Jon Bloom's Blog, page 43

When God Gives You an Overcrowded Christmas

For many, the last few days before Christmas are rarely peaceful. This is especially true for parents and pastors. These days are packed with final (and often pressured) preparations of presents and programs and celebrations and sermons. “All is calm” is not our experience. This can leave us wondering if we are nothing more than Christmas “Martha’s,” “distracted with much serving . . . anxious and troubled about many things” and missing the “Mary” moment in all the merry (Luke 10:40–42).

While such distractions are, of course, a year-round ever-present danger, let me encourage you with some brief Christmas perspective on busy-ness.

Remember Joseph and Mary

First, we must keep in mind that the original Christmas was not peaceful, not for Joseph and Mary. They were the first parents who had to prepare for Christmas and the pressure they felt dwarfs what most of us are experiencing right now. Bethlehem was overcrowded with census registrants. Things did not go as they likely envisioned. Joseph was desperately searching for lodging for his wife who was in labor. All he could secure was a stable.

If an unforeseen crisis emerges in the midst of your already challenging Christmas labors, remember Joseph and Mary. That place of desperation is often where the grace of God breaks in with the greatest power.

Remember the Ministry-Weary Disciples

Second, certain seasons of ministry and serving are simply exhausting. The Bible is full of weary saints who serve in the midst of various kinds of pressures. One example is the time in Capernaum when the crowds trying to get to Jesus became so great and demanding that the disciples didn’t even have time to eat (Mark 3:20). Were they “distracted with much serving” at that moment? In a sense, yes — meaning they weren’t sitting at Jesus’s feet peacefully listening. Yet, at that moment, from what we can tell, they were doing exactly what they should have been doing: helping all those people hear Jesus.

That is what Christmas is for our children and our congregations (and all the visitors in our homes and churches during the season): a time to hear Jesus. If making that happen means extraordinary busyness for you, it is very likely that you are doing exactly what you should be doing.

Get Away to a Lonely Place Later

There seems to have been a rhythm in Jesus’s ministry of very hard work followed by seasons of respite in “lonely” or “desolate” places (Luke 5:16; Mark 6:31). This is necessary for all of us. If your Christmas is an extraordinarily busy time of family and church ministry, then it is wise to plan a time, in January if possible, to get away from the chaos and listen to Jesus in his Word and to pray (here are some helpful pointers on how to do that). Find a lonely place where you have time to eat the Bread of life and be refreshed for the next exhausting push.

A busy, high pressure Christmas does not de facto mean you’re a Christmas “Martha.” You may be a desperate Joseph or Mary in an overcrowded Bethlehem or you may be a tired disciple in an overcrowded Capernaum. If that’s your call, work hard and serve well. Make the aim of your serving the progress and joy of the faith of others (Philippians 1:25) and aim to serve in the strength that God supplies (1 Peter 4:11). Then afterwards, withdraw with Jesus to a lonely place and be refreshed by him.

If your Christmas isn’t tranquil because you’re trying hard to make room in the world for Jesus to become “good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10) for others, you are in very good company. May God bless you.

Related Articles

Five Things to Teach Your Children This Christmas

Of Kids and Christmas

Lay Aside the Weight of Christmas Expectations

Did Tolkien Waste His Life?

There were imaginative flickers of Middle-earth in the precocious child, Ronald Tolkien. Enchanting English landscapes, a language invented with a young cousin for kicks, an awakening love of mythology, especially of the northern and Germanic variety, and a local doctor named Gamgee were all future literary fodder.

But it was in the fierce furnace of World War I, where Tolkien (a signals officer) saw unspeakable horrors and evils and which took the lives of all but one of his closest friends, that the mythology and epic tales that later gave birth to his books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). He spent the rest of his life working on this fantasy (or as he preferred, “faërie”) world. When John Ronald Reuel Tolkien died on September 2, 1973, it fell to his son, Christopher, to work through boxes of writings to piece together and publish the mythic history of Middle-earth.

Tolkien never envisioned those tales of Middle-earth would become a global phenomenon it has. And what a phenomenon! An estimated 250 million copies of The Hobbit and LOTR books have been sold worldwide, and the revenue from Peter Jackson’s motion picture adaptations are $5 billion and growing.

Fantasy in a World of Real Need?

But sales and celebrity achievement are no biblical endorsement that a life was well spent. The fact is Tolkien spent an enormous portion of his life conceiving and composing a fantasy world.

And this world is quite comprehensive. It has its Deity, its angel-like, Satan-like, and demon-like creatures. It has its intelligent creatures of numerous species, each having its own ethnic branches. It has its geology and detailed topography. And it has several fully developed, sophisticated languages. There is nothing comparable to Middle-earth’s scope in English literature.

But was it worth it? Did Tolkien waste much of his life loitering in his own elaborate Elfland? And did he enable hundreds of millions of others to waste theirs by joining him there? In the face of such real desperate needs of very real souls in the very real world, isn’t Middle-earth just an escape?

Real Seeing Through Fantasy Lenses

Since I am not God, I do not know how much of his life Tolkien may have wasted in his work. God knows I’ve wasted more than enough of my own already. But in terms of Middle-earth being a means of escape, Tolkien had this to say:

Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and what is more, they are confusing . . . the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. (“On Fairy-stories”)

Tolkien never intended his tales of Middle-earth to be a desertion from reality, but a means of seeing beyond the confined walls of our perceptions to a much larger reality beyond. And he suffered no delusions that Middle-earth was that reality. But through the lenses of Middle-earth, Tolkien, an unashamed Christian, wanted to show us “a far-off gleam . . . of evangelium in the real world” (emphasis his, “On Fairy-stories”). His kind of fantasy was intended to help prisoners in the real world escape and go home.

There is a deep, profound reason why God created us to be story-makers and storytellers, and why, when the Word became flesh (John 1:14), he frequently spoke in stories. The best make-believe stories help us better understand the real world. And in our day, such stories are needed more than ever.

Professor Louis Markos writes,

We are, in many ways, a civilization adrift on the stormy seas of relativism and existentialism. The first ‘ism’ has robbed us of any transcendent standard against which we can measure our thoughts, our words, and our deeds; the second has emptied our lives of any higher meaning, purpose, or direction. Our compass is broken and the stars obliterated, and we are left with nothing to navigate by but a vague faith in the modern triad of progress, consumerism, and egalitarianism. They are not enough. . . . What we need, in short, are stories. (On the Shoulders of Hobbits, 10–11)

And, he says, the stories we need,

are precisely those that will beckon us to follow their heroes along the Road; that will embody for us the true nature of good and evil, virtue and vice, and then challenge us to engage in the struggle between the two; that will open our eyes and ears to that sacramental faerie magic that we so often miss. (187)

There Is More Faërie to Reality Than We See

It is a great, sad, tragic irony that we so often miss the true magic. This world pulses with the glory of God shining out in all that he has made (Romans 1:20) and the written Word contains “precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:4) of incredible magnitude, and we are often so dull to it all. The pervasiveness of our sinful depravity causes us to live so much of our days in a small jail cell of self-obsession.

But the great Hero of the true Epic has proclaimed liberty to all the captives who will follow him (Luke 4:18). The road is hard and the perils are many (Matthew 7:14). The enemies are otherworldly and far more powerful than ourselves (Ephesians 6:12). But the Hero is greater still (1 John 4:4) and he promises to be with us to the end (Matthew 28:20), even in the darkest places (Psalm 23:4) and deliver all in his fellowship safely into his heavenly kingdom (2 Timothy 4:18).

No faërie story or myth or man-made religion in all of recorded history compares with the Great Story of Christianity. But we need all the help we can get to turn our eyes away from our confined corner of reality and see the Story with fresh eyes.

For many, looking through the faërie lenses of Middle-earth has helped them see again the real Epic we each are a small part of. They have been helped to see the gleam of the true evangelium and press on in the journeys to which they have been appointed with renewed hope and courage, knowing that at the end of the Road is Home.

Investing life in creating fantasy that results in pointing real people in the real world to true hope in the true evangelium is not a waste, but well done.

More Resources on Tolkien:

Bilbo’s Last Goodbye (article)

The Allure of Middle-Earth (article)

“Luck” and Latent Christianity in Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ (video)

The Reward of God’s Rebuke

What might Zechariah and Elizabeth have talked about after their friends left the naming ceremony where Zechariah had miraculously regained his speech?

“So . . . are you going to tell me?”

Elizabeth was ready to burst. She had waited nearly a year to hear what had happened in the temple.

Zechariah was looking adoringly at the infant boy lying on his lap. “Baby John, there’s something you need to know about women. They always want the details!” Zechariah glanced up playfully at his wife.

“The Lord has freed your tongue, Zechariah. It needs some exercise. Out with it!”

In some ways being mute for ten months had made it easier. How does one even describe such things? The moment had been so sacred, and overwhelming.

“That day seems like a dream. I remember walking into the temple. I had a knot of joyful fear in my stomach. I had been chosen by the Lord to intercede for Israel in the holy place. I remember praying as I lit the incense. And then suddenly there was a man standing just to my right! I never saw him come. He was just there! I was so startled I nearly dropped the fire.”

“The angel looked like a man?”

“Well . . . yes. I guess. But I’ve never seen any man like him. It’s hard to explain.”

“Did he have wings like the carvings?”

Zechariah paused. “This is going to sound strange, but I’m not sure. I remember him not looking anything like I’d imagined. But his appearance is less clear in my memory than the words he spoke — and how suddenly conscious I was of my sinfulness. I felt unclean.”

“So what exactly did he say?”

“I was terrified. You know how we’re warned. If priests offer unrighteous intercession we could be struck dead. And at that moment it didn’t feel unjust. So the first thing he said was, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah.’ His words gave me strength.”

Looking at his wife with tears, he went on, “Then he said, ‘Your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.’” Husband and wife both sobbed in sorrow-laced joy.

“Liz, all those years of praying. I had stopped hoping. But God heard.” Elizabeth just nodded with closed, tearful eyes.

Zechariah wiped his face and beamed at his son. “‘And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord.’”

“The angel said that?”

Zechariah nodded. “‘And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit,” and looking at Elizabeth he said, “even from his mother’s womb.’” Both were thinking of Mary and of John’s womb-leap over the Miracle she was carrying.

“‘And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.’”

“The prophecy!”

“Yes. The Prophet Malachi. Liz, those were the last words that the Lord spoke to our people through a prophet. It’s been 400 years of silence. But now the Lord is loosing the prophetic tongue of Israel, beginning with this little boy. God is visiting us again, this time with the Messiah! And our John will be his forerunner. Who are we that God would allow us to be a part of this marvel?”

Neither spoke for a while.

Then Elizabeth asked, “Why did the angel make you mute?”

Zechariah sighed. “I’m a sinfully proud man, Liz. I’ve viewed myself as a man who believes God’s word. I’ve lived by his law. I’ve felt contempt for doubters. Though I’ve never said it out loud, I’ve secretly thought that my faith would be greater than some of our prophets and kings if only God spoke directly to me as he did to them.

“Well, God showed me what I really am. You know what I said to the angel? ‘How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.’ I — who have taught many about Abraham and Sarah — I doubted God when he sent an angel to tell me that he’s answering my prayer. Is there a greater fool?

“So the angel said, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.’

“God was very gracious to only take my words. He could have taken my life.”

“The Lᴏʀᴅ is gracious, Zechariah. That is the name he gave our son.”†

Zechariah smiled again at John. “Yes. Isn’t it beautiful? God has taught me more about his grace these past ten months of silence than in all my years of talking. Even his rebuke has become a reward for me. It’s all grace! I love the ways of God, Liz.”

The humble father then held his son in the air. “And this boy will help us all see that Messiah is coming to show the tender mercy of our God in forgiving undeserving sinners — even proud, faithless old priests.”

God’s grace toward his children is infused in everything he does for us, even when he chastens us. “God always turns his rebukes into rewards” for his own.

This story is published as “When a Rebuke Became a Reward” in the book, Not By Sight: A Fresh Look at Old Stories of Walking by Faith (Crossway, 2013).

Related Resources

Jesus Is the Horn of Salvation (sermon)

God Is Merciful Not to Tell Us Everything (article)

When God Says Wait (article)

† “John” is “derived from the Hebrew name יוֹחָנָן (Yochanan) meaning “YAHWEH is gracious.”

Enjoy Jesus’s Favorite Meal

The best thing about Christmas is the food. But I don’t mean the food that tends to come to mind at the suggestion.

Eating in Samaria

In John chapter 4, Jesus and his disciples had stopped in the Samaritan town of Sychar for food. But the disciples weren’t aware that their idea of food was different than Jesus’s idea of food.

Part of the reason for this is because the disciples’ assumption about why they were in Samaria didn’t match Jesus’s plans. They saw Samaria as a “fly-over” region, a place you had to pass through to get where you want to be. They didn’t see the half-breed heretic Samaritans as their gospel calling. But the Samaritans did have food and the disciples were hungry, so they were happy enough to stop in Sychar for bread.

But Samaria was not a rest stop for Jesus. Samaria was a field ripe for harvest. Jesus was not there to get bread from the Samaritans; he was there to give Bread to them (John 6:51). And in doing so he would be eating his favorite meal.

When the disciples got back to Jacob’s well with the food they thought they were in Sychar to get, and saw Jesus talking with a Samaritan woman of dubious reputation (three reasons they thought he shouldn’t have been talking with her), they were perplexed. And when they offered him bread, they were even more perplexed to find out that Jesus had already eaten. Somehow he had gotten food they didn’t know about (John 4:32). It just got increasingly confusing when he said that his food was to do the will of his Father (John 4:34). What was the nourishing will of the Father in the spiritual wilderness of Samaria?

It wasn’t until Jesus told them to lift up their eyes and see the harvest (John 4:35), and they turned to see a crowd of Samaritans headed their way that they began to comprehend. The harvest wasn’t merely up ahead in Galilee. There was a white harvest in barren Samaria, where they least expected it. There was bread in the wilderness.

Don’t Miss the Best Christmas Meal

What does this have to do with you and Christmas? Simply this. You might think you know why you are where you are this Christmas. Maybe you’re happy about it or maybe you’re sad or frustrated about it. Maybe you’re stuck in a place you don’t want to be, or maybe you think you’re just passing through this place to get where you want to be. Whatever the case, it’s possible that Jesus’s reasons for you being where you are are quite different than what you think.

Jesus often has harvests for us where we least expect them. Be careful not to assume that the real harvest is up the road and where you are is merely a rest stop or a frustrating, delaying detour. Lift up your eyes. The field around you may be whiter than you know. You may be in a field where God has been sowing gospel seeds completely unknown to and unseen by you — and he’s inviting you to reap.

The best meal you’ll ever eat on earth is to do God’s will for you. There’s nothing that tastes better. It was Jesus’s favorite meal. God has a purpose for you right where you are. Whatever you do this Christmas, make sure not to miss out on this feast. It will make all the other Christmas meals and treats taste far better.

Related Resources

Do Not Labor for the Food That Perishes (sermon)

When God Says Wait (article)

God Is Merciful Not to Tell Us Everything (article)

Be an Advent Gift of Encouragement

For most of us, Advent is not a season of peace. It’s an extraordinarily busy, often stressful season. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

The first Advent was certainly anything but peaceful. It began with a contemplation of divorce, was accompanied by numerous confusing, unplanned detours, and was consummated in a stable of desperation. The Prince of peace brought a lot of turmoil with him when he came. And I think this implies that, in God’s judgment, what we may need at Christmas is not less turmoil, but more trust.

The Beautiful Busy-ness of Love

It really is a beautiful thing that the season of Advent is a season of giving. And as Jesus demonstrated by his life and his death, true giving, the kind of giving born of love, is costly. It makes life more complicated and messy and busy. But that’s okay, for there is a profound blessing in the busy-ness of love: “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). And God loves a cheerful giver and promises to make all grace abound to us when we cheerfully give grace to others (2 Corinthians 9:7–8).

What to Give This Christmas

That’s what we want especially to give to others this Christmas: grace. And one particular grace to focus on in our Christmas giving this year is encouragement. What if we seek not to merely ask what our loved one or neighbor would like, but what would most encourage him or her?

Courage is our resolve to face a fearful threat. And courage comes from hope — a hope in something stronger than what we fear. Discouragement sets in when our hope is leaking out. It’s a surrender to our fears. When discouragement happens, and it happens often, what we need is an infusion of hope. That’s what encouragement is — a hope-infusion that helps us keep fighting the fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:12). To give another the gift of encouragement is extending to them a kindness that seeks to point them to the God of hope (Romans 15:13).

Giving This Gift Is Not Easy

But giving the gift of encouragement is not easy. It will likely add to our seasonal stress because it is spiritual warfare. If we’re going to encourage anyone else, we have to fight Satan and our own sin to do it.

The devil is constantly trying to discourage us. He’s the “the accuser of [the] brothers . . . who accuses them day and night before our God” (Revelation 12:10). And his minions are frequently throwing “flaming darts” of condemnation and jealousy and resentment at us (Ephesians 6:16). Resist them (1 Peter 5:9)!

And our sin nature often wants to discourage others. It desires self-exaltation more than anything. So it relishes focusing on others’ weaknesses, foibles, mistakes, and sins out of arrogance or envy. Pride is why so much of what we think or say or interpret or hear about others is negative and uncharitably critical.

But the “God of . . . encouragement” (Romans 15:5) has given us the weapon that is designed to defeat these enemies: “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). The Bible was “written for our instruction, that . . . through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). And when we have hope, we have courage, and we’re able to give the grace of encouragement to others who need it.

So encouraging people soak in and store up God’s word (Psalm 119:11) and by doing so are better able to walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16). And when they talk they seek to speak only what “is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).

Be a Generous Encouragement Giver!

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to give the grace of encouragement to everyone who hears from us this Advent season? No, we won’t do it perfectly. But if we make this form of love our aim (1 Timothy 1:5), it’s possible that we could give out twice or three times as much encouragement as we otherwise would. Why not try?

God loves encouragement, generosity, and cheerful giving. So let’s be generous, cheerful givers of encouragement this Advent, even if it means the additional busy-ness of love. Let’s be on the hunt for those who need hope-infusions. And let’s ask the Father for Spirit-empowered discernment and Scripture recall so that we leave whomever we interact with this season more encouraged than we found them.

Related Resources

Advent: The Dawning of Indestructible Joy (book)

Rethinking Santa (interview)

Advent Is Slow — on Purpose (article)

How to Fight Lukewarmness

As we give thanks to God for his “abounding faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6), it is good for us to examine our own faithfulness. How faithful are we? This is important because “it is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2). And a gauge of our faithfulness is our level of lukewarmness.

Don’t Grow Grey with Age

Lukewarmness is the dying of conviction. And conviction often dies the slow death of a thousand compromises. 

When I was 22 years old, I worked at a company where my supervisor was defrauding customers and asking me to comply by fudging inventory reports. I refused and raised serious concerns about his conduct. This got back to the company owner, who one day asked me into his office and sagely said, “When I was your age I also saw things in black and white. But I‘ve come to learn that things are mainly shades of grey.” That was baloney. Fraud isn’t grey. If the customer became aware of the fraud, the colors would have sharpened very quickly.

But what had happened to this owner that made his youthful black dilute to grey with age?

Well, now that I’m near the age he was back then, I understand more. I know how longer, broader life experiences can season and temper the soul. But I also know that his sort of “greying with age” is not the tempering of age-acquired wisdom. It is the result of failing to be faithful, of being lured and enticed and ensnared by our sinful desires (James 1:14).

Truth does not grey with age. Rather, our moral eyes cloud from the cataracts of compromise. And with each compromise we lose more resolve to see truth and be faithful to it. We call black grey only to ease our consciences.

Lukewarmness is a Symptom of a Disease

Most of us in the prosperous West live in modern day Laodiceas (Revelation 3:14–22). Our faith is not endangered by persecution but by the constant temptations of worldly compromise. Jesus, the “faithful and true witness” (verse 14) rebuked the Laodiceans for having grown “lukewarm” (verse 16) in unfaithfulness and exhorted them to “buy from [him]. . . salve to anoint [their] eyes” (verse 18) to heal their cataracts of compromise.

If a fever is a symptom of disease in the body, lukewarmness is a symptom of the disease of unfaithfulness in the soul. And like all of us experience bodily fevers and fight disease, all of us experience lukewarmness to greater or lesser degrees and must fight the disease of unfaithfulness.

Jesus’s Prescription for Unfaithfulness

If we feel lukewarm, how do we fight the disease? Our faithful and true Physician gives us his prescription: “be zealous and repent” (Revelation 3:19).

But how does a lukewarm person just “be zealous”? Isn’t that the problem — not being zealous? No! The problem is not perceiving the disease of which lukewarmness is a symptom. If you think all that you have is a cold, you may not think much of a fever. But if you find out that cancer is causing your fever, suddenly zeal is not a problem. Lukewarmness is a symptom of the cancer of unfaithful unbelief in the soul. If left untreated it will result in an unspeakably horrible experience: Jesus will spew you out of his mouth (Revelation 3:16). It is not the unfaithful who receive the eternal reward. The reward goes to “the one who conquers” (Revelation 3:21) — the one who fights and overcomes.

How does a lukewarm person repent? Don’t wait for some emotional muse. Repent right now! Turn around and get moving in the right direction. Take one step and then another. When it comes to repenting, rarely is our problem not knowing what to do. The Spirit shows us what to do if we want to repent. Our problem is wanting to repent. (To address that problem read the above paragraph again.)

Grace to the Unfaithful

Jesus’s hard words of warning to the Laodiceans was grace. He wasn’t telling them to earn their salvation by being faithful. He was telling them that lukewarm unfaithfulness might be evidence that they didn’t have saving faith. It was a “you have cancer” moment. And he had the treatment. He was telling them to repent and come back to him for healing. That’s the grace he extends to most of us followers who, like Peter (Luke 22:60–62), fall at some time into the sin of unfaithfulness. Repentance is the evidence of real, if deficient, faith.

Fierce Fidelity

To remain faithful is not merely a struggle. It is war. To be faithful to God, our spouse, our children, our church, and our vocation, requires that we fight every day against the indwelling sin that presses us toward compromises. Don’t coddle little compromises. Kill them. Fight the good fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:12) by fighting fiercely for fidelity.

Repentance becomes a holy habit of the faithful fighter. The sin of compromise is always crouching at our door and we must rule over it (Genesis 4:7). We do this by cultivating the skill of taking every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

In your thanksgiving, thank God for the grace of his hard words that, in kindness, leads you to repentance (Romans 2:4). Resist the devil (James 4:7), repent of any greying of black, and fight lukewarmness like the plague.

Related Articles

Lay Aside the Weight of “Not Feeling Like It”

Lay Aside the Weight of “I’ll Never Change”

Lay Aside the Weight of Irritability

Help to Increase Your Thanksgiving Appetite

When it comes to cultivating gratitude, we need all the help we can get. As I wrote last week, thanksgiving does not come naturally to sinful people. Grumbling and disputing comes natural (Philippians 2:14). Gratitude is the heart’s response to seeing and experiencing grace. And we must intentionally look for grace. It’s all around us. But selfishness distorts the lenses of our heart-eyes. So we need scriptural prescription lenses to see right.

But once we begin to see, oh how things change. It is then that the real meaning of Thanksgiving dawns on us. We discover that the real feast of Thanksgiving is feasting on thanksgiving. Thursday’s American food feast is not the focus but is a finger that points us to a feast for our souls: God’s abounding, all-sufficient grace (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Now, if we (Americans) rush into Thursday’s celebration having barely reflected on gratitude, we will fill our stomachs but leave our souls hungry. So here are some resources that will help increase your thanksgiving appetite.

Make your debt of gratitude bigger, not smaller! (4 min) I love this interview with John Piper where he says, “the greatest Christian is the one who reaches the finish line with the most debt to God.” Christ paid your debt of sin and delights in giving you everything freely forevermore!

Bathe in the gospel! (38 min) Listen to this wonderful Thanksgiving sermon John Piper preached 25 years ago titled, “Thanks Be to God for His Inexpressible Gift.” It’s a swim in the gospel.

Pursue true gratitude. (6–7 min) Just being grateful isn’t necessarily Christian. In this brief article, Jonathan Edwards (via John Piper) helps us understand what Christian gratitude is built on so that we don’t actually commit idolatry in giving thanks.

Starve your pride. (10 min) John Piper explains how “everything, without exception, is a free gift” but that “Proud People Don’t Give Thanks.” Then he provides us with counsel on how to be free of love-blocking, joy-stealing pride.

Learn from grateful examples. (12 min) No one has been more helpful to me in both example and the nitty-gritty how-to’s of daily cultivating gratitude than Ann Voskamp. Here is an interview she gave David Mathis when she stopped by the DG studio a couple years ago. And if you haven’t yet, read her book, One Thousand Gifts.

Even in Suffering. (30 min) Years ago John Piper preached a Thanksgiving sermon titled, “Thanksgiving in Suffering.” It can be very hard to feel grateful in and for profound pain. But nothing is too difficult for God to redeem into something unspeakably beautiful. In this message, John shares a story of a young woman who suffered terrible facial burns as a child, the alcoholism of an unaffectionate father, the sexual molestation of a neighbor, a gang rape as a young teen, anorexia, bulimia, drug addiction, multiple marriages, and multiple suicide attempts. She then experienced the radical grace of God that resulted in the radical liberation of gratitude.

The Thanksgiving spread. (10 min) A few years ago David Mathis wrote an excellent post titled, “Making the Most of Turkey Time: Thanksgiving on Mission.” In cultivating our own gratitude, we don’t want to neglect the joy and need of spreading the gracious news to those who need to hear.

There’s more… Want more? Here’s a list of other resources to use as thanksgiving appetizers as you prepare to feast.

So carve out time this week to cultivate gratitude by looking at and tasting the grace of God in Christ and the thousands of gifts (even painful ones) that flow to us through Christ every single day. And let the feast of Thanksgiving mainly be a feasting on thanksgiving.

Feasting on Thanksgiving

In a week, most of us in the United States will gather as family and friends around a table and share in the lavish feast we call Thanksgiving.

The tradition of setting aside a day to give thanks extends back to the earliest days of the U.S. The Continental Congress proclaimed a day of national thanksgiving in 1777, and President George Washington proclaimed one in 1789. After 1815, the practice disappeared until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln established an annual national holiday of Thanksgiving to be observed on the last Thursday in November.

This tradition is a merciful common grace from God. It’s for our joy! So before the flurry of housecleaning and feast preparation, before we switch into the autopilot of our familiar food and football traditions and the day passes in a caloric, but largely thankless blur, let’s think about the feast of Thanksgiving so that we eat the right things.

The Real Feast

The traditional American Thanksgiving meal featuring turkey and all the fixings that go with it is my favorite meal. Period. That may or may not be true for our American readers. But eating something you love on Thanksgiving is exactly what you should do because Thanksgiving is not about the feast of food. Thanksgiving is about feasting on the manifold, abundant, overflowing, all-sufficient grace of God in all that he is for us and all that he has done, is doing, and promises to do for us. An abundant, delicious feast of food is intended to be a symbol, a small picture, a momentary experience of what God’s grace is like. It is to help us “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).

In other words, the food is meant to fuel our thanksgiving, not be the focus of thanksgiving.

Remember to Say “Thank You”

For Thanksgiving to really be about thanksgiving requires the intentionality of remembering on our part.

We are not, by fallen nature, thankful people. We are naturally very selfish. This was evident when we were children. We didn’t naturally recognize that the thousands of ways we were served by our parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, neighbors, teachers, and others were grace-gifts. It came naturally to us to largely assume that it was their job to serve the all-important us. And if they didn’t, out of our mouths came complaints and accusations that, looking back, we wish we had never said.

We had to learn gratitude. This usually began with our parents. They had to remind us to be thankful. When grandma gave us a gift or we were on our way to our friend’s house, a parent would often say, “Remember to say ‘thank you.’” And there is our condition illustrated: “Remember to say ‘thank you.’”

Being Fake Thankers Is Not Okay

Being reminded to give thanks is very biblical. In the book of Psalms alone we’re reminded nearly 50 times to give thanks. The New Testament also reminds nearly 50 times, including the all-inclusive “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

God reminds us frequently because we need to be reminded. But we can tune his reminders out just like we used to do with Mom. And we can do with God what we learned early to do with everyone else: become a fake thanker.

Being self-absorbed sinners, and modeling off the self-absorbed sinners we observed, we learned early to use expressions of gratitude often more as social gear-greasing courtesies and reputation-enhancers rather than real, heart-felt expressions of amazement that someone showed us kindness or generosity or sacrificed on our behalf.

And now when we hear the Bible tell us to “be thankful” (Colossians 3:15), we can do the same thing and turn it into an obligatory expression of spiritual courtesy toward God rather than an expression of an astounded, overwhelmed realization that we have received mind-blowing grace from him.

We’ve learned to say thank you without feeling thankful and to think it’s okay. It’s not okay. Thankless gratitude is like affectionless love. It’s like joyless happiness. It’s like the form of godliness without its power. It’s not okay. It’s not the real thing. And as long as we practice it we are missing out on the joy God intends to give us through thanksgiving.

Feast on Thanksgiving

When God commands us to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18), he does not want some mere spiritual courtesy from us. It’s not like he needs our meager words of thanks or he’ll feel bad, like grandma might have. I believe God does feel bad if we don’t express gratitude. But what he feels is not self-pity because we didn’t make him feel good for doing something nice for us. He feels grieved for us because we are missing the point and therefore missing true joy. 

God’s command for us to be thankful is a prescription of healing for the disease of our soul-crippling selfishness. It is an invitation to us to see the glory of God’s grace that is everywhere and, for the Christian, is infused into everything (Romans 8:28). It is an invitation for us to leave behind the spiritual poverty of our sin and selfishness and receive, through the cross, “the immeasurable riches of [God’s] grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). The command for us to be thankful is God commanding us to experience the deep joy of true gratitude for all God promises to be for us in Christ forever. It is a profoundly kind command.

Christian thanksgiving is a feast of joy for the soul. It is savoring what is most satisfying to us. It is eating “the food that endures to eternal life” (John 6:27).

That is what next week’s feast of food is all about. The food many of us will enjoy is not meant to be the focus; it is meant to be a finger pointing to the abounding grace of God (2 Corinthians 9:8) that is enveloping us like a flood. The food is meant to help us really taste joy. The feast is meant to help us really feast.

So, in the words of the old table blessing, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.”

Related Resources

Thanksgiving, Thanksfeeling, and the Glory of God (article)

Guard Yourself With Gratitude (sermon)

How Not to Commit Idolatry in Giving Thanks (article)

Beware the Mirror

Mirrors are very dangerous for proud people.

Remember the story of Narcissus? He’s the proud, beautiful man in the Greek myth who saw his reflection in a pool, fell in love it, couldn’t tear himself away, and it killed him.

All of us sinners are Narcissistic to some degree. But the enchanting power that mirrors have over most of us is different from Narcissus. When we look into a mirror most of us are not captivated by our beauty, we are condemned by our defects.

And for us, mirrors are not just things that hang on our walls. Fallen, proud hearts turn just about everything into a mirror. Magazines, mall browsing, mutual fund reports, someone else’s immaculate lawn or impressive children or beautiful home or successful business or growing church can all become mirrors. Because when we look at them we see reflections of ourselves. We see ourselves wanting in comparison.

So the enchantment ends up being a Narcissistic obsession without changing our self-image into a thing of beauty, usually into the constantly changing, illusive images of what the world tells us is beautiful. And the power we desire our improved image to have is not to enchant ourselves by looking at our direct reflection, but to be enchanted by other people’s admiration of us.

Other people’s admiration is our pool of Narcissus.

This is why focusing on our self-image is so dangerous. Many of us do need our sin-corrupted, Satan-encouraged self-loathing corrected. But this will never happen by focusing on our self-image because our salvation, peace, and happiness are not found in improving our image or having the fleeting pleasure of others’ admiration. We are not designed to be satisfied with our own glory. We are designed to be satisfied with God’s glory (Romans 1:23). And however much we would like to be like God (Genesis 3:5), we never will be, not even close.

The gospel we need won’t be viewed in our mirrors. For that we need to look through a window. And that’s what the Bible is. The Bible is not a mirror; it is a window. It is through the Bible that we come to see reality. And it is through the Bible that we see the “gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4), and “behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) and “behold [his] face in righteousness” and become “satisfied with [his] likeness” (Psalm 17:15).

The health and restoration of your sin-sick, Narcissistic soul lies in looking to Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). It is not a better you that you need to see. You need to see Jesus and then bask in the amazing truth that the more you look to him and trust him, the more you will be conformed to his beautiful image (Romans 8:29) and that being in Christ you have received and will receive as a free gift (Romans 6:23) all that will make you most satisfied and most truly beautiful (Ephesians 1:3).

Narcissus is a pagan parable of a real danger. Beware of mirrors — any kind of mirror. Look at mirrors as little as possible. Instead, look through a window. Any window is ten-times more healthy for us than a mirror. But especially look through the window of God’s word so you can see Jesus.

He is the Savior (1 John 4:14), the peace (Ephesians 2:14), and the satisfying gain (Philippians 3:8) you are looking for.

Related Resources

The Epidemic of Male Body Hatred (article)

Battling the Unbelief of a Haughty Spirit (sermon)

The Power to Conquer Selfishness (interview)

Lay Aside the Weight of “I’ll Never Change”

We all must come to terms with the way we are. But there are two ways we must do this. The first is to cultivate contentment with who God designed us to be, which results in a wonderful liberation from trying to be someone we’re not. The second is to lay aside the burdensome weight of the fatalistic resignation that we’ll never be any different than what we are, which results in an enslavement to our sin-infused predilections.

Cultivating Contentment and Fighting Fatalism

Cultivating contentment in the person God designed us to be is based on our belief in the glorious gospel truths that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), knitted us together in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13), caused us to be born again (1 Peter 1:3) so that we are now a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) who lives by faith (Galatians 2:20) in the God who provides all we need (Philippians 4:19) so that we can exclaim with joy, “by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10)!

Believing these things sets us free to increasingly pursue living in the freedom that Jesus has provided us (John 8:36).

But they can be hard to believe in the face of our persistent sins and weaknesses, things we are so keenly aware of. Instead, we are tempted to believe the horrible, heavy lies that God’s grace toward us must, in fact, be in vain (1 Corinthians 15:10) or else simply withheld by a disapproving, unsatisfiable Heavenly Father, because we keep stumbling in the same old “many ways” (James 3:2) and we’ll never, at least in this age, ever really be “more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37).

Believing these things confines us to living in fear, shame, and the apathy of fatalistic resignation. We buy into the seductive, hope-sucking, energy-depleting, self-pitying deception that “I’ll never change.” The destructiveness of this lie goes beyond a particular sin or weakness. It creates a mindset of surrender that leads to further kinds of self-indulgence, compounding our problem and sense of defeat.

We must fight to take these lies captive and destroy their fatalistic arguments (2 Corinthians 10:5) so that we can lay aside the weights of their sins (Hebrews 12:1).

The Key to Transforming Power

The truth is that what keeps us from experiencing change is not a lack of power but a lack of belief. When Jesus said, “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), his point was that we “can do all things through him who strengthens [us]” (Philippians 4:13). For “all things are possible for the one who believes” (Mark 9:23).

In the battle against sin and pursuit of transformation, the Bible appeals almost exclusively to our belief as the conduit through which the Spirit’s power flows. Here’s a well-known example:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

The key to not being pressed into worldly sin, the key to transforming power is a change (a renewal) of mind. What does this change of mind look like? It looks like a change of belief. It’s believing and choosing to act on what Jesus promises and not what the world and all of its enslaving vices promise.

Get Fed Up!

Now, if you’re a regular to this blog or been a Christian for a while, you know this. What you might find yourself saying is, “A lot easier said than done.” Point granted. We all admit it: Sin habits and addictions are difficult to break, some more than others. I’m a sinner with terrible indwelling sin. I know from personal experience that the fight to change a mindset can be hard. And I have loved ones who have walked or are walking through very difficult sin issues, some of them the effects of unspeakable sins committed against them.

But let’s also all admit this: We need less whining and whimpering about how hard it is to change and how we don’t know how or where to start and we can never maintain our resolves, etc., ad nauseam. This has too often been a smoke screen for our lack of desire to make a change. Or we’ve been cowards, letting sin hold us prisoner because we hold our precious reputations so dear that we don’t ask anyone for help. Too often our attempts at transformation have been half-hearted because we’re proud, indulgent, and self-pitying. And we haven’t believed Jesus.

There comes a time when we don’t need more sermons or seminars or books or how-to’s laid out for us. What we need is some righteous indignation that we have allowed ourselves to be held captive to habitual sin and indulgence by a mindset — an evil argument (2 Corinthians 10:5)! We need to get fed up with “struggling” and start believing God. We need to resolve to stop disbelieving Jesus and start believing (John 20:27) and begin to take texts like these seriously:

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. (1 Peter 2:16)

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. . . . For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:12, 14)

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7)

We must get fed up with teeny-weeny mud puddle happiness! Jesus’s promises are ten thousand times better and they are worth bearing some discomfort or suffering to obtain!

The Grace of Slow Change

Pursuing transformation through a renewed mind doesn’t mean change will necessarily come quickly. Change is often very slow. Sometimes this is because we are “slow of heart to believe” (Luke 24:25). But God also has his wonderful purposes in sanctifying us slowly.

Slow change produces spiritual fruit in us that God values highly, maybe more than we do, fruit like patience, humility, kindness, gentleness, perseverance, and self-control. And faith. Slow change often drives us to ransack the Word for promises to trust, an exercise which has loads of benefits.

Slow change also gives us insight into other purposes of God. There is a strong, consistent motif throughout the Bible of the saints waiting on God. Think of how God called Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Israel in Egypt, Hannah, David, Daniel, and many others to wait on him. Think of how long Israel waited for the long-expected Jesus. And think of how the church has waited for the long-expected “revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:7).

There is often more in our waiting than we understand. God’s concept of time is different from ours and therefore God is not slow, as we tend to think (2 Peter 3:9). He is at work patiently conforming us into his image (Romans 8:29), and therefore very good work is being accomplished in our waiting. “The Lord is good to those who wait for him” (Lamentations 3:25); they “shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31).

Lay the Lie Aside

There is no need for us to carry the lying weight that we will never change any further. We can lay it aside today and run the race believing the joyful promise that “he who began a good work in [us] will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

And today’s work: Be done with excuses and be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

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