy. Community. Service.

And time would fail me to talk of all the vocations and human ingenuity involved in growing, nurturing, packaging, distributing, selling, and buying food.

Every meal is a miracle.

Receive This Blessing with Thanksgiving

And so it is only right that we pray before meals. It should be a beautiful thing. We should not pray flippantly or out of mindless habit. We certainly shouldn’t sound bored. Miracles are not boring. To have a meal to eat so that we can continue to live for God’s glory (1 Corinthians 10:31) is a holy moment — if it is received in faith:

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:4–5).

We should make sure to teach our children why we pray before meals. Unexplained traditions can result in weird ideas. The whole point to a mealtime prayer is to receive the blessing of God’s provision with thanksgiving. It’s not an incantation we chant to ensure that our food is “blessed.” Food eaten before a prayer is not any less blessed by God. You might even choose to pray at the end of a meal occasionally. Post-meal gratitude is equally and gloriously appropriate.

Piper Mealtime Prayers

If we are in the habit of saying the same well-worn phrases for mealtime prayers, if others (or you) tune out during the prayer, it’s probably time for a change.

One thing to try is forcing yourself to find a fresh way to thank God for every time you sit down for a meal. Simply identify one or two unusual things to thank to God for. Think outside the box. It took thousands of combined factors to make the meal possible. It’s not that hard to identify a couple.

If you prefer that everyone at the table say a prayer of thanks together, I suggest trying these mealtime prayers that John Piper created for his family years ago. There are shorter and longer prayers.

Morning Meal

Lord Jesus, thank you for this day,

And for the night of rest,

And for this food, and for the way

That we are always blessed.

Midday Meal

Lord Jesus, thank you for these gifts

And what each one displays;

For your own steady love which lifts

Our hearts in midday praise.

Evening Meal

Lord Jesus, come now to our meal,

And bless to us this food;

Where faith is weak, dear Lord, reveal

That all you give is good.

Morning Meal

Our Father, every day you give

The food by which our bodies live.

For this we thank you from our heart

And pray that as we this day start,

You might allow our eyes to see

Your endless generosity.

And grant that when we thus are filled,

We may do only what you’ve willed.

Midday Meal

We're grateful, Father, for this hour

To rest and draw upon your power

Which you have shown in sun and rain

And measured out to every grain.

Let all this food which you have made

And graciously before us laid

Restore our strength for this next hour

That we may have your fullest power.

Evening Meal

How faithful, Father, is your care;

Again as always food is there.

Again you have set us before

A meal we pray will mean much more

Than single persons filled with food;

Let there be, Lord, a loving mood.

And as you make our bodies new,

Come now and feed our oneness too.

Don’t Forget to Thank God for the Dishes!

And we should not forget that dirty dishes are an evidence of God’s grace. They represent the fact that we have food to eat, tools to prepare and eat it with, and a place to live. They are mercies. So washing dishes is not a moment for grumbling (Philippians 2:14), but a moment for gratitude. Using John Piper’s short poem form, allow me to suggest a cleanup prayer:

Prayer for Dirty Dishes

Lord Jesus, thank you for the grace

These dishes represent:

Sufficient food and living space;

Kind mercies you have sent.

More from Desiring God

The Loneliness of Suffering | Vaneetha Rendall: “One of the hardest things for me about suffering is loneliness.” (article)

Seven Ways to Pray for Your Leaders | Consider James 3:17 as a guide for praying for what our leaders would be. (article)

Bethlehem 2016 Conference for Pastors and Church Leaders | Audio and video from last week’s conference in Minneapolis, featuring John Piper, Don Carson, and others. (conference media)

How to Have Intimacy with God

Intimacy with God is available to you. It is as accessible to you as God’s promises. And God’s invitation to you to enjoy intimate fellowship with him is that thing that is putting your faith to the test more than anything else (James 1:2–4).

The Heart of Intimacy

Intimacy is what we call the experience of really knowing and being known by another person. We frequently use spatial language when describing this experience. An intimate friend is someone we feel very close to; they know us at a deep level. If something happens that damages the intimacy with our friend, they feel distant from us. Or a person who doesn’t know us intimately knows us at a superficial level.

But of course intimacy is not spatial but relational. We all know what it’s like to be sitting right next to a person with whom we feel distant and we can feel close to a person who is four thousand miles away.

What makes us feel intimate with another person? While there are many ingredients to intimacy and each intimate relationship we have has a different recipe, common to all of them is trust. We cannot be intimate with a person we don’t trust.

Trust is at the heart of intimacy. The more we trust someone, the closer we let them get to us. The degree to which trust is compromised in a relationship is the degree to which intimacy evaporates.

The Heart of Intimacy with God

This is as true in our relationship with God as it is in our relationships with other human beings. Our experience of God’s nearness or distance is not a description of his actual proximity to us but of our experience of intimacy with him. Scripture shows us that God is intimate with those who trust him. The more we trust God, the more intimately we come to know him. A felt distance from God is often due to a disruption in trust, such as a sin or disappointment.

This reality is vitally important to understand. As Christians, we want to experience intimacy with God. With the psalmist we say, “for me it is good to be near God” (Psalm 73:28). And we want to heed James’s exhortation and realize its promise: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8). But we can seek that nearness in ways that don’t produce it.

Intimacy Is More Than Knowledge

One common mistake is thinking that nearness to God can be achieved through knowledge accumulation. Now, of course to intimately know God we must know crucial things about God. Jesus said, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32) and he pointed out that many worship what they do not know (John 4:22).

But never in the history of the Christian church has so much theological knowledge been available to so many people as it is today. The American church enjoys perhaps the greatest amount of this abundance. We are awash in Bible translations, good books, insightful articles, recorded sermons, interviews, movies, documentaries, music, and more. And much of it very good. It is right for us to be very thankful.

But America is not abounding in Enochs (or finding them frequently disappearing), saints who walk with God in a profoundly intimate way (Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5). Why? Because knowledge is not synonymous with trust. That’s why Jesus said to the religious leaders of his day, some who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture:

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (John 5:39–40)

Biblical knowledge is far better than gold when it fuels our trust in God, because it fuels our intimacy with God (Psalm 19:10). But when biblical knowledge replaces our trust in God, it only fuels our pride (1 Corinthians 8:1).

Why Aesthetic Experiences Fail

Another common mistake is trying to achieve intimacy with God through subjective aesthetic experiences. We might call it a “Field of Dreams” approach: If we build the right environment, God will “come.”

Some pursue this in high liturgical environments designed to inspire an experience of transcendence and mystery. Others pursue it in contemporary worship events designed to inspire an experience of immanence. Others chase revivals, thinking that proximity to God’s power will result in proximity to God. If we truly trust God, such environments can encourage our intimacy with God. But none of them inherently possesses the power to conjure God’s nearness to us.

Think of it like this: A candle-lit dinner with romantic music may encourage a sweet moment of relational intimacy between a husband and wife, but only to the degree that the environment encourages and deepens their mutual trust and love. If there’s relational distance between them due to a lack of trust, the aesthetics themselves have no power to bridge the distance. Only restoring the trust will do that.

How We Draw Near to God

The secret to drawing near to God and having him draw near to us is revealed clearly in the Bible: we draw near to God through faith in Christ who alone gives us access to him (Hebrews 4:14–16, 7:25, Philippians 3:9), and we put our trust in all of his “precious and very great promises” which find their yes to us in Christ (2 Peter 1:4, 2 Corinthians 1:20).

God is impressed with our faith, not our feats. Where faith is lacking, he is not pleased with the quantity of our knowledge or the quality of our aesthetic events.

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

When God sees a man or woman whose heart fully trusts his promises and lives by them, God comes to strongly support that saint (2 Chronicles 16:9) and manifests himself to him or her:

“Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” (John 14:21)

God’s Invitation to Intimacy

God wants intimacy with you. Christ has done all the hard work in the cross to make it possible. All he requires is that you believe in him (John 14:1). He wants you to trust him with all your heart (Proverbs 3:5).

Which means his invitation to you to enjoy intimacy with him is the providences in your life that are testing your faith more than anything else. What you must trust God most for right now is where he means for you to draw closer to him.

It is likely an invitation that your flesh wants to decline. But as you read your Bible, do not the great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1) all agree with James and Peter that the greatest testing of faith is the path to the greatest joy (James 1:2–4, 1 Peter 1:8–9)? And do they not agree with Paul that it is not worth comparing to the joy of knowing Christ and the coming glory (Philippians 3:8; Romans 8:18)?

Intimacy with God often occurs in the places where we must trust him most. Heaven on earth is the inexpressible joy and the peace that surpasses understanding that comes from trusting God wholly (Philippians 4:6–7). For, as the old hymn writer said, “they who trust him wholly find him wholly true.

Related Resources

Finding Joy in the Clouds | It doesn’t feel like God draws as near without the clouds. There is an intimacy with him I have only experienced in the raging storm.

Preparing to Know Christ Deeply Through Suffering | In suffering, we come to hope more fully in God and put less confidence in the things of the world. We also come to know Christ better when we share his sufferings.

Was Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret the Same as Paul’s? | Hudson Taylor’s spiritual secret and Paul’s were the same. Taylor learned it from Paul. Both drew “for every need upon the fathomless wealth of Christ.”

God Does Not Need You to Be Strong

God does not want us to be strong. God wants to be our strength.

Perhaps a better way to say it is this: God wants us to be really strong, which is different from the way we might typically desire to be strong. We often want to be strong in a way that reflects well on us. God wants us to be strong in a way that reflects well on him. In a fallen world, these two wants are often at odds.

Now, if we were sinless, our wants and God’s wants would be in perfect harmony. We would only want to be strong in the strength that God supplies (1 Peter 4:11). But since we are not sinless, there is often dissonance between the strength we desire to have and the strength God desires to give us.

As a result, we can find ourselves deeply discouraged by the very limitations and adversity that God has actually designed to cultivate in us strong, courageous, and liberating faith.

Trapped in Weakness

In Exodus 12, the people of Israel had been miraculously released from slavery and led out of Egypt by Moses. And by Exodus 14, Israel was encamped by the Red Sea, in a vulnerable and probably puzzling position. God has purposefully instructed Moses to lead Israel there because he had determined to humiliate Pharaoh and the Egyptians one last dramatic time — one more dramatic exclamation point to place on the declaration to Egypt and the world that would reverberate for the remainder of human history: “I am the Lord” (Exodus 14:4).

But the Israelites didn’t understand God’s purposes. There was probably plenty of murmuring about what in the world they were doing camped at what looked like a dead end. This only grew to fever pitched panic when Pharaoh’s army showed up and pinned them all against the sea. It had all the look of a worst-case scenario: death by sword or death by drowning.

And like most of us would feel, the people were scared and angry. They yelled to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt?” (Exodus 14:11).

They were trapped in a weak place — a place designed for them by God.

Weakened to Learn Where Strength Really Is

Moses’s reply to the panicky people was, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent” (Exodus 14:13–14).

And fight for them he did. While holding off the Egyptian army with the pillar of fire, he opened for the Israelites a dry path through the Red Sea. Then he let the Egyptians loose and they chased Israel hell-bent into the sea, which swallowed them.

And on the other side of it all, Moses and the people erupted in a song we still sing today:

“The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.” (Exodus 15:2)

When the Egyptian army showed up, God could have made Israel a nation of Samsons. The Holy Spirit could have rushed upon them all, and they could have whipped Egypt with a bunch of donkey jaws. Why didn’t God do that?

Well, remember Samson? When God gave Samson power to overcome 1,000 Philistines on his own, what was the song Samson sung afterward?

“With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey have I struck down a thousand men.” (Judges 15:16)

“I struck down.” There is no hymn to God by Samson after any of his exploits, and he didn’t survive the one that likely got him mentioned as a model of faith in Hebrews 11:32. God was Samson’s strength, but Samson didn’t really recognize it.

God wanted Israel to understand that he was their strength and their salvation so that he would become their song. That’s why he put them in the weak, helpless place.

The Lord Is Our Strength

The exodus was the greatest Old Testament foreshadowing of the gospel of Jesus Christ. God delivers us all as helpless children, caught between the forces of evil and the sea of God’s wrath. Jesus is our deliverer, and his cross and resurrection our deliverance.

But the exodus, along with all the other biblical stories of redemption, is also a reminder that God purposefully designs our weak places and assigns us to them. When we feel ourselves trapped in them, we can be deeply discouraged, panicky, and even angry. God’s purposes in such experiences are typically not clear to us at first. Things just look like he’s either made a huge mistake or he’s capricious. But he’s neither.

The truth is that as sinful people, we don’t really understand what it means for God to be our strength and our salvation until we are put in a weak enough place where he is our only option. At first this doesn’t feel like a great mercy, but later, sometimes much later, we discover it was a gift of measureless mercy. And then God really becomes our song.

Related Resources

Christ’s Power Is Made Perfect in Weakness | The market wants power to escape weakness in leisure, but
Christianity offers power to endure weakness in love. A sermon by John Piper on 2 Corinthians 12.

The Weakness of the World’s Strongest Man | Why did the author of Hebrews include Samson in his heroes of the faith? His story is a painful reminder that faithful obedience is better than impressive giftedness, that faith must work through love.

Pray for the Strength That God Supplies | We weak people frequently need to pray for strength. It’s a necessary prayer, and it’s a God-honoring prayer because it recognizes the true source of our strength.

God Knows

At the end of Exodus 2, Moses is a fugitive in Midian, hiding from Pharaoh and the people of Israel are groaning in Egypt, crying out for deliverance from the oppressive, abusive death grip of slavery. And the chapter ends with these words: “God saw the people of Israel — and God knew” (Exodus 2:25).

Those words, “God knew,” are pregnant with hope.

God Knew

God knew. God was aware of each person’s suffering. He understood what was happening to them and how it was affecting them.

God knew the dehumanizing degradation and routine rapine that is part and parcel of a slave’s experience. He knew the premature breakdown of bodies ruthlessly subjected daily to exhausting manual labor (Exodus 1:11). He knew the bitter erosion of hope that occurs when all labor only benefits ungrateful abusers (Exodus 1:14).

God knew the horror and trauma of legalized, enforced infanticide (Exodus 1:16). And he knew the resentment and anger that is on constant simmer in a culture of hopelessness, sometimes boiling over into vengeful violence against oppressors (Exodus 2:11–12), and other times into tragic violence within the oppressed community (Exodus 2:13).

God knew and he was preparing to take action in a way that would leave a permanent, indelible imprint upon the collective memory of the human race.

God Foreknew

But God didn’t only know this when it all happened. He knew it was going to happen long before it even looked remotely possible that it could happen. Centuries earlier God had told Abram (later Abraham), the founder of the Israelite nation,

Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. (Genesis 15:13–14, italics mine)

The nature and implications of God’s foreknowledge — what he foreknows and how certain this foreknowledge is — have been debated for millennia. Admittedly, this is deep water for human intellects to swim in.

But in this text we have a direct quote from God himself on the subject. And he says it so plainly a child could not mistake it: “Know for certain that your offspring will be [enslaved] and will be afflicted for four hundred years.” This was not a qualified expert making an educated guess about the future decisions of free moral agents on the basis of probabilities. This was clear, specific, certain foresight. God certainly foreknew that the Israelites would experience desperate suffering.

And his revealed foresight also clearly revealed a divine purpose in this horrible experience, a purpose whose scope extended way beyond just Israel.

God Knew What He Was Doing

Two verses later in Genesis 15, God tells Abram, “And [your descendants] shall come back here [to Canaan] in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16, italics mine). This statement about the Amorites is a multi-layered gift for the saints of God. To unpack its implications would require a book. In it is a world of God’s precise patience, justice, judgment, and more.

But with regard to Israel’s suffering, we see in the Amorite allusion a rare jewel of God’s rationale for his timeline. The enslaved Israelite’s prayers must have sounded much like their future royal kinsman’s: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? . . . How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” (Psalm 13:1–2). God rarely provides an answer to such a question.

But here he provides an answer before the question was ever raised.

How long, O LORD?

Four hundred years.

Why so long?

Because my purposes involve far more than just Israel and Egypt. They also involve the sin of and my righteous judgment on the peoples of Canaan. When the time is ripe for me to fulfill my covenant to Abraham, it will also be ripe for me to judge the wickedness of the Amorites.

In the bloody, sweaty, tearful, agonizing experience of slavery, it would have looked like God had forgotten. He had not. He knew. He had foreknown. And he knew just what he was doing.

God Knows

The reality expressed in the words “God knows” is a well of profound comfort and peace for us in our afflictions. Yes, there remain unanswered questions. No, they do not themselves remove our pain. But in Exodus 2:25 and Genesis 15:13–14 we see why these words are pregnant with hope.

Your affliction has a purpose. You likely don’t know what it is yet, but someday you will. And your affliction has a timeline. You likely don’t know what it is yet, and likely it already seems too long. But someday you will understand. And you will understand that the purposes for both your affliction and how long you were required to endure it extended far beyond the range of your perception. And then it will make sense.

Jesus Christ has guaranteed your exodus. And it is a far greater exodus than the mere escape from your affliction. There is coming an end to your sojourning in this foreign land (Hebrews 11:13). There is a Promised Land far greater than Canaan. And when you reach it, no matter what you suffered in this veil of tears, you will have no regrets. God will have worked it all for such good that you will wonder that you ever questioned his judgment or goodness (Romans 8:28).

In your affliction, cry out to God for help (Exodus 2:23). He hears. And when the time is right, God will answer you. For God sees you — and he knows.

Related Resources

When God Mercifully Ruins Our Plans | There is no real gain in making our name known. That’s Philippians 3:8 rubbish. The only real gain is Christ. So God mercifully thwarts our pride-fueled plans in order to make us truly happy.

The Sovereignty of God: “My Counsel Shall Stand, and I Will Accomplish All My Purpose” | “God works all things according to the counsel of his will.” All things — from the roll of the dice, to the circuits of stars, to the rise of presidents, to the death of Jesus, to the gift of repentance and faith.

Is the Glory of God at Stake in God’s Foreknowledge of Human Choices? | Pastor John explains why the issue of God’s foreknowledge of human choices is about the glory of God.

Our Eyes Are a Parable About Faith

Back in anatomy class we learned that, because of the shape of the lenses in our eyes, whenever we look at something, the image we see is turned upside-down before that image hits our retina. This image is then translated into neural impulses and transmitted along millions of optic nerve fibers to our brains.

This means that our brains receive a picture of the world flipped on its head. But being so brilliantly designed, our brains figure out very early and very quickly that the upside-down images are not the way things really are and learn the ability to interpret them as right-side up.

This is a fascinating phenomenon that I believe contains a parable.

We Don’t Believe What We See

Why this strange optical design?

Darwinian materialists’ explanations, besides being on the extreme and incredible end of improbable, are narrow and hollow. They see the eye as the collaborative creation of blind chaos and unconscious natural selection. And they believe the primary evolutionary purpose of the eye is to secure us calories and copulation so our mindless genes’ can survive. The eye is a result of zero imagination plus inconceivable mathematical improbabilities plus ultimate meaninglessness. This is a seriously inadequate explanatory formula for the wondrous beauty of the eye in the eye’s beholder.

No, God created the eye (Proverbs 20:12). And this opens for us a wide world of eye-wonder. He could have myriad purposes, beyond pragmatic ones, for designing our lenses to invert the image.

And I believe one purpose is to humble our skeptically proud tendency to assert that seeing is believing. Our discovery of the way the eye works shows that this seemingly common sense assertion is built on faulty assumptions about this common sensory organ.

The truth is, our own brains don’t actually believe exactly what our eyes report seeing. Our eyes see things topsy-turvy from the way they really are. So our brains are forced to draw from other ways of discerning reality and then make the necessary corrections to the images the eyes send them.

In other words, there is a sense in which we all walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). Our brains have learned that reality is actually the flip-side of the way they initially see it, so they must trust other sources of revelation to get the true sense of what’s real.

Without Faith It Is Impossible to See Right

And this provides a parable for how faith helps us see.

Frequently, what we think we see is an inverse or distorted form of the way things actually are. Wisdom is recognizing the truth of this phenomenon and faith is putting our trust in revelation beyond our perceptions in order to make the necessary adjustments and see things right-side up. Faith is a way of seeing accurately.

That’s of course only true if the revelation we trust is true. And the truth we are designed to trust is our Creator’s revealed word. Our Creator has made himself known in the person of Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:16). He is the very embodiment of the truth that enlightens everyone (John 14:6, John 1:9). Whoever believes his word walks in the light and sees right (John 12:46, 1 John 1:7).

How Jesus Turns Our World Right-Side Up

And this has always been the case. Christ created humans to be creatures who walk by faith.
Walking by faith is not a result of the fall (although our post-fall difficulty of walking by faith is a sad result). Trusting Christ’s word was always meant to be our primary source of reality-revelation, and our senses were always meant to be complementary and secondary.

When Adam and Eve succumbed to the serpent’s deception in the garden, they transferred their reality-revelation trust from God’s word to the serpent’s word. And when that happened, it tragically altered what they saw. They “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). They suddenly saw the tree’s promise from an inverse perspective. The serpent had turned God’s promise on its head.

When Adam and Eve ceased to draw from God’s revealed word to help them discern what was real, they ceased seeing right-side up and got everything wrong. And every time we sin, the same cursed inversion occurs.

Therefore, our Creator became a man to bear the curse his justice demanded and restore our ability to see right. That means he gives us the grace-gift of faith in his revelation of reality so that once again we will let his word govern our perceptions in order to see right-side up, even while living in a world that sees upside-down. And every time we repent the same blessed restoration occurs.

So hear the parable of the eye: We cannot believe merely what we see. Our perceptions are not our primary source of truth; they were never designed to be. They require the help of another source in order for us to accurately understand what’s truly real.

Always let God’s promises inform and instruct your perceptions (Proverbs 3:5). If you do, you will know peace that surpasses understanding (Philippians 4:7). But whenever your trust transfers from God’s promises to your perceptions, you will find yourself losing your grip on reality and trying to pursue an illusive peace in your understanding. Such a peace is a mirage.

Related Resources

A Surgeon for Sick Eyes

Open My Eyes that I May See

Not By Sight