Jon Bloom's Blog, page 35

Jesus Will Provide the Wine

Why did the wine run out at the Cana wedding (John 2:1–12)? Did the hosts plan unwisely? Did uninvited guests turn up and exceed their capacity? Did they run short of funds to provide enough wine?

The Bible doesn’t tell us, which is a mercy. Because whether it was a failure of human wisdom, strength, or resources — all familiar failures to us — there was a need that the human hosts could not meet.

But unknown to the hosts, the Lord of hosts was a guest at this wedding, veiled in flesh. Mary knew, though, and she knew that he was able to make all grace abound so that there would be all sufficiency to meet this need (2 Corinthians 9:8). So she informed her son, the Lord, about the need and glorious grace flowed freely.

But the glory that Jesus manifested at this wedding was more than his omnipotent authority over nature. For those who could see it that day, a deeper, brighter glory of the Triune God’s abounding, all-sufficient love for foolish, weak, sin-impoverished people blazed forth.

Out of Jesus’s fullness the wedding guests received grace upon grace (John 1:16). They drank the very best earthly wine ever created, made by the Creator of grapes himself. But more than that, the wine they drank freely was a foretaste of the gospel.

Jesus knew the time for making the real gospel wine of Calvary had not yet come (John 2:4). But this wedding wine, poured out of vessels of purification, foreshadowed that best of all wines, which would be served after humans had done their sinful insufficient best to meet their need and failed. This wine would flow freely with infinite abundance from the purest Vessel of all time for the greatest wedding of all time.

That’s why when you run out of “wine” today, when you fail in wisdom, power, or resources, or fail to meet the righteous requirement of God’s law, or fail to love the Lord with all your heart, you need not fear. Jesus, your Lord, your Groom, the Master of the Great Wedding feast, has infinite power and infinite love and is “able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Trust him. Jesus will provide the wine you need. Just do whatever he tells you.

Jon Bloom is a contributor to the new ESV Men’s Devotional Bible. This meditation was written to accompany John 2:1–12.

The Prize Is Worth the Price

If you were an athlete who aspired to win a medal in the Olympic Games, there’s only one thing you would need besides an extraordinary athletic gifting: a ruthless, life-consuming focus on getting the prize.

Have you ever looked at an Olympic athlete’s daily training regimen? Each sport is unique, but most athletes would keep a schedule something like this:

Wake up early
Eat a carefully planned breakfast of just the right amount of carbs, protein, and fat content calories as well as fluids
Early morning training exercises focusing on particular muscle groups, vigilantly executing the proper warm-up, intensity, and cool-down procedures, mindful of hydration
Eat a carefully planned snack to fuel the right amount of energy needed for the next phase
Late morning training session focusing on other particular muscle groups, vigilantly
Eat a carefully planned lunch
Midday rest to prevent overly fatigued muscles, often reviewing training issues with coaches or viewing training or competition videos
Eat a carefully planned snack
Afternoon training session focusing on other particular muscle groups, vigilantly
Eat a carefully planned dinner
Evening purposeful relaxation, mindful to prepare for the next day’s training
Sleep to ensure eight hours of restful recovery

The pursuit of an Olympic gold medal is all-consuming. Athletes must structure their entire life around the training required for that elite level of competition because this pursuit can only be achieved with a ruthlessly narrow focus and rigorous discipline.

Hedonistic Ruthlessness

This convicted me again after pondering this exhortation from Paul:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:24–27)

Corinth was the host city to the Isthmian Games, where elite athletes from all over the ancient Greek-speaking world gathered to compete in years between the quadrennial Olympiad. So Paul’s analogy was particularly powerful for his Corinthian readers.

And what Paul was saying would have been just as convicting to the affluent, indulgent first-century Corinthians as it is to us affluent, indulgent twenty-first-century Christians in the West: the Christian life should be lived with the ruthless focus and discipline of an elite athlete.

But let’s not make the mistake of focusing primarily on the ruthless part — the running, the beating, the strict discipline. Very few athletes would subject themselves to the rigors and pain of training because they desire rigor and pain themselves. What do they desire? The prize!

Olympians “exercise self-control in all things,” deny themselves many worldly enjoyments and purge their lives of distractions, in order “to receive a perishable wreath.” In other words, they do it for the glory of the prize. They do it for the joy that the glory brings.

These athletes are hedonists, not legalists or stoics. They’re in love with glory, not asceticism. Their self-denial simply shows how glorious they consider the prize to be. They only give up indulgences that distract and detract from the prize. They refrain from indulging themselves lest they end up unable to compete — disqualified — and lose the prize the desire.

Run to Obtain the Prize

That’s why Paul chose Olympic-level athletes as an analogy. The analogy is meant to highlight the prize, not the price. The price, the life-consuming focus, discipline and self-control, only shows the worth of the prize. Paul wants us to join him in running to obtain the prize.

So, like an athlete who aspires to win a gold medal, we must ask ourselves some hard questions:

How much do I want the prize? This is the most important. We will not pursue a prize we don’t really desire.
Am I willing to subject myself to strict measures to gain the prize? Is it worth denying myself things I enjoy?
What am I currently consuming that would hinder me from winning the prize?
What time commitments must be jettisoned to free up the time necessary to pursue the prize?
What distractions are robbing my mental attention and emotional energy from focusing on pursuing the prize? What do I need to do to minimize them?
What bodily and psychological cravings am I indulging that will undermine my obtaining the prize?
What are areas of ignorance or chronic weakness could threaten my ability to win the prize without some skilled coaching?
Am I willing to begin this pursuit today?
If so, what one thing will I do today to begin making the necessary changes to seriously pursue the prize?

We are in a race, though it is no game (Hebrews 12:1–2). And there is a prize (Philippians 3:8). Olympic wreaths and medals are perishable, but the prize we pursue is imperishable (1 Corinthians 9:25). Olympic glory, among the most glorious moments the world has to offer, is fading. Among the medal winners in the last Olympics, how many names can you recall? I’m quite confident that you don’t know any wreath winners from Paul’s time. That glory has long since faded away. But the glory you will experience if you win this race is both unfading and incomparable (1 Peter 5:4, Romans 8:18).

But this race is hard. We must take Paul seriously here. Winning requires the hedonistically ruthless focus and discipline of an Olympic competitor. It calls for single-mindedness. It calls for laying aside every weight and entangling sin (Hebrews 12:1). But the point is not the painful price but the surpassing pleasure of the prize. We run for the joy!

So let us run so as to obtain this prize and lay aside every thing that might disqualify us.

Communing with Christ on a Crazy Day

The Danger in Our Daily Devotions

How to Count It All as Loss

The Prize is Worth the Price

If you were an athlete who aspired to win a medal in the Olympic games, there’s only one thing you would need besides an extraordinary athletic gifting: a ruthless, life-consuming focus on getting the prize.

Have you ever looked at an Olympic athlete’s daily training regimen? Each sport is unique, but most athletes would keep a schedule something like this:

Wake up early
Eat a carefully planned breakfast of just the right amount of carbs, protein, and fat content calories as well as fluids
Early morning training exercises focusing on particular muscle groups, vigilantly executing the proper warm-up, intensity, and cool-down procedures, mindful of hydration
Eat a carefully planned snack to fuel the right amount of energy needed for the next phase
Late morning training session focusing on other particular muscle groups, vigilantly
Eat a carefully planned lunch
Midday rest to prevent overly fatigued muscles, often reviewing training issues with coaches or viewing training or competition videos
Eat a carefully planned snack
Afternoon training session focusing on other particular muscle groups, vigilantly
Eat a carefully planned dinner
Evening purposeful relaxation, mindful to prepare for the next day’s training
Sleep to ensure eight hours of restful recovery

The pursuit of an Olympic gold medal is all-consuming. Athletes must structure their entire life around the training required for that elite level of competition because this pursuit can only be achieved with a ruthlessly narrow focus and rigorous discipline.

A Hedonistic Ruthlessness

This convicted me again after pondering this exhortation from Paul:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:24–27)

Corinth was the host city to the Isthmian games, where elite athletes from all over the ancient Greek-speaking world gathered to compete in years between the quadrennial Olympiad. So Paul’s analogy was particularly powerful for his Corinthian readers.

And what Paul was saying would have been just as convicting to the affluent, indulgent First Century Corinthians as it is to us affluent, indulgent 21st century Christians in the West: the Christian life should be lived with the ruthless focus and discipline of an elite athlete.

But let’s not make the mistake of focusing primarily on the ruthless part — the running, the beating, the strict discipline. Very few athletes would subject themselves to the rigors and pain of training because they desire rigor and pain themselves. What do they desire? The prize!

Olympians “exercise self-control in all things,” deny themselves many worldly enjoyments and purge their lives of distractions, in order “to receive a perishable wreath.” In other words, they do it for the glory of the prize. They do it for the joy that the glory brings.

These athletes are hedonists, not legalists or stoics. They’re in love with glory, not asceticism. Their self-denial simply shows how glorious they consider the prize to be. They only give up indulgences that distract and detract from the prize. They refrain from indulging themselves lest they end up unable to compete — disqualified — and lose the prize the desire.

Run to Obtain the Prize

That’s why Paul chose Olympic-level athletes as an analogy. The analogy is meant to highlight the prize, not the price. The price, the life-consuming focus, discipline and self-control, only shows the worth of the prize. Paul wants us to join him in running to obtain the prize.

So, like an athlete who aspires to win a gold medal, we must ask ourselves some hard questions:

How much do I want the prize? This is the most important. We will not pursue a prize we don’t really desire.
Am I willing to subject myself to strict measures to gain the prize? Is it worth denying myself things I enjoy?
What am I currently consuming that would hinder me from winning the prize?
What time commitments must be jettisoned to free up the time necessary to pursue the prize?
What distractions are robbing my mental attention and emotional energy from focusing on pursuing the prize? What do I need to do to minimize them?
What bodily and psychological cravings am I indulging that will undermine my obtaining the prize?
What are areas of ignorance or chronic weakness could threaten my ability to win the prize without some skilled coaching?
Am I willing to begin this pursuit today?
If so, what one thing will I do today to begin making the necessary changes to seriously pursue the prize?

We are in a race, though it is no game (Hebrews 12:1–2). And there is a prize (Philippians 3:8). Olympic wreaths and medals are perishable, but the prize we pursue is imperishable (1 Corinthians 9:25). Olympic glory, among the most glorious moments the world has to offer, is fading. Among the medal winners in the last Olympics, how many names can you recall? I’m quite confident that you don’t know any wreath winners from Paul’s time. That glory has long since faded away. But the glory you will experience if you win this race is both unfading and incomparable (1 Peter 5:4, Romans 8:18).

But this race is hard. We must take Paul seriously here. Winning requires the hedonistically ruthless focus and discipline of an Olympic competitor. It calls for single-mindedness. It calls for laying aside every weight and entangling sin (Hebrews 12:1). But the point is not the painful price but the surpassing pleasure of the prize. We run for the joy!

So let us run so as to obtain this prize and lay aside every thing that might disqualify us.

Communing with Christ on a Crazy Day

The Danger in Our Daily Devotions

How to Count It All as Loss

Don’t Follow Your Heart (New Book)

“Follow your heart” is a creed embraced by billions of people. It’s a statement of faith in one of the great pop-cultural myths of the Western world — a gospel proclaimed in many of our stories, movies, and songs.

Essentially, it’s a belief that your heart is a compass inside of you that will direct you to your own true north if you just have the courage to follow it. It says that your heart is a faithful guide that will lead you to true happiness if you just have the courage to listen and act. The creed says that you are lost and your heart will save you.

This creed can sound so simple and beautiful and liberating. It’s a tempting gospel to believe.

Until you consider that your heart has sociopathic tendencies.

Is This the Leader You Want to Follow?

Think about it for a moment. What does your heart tell you?

Please don’t answer. Your heart has likely said things today that you would not wish to repeat. I know mine has. My heart tells me that all of reality ought to serve my desires. My heart likes to think the best of me and worst of others — unless those others happen to think well of me, then they are wonderful people. But if they don’t think well of me, or even if they just disagree with me, well then, something is wrong with them. And while my heart is pondering my virtues and others’ errors, it can suddenly find some immoral or horribly angry thought very attractive.

The “follow your heart” creed certainly isn’t found in the Bible. The Bible actually thinks our hearts have a disease: “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Jesus, the Great Physician, lists the grim symptoms of this disease: “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:19). This is not leadership material.

The truth is that no one lies to us more than our own hearts. No one. They don’t tell us the truth, they just tell us what we want. They are not benevolent, they are pathologically selfish. In fact, if we do what our hearts tell us to do we will pervert and impoverish every desire, every beauty, every person, every wonder, and every joy. Our hearts want to consume these things for our own self-glory and self-indulgence.

No, our hearts will not save us. We need to be saved from our hearts.

This Is the Leader You Want to Follow

Our hearts were never designed to be followed, but to be led. Our hearts were never designed to be gods in whom we believe; they were designed to believe in God.

If we make our hearts gods and ask them to lead us, they will lead us to narcissistic misery and ultimately damnation. They cannot save us, because what’s wrong with our hearts is the heart of our problem. But if our hearts believe in God, as they are designed to, then God saves us (Hebrews 7:25) and leads our hearts to exceeding joy (Psalm 43:4).

Therefore, don’t believe in your heart; direct your heart to believe in God. Don’t follow your heart; follow Jesus. He is your shepherd (Psalm 23; John 10). Listen to his voice in his word and follow him (John 10:27). Let him be, in the words of a great hymn, the “heart of [your] own heart whatever befall.” He is the truth; he is the way, and he will lead you to life (John 14:6).

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Jon Bloom’s new book Don’t Follow Your Heart will help you heal, as well as avoid spiritual heart disease, by identifying and resisting your heart’s errant predilections and directing it to do all God’s will — to follow Jesus. This collection of helps for common heart problems is available free of charge in three digital formats.

Download the PDF file.

Download the EPUB file formatted for readers like the Nook, Sony Reader, and Apple iBooks (iPad, iPhone, iPod).

Download the MOBI file formatted for Kindle. (You may be required to download the MOBI file to a computer before sending it to your Kindle device.)

Purchase the paperback.

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You Are Meant to Move Mountains

On the mountain, Jesus revealed his divine glory to Peter, James, and John. The four had just rejoined the rest of the disciples and the ever-present, clamoring, curious, constantly needy crowd when a desperate father threw himself before Jesus and pleaded,

“Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” (Matthew 17:15–16)

Jesus’s response must have caught everyone off-guard:

“O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” (Matthew 17:17)

Phew. Those are searing words. You can almost see the impotent, humbled disciples casting chastened glances at each other. The afflicted boy was brought to Jesus, whose omnipotent word soon dispatched both demon and disease.

The Holy Exasperation of a Grieving God

Who was Jesus calling faithless and twisted? These words were aimed at the disciples, the crowd, Israel, the world, and us. All of these are wrapped into the Greek word geneá (generation): a group, a nation, or an entire age.

In Jesus’s exclamation, we get a glimpse into the deep anguish and grief that he lived with during his sojourn on earth. This was no impatient outburst of a tired man. This was a careful, measured, if anything highly restrained and understated revelation of the exasperation the Holy One experiences bearing with evil people (Luke 11:13) who don’t really know how evil they are (John 2:24–25).

What must it have been like for Jesus to have created and uniquely loved each of these people who, because of their own perversity, did not know, believe, or receive him (John 1:3, 10–11)? Oh, many loved that he could heal, feed, and excite them with miracles. But, as their Creator, the one to whom they would ultimately give an account for their sin (John 5:22; Romans 14:12), he was despised and rejected by them (Isaiah 53:3). They were faithless and twisted, and Jesus, who was faithful and righteous (Revelation 3:14), was dwelling among them. It was harder for him to bear than any of them imagined.

Little Faith Results in Ministry Failure

And the disciples, at that moment, were counted among the faithless and twisted. So can we be. Our faithlessness is the worst part of our perversity (numerous English translations choose “perverse” in Matthew 17:17). More accurately, our lack of faith in God is the root of all our perversity.

But were the disciples really faithless? After all, they had tried to cast out the demon and disease. Wasn’t that faith? Perhaps. But whatever faith was present, while apparently well meaning, didn’t produce any results. It didn’t put God’s glory and power on display, it didn’t proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God, and it didn’t help the boy or the father. That’s why Jesus didn’t commend their effort; instead he rebuked their failure.

Later, when the disciples privately asked Jesus why they had failed, his explanation was succinct: “Because of your little faith” (Matthew 17:20). This was an unnerving answer. Jesus did not speak of God’s mysterious, inscrutable will in choosing not to answer at the time the disciples asked. Jesus put the blame squarely on the disciples’ shoulders. Their ministry failure was due to their little faith.

This account is included in the Scriptural canon in part to make us squirm and force us to ask the same soul-searching question over our ministry failures that the disciples were forced to ask: “Why could we not ____?”

Of course, not every unanswered prayer for healing, provision, conversion, etc. is a result of little faith. But we must not let ourselves off the hook too quickly when we don’t see prayers answered or when our ministry efforts fail. Being a Calvinist doesn’t mean we always get to appeal to God’s mysterious inscrutability. Yes, God is sovereign. And in this narrative, the sovereign God makes a clear statement: Little faith results in ministry failure.

What If Nothing Was Impossible for You?

But like all of Jesus’s rebukes to his disciples, his reproof is not intended to condemn us but to exhort us to press in further. If we currently have little faith, it is possible for us to have more faith. If we failed yesterday or today, we don’t have to continue to fail. “Little faith” is not a permanent label. Jesus means it as a catalyst for our transformation. For this is what he followed up with:

“For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20)

If Jesus’s rebuke over our little faith makes our heads droop, his promise should make our jaws drop: “nothing will be impossible for you.” Those are not empty words. That phrase is a check to be cashed.

How would you live differently if you really believed that nothing would be impossible for you?

Don’t let cynicism squelch that question. Our lightning quick and loud unbelief is not commendable. It is perverse, twisted. It robs us of more than we know. When contemplating such a question, it can be tempting for some of us to quickly point to the errors of the word-of-faith movement and reaffirm that we aren’t going to fall in that ditch. Good. We should not. But that does not excuse us to live at peace with little faith and impotence in kingdom ministry.

We are meant to move mountains — to see the impossible occur through the exercise of faith in the omnipotent promises of our sovereign Lord. If we are not seeing mountains move, we are living beneath our means. We are living as paupers when we have millions in our heavenly bank account. Jesus doesn’t commend this. He rebukes it.

The faith of God’s people is the channel through which God chooses to manifest much of his glory that results in the conversion of unbelievers. If we have little faith, then little glory is seen through us. We must not be content with this.

If we recognize that we have little faith, let us repent today and join the disciples in pleading, “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5), and not let God go until he blesses us with an answer. It is a request he loves to grant.

Jesus really does mean for us to move mountains. He wants us to live in the bold joy of knowing that nothing will be impossible for us.

Unbelief Is Sure to Err (article)

Don’t Follow Your Heart (article)

How Does Scripture Produce Faith? (Ask Pastor John)

God Says “No” for Your Joy

The only time God gives us restrictions or prohibitions is for our joy. He never says “no” to us unless “no” will make us ultimately happier.

Back in Eden, before the horrible fall, the only prohibition God placed on Adam was this:

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16–17)

Adam, you have complete freedom to eat of every single tree in the entire garden except for the one tree that will kill your joy.

A Liberating Prohibition

This prohibition was a profound expression of God’s love for Adam in warning him against terrible harm. It was also an opportunity for Adam to express his love for God through trusting and obeying him. It was a liberating prohibition. As long as Adam believed it was an expression of God’s love, it would guard Adam from becoming a slave of sin (John 8:34) and of the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15). It was an expansive restriction, keeping all the best options for Adam’s enjoyment available to him, as he refrained from the one tree.

But he didn’t. Adam and Eve believed the seductive lie and ate from the one restricted tree. They transgressed the one gracious law and did not heed the one loving “no.” They (and all of us in them) lost the garden, the incomparable freedom of sinlessness, our earthly lives, and worst of all, communion with our heavenly Father.

Expression of Love

But thank God that is not the end of the story. The last Adam has come, and he has obeyed the Father perfectly and paid the full debt of sin so that he, and all who believe, will recover creation, sinless freedom, eternal life, and best of all, unhindered communion with the triune God. All who trust and obey Jesus will gain more than Adam lost in Eden.

All of God’s prohibitions are love. Every “you shall not” of God’s law is an expression of God’s love.

What a beautiful model God is for all us who must say “no” and “do not” to people for whom God has given us some level of responsibility. Parents, grandparents, older siblings, pastors, elders, deacons, CEO’s, managers, supervisors, teachers, small group leaders, presidents, legislators, law enforcement officers, whatever position of authority we hold or will hold, we are given the sober responsibility of saying “no” for only one reason: to guard the ultimate good, to protect and increase the ultimate joy of those we serve.

Yes, our authority to say “no” is given to us only to serve them, not to lord authority over them (Matthew 20:25–28). We must only prohibit in order to protect their true liberty; we must only restrict in order to expand their most joy-producing options.

It may be that we should review our prohibitions. Are all our “no’s,” “do not’s,” and “you can’t’s” truly expressions of love, or are we imposing some of them out of selfishness, fear, or a sinful desire to win someone else’s approval or desire for revenge?

Let us only prohibit because we love those we serve. Let us only say “no” for their joy.

You Are a Saint, Sinner, and Sufferer (article)

Unsocial Media (article)

How to Fight Addiction in a Pornographic Culture (video)

Your Bible Is a Gold Mine

The word of Christ dwells richly in the one who dwells in it long enough to discover its riches (Colossians 3:16). The Bible is the divine mine that contains the theological mother load. Any theology book based on it is only a small fraction of the Bible’s unquantifiable wealth. That’s why there will be no end to theological book publishing.

The wonderful thing about this mine is that we often find treasure in unexpected places. God loves to lace and layer revelatory riches in what at first seems like a fairly straightforward historical narrative.

One example is the account of Jesus and Peter walking on water in Matthew 14:22–33. This aquatic hike is astounding. But if we’re not careful, we may only see the obvious gold and miss out on much more. Here are a few less obvious nuggets I found when digging recently.

Jesus Makes Us Face Strong Waves in the Dark

Jesus “made” the disciples get into the boat (Matthew 14:22). At the time, they probably didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t an unusual directive from the Master. But in retrospect, it became clear that God knowingly sent them to face an adverse wind all night.

After an exhausting day of ministry (feeding the 5,000), God did not lead them to a rest beside quiet waters, but to row against battering waves for most of the night. The sovereign Lord sometimes intentionally sends us when we’re already weary to struggle against adversity in disorienting darkness.

Jesus Comes in Unexpected Ways at Unexpected Times

When Jesus finally came to the disciples, he came in a completely unexpected way — walking on the water. This so caught them off guard that they didn’t even recognize him at first (Matthew 14:26). Furthermore, Jesus didn’t show up until “the fourth watch of the night” (Matthew 14:25) — between three and six in the morning.

The weary disciples had been fighting the wind and waves (and probably each other) for long dark hours. No doubt they prayed for God’s help. In the apostle John’s account, once Jesus reached them and got in the boat, “immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going” (John 6:21). This must have come as a welcome relief, but notice that this relief wasn’t provided until they were extraordinarily tired.

When God comes to us in a moment of need, he might arrive in an unexpected, unrecognizable, and frightening way and later than we hope.

Ask Jesus for Impossible Things

Peter’s request of Jesus was outrageous. It may be that this story is so familiar or has been told to us so matter-of-factly that it doesn’t shock us. If that’s true, we need fresh eyes. We must put our sleep-deprived selves in that wave-tossed little boat in the dead of night, feeling the wind-whipped sea spray on our faces while we squint at the strangest thing we’ve yet seen — Jesus standing about ten feet away on the heaving water as if it were solid ground.

Imagine our nerves being on edge from the terror-induced adrenaline rush. Would we ask to get out of the boat and join Jesus on the water? We might best answer this question by asking ourselves how often we are asking Jesus for the privilege of risking the humanly impossible with him now. Jesus may have admonished Peter for having “little faith” (Matthew 14:31), but Peter was a faith giant in that moment compared to the other eleven. He was the only one who asked to do the impossible with Jesus. And Jesus granted it to him with pleasure.

God is pleased when we ask him to enable us to get out of the safety of our “boat” in order to do the humanly impossible with him, and he does grant such requests.

Jesus Sovereignly Responds to Our Asking

This story illustrates a profound mystery: God in his sovereignty interacts with our initiative. Note the very brief but loaded exchange between Peter and Jesus:

And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” [Jesus] said, “Come.” (Matthew 14:28–29)

There is towering theology in these few words. Peter recognized Jesus as the sovereign Lord of all nature who was commanding the water to support him. Peter also knew that walking on the water would require faith, but he did not mistake his own faith as the power that would command the water beneath him. So he asked Jesus to command him to come. And when Jesus commanded, Peter exercised faith in Jesus’s word, which Jesus honored. That’s how Peter’s faith helped him walk on water. It’s true that when Peter’s faith weakened, he sank (Matthew 14:30). But his cry to Jesus for help proved that Peter knew where the power to hold him up resided, and was itself an expression of faith. And again Jesus responded to Peter’s faith by pulling him back up (Matthew 14:31).

Notice, Jesus did not call any of the disciples to join him on the water. Peter took the initiative to ask Jesus if he could come. Forgive the pun, but this is deep theological water. If Peter had not taken the initiative to ask Jesus, this aspect of the story might simply be missing. What might be missing from your story if you do not take the initiative to ask Jesus?

God alone has power to command reality, but he encourages us to request whatever we wish in prayer (John 15:7) and he loves to respond to our faith by commanding answers to our requests.

Dig, Find, and Be Enriched

O, there’s much more gold in this story to be had, but time and article word limits fail me. I must refrain. Go dig, find it, and you will be enriched. In only twelve verses we discovered four theological nuggets:

The sovereign Lord sometimes intentionally sends us when we’re already weary to struggle against adversity in disorienting darkness.
When God comes to us in a moment of need, he might arrive in an unexpected, unrecognizable, and frightening way and later than we hope.
God is pleased when we ask him to enable us to get out of the safety of our “boat” in order to do the humanly impossible with him, and he does grant such requests.
God alone has power to command reality, but he encourages us to request whatever we wish in prayer (John 15:7) and he loves to respond to our faith by commanding answers to our requests.

The Bible contains over 31,000 verses — so much gold and so little time. We’ll never exhaust the gold it contains during our brief lives, but we must discover all we can. The apostle John said this about the three years he spent with the word made flesh: “Were every one of [the things Jesus did] to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

Well, the written word is written. But of this word we can say that if all it reveals were to be written, the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

The Blind Eyes of Abortion

Joyless Christianity is Dangerous

I Need Thee Every Hour

Reformation Day: Jesus Came Knocking

Sometime around A.D. 95, Jesus, through the apostle John, came metaphorically knocking on the door of the church in Laodicea with an unsurpassed invitation:

“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)

Pulled out of its context, this verse can sound like Jesus was calling softly and tenderly. Paintings inspired by this verse tend to portray a gentle Jesus mildly knocking. In reality, he was anything but soft and tender, gentle and mild. This invitation came on the heels of a bracing rebuke and serious warning. Jesus was pounding on the Laodicean’s door with the urgency of emergency:

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.” (Revelation 3:15–19)

Jesus was pounding on the door of a church whose trust in an idol put them in grave spiritual danger. Their prosperous tepidness made him want to gag. But because he loved these lukewarm Christians, he lovingly disciplined them with hard words and called them to zealous repentance and reformation.

When Jesus Came Knocking in Wittenberg

On October 31, 1517, Jesus, through a little-known German priest/professor named Martin Luther, came quite literally knocking on the Wittenberg door of the Roman Catholic Church.

Unrestrained corruption of power and wealth was a sin-cancer that had metastasized in the Roman Catholic Church and spread to many of her leaders and, through them, into her doctrines and practices. This cancer was killing the church. She too had grown very prosperous and yet did not realize how wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked she had become. She had not listened sufficiently to Jesus’s authoritative voice in the Scriptures, or to the prophetic voices of warning that he had repeatedly sent to her. The Lord was at the end of his patience.

But because he loved his sin-diseased church whose idolatry put her in grave spiritual danger, he sent an unlikely messenger from an unlikely town — so very like the Lord — with a hard word of loving discipline. Professor Luther walked up to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg with a hammer, a few nails, and a parchment listing 95 stinging indictments against the Roman Catholic Church. Unlike what the Laodiceans received, Luther’s theses were not inerrant Scripture. In fact, later Luther knew a number of them did not go far enough. But still, they were a largely biblical call to zealous repentance, as the first thesis so clearly captures:

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Matthew 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

In the pounding of Martin’s hammer, Jesus came knocking. And his knocking set off a chain-reaction that exploded into the Protestant Reformation, a gospel detonation that is still shaking the world nearly 500 years later.

A Reformation Detonation

As a result of October 31, 1517, hundreds of millions of Christians all over the world have submitted to God’s word as their highest authority (Sola Scriptura) and his teaching that salvation is a gift given by God’s grace alone (Sola Gratia) through the instrument of faith alone (Sola Fide) in the death and resurrection of their one savior and mediator, Jesus Christ (Sola Christus), so that all glory would always redound to the Triune God alone (Sola Deo Gloria).

Wherever the church opened the door to Jesus, repentance and reformation was like chemotherapy to the cancer of spiritual corruption and recovered belief in the gospel of Christ spread spiritual health through much of Europe, then on to the New World, Asia, and Africa. It spawned massive evangelism, church planting, Bible translation, and frontier missions efforts. And in its wake it brought about all manner of social good: stronger families, honest commerce, economic empowerment for the poor, hospitals and clinics for the sick, education for the masses, encouragement for the scientific enterprise, democratic forms of civic government, and on and on.

When we really comprehend the massive floodgate of mercy that was opened to us because Jesus came knocking in Wittenberg, Reformation Day (October 31st) becomes a thanksgiving day — a day for feasting or perhaps for fasting and prayer for another reformation detonation in our lives and churches and nations.

Is Jesus Knocking on Your Door?

In fact, given the prosperity that most of us in the West are experiencing and the arid spiritual climate most of us live in, it may be that the best way we can observe Reformation Day is to do some serious, prayerful soul-searching. Have we allowed a Laodicean type of acedia to settle in? We know that significant portions of the Western church are diseased with various heresies. Do they provoke us to earnest prayer?

And we should ask ourselves, is Jesus knocking — or pounding — on our door? Are we hearing him? Are we ignoring or even resisting him? Are we tolerating and justifying any idols? One clear symptom of idolatry is spiritual lukewarmness. Tepidness typically does not feel like a grave danger. It can feel like a tolerable and even nearly pleasant malaise. But it is deadly. In this state we do not realize how wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked we are.

And because Jesus loves sinful people like us, when we fall into such a state he comes knocking — hard. We often do not recognize it as him at first because he can come in the form of a messenger, sometimes an unlikely one. And the pounding of their hard words can make us defensive and mad.

But let us listen carefully and drop our guard. The hard words are painful, especially to our pride. But Jesus (or his imperfect messenger) is not being mean or condemning us. It is the loving discipline of our Savior to warn us. Lukewarmness means spiritual life-threatening idolatry. The cure is for us to “be zealous and repent” (Revelation 3:19).

If Jesus is knocking on our door, let us welcome him in fully that we may eat with him and he with us (Revelation 3:20). Accepting his unsurpassed invitation to joy through repentance and reformation may be the greatest way to celebrate Reformation Day.

Resources for Reformation Day

The Reformation: Trick or Treat? (articles)

After Darkness...Light (video)

Trick or Treat? It’s Martin Luther (article)

Is Your World Too Small?

In recent centuries, our collective knowledge of the cosmos along with everything else has increased astronomically. Now we know that in size comparison, our solar system is to the universe what an atom is to our solar system. One result of this knowledge is that we have a tendency to view everything through what I’ll call a telescopic perspective: We live, as they say at Walt Disney, in “a small, small world.”

Not only that, but technological advancement now allows us to live and move in our small world at high velocity and high volume. We can travel great distances at great speed in cars and planes, seeing many brief glimpses of our tiny world. And when we aren’t traveling, we are squeezing into our short days as much activity, browsing as much information, and interacting briefly with as many social relationships as we can.

We live in a small world at high speed. And the problem is that this way of living tends to produce spiritual barrenness rather than richness.

The Big Picture

That’s why G.K. Chesterton, ahead of his time as usual, was sounding this warning more than a century ago and telling us to get our microscopes back out:

The truth is that exploration and enlargement make the world smaller. The telegraph and the steamboat make the world smaller. The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it larger. Before long the world will be cloven with a war between the telescopists and the microscopists. The first study large things and live in a small world; the second study small things and live in a large world. (Heretics, chapter 3)

Chesterton wasn’t bemoaning technological advancement and cosmological discovery. He was bemoaning our tendency to believe that always viewing life through the telescope and zipping around frenetically trying to learn, see, and experience a little about a lot of things makes for a more sophisticated, richer life. It doesn’t.

The big picture of the world or a country or a culture or a garden or person is by definition superficial. Flying itself helps us see very little of the world. Book summaries don’t tell us the whole story. Facebook alone won’t help us nurture deep, intimate friendships. They increase speed and volume. But they tend to make the world smaller.

Rather, we must augment our big picture perspectives and high speed, high volume approaches with patient, slow-paced, careful, prolonged observation, examination, and reflection as well as time-intensive discussion. These are things that reveal glories that we’ll never see merely through our telescopes alone. They can function as microscopes, helping us see far more wonders right around us in things we thought we knew, things we’re used to, things we have become bored with. These microscopes help enlarge our world.

Make Room for Microscopes

There is no easy way to incorporate more microscopic observation into our fast-pace, superficial lives. It takes deliberate, even ruthless effort. I’m not very good at it, but I am determined to get better.

The most important microscopes we have, the ones that can’t be neglected, are Bible reading and prayer — which, in a different metaphor, also become telescopes, helping us see our massive God as he is, not distortedly small.

But reading, journaling, pondering, unhurried conversations, long, slow walks, pausing to notice flowers, trees, clouds, laughter, birdsongs, breezes, children, architecture, the wonder of rain, the taste of food, and getting sufficient sleep — these are the kinds of things we must make a place for if we want spiritual richness. They all reveal aspects of God’s fullness (Psalm 24:1).

Our world may be cosmically small, but it is not cosmically insignificant. The Creator and Sustainer of this vast universe (John 1:1–3) once walked this tiny planet (John 1:14). And he has filled it with glory. But we will miss much of the glory if we only look through a telescope and if we move too fast too much of the time.

The Rolling Stones Are Dead

One last word from Chesterton to us, the rolling stone generations living decades after him:

In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss. We were inclined to ask, “Who wants to gather moss, except silly old ladies?” But for all that we begin to perceive that the proverb is right. The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.

Too much rolling leads to lifelessness. Life and true knowledge often grow in stillness (Psalm 46:10).

More Resources

Knowledge Exists Because God Exists

Grace Supplies Strength for Today

The Loneliness of Suffering

Don’t Coddle Your Fears

When I was six or seven years old, my mother enrolled me in swimming lessons. At first they were fun. We learned how to tread water, float on our backs and some basic swimming strokes, all in the familiar security of the shallow end of the pool. But as the lessons progressed the instructor had us spend more time in the deep end, forcing us to rely on the skills we were learning. It was a bit scary, but the instructor stayed close.

The Diving Board

Then came a dreadful day: Each of us would have to jump off the diving board into the deep end.

It wasn’t jumping that I feared. I had jumped with gusto into the shallow end. I had even taken a few tentative jumps into the deep end, provided that the side of the pool was within reach.

But the diving board was a good 15-20 feet away from the side of the pool. Jumping off of it seemed like flinging myself into the abyss. I was terrified.

If you had asked me back then why I was terrified, I’m not sure I could have articulated my fear. I may have answered something like, “I just don’t want to do it!” But looking back, I know exactly what I was afraid of: drowning.

A Crisis of Faith

When my turn to jump finally came, I got up on the board, walked carefully toward the end and stood there, scared to death. My fear was immobilizing. I couldn’t jump.

My instructor was close by, treading water. He shouted, “Don’t be afraid! You can do it! You’re going to be okay.”

Now, what was the point in telling me that? The point was that he had equipped me with the knowledge and the skills to swim and besides that he was nearby with the power to help me if I got into trouble. My fear of drowning was unfounded. However, my fear was still distorting my perception of reality and governing my behavior. I was not in real danger, but I still believed that this jump might be my last.

My instructor knew that the only way to cure my fear and rid me of my unbelief in his promises was to get me to jump. My merely knowing his promises wasn’t the same as believing them. Believing them required me to rely on them. Only in jumping would I put the promises to the test and know they were true. My instructor knew that if I jumped, my fear would lose its power over me.

I don’t know how long I stood there debating my instructor; maybe five to seven minutes. It felt like an hour. He exhorted and encouraged me and I was tortured with doubt. It was a crisis of faith. Would I believe my fears or would I believe my instructor’s promises? What I chose to believe would make all the difference in my behavior and in my future.

A Life-Changing Jump

Finally, the scale of my faith tipped from believing my fears to believing my instructor’s encouraging promises. I jumped! It was by no means a heroic jump, but it was a life-changing jump. For when I jumped, I discovered that my instructor’s promises were indeed true and my fears had been unfounded. A whole new dimension of swimming joy began to open up to me. Faith replaced fear, confident action replaced paralysis. I got up and jumped again. And then I did it again and again.

The next week, my instructor wanted me to jump off the board again and the old fear came back. I again had to battle for faith. But this time the battle was not anywhere near as difficult or long as the first. I jumped and the fear was gone. Soon I was diving off the board and later off a high dive at a local beach. I was free from that fear’s grip.

A Merciful Instructor Doesn’t Coddle Our Fears

Back when I stood on the board terrified, my instructor could have coddled my fear. He could have pitied the scared little boy pleading to avoid having to take that frightening jump. He could have come up, put his arm around me, and escorted me back to the comfort and security of the shallow end. I would have been grateful to him that day. But I would not have been grateful later. I would have spent much more of my childhood splashing in the shallows and missing out on the joy of the deeps.

In what deep end are you afraid of drowning? Are you standing petrified on the end of some diving board in a faith crisis while your heavenly Instructor is exhorting you to jump? Is he making precious and very great promises (2 Peter 1:4) to you that if you jump, you will discover new dimensions of swimming joy?

Here’s what you need to remember: You will not know the truth or the power of the Instructor’s promises unless you jump. You can stay in the shallows where it’s secure, where you can touch bottom. But he did not teach you to swim for that. What you have learned is meant for the deeps. And you will only know the joy of the deeps if you take the jump.

Your Instructor knows this. That’s why he’s not coddling your fear. Any fear that makes you distrust his promises is distorting your perception of reality and governing your behavior. And it’s robbing you of joy. Your Instructor’s exhortation to do what you are afraid of may feel unkind now, but later you will know it as a mercy.

So go ahead: Jump. Don’t be afraid (John 14:27). You can do it (Matthew 4:19). You’re going to be okay (Romans 8:37). Your Instructor is close (Hebrews 13:5) and won’t let you drown (Philippians 4:19). It doesn’t have to be a heroic jump. But it may well be a life-changing jump.

Related Resources

Fear Not, I Am with You, I Am Your God (sermon)

Help Me Face Today (article)

God Doesn’t Want You to Worry (video)