Jon Bloom's Blog, page 5

The Hardest Word to Obey

The most morally beautiful, winsomely attractive command Jesus ever uttered also happens to be the most difficult to obey:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37–40)

It’s a breathtaking statement. All that God requires of us, everything Scripture contains regarding “life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3), summed up in two simple commands.

In that simplicity, these two commands encompass everything. Obeying them, however, is anything but simple. And there’s the rub. Because these commands are so sweeping, they can feel overwhelming — in fact, impossible. As a result, we can assume that we’re not required to take them all that seriously. This is a serious mistake.

Is Love Even Possible?

We might wrongly assume that while obeying these commands was once humanly possible in Eden, and will once again be humanly possible in our glorified state, they are humanly impossible now in our fallen state. And so they’re really more like lofty ideals, ones we don’t need to think hard about. We might even assume their purpose is to merely reveal our inability to fulfill them and our need for Christ (Romans 7:22–25), and that as part of Christ’s righteousness imputed to us, Jesus obeyed these commands perfectly on our behalf (Romans 8:3–4). Therefore, Jesus doesn’t really expect us to obey them now.

While it’s true that Jesus purchased our justification through his perfect obedience, what Paul wrote in Romans 13:9 and Galatians 5:14, and what James wrote in James 2:8, make it clear that the apostles believed Jesus expects us to seriously seek to love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves — now, in this age, even today.

Who Models Discipleship for You?

The community around us either confirms or confronts our faulty assumptions about love. We often allow our peers to inordinately determine for us what discipleship looks like. If many Christians around us assent to but don’t rigorously apply these two great commands, their example can influence us to implicitly assume Jesus wants us to affirm his commands’ ideal rightness, but doesn’t really expect us to work hard in consistently living them out.

But as Paul’s rebuke of Peter in Galatians 2 illustrates, peer influence can lead us into serious disobedience. The whole New Testament witness bears out that it’s precisely the radical way we live out Jesus’s love commands, all of which are essentially expositions of these Great Commandments, that demonstrate we are his disciples (John 13:35).

No, we must not allow these facts — that these commands are difficult to obey, that we aren’t ultimately justified by our obedience, or that others around us fail to obey them — to form our assumption that Jesus doesn’t expect us to seriously obey them. Because he does. In fact, he expects us to structure our lives around obeying them.

How in the World?

This brings us back to how overwhelming these commandments can feel. If we take them seriously, they force us to ask, How in the world am I supposed to obey them? That’s exactly the right question to ask ourselves.

Have you ever spent serious time meditating on these commands to love?

I don’t mean merely listening to sermons, lectures, and podcasts about them, or reading numerous books and articles about them, and forming the right theological answers. For Christian teachers who produce such resources (I’m preaching to myself as I write this), I don’t mean merely putting in the arduous work of historical-grammatical and hermeneutical research and developing effective homiletical or literary communication skills in order to accurately understand and teach this text within your systematic theological framework. Don’t misunderstand me: these are important. But they don’t necessarily result in rigorous real-life obedience.

I mean, have you ever spent hours seriously pondering and working out specifically what it means for you to intentionally pursue loving God with your whole being in the tiny part of the world where God has placed you, and loving your neighbor as yourself among the eternally significant souls whom God has placed there too — especially needy ones, perhaps even an “enemy” (Matthew 5:44), maybe one you come upon along the road, so to speak (Luke 10:25–37)? Jesus doesn’t mean for us to be paralyzed by these all-encompassing commandments; he means for them to form our fundamental approach to life. He means for each of us to seriously ask how in the world we are to obey them and put in the rigorous effort of prayerfully discerning what obedience might specifically mean for us.

And he has by no means left us without help. He has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit to guide us (John 16:13), the gift of the New Testament to provide plenty of examples of breaking down these sweeping commands into specific applications, and the gift of one another in the church to assist us in pursuing this “more excellent way” of life (1 Corinthians 12:31).

Count the Cost

It isn’t until we have pondered what these commandments truly demand of us that we can determine if we’re truly willing to pay what it costs. Jesus says as much:

Which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? (Luke 14:28)

Jesus said this after declaring what his commandments cost his disciples: they must renounce everything. It’s a high cost.

But the cost itself is an expression of love. Our renunciation isn’t primarily about how much asceticism we’re willing to endure for Jesus’s sake; it’s about where our treasure is and how much we love it (Matthew 6:21). Which is why Paul wrote, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). Jesus’s call, to paraphrase Jim Elliott, is for us to give up what we cannot keep, to gain what we cannot lose.

If You Love Me

Jesus’s commands to love — these most morally beautiful, winsome imperatives — are the most difficult, most costly words to obey.

That’s why at the end of his Sermon on the Mount, after giving specific examples of what a life of love looks like, Jesus says, “The way is hard that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14). And it’s why one of the last things Jesus said to his disciples before his crucifixion was John 15:12–13:

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

When we read that statement, especially in the light of something he said just minutes before — “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15) — we can hear both the echo of Jesus’s two great commandments and his expectation that we take them with the utmost, life-shaping seriousness.

For those of us aspiring to pursue “radical discipleship,” it really doesn’t get more radical than Christlike love.

Laziness Ruins Happiness: What Makes Diligence a Virtue

Most people do not want to be thought of as lazy — as a person averse to hard work. We all know laziness is a vice — a corrupting and addicting use of a good gift: rest. Leisure in proper doses is a wonderful, refreshing gift of God. But habitual indulgence in leisure to the neglect of God-given responsibilities brings destruction, both to ourselves and to others.

But it’s destructive for a deeper reason than the obvious detrimental impact of work done negligently, or not done at all. At the deeper levels, laziness robs us of happiness by decreasing our capacity to enjoy the deepest delights. And on top of this, it leaves us failing to love as we ought.

Since all of us are tempted in different ways to the sin of laziness, it’s helpful to keep in mind all that’s at stake — and why, over and over throughout the Bible, God commands us to pursue the virtue of diligence.

Virtues and Vices

For Christians, a virtue is moral excellence that, if cultivated into a habit, becomes a morally excellent character trait. We become more conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29) and experience an increased capacity to delight in what God has made good, true, and beautiful. We see scriptural examples in 2 Peter 1:5–8:

Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue [aretē in Greek, referring to all the virtues] and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Conversely, a vice is moral corruption that, if cultivated into a habit, becomes a morally corrupt character trait. We become more conformed to the pattern of this fallen world (Romans 12:2) and experience a decreased capacity to delight in what God has made good, true, and beautiful. We see scriptural examples in Galatians 5:19–21:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do [prassontes in Greek, meaning “make a practice of doing”] such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Why Diligence Is a ‘Heavenly Virtue’

In the fifth or sixth century, many in the church included diligence on the list of the seven heavenly virtues to counter sloth (the old English word for laziness), which it had on its list of seven deadly sins. But saints throughout redemptive history have always considered diligence a necessary virtue. Both the Old and New Testaments consistently command saints to be diligent, and warn against the dangers of being slothful.

Here’s a sampling:

Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. (Deuteronomy 4:9)

The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing,
     while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. (Proverbs 13:4)

You have commanded your precepts
     to be kept diligently. (Psalm 119:4)

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

If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. (2 Thessalonians 3:10–11)

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. (2 Peter 1:10)

As these passages show, diligence is a “heavenly virtue” because it is a means of cultivating godliness — increased capacities to deeply delight in God and his gifts. Cultivating the “deadly sin” (or vice) of sloth, on the other hand, is a means of cultivating ungodliness — decreased capacities to deeply delight in God and his gifts.

Wearing Our Love on Our Sleeve

But when we speak of pursuing diligence as a way of cultivating godliness, there’s an additional dimension besides developing a strong work ethic for the sake of experiencing greater joys. Since “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and since love fulfills his law (Romans 13:10; Galatians 5:14), growing in godliness means we grow in some aspect of what it means to love. What makes the virtue of diligence distinctly Christian is that it is one of the ways we love God supremely and love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–39).

God designed us such that our actions bring into view the real affections of our inner being. To put it very simply (and admittedly simplistically): how we behave, over time, reflects what we believe; what we do reflects what we desire; our labors reflect our loves.

Now, I realize I’m touching on a complex issue. Our motivating beliefs, desires, and loves are not simple, nor are the contexts in which we behave, do, and labor. Nor are the neurological disorders and diseases that sometimes throw wrenches into these already complex gears.

That said, it remains true that our consistent behaviors over time reveal what we really believe, desire, and love. This is what Jesus meant by saying we can distinguish between a healthy (virtuous) tree and a diseased (corrupt) tree by its fruit (Matthew 7:17–20).

And of course, the “fruit” is seen not only in what we do, but in how we do it. And here is where our diligence or laziness often reveals what or whom we truly love. Since we seek to take care of what we value greatly, it’s usually apparent when others put their heart into what they’re doing and when they don’t. Or as Paul said of some who were “lazy gluttons” in Crete, “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works” (Titus 1:12, 16).

In what we do and how we do it, in our diligence or laziness, we come to wear our loves on our sleeves — whether we love God (John 14:15) and our neighbor (1 John 3:18), or selfishly love ourselves (2 Timothy 3:2).

Be All the More Diligent

So, there’s more at stake in our diligence or laziness than we might have previously thought.

Yes, diligence is important for the sake of doing high-quality work, which is beneficial in many ways. But hard work, by itself, does not equal the virtue of diligence. As Tony Reinke points out, “Workaholism is slothful because it uses labor in a self-centered way to focus on personal advancement or accumulated accolades” (Killjoys, 50).

When Scripture commands us to “be all the more diligent” (2 Peter 1:10), God is calling us to work hard toward the right ends (growing in godliness), in the right ways (what God commands), for the right reasons (love). The more this kind of diligence becomes characteristic of us, the more we become like Jesus: we increasingly delight in what gives him delight, and increasingly love as he loves — which is true virtue.

Bible Memory Brings Reality to Life

For many Christians, the term Scripture memory means rote memorization of Bible verses. And this conjures up feelings of past failure (over how often they’ve tried and given up), or futility (over how little they recall of what they once memorized), or fear (over memories of having to publicly recite verses).

Who wants to pursue Bible memory if it means more failure, futility, or fear?

No one, if that’s what Bible memory means. But that’s not what it means. It means so much more than rote memorization. And it’s crucial that we see the bigger picture of Bible memory so we understand why it’s so important to the Christian life — why God repeatedly commands us to remember.

Here’s how I describe it:

Bible memory means stockpiling your God-given memory with God-breathed truth (2 Timothy 3:16) so that your God-given imagination can draw from it to construct a more accurate understanding of God-created reality, enabling you to live in “a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).

Let me try to briefly unpack this.

Your Amazing Memory

Your memory is amazing. If you’re thinking, “No, it’s not,” you’re probably overly aware of your memory weaknesses. And you probably measure yourself against people with extraordinary memories, like Charles Spurgeon, who, as J.I. Packer described, had “a photographic memory, virtually total recall, and as he put it ‘a shelf in my mind’ for storing every fact with a view to its future use” (Psalms, 4).

But don’t let phenomenal memories blind you to the marvelous gift of God that is your own memory. Your ability to recall information to your conscious mind is just one function your memory performs. But it does far more than that.

Your memory is a vast library, far more sophisticated than the Library of Congress, where you’ve been collecting information since before your birth. In that three-pound lump of wet grey tissue inside your skull, in ways that remain largely mysterious despite wonderful recent advances in neuroscience, you have stored enormous amounts of information in the form of impressions, sensations, sights, sounds, smells, cause-and-effect observations, propositional statements, stories, and dreams, as well as real, unreal, or anticipated experiences that produce joy, sorrow, pleasure, anger, delight, horror, desire, fear, and on and on. And you draw from this mental library all the time, every day, consciously and unconsciously, to do everything you do.

And more marvelous still is how your memory works with all levels of your consciousness to allow you to imagine.

Why You Understand Anything

By imagination, I’m not talking about our ability to create fantasy worlds in our minds. I’m talking about our ability to draw from our vast store of information and construct an image (or model) of reality, and then draw implications for what it means. That is the primary function of our imagination. It allows us to conceptualize things we learn are true, but cannot see. Which is crucial for those of us called to “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen” (2 Corinthians 4:18), to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

And what empowers our ability to imagine is our memory.

Augustine, in his jaw-dropping meditations on the human memory in book 10 of his Confessions, explained it this way:

From [my memory] I can picture to myself all kinds of different images based either upon my own experience or upon what I find credible because it tallies with my own experience. I can fit them into the general picture of the past; from them I can make a surmise of actions and events and hopes for the future; and I can contemplate them all over again as if they were actually present. If I say to myself in the vast cache of my mind, where all those images of great things are stored, “I shall do this or that,” the picture of this or that particular thing comes into my mind at once. Or I may say to myself “If only this or that would happen!” or “God forbid that this or that should be!” No sooner do I say this than the images of all the things of which I speak spring forward from the same great treasure-house of the memory. And, in fact, I could not even mention them at all if the images were lacking. (215–16)

It’s our immense memory that provides our creative imagination the information from which to make sense of reality and draw the correct implications. And we can’t imagine anything that isn’t meaningfully present in our memory.

This is why Bible memory so important.

‘You Shall Remember’

Have you ever noticed how often the Holy Spirit inspired biblical authors to stress the importance of memory? Over and over God commands us to remember his word (for example, Numbers 15:40; Psalm 103:17–18; Isaiah 48:8–11; Luke 22:19; 2 Timothy 2:8). In fact, it would be worth a week of your devotional Bible reading to look up all the texts that mention these words as they relate to what God has revealed to us: memory, memorial, remember, remembrance, remind, call to mind, recall, forget, forgot, and forgotten.

To re-member is to call to mind something we’ve previously learned, something that exists in our memory. We can see such remembering in Lamentations 3:21–23, written while the author was experiencing terrible distress and suffering:

But this I call to mind,
     and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
     his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
     great is your faithfulness.

The truth that the author called up from his memory, which sustained him in great need, was something he learned prior to his need. And it was something he was learning in more profound ways at that very moment.

That’s Bible memory: calling to mind and keeping in mind biblical truth we’ve learned, so that it expands and deepens our understanding over time, and continues to shape the way we live.

Meditation’s Servant

That’s perhaps why the Bible doesn’t say much about rote memorization, but it says a lot about meditation, because meditation is the way we both learn and remember. If you take that week of devotional exploration, it will add to your understanding of how meditation relates to remembering if you look up all the texts that mention these words: meditate, meditation, understand, understanding, know, knowledge, wise, and wisdom.

Biblical meditation (or reflection, rumination, contemplation) takes place when our God-given imagination processes the God-breathed information we store in our God-given memory in an effort to understand, or further understand, God-revealed reality, so that we might live wisely. We can see this process at work in Psalm 119:97–99:

Oh how I love your law!
     It is my meditation all the day.
Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
     for it is ever with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers,
     for your testimonies are my meditation.

Implicit in this text on meditation (and most others in Scripture) is repetition. We all know from experience that repetition is what drives most information into our long-term memory. And this is the great value of memorization — it is a servant of meditation.

That’s certainly been my experience. Few practices have helped me meditate on Scripture more than memorization. The method I’ve found most effective has me repeating the same section of text over many days. This repetition not only has driven these texts into my long-term memory, but it has given my imagination the opportunity to ruminate on them.

As a result, I’ve gained a deeper, richer understanding of these texts and how they relate to other Scriptures and the world. That’s been the greatest benefit for me. Even though I don’t retain perfect conscious recall of many Scriptures I’ve memorized, meditating on them has woven their meaning and application into the fabric of my understanding. And they do come to mind much more readily, especially in times of need.

Keep the Goal in Mind

If Scripture memory has negative connotations for you, don’t think of it as memorizing Bible verses. Rather, think of it as

stockpiling your God-given memory with God-breathed truth (2 Timothy 3:16) so that your God-given imagination can draw from it to construct a more accurate understanding of God-created reality, enabling you to live in “a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10).

It is a gift of God, a means of grace, to help you meditate on God’s word and bring reality to life.

As someone who struggles with memory weaknesses and who used to believe that Bible memorization wasn’t for me, I strongly recommend memorizing Scripture, especially larger sections. This is something you can do — you really can. You won’t regret employing this very effective servant of meditation.

For accurate understanding comes from careful meditation on true information. And accurate understanding results in our discerning right implications for what true information means. And when we live according to this understanding, the Bible calls it wisdom (Psalm 111:10).

This is the goal of Bible memory.

Can Anything Mend Our Conflict? How Cynicism Dies in a Divided Church

Right now, the example of a small band of twentysomething Christian women is helping me resist the many temptations I feel toward cynicism. Let me explain why.

I have been disheartened by the amount of politically/ideologically/culturally driven acrimony, leadership failures, church divisions, ethnic tensions, and relational breakdowns among American evangelicals over the past few years. I wish I could say it’s all exaggerated by media algorithms and irresponsible Christian clickbaiting. But I’ve seen too much up close.

I see evidence of Christian disunity almost everywhere I turn. The three beloved churches where I’ve spent most of my life have in the past few years all experienced significant to devastating internal conflict. Christians who are remarkably aligned theologically, and who have worshiped together for years, no longer bear with each other. Relationships that took years to bond are torn. And the resulting wounds leave a scar tissue of distrust that doesn’t seem to relationally adhere as it did before.

What is going on? A lot. Complex historical, social, cultural, political, leadership, and spiritual-warfare issues factor into this epidemic of Christian disunity. We can’t ignore them. They’re real and seriously affect real people.

But we must be careful. In our analysis and discussions and debates of the problem, we can, ironically, miss or evade the fundamental issue. For when it comes to cultivating priceless Christian harmony, or wreaking destructive Christian dissonance, the greatest causal factor, the one the New Testament far and away addresses more than any other, is love.

Jesus’s Radically Simple Solution

Try not to roll your eyes. I know when there’s a strenuous debate among Christians over something complex, there’s always a guy in the room that says something like, “We just need to love each other!” And it’s usually not very helpful.

This kind of statement comes across as naive, simplistic idealism, because we don’t just need to love each other. We need to fundamentally love each other. We need to know what loving each other means and looks like when we’re faced with a complex issue, when we view matters from different perspectives, when we have no simple solutions, and when the only way forward requires bearing with one another during the extended tension of disagreement.

And in this way, New Testament love is not simplistic, as in reductionistic; it’s simple, as in fundamental. There’s a big difference.

Neighbor as Self

The Beatles’ song-slogan “all you need is love” is naive, simplistic idealism. It sounds right because we all intuitively know love is the supreme virtue. But the statement is conceptually hollow and incoherent. It doesn’t tell anyone what love means, what it looks like when practiced, or what it costs. Consequently, this sentence hasn’t transformed anything, much less conflicts over complex issues.

Contrast that with Jesus’s great command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Do you see the difference? Jesus’s command is fundamentally simple, but not at all simplistic. It’s simple in that everyone immediately grasps the fundamental principle: love ought to be our most core value, shaping all our motives in relation to others. It’s not simplistic, because it is a one-sentence summary of an all-encompassing orientation to all our relationships, and its applications are endless.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is functionally powerful because, in any specific situation, it helps us gain at least some clarity on what love ought to look like, as well as what it will cost. It doesn’t remove complexities from relationships, situations, and issues, but if earnestly pursued, it is effective at dousing the flame of sin that turns our conflicts into wildfires — fires surrounding us in American evangelicalism.

The power of Jesus’s love command (and the many examples and expositions of it in the New Testament) has been lived out by countless saints over the past two thousand years and has transformed the world in countless ways. Which brings me to that small band of twentysomething women I mentioned at the beginning. For me, they are a picture of Jesus’s love command in action.

Taking Love to the Streets

I know most of these young ladies. Through a wonderful story of God’s providential work in their lives, they developed a deep concern over the plight of the thousands of street children in a major city of a Latin American country.

A few years ago, having gained a modicum of experience and raised enough financial support to live simply, they moved to this city and just began walking the streets and ministering to the kids and young adults they came across. These are children who, due to abuse, abandonment, excessive poverty, addiction, or the death of their parents, are forced to fend for themselves.

They sleep in culverts, under bridges, and in doorways, and they do whatever they must to find food. The streets are brutal, ruthless places for vulnerable children. Terrible things happen to many of them. Tender hearts harden and become distrustful. Danger and desperation exacerbate depravity.

But these women just began loving these kids — each one as a precious soul. They sought to love them as they loved themselves (imperfectly, they’d want me to emphasize). And they’re down there loving them right now.

They feed them, clothe them, take them to doctors when they’re sick or injured, and help many of them dealing with chemical addiction get into (or return to) treatment centers. They walk with young pregnant girls through the frightening journey of childbirth and beyond. They play Uno with kids in the parks and celebrate their birthdays with cakes and parties — something many of these kids have never experienced before. And as the Lord gives them opportunity, they share Jesus with them, pray with them, study the Bible with them, and connect them with good churches. As a result, an increasing number are coming to faith in Christ and getting baptized.

‘Because They Love Us’

Having won the trust of these hardened street kids through loving them with the tenacious, steadfast, faithful, self-sacrificial love of Jesus, now hundreds of hardened street kids have grown tender, loving these women back and genuinely caring for them in various ways. And of course, word on the street spreads fast, so more and more kids are seeking these women out and the modest ministry center the Lord has provided them.

Government officials are also now seeking them out to discover what they’re doing that’s so effective. These officials are also asking the street kids why they go to these women first when the government centers have more resources and programs. The kids’ answer: “Because they love us.”

Let that sink in. These women aren’t recognized experts, and they don’t have long experience, abundant resources, or PhD-designed programs. Neither do they have formal theological training. And yet they are proving remarkably effective at reaching these kids and helping them transition toward a more hopeful, productive future. From a kingdom standpoint, they are bearing more fruit in transformed lives and making more disciples than just about anyone else I know — even among a very neglected and historically difficult-to-reach group. Why? Ask the kids. They know why: “Because they love us” — each one as a precious soul.

Living Sacrifices of Love

So, what do these women have to do with the epidemic of Christian disunity in America? Answer: they are examples of taking Christian love seriously. But isn’t it apples and oranges to compare them to us? Contextually, yes, but not fundamentally.

My report of these women’s story, due to brevity, sounds more ideal than it really is. It’s hard. At times heartbreakingly hard — literal blood-sweat-and-tears hard. And it’s messy. Kids turn away. Kids disappear. Kids relapse into addiction. Kids are raped. Kids are killed. And the women make mistakes. They are misunderstood, sometimes maligned, and sometimes in bodily danger. They regularly feel inadequate, lonely, confused, grieved, bewildered, homesick, and like failures. They wonder if they’re doing it wrong. And they’re all too aware of their own sin.

No matter the context, living out Jesus’s love command seriously and intentionally will be hard, and the cost in numerous ways will be high. We will feel the same ways in our context as these women do in theirs. That’s part of what it means to be a “living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1).

But this kind of love is transformational in ways that nothing else is. In our divisive and conflicted times, we urgently need to examine whether we’re seriously seeking to obey Jesus’s love command in our complex context. Our rancor, bitterness, division, and relational breakdown does not look like Romans 12–15, 1 Corinthians 13, Ephesians 4, or 1 John 3. We also should examine whether we’re paying any meaningful attention to our contextual equivalent of our wounded neighbor in the street.

As He Has Loved Us

The stakes are high. A deficit of love creates relational wreckage and distorts people’s perception of Jesus. For he said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). And he raised the “love your neighbor” bar even higher than we would have thought when he said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

Sometimes, when the muck is flying and the disunifying din is blaring, it helps to focus on saints who are simply (not simplistically) loving like Jesus in their difficult contexts. They can help us gain perspective on ours and remind us what, fundamentally, is most important. And they can be a blessed antidote to cynicism. That’s what these remarkable young women are for me right now.

And as I see them trying to love their broken neighbors as themselves, I hear Jesus say, “You go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

Lord, Where Is Your Faithfulness? How the Faithful Sing in Crisis

In ancient rabbinic literature, the Psalms were referred to as tehillîm, which is Hebrew for “praises.” One of the most remarkable features of this sacred collection of praise songs is that at least one-third of them are laments. These are songs that passionately express some kind of emotional distress, such as grief, sorrow, confusion, anguish, penitence, fear, depression, loneliness, or doubt.

This is remarkable because the presence of so many praise laments implies that God knew his people would frequently be called to worship him in agonizing circumstances. The Holy Spirit inspired poets to craft “praises” that would provide us worshipful expressions of our diverse experiences of pain.

If lament psalms are Spirit-inspired praise songs for our painful seasons, we should look at them carefully, because they teach us important lessons about the kinds of worship God receives. Some of the ways these inspired poets worshiped God in their agony might make us uncomfortable. Psalm 89 is a good example.

Leader in Lament

Psalm 89 is attributed to Ethan the Ezrahite. According to 1 Chronicles 6:31–48, Ethan was one of three clan chiefs of the tribe of Levi — the other two being Heman (Psalm 88) and Asaph (Psalms 50; 73–82) — “whom David put in charge of the service of song in the house of the Lord.” He was a high-profile leader to whom thousands looked for social and spiritual instruction and counsel. His words had gravitas.

And in this psalm, Ethan led the people in lament. Over what? Over God’s apparent unfaithfulness to his covenant with David — apparent being the operative word here.

In 2 Samuel 7, the prophet Nathan delivered a stunning promise from the Lord to David about how long his descendants would sit on Israel’s throne: “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). This became a crucial part of Israel’s self-understanding: God had planted them in the Promised Land and had given them a promised governance that would last forever.

However, something terrible happened (perhaps Absalom’s rebellion of 2 Samuel 15–18), which made it appear as if God had “renounced” his covenant and “defiled [David’s] crown in the dust” (Psalm 89:39). And in this moment of crisis, Ethan composed a psalm that gave worshipful voice to the confusion and grief that all who trusted in God’s faithfulness were experiencing.

Famous Faithfulness

In the first eighteen verses, Ethan exults in how bound up God’s steadfast love and faithfulness are with his very character.

God’s steadfast love and faithfulness are part of the glory and might for which he is loved and praised and feared in the divine council and the great angelic host (Psalm 89:5–8). It is through God’s steadfast love and faithfulness that he exercises his sovereign rule over all creation: the heavens and the earth and all that fills them, the “raging sea” and its most fearsome creature, Rahab, and the great mountains, like Tabor and Hermon (Psalm 89:9–12). God’s steadfast love and faithfulness are part of the “foundation of [his] throne,” most clearly manifest (at that time) in the Davidic kingdom he had established in Israel. They are why his people shout for joy and “exult in [his] name all the day” (Psalm 89:13–16).

Ethan reminds God,

You are the glory of [Israel’s] strength;
     by your favor our horn is exalted.
For our shield belongs to the Lord,
     our king to the Holy One of Israel. (Psalm 89:17–18)

The stakes were high. If God’s people could not hope in his steadfast love and faithfulness, how could they continue to exult in him like this?

‘You Promised’

Then in verses 19–37, Ethan at length beautifully reminds God of the promise he made to David, on which the hope of his people rested:

God had delivered this promise “in a vision to your godly one” (presumably the prophet Nathan, Psalm 89:19). God had chosen David from the people and anointed him king, established him, and promised that his foes would not overcome him (Psalm 89:20–24). God promised to be a Father to him and make him “the highest of the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:25–27). God promised to “establish [David’s] offspring forever,” and if they strayed from God’s ways, he would discipline them but would “not remove from [David God’s] steadfast love or be false to [his] faithfulness.” God would “not lie to David” (Psalm 89:28–37).

I don’t know how much Ethan discerned the Messianic dimensions of the Davidic covenant, but this section is full of prophetic pointers to Jesus, each worthy of our lingering meditation. But during this moment of crisis, it looked like God’s promise had come to an abrupt end.

Broken Promise?

Had the promise of God really failed? In verses 38–45, that’s exactly what Ethan described — to God. And he did so in no uncertain terms.

He told God, “But now you have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed,” and “you have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust” (Psalm 89:38–39). He told God how he had exalted David’s foes by causing them to defeat Israel in battle, and how David’s walls had been breached and his kingdom plundered, making him an object of scorn (Psalm 89:40–44). He told God how he had “cut short the days of [David’s] youth [and] covered him with shame” (Psalm 89:45).

It’s this section that might make us feel most uncomfortable. Can we really speak to God like this?

The answer is yes — and no. It’s yes if we, like Ethan, take God’s faithfulness with utmost seriousness and truly love his glory. The answer is no if we, like Israelites after the Red Sea crossing, are just “grumbling against the Lord” (Exodus 16:7).

Ethan is not shaking his fist at God in rebellion. Rather, he’s setting forth his case that God must act for the sake of his name. Ethan is interceding, not accusing. He has not lost faith in God; he’s exercising bold faith in God by calling on him to do what he promised. He still believes in God’s steadfast love and faithfulness.

‘Remember, O Lord’

That’s precisely why Ethan doesn’t end his psalm with a poetic “Forget you, God!” but with a passionate plea: “Remember, O Lord!” He devotes verses 46–52 to pouring out his heart’s desire. It’s worth reading them in full. And as you do, listen (as God does) for the heart’s desire behind the anguished words.

How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?
     How long will your wrath burn like fire?
Remember how short my time is!
     For what vanity you have created all the children of man!
What man can live and never see death?
     Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah

Lord, where is your steadfast love of old,
     which by your faithfulness you swore to David? Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked,
     and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations,
with which your enemies mock, O Lord,
     with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed.

Blessed be the Lord forever!
     Amen and Amen. (Psalm 89:46–52)

Do you hear his heart? Ethan longs, for himself and his people, to experience the joy of the glory of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. He knows how short life is, and does not want himself or his people to die before experiencing it again. This man is jealous for God’s fame. He does not want God’s good name, or the faithful who trust in him, to be mocked. That is what drives Ethan’s lament.

Lament Boldly, and Faithfully

As we read Psalm 89 now through the lens of the new covenant, we no doubt see clearer than Ethan did how broad the scope of God’s faithfulness to David has been. For in Jesus, this promise to David found its incredible yes (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Like Ethan the Ezrahite, however, we too experience crisis moments when it appears to us as if God is not being faithful to some promise. And it’s in such moments when we discover just how precious lament psalms like this are. Not only do they give us inspired language to pray in our pain, but they teach us what acceptable worship can sound like in our suffering.

In Psalm 89, God invites us to be bold in our prayerful laments. If our heart’s desire is God; if we long, for ourselves and our people, to experience the joy of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness; if our words are not the grumbling of unbelief but the expression of grieved faith, then it’s good to be direct with God. He hears, and receives as worship, real faith expressed in a cry of pain.

And we can trust that, at the same time, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).

Devote Yourself to Faithfulness: How to Cultivate a Quiet Virtue

If you’re a Christian, no doubt you highly value God’s faithfulness, the precious reality “that what God [has] promised, he [is] able to perform” (Romans 4:21 NASB). You believe that Christ upholds the entire cosmos “by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). Therefore, all of reality, not to mention your eternal future, literally depends on God being true to his word.

True to your word. That is a concise, clear definition of what it means to be a faithful person. There is consistency between what you say and what you do, between what you believe and how you behave, between what you promise and what you perform.

When we (and the Bible) describe someone as “faithful,” we’re almost never referring to how much faith that person possesses, but to how much faith others can place in that person — how much others can trust him to perform what he promises. A faithful person keeps (cherishes, maintains, guards) the faith of those who put their trust in him.

We all want to think of ourselves as faithful, but we all fail at different times and in different ways. As a character quality, as a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), faithfulness is all too often in short supply. It always has been, which is why this proverb is in the Bible: “Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?” (Proverbs 20:6).

So, beginning with ourselves, how might we resolve to become more faithful disciples of Jesus? One way we can do so is by meditating on this crucial verse:

Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. (Psalm 37:3)

Graze on Faithfulness

Psalm 37 was written by David, whom God “took from the sheepfolds . . . to shepherd Jacob his people” (Psalm 78:70–71). David’s experience as a shepherd might explain his choice of the phrase translated “befriend faithfulness,” although the English Standard Version doesn’t convey to us modern readers the full meaning of what the Hebrew words rə‘êh and ’ĕmūnāh meant to David and his original readers. No translation does. Here’s why:

The word rə‘êh, which the ESV translates as “befriend,” can mean “feed, graze; drive out to pasture; shepherd, protect, nourish” (ESV OT RI). The word ’ĕmūnāh, which the ESV translates as “faithfulness,” can “steadfastness; trustworthiness, faithfulness; firmness, security; honesty” (Ibid.).

This phrase is a translation challenge because David used a nuanced pastoral allusion — an allusion that his original readers would have intuitively understood (given how familiar they were with sheep), but one that is lost on the majority of us today. So, translators work hard to interpret and convey his meaning in a way we understand. Which explains the variety of different attempts (besides “befriend faithfulness”):

“Verily [truly] thou shalt be fed” (King James Version). “Feed on His faithfulness” (New King James Version). “Enjoy security” (Revised Standard Version). “Cultivate faithfulness” (New American Standard Bible). “Enjoy safe pasture” (New International Version).

Perhaps we’d get closest to what David meant if we could somehow infuse the NASB’s “cultivate” with the NKJV’s “feed,” such that we’d come away with a sense of “diligently cultivate [by grazing on] the virtue of faithfulness” (Keil & Delitzsch, 5:283).

But “cultivate,” “feed on,” and “befriend” all give us some sense of what David wants us to do: devote ourselves to developing faithfulness until it becomes part of us.

How to Grow Your Faithfulness

David’s command fits with how the Bible instructs us to pursue all aspects of godliness. We are called to build ourselves up in our most holy faith (Jude 20). And the way we build ourselves up spiritually is similar to the way we build our capacities for anything: we exercise what we want to grow.

Bodily strength is increased through the exercise of bodily strength. If we want to grow strong in our muscles or our minds, we must exercise them. We must push against internal and external resistance. We must endure the discomfort and persevere with the limitations of our current capacities until the discomfort decreases and our capacities increase. And we must not give in to the part of us that offers all kinds of reasons for why we should give up.

We all like the idea of stronger, trimmer bodies, but we all find it hard to work out and eat healthier. We all like the idea of growing more proficient in our skills, but we all find it hard to keep practicing and studying. We all like the idea of building new, healthy, fruitful habits, but we all find it hard to consistently perform the habit until it becomes part of how we function.

Likewise, we all like the idea of becoming more faithful with our talents and more trustworthy to those we are called to serve and serve with, but we all find it hard to “discipline [ourselves] for the purpose of godliness” in this area (1 Timothy 4:7 NASB). But the only way to become more faithful is to practice faithfulness, to cultivate faithfulness, to feed on faithfulness, to befriend (make a companion of) faithfulness, to devote ourselves to developing faithfulness until it becomes part of us.

Begin with What You’ve Been Given

The wonderful thing is that we don’t need some special faithfulness gym membership to begin growing our capacity for faithfulness. We have everything we need right now, right where we find ourselves. Jesus tells us, “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much” (Luke 16:10). And so, if we draw strength from Jesus to be faithful with a little, he will entrust us with much (Matthew 25:23).

The best place for us to start is by identifying the people and responsibilities that Jesus has entrusted to us. And then remember David’s exhortation:

Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. (Psalm 37:3)

The people and responsibilities in front of us are where God wants us to trust him. This is the “land” where he wants us to dwell, at least for now. These are the people to whom he wants us to do good. This is where he calls us to practice, cultivate, graze on, and befriend faithfulness.

If we are ever going to be men and women who are more consistently true to our word, for whom there is less discontinuity between what we say and what we do, between what we believe and how we behave, between what we promise and what we perform, we will become so here, in the land where God has placed us.

And if we devote ourselves to faithfulness here, someday we will hear our Master say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23).

You Can’t Fake What You Love: How a Sentence Exposed and Delighted Me

The soul is measured by its flights,
Some low and others high,
The heart is known by its delights,
And pleasures never lie.

I was 25 years old when John Piper’s book The Pleasures of God was first released in 1991. My wife and I had been attending Bethlehem Baptist for two years and had read John’s book Desiring God, which unpacked what he called Christian Hedonism. His fresh emphasis on the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him was working its way into our spiritual bones.

But as I read the introduction to The Pleasures of God, the one-sentence poem above crystalized the truth of Christian Hedonism for me, opening my mind to the role delight plays in the Christian life.

One Sentence Begets Another

John wrote that life-changing sentence as a kind of exposition of another life-changing sentence he had read four years earlier. In fact, the whole sermon series that birthed the book was born of his meditation on that sentence written in the seventeenth century by a young Professor of Divinity in Scotland named Henry Scougal.

Scougal had actually penned the sentence in a personal letter of spiritual counsel to a friend, but it was so profound that others copied and passed it around. Eventually Scougal gave permission for it to be published in 1677 as The Life of God in the Soul of Man. A year later, Scougal died of tuberculosis before he had reached his twenty-eighth birthday.

John Piper describes what gripped him so powerfully:

One sentence riveted my attention. It took hold of my thought life in early 1987 and became the center of my meditation for about three months. What Scougal said in this sentence was the key that opened for me the treasure house of the pleasures of God. He said, “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.” (18)

John realized that this statement is as true of God as it was of man. The worth and excellency of God’s soul is measured by the object of its love. This object must, then, be God himself, since nothing of greater value exists than God.

John previously devoted a whole chapter in Desiring God to God’s happiness in himself — the God-centeredness of God. Scougal’s sentence, however, opened glorious new dimensions of this truth for John as he contemplated how the excellency of God’s soul is measured. And John’s sentence opened glorious new dimensions for me as I began to contemplate that a heart, whether human or divine, is known by its delights.

Pleasures Never Lie

It was the last line of John’s poem that hit me hardest:

The heart is known by its delights,
And pleasures never lie.

Pleasures never lie. This phrase cut through a lot of my confusion and self-deceit to the very heart of the matter: what really matters to my heart.

“Pleasures never lie” doesn’t mean things we find pleasurable are never deceitful. We all know, from personal experience as well as the testimony of Scripture, that many worldly pleasures lie to us (Hebrews 11:25). Rather, it means that pleasure is the whistle-blower of the heart. Pleasure is our heart’s way of telling us what we treasure (Matthew 6:21).

When we take pleasure in something evil, we don’t have a pleasure problem; we have a treasure problem. Our heart’s pleasure gauge is working just like it’s supposed to. What’s wrong is what our heart loves. Our lips can lie about what we love, but our pleasures never lie. And we can’t keep our pleasure-giving treasures hidden, whether good or evil, at least not for long. What we truly love always ends up working its way out of the unseen heart into the plain view of what we say and don’t say, and what we do and don’t do.

My heart, like God’s heart, is known by its delights. I found this wonderfully clarifying. It resonated deeply; all my experience bore out its truth. And I saw it woven throughout the Bible. The more I contemplated it, however, the more devastating this truth became.

Devastated by Delight

It’s devastating because if the worth and excellency of my soul is measured by the heights of its flights of delights in God, I find myself “naked and exposed” before God, without embellishment or disguise (Hebrews 4:13). No professed theology, however robust and historically orthodox, no amount of giftedness I possess, no “reputation of being alive” (Revelation 3:1) can compensate if I have a deficit of delight in God. And to make sure I understand what is and isn’t allowed on the affectional scale, John says,

You don’t judge the glory of a soul by what it wills to do with lukewarm interest, or with mere teeth-gritting determination. To know a soul’s proportions you need to know its passions. The true dimensions of a soul are seen in its delights. Not what we dutifully will but what we passionately want reveals our excellence or evil. (18)

As I place my passions on God’s soul-scale, my deficits become clear. I’m a mixed bag when it comes to my passion for God. I can savor God like Psalm 63 and yet still sin against him like Psalm 51. I have treasured God like Psalm 73:25–26, and questioned him like Psalm 73:2–3. Sometimes I sweetly sing Psalm 23:1–3, and sometimes I bitterly cry Psalm 10:1. At times I keenly feel the wretchedness of Romans 7:24, and at times the wonder of Romans 8:1. I have known the light of Psalm 119:105 and the darkness of Psalm 88:1–3. I’ve known the fervency of Romans 12:11 and the lukewarmness of Revelation 3:15. Many times I need Jesus’s exhortation in Matthew 26:41.

It is devastating to stand before God with only what we passionately want revealing the state of our hearts, measuring the worth of our souls. But it is a merciful devastation we desperately need. For we must know our spiritual poverty before we will earnestly seek true spiritual wealth. We must see our miserable idolatries before we will repent and forsake them. We must feel our spiritual deadness before we will cry out, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6)

That’s all true. However, the longer I contemplated John’s sentence over time, the more I realized the devastating exposure of my spiritual poverty is meant to be a door into an eternal world of delight-filled love.

Pleasures Forevermore

I made this discovery in the story of the rich young man (Mark 10:17–22). When Jesus helped this man see his heart’s true passions (when he exposed his spiritual poverty), the exposure wasn’t Jesus’s primary purpose. Jesus wanted the man to have “treasure in heaven,” to give this man eternal joy (Mark 10:21).

And Jesus knew the man would never joyfully sell everything he had to obtain the treasure that is God unless he saw God as his supreme treasure (Matthew 13:44). So he tried to show him by calling the man to the devastating door of exposure and knocking on it. And he grieved when the man wouldn’t open it, because the door led to a far greater treasure than the one he would leave behind.

God created pleasure because he is a happy God and wants his joy to be in us and our joy to be full (John 15:11). When he designed pleasure as the measure of our treasure, his ultimate purpose was that we would experience maximal joy in the Treasure. And that the Treasure would receive maximal glory from the joy we experience in him. It is a marvelous, merciful, absolutely genius design: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

If God has to expose our poverty to pursue our eternal joy, he will. But what he really wants for us is to experience “fullness of joy” in his presence and “pleasures forevermore” at his right hand (Psalm 16:11). And so it is a great mercy, even if at times devastating, that our pleasures never lie.

Weakness May Be Your Greatest Strength

How well are you investing the weaknesses you’ve been given?

Perhaps no one has ever asked you that question before. Perhaps it sounds nonsensical. After all, people invest assets in order to increase their value. They don’t invest liabilities. They try to eliminate or minimize or even cover up liabilities. It’s easy for us to see our strengths as assets. But most of us naturally consider our weaknesses as liabilities — deficiencies to minimize or cover up.

But God, in his providence, gives us our weaknesses just as he gives us our strengths. In God’s economy, where the return on investment he most values is “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6), weaknesses become assets — we can even call them talents — to be stewarded, to be invested. It may even be that the most valuable asset God has given you to steward is not a strength, but a weakness.

But if we’re to value weaknesses as assets, we need to see clearly where Scripture teaches this. The apostle Paul provides us with the clearest theology of the priceless value of weakness. I have found 1 Corinthians 1:18–2:16 and, frankly, the entire book of 2 Corinthians, to be immensely helpful in understanding the indispensable role weakness plays in strengthening the faith and witness of individual Christians and the church as a whole.

Paradoxical Power of Weakness

Paul’s most famous statement on the paradoxical spiritual power of weakness appears in 2 Corinthians 12. He tells us of his ecstatic experience of being “caught up into paradise,” where he received overwhelming and ineffable revelations (2 Corinthians 12:1–4). But as a result,

a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7–10)

In these few sentences, Paul completely reframes the way Christians are to view weaknesses, even deeply painful ones that can appear to hinder our calling and that the powers of darkness seek to exploit. What at first seems to us like an expensive liability turns out to be a valuable, God-given asset.

Weakness and Sin

Before we go further, we need to be clear that Paul does not include sin in his description of weakness here. The Greek word Paul uses is astheneia, the most common word for “weakness” in the New Testament. J.I. Packer, in his helpful study on 2 Corinthians, Weakness Is the Way, explains astheneia like this:

The idea from first to last is of inadequacy. We talk about physical weakness [including sickness and disability] . . . intellectual weakness . . . personal weakness . . . a weak position when a person lacks needed resources and cannot move situations forward or influence events as desired . . . relational weakness when persons who should be leading and guiding fail to do so — weak parents, weak pastors, and so on. (13–14)

But when Paul speaks of sin, he has more than inadequacy in mind. The Greek word for “sin” he typically uses is hamartia, which refers to something that incurs guilt before God. Hamartia happens when we think, act, or feel in ways that transgress what God forbids.

Though Paul was aware that hamartia could lead to astheneia (1 Corinthians 11:27–30) and astheneia could lead to hamartia (Matthew 26:41), he clearly did not believe “weakness” was synonymous with “sin.” For he rebuked those who boasted that their sin displayed the power and immensity of God’s grace (Romans 6:1–2). But he “gladly” boasted of his weaknesses because they displayed the power and immensity of God’s grace (2 Corinthians 12:9).

In sin, we turn from God to idols, which profanes God, destroys faith, and obscures God in the eyes of others. But weakness has the tendency to increase our conscious dependence on God, which glorifies him, strengthens our faith, and manifests his power in ways our strengths never do.

And that’s the surprising value of our weaknesses: they manifest God’s power in us in ways our strengths don’t. That’s what Jesus meant when he told Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9) — “perfect” meaning complete or entirely accomplished. Our weaknesses are indispensable because God manifests the fullness of his power through them.

Asset Disguised as a Liability

At this point, you may be thinking, “Whatever Paul’s ‘thorn’ was, my weakness is not like that.” Right. That’s what we all think.

I have a thorn-like weakness, known only to those closest to me. If I shared it with you, you might be surprised. It dogs me daily as I seek to carry out my family, vocational, and ministry responsibilities. It makes almost everything harder and regularly tempts me to exasperation. It’s not romantic, certainly not heroic. It humbles me in embarrassing, not noble, ways. And most painful to me, I can see how in certain ways it makes life harder for those I live and work with. Often it has seemed to me a liability. I’ve pleaded with the Lord, even in tears, to remove it or grant me more power to overcome it. But it’s still here.

Paul also initially saw his weakness as a grievous liability and pleaded repeatedly to be delivered from it. But as soon as he understood Christ’s purposes in it, he saw it in a whole new light: a priceless asset disguised as a liability. And he gloried in the depths of God’s knowledge, wisdom, and omnipotent grace.

I have been slower than Paul in learning to see my thorn as an asset (and honestly, I’m still learning). But I see at least some of the ways this weakness has strengthened me. It has forced me to live daily in dependent faith on God’s grace. It has heightened my gratitude for those God has placed around me who have strengths where I’m weak. Beset with my own weakness, I am more prone to deal gently and patiently with others who struggle with weaknesses different from mine (Hebrews 5:2). And I can see now how it has seasoned much of what I’ve written over the years with certain insights I doubt would have come otherwise. In other words, I see ways God has manifested his power more completely through my perplexing weakness.

The fact that we don’t know what Paul’s thorn was is evidence of God’s wisdom. If we did, we likely would compare our weaknesses to his and conclude that ours have no such spiritual value. And we would be wrong.

Stewards of Surprising Talents

Paul said that his weakness, his “thorn . . . in the flesh,” was “given” to him (2 Corinthians 12:7). Given by whom? Whatever role Satan played, in Paul’s mind he was secondary. Paul received this weakness, as well as “insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities” (2 Corinthians 12:10), as assets given to him by his Lord. And as a “[steward] of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1), he considered his weaknesses a crucial part of the portfolio his Master had entrusted to him. So, he determined to invest them well in order that his Master would see as much of a return as possible.

If you’re familiar with Jesus’s parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30), you might recognize that I’m drawing from its imagery. Jesus has given each of us different “talents” to steward, assets of immense kingdom value, “each according to his ability” (Matthew 25:15). And his expectation is that we will invest them well while we wait for his return.

Some of these talents are strengths and abilities our Lord has given us. But some of them are our weaknesses, our inadequacies and limitations, which he’s also given to us. And he’s given us these weaknesses not only to increase in us the invaluable and shareable treasure of humility (2 Corinthians 12:7), but also to increase our strength in the most important aspects of our being: faith and love (2 Corinthians 12:10).

But our weaknesses are not only given to us as individuals; they are also given to the church. Our limitations, as much as our abilities, are crucial to Christ’s design to equip his body so that it works properly and “builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:16). Our weaknesses make us depend on one another in ways our strengths don’t (1 Corinthians 12:21–26). Which means they are given to the church for the same reason they are given to us individually: so that the church may grow strong in faith (1 Corinthians 2:3–5) and love (1 Corinthians 13) — two qualities that uniquely manifest Jesus’s reality and power to the world (John 13:35).

Don’t Bury Your Weaknesses

Someday, when our Master returns, he will ask us to give an account of the talents he’s entrusted to us. Some of those talents will be our weaknesses. We don’t want to tell him we buried any of them. It may even be that the most valuable talent in our investment portfolio turns out to be a weakness.

Since “it is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2), we would be wise to examine how faithfully we are stewarding the talents of our weaknesses. So, how well are you investing the weaknesses you’ve been given?

My Times Are in Your Hand: Learning to Trust the Speed of God

Did you know your head ages faster than your feet? Scientists have confirmed this, proving again that Albert Einstein was spot-on in his theories of relativity: the speed of time is relative to a particular frame of reference. For us terrestrials, that frame of reference is earth’s gravitational force. The higher up from the earth something is, the weaker the gravitational pull and the faster time moves.

An implication of this is that we frequently put our trust in a frame of reference on time different from the one we experience. For instance, the Global Positioning System (GPS) we rely on to accurately and safely guide us as we pilot our cars, ships, planes, and spaceships only works because it’s programmed, based on Einstein’s theories of relativity, to compensate for the distance between earth and space. Without those formulas, our computers and smartphones would soon get disastrously out of sync with the GPS satellites, which orbit in a different time.

Stick with me; I am going somewhere with this. How we experience time depends on our frame of reference. And our particular frame of reference is not always the one we should trust. In fact, sometimes it’s critically important that we trust another framing more than our own.

One Day with the Lord

For Christians, this concept is nothing new. Over three millennia ago, Moses wrote,

A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4)

And some two millennia ago, Peter wrote,

Do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. (2 Peter 3:8)

In other words, time in God’s eyes moves at different speeds from time in our ours. And in the life of faith, it’s critically important that we learn to rely on God’s timing more than our own — to learn to trust the speed of God.

How Long, O Lord?

Learning to trust God’s timing is not easy, to say the least. This is partly due to our sin and unbelief. But it’s also because trusting a frame of reference different from ours is, by definition, counterintuitive. Since we can’t calculate God’s time, his timing often doesn’t make sense to us.

That’s why after Peter described one God-day as being like a thousand years for us, he went on to say, “The Lord is not slow . . . as some count slowness” (2 Peter 3:9). The “some” he referred to were “scoffers” who mocked Christians’ hope in the return of Christ (2 Peter 3:3–4). But the truth is that all of us fit into the “some” category at times. I don’t mean as scoffers, but as children of God painfully perplexed by our heavenly Father’s apparent slowness.

We cry out, “How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1), wondering when he will finally fulfill some promise to which we’re clinging. So, Peter exhorts us, the “beloved” of God, not to “overlook” the fact that God-time is not man-time; therefore, God “is not slow” as man counts slowness (2 Peter 3:8–9) — as I sometimes count slowness. Indeed, he is not.

God Is Not Slow

Someone who has created such a thing as light speed, and who knows what’s happening in every part of a universe spanning some 93 billion light-years across, is clearly not slow.

It’s also clear, however, that such a being as God operates on a very different timeline than we do — if timeline is even the right word. For God is not constrained by time. He is the Father of time (Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1:16). He is “the Ancient of Days” (Daniel 7:9), existing “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 90:2). God is not in time; time is in God (Acts 17:28; Colossians 1:17). The “thousand years” of Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 is just a metaphor, using a timeframe we can somewhat comprehend to communicate a reality we can’t.

So, when the speed of God seems slow to us, or when his timing doesn’t make sense, we must “not overlook this one fact”: God-time is different from man-time. God-time is relative to his purposes, which is his frame of reference. And God, according to his wise purposes, makes everything beautiful in its time — the time he purposefully chooses for it.

Time for Everything

Everything beautiful in its time. I get that from Ecclesiastes 3:11:

[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

This verse captures like no other both the mysterious nature of our experience of time, and the pointers God has placed within our frame of reference to help us trust the wisdom of his timing.

In designing us with eternity in our hearts, the “eternal God” made us to know him (Deuteronomy 33:27). But in limiting the scope of our perspective and comprehension, he also made us to fundamentally trust him and not ourselves (Proverbs 3:5–6). This is how he means for us to know him:

I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.” (Isaiah 46:9–10)

He is “the everlasting God” (Isaiah 40:28), “who works all things,” including all time everywhere, “according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). One clear way he reveals the wisdom of his purposes is how he has created, in our frame of reference, “a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1):

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance. (Ecclesiastes 3:2–4)

God “made everything beautiful in its time.” The Hebrew word translated “beautiful” means appropriate, fitting, right. God’s “invisible attributes” can be “clearly perceived” in the created order we observe and experience (Romans 1:20). They reveal the wisdom of his purposes — a wisdom far beyond ours. And God intends them to teach us that his “beautiful” timing can be trusted, even when we don’t understand it.

In the Fullness of Time

God did not merely leave us to deduce his character and wisdom from nature. For “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4). In Jesus, the Creator of all stepped into terrestrial time, into our frame of reference (John 1:2). In fully human form, he “dwelt among us,” directly revealing the divine attributes with a “glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

While here, he performed many signs and wonders and proclaimed, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14–15). As he did so, he displayed the marvelous wisdom of the timing of God, often in ways that surprised and confused his followers (John 4:1–42; 11:1–44).

Then, when his time had come (John 12:23), Jesus obeyed his Father to the point of death on a cross, “offer[ing] for all time a single sacrifice for sins.” And then he was raised from the dead and “sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet” (Hebrews 10:12–14).

As his followers, we also wait. We wait for the Father to “send the Christ appointed for [us], Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago” (Acts 3:20–21).

Trust the Speed of God

As we wait, two thousand years later (or two God-days), we help each other remember,

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward [us], not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

Yes, we must frequently help each other remember:

God-time moves at different speeds than ours.
God works all things, at all times, in all places, in all dimensions, after the counsel of his will to accomplish all his purpose.
God has a purposeful time for everything, and he makes everything beautiful in its time.
However God chooses to use our times, it’s critically important that we learn to trust his timing over the relative and unreliable earthbound perspective that shapes our expectations.

Our times, like all times, are in God’s hand (Psalm 31:15). This is what it means to live by faith in relation to time. In choosing to trust the speed of God, we humble ourselves under his mighty, time-holding hand.

According to 1 Peter 5:6–7, the amazing reward of choosing to embrace such joyful, peaceful, childlike trust in God is that he will exalt us at the proper time.

I Lay My Life in Your Hands: How Faith Prays in the Dark

Down through church history, Christians have referred to the seven statements Jesus spoke from the cross as the “last words” of Christ. According to tradition, the very last of these last words, which Jesus cried out before giving himself over to death, were these: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

It was a powerful, heartbreaking, poetic moment. God prayed to his God by quoting God-breathed Scripture. The Word of God died with the word of God on his lips. And it was a word of poetry, the first half of Psalm 31:5.

Most of those gathered on Golgotha that dark afternoon likely knew these words well. They were nearly a lullaby, a prayer Jewish parents taught their children to pray just before giving themselves over to sleep for the night. So, in Jesus’s cry, they likely heard a dying man’s last prayer of committal before his final “falling asleep.” And, of course, it was that.

But that’s not all it was. And every Jewish religious leader present would have recognized this if he were paying attention. For these men would have known this psalm of David very well. All of it. They would have known this prayer was uttered by a persecuted king of the Jews, pleading with God for rescue from his enemies. They also would have known it as a declaration of faith-fueled confidence that God would, in fact, deliver him. For when Jesus had recited the first half of Psalm 31:5, they would have been able to finish the second half from memory: “You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.”

What Was Jesus Thinking?

The most maddening thing for the Jewish rulers had always been trying to get inside Jesus’s head. What was he thinking? Who was he making himself out to be (John 8:53)?

Well, he had finally confirmed their suspicions at his trial: he believed himself to be Israel’s long-awaited Messiah (Matthew 26:63–64). It was true: he really did see himself as “the son of David” (Matthew 22:41–45).

Now here he was, brutalized beyond recognition, quoting David with his last breath — a quote that, in context, seemed to make no sense in this moment:

You are my rock and my fortress;
     and for your name’s sake you lead me and guide me;
you take me out of the net they have hidden for me,
     for you are my refuge.
Into your hand I commit my spirit;
     you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. (Psalm 31:3–5)

What had Jesus been thinking? This should have been a moment of utter despair for him. David had prayed, “Let me never be put to shame” (Psalm 31:1), but there Jesus was, covered in nothing but shame. David had prayed, “In your righteousness deliver me!” (Psalm 31:1) But Jesus was dying a brutal death. In what possible way could he have believed at that moment that God was his refuge?

David proved to be the Lord’s anointed because God had delivered him “out of the net” of death. David committed his spirit into God’s hand, and God had been faithful to him by redeeming him. But this so-called “son of David” received no such deliverance, no such redemption.

King Who Became a Reproach

Yet, as they looked at that wasted body hanging on the cross, with a sign posted above it that read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:37), and pondered his final words, might some of them have perceived possible foreshadows of messianic suffering in this song of David?

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;
     my eye is wasted from grief;
     my soul and my body also.
For my life is spent with sorrow,
     and my years with sighing;
my strength fails because of my iniquity,
     and my bones waste away.

Because of all my adversaries I have become a reproach,
     especially to my neighbors,
and an object of dread to my acquaintances;
     those who see me in the street flee from me. (Psalm 31:9–11)

This psalm recorded a moment when David, the most beloved king of the Jews in Israel’s history, had become a reproach. He had been accused, blamed, censured, charged. He had become an “object of dread” to all who knew him; people had wanted nothing to do with him. He had “been forgotten like one who is dead”; he had “become like a broken vessel” (Psalm 31:12). Had this at all been in Jesus’s mind as he uttered his last prayer?

David, of course, hadn’t died. God delivered him and honored him. Surely he would do the same, and more, for the Messiah!

After Death, Life

Yet, there were those haunting words of the prophet Isaiah: “We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:4–5). Pierced. Crushed. Indeed,

It was the will of the Lord to crush him;
     he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
     he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. (Isaiah 53:10)

It would have been unnerving to recall that Isaiah’s “suffering servant” is first “slaughtered” like a sacrificial lamb (Isaiah 53:7) and then afterward “prolong[s] his days.” After death, life. Not only that, but God himself commends and promises to glorify him for his sacrifice: “Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted” (Isaiah 52:13).

Had Jesus really believed, even as his life drained away, that he was the King of the Jews bearing reproach, the Suffering Servant? Was this woven into the fabric of his final cry?

‘My Times Are in Your Hand’

This self-understanding would make sense of Jesus’s physically agonizing yet spiritually peaceful resignation to the will of God as he died. Even more, it also would fit with his previous foretelling of his death and resurrection — something these leaders were quite cognizant of at that moment (Matthew 27:62–64).

All this again aligned with the childlike faith and hope David had expressed in Psalm 31:

I trust in you, O Lord;
     I say, “You are my God.”
My times are in your hand;
     rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!
Make your face shine on your servant;
     save me in your steadfast love!

Oh, how abundant is your goodness,
     which you have stored up for those who fear you
and worked for those who take refuge in you,
     in the sight of the children of mankind! (Psalm 31:14–16, 19)

If any of the Jewish leaders (and others) had been paying careful attention to where Jesus’s words were drawn from, they would have heard more than a desperate man’s prayer before falling into deathly sleep. They also would have heard a faithful man’s expression of trust that his God held all his times in his hands, including that most terrible of times, and that his God had stored up abundant goodness for him, despite how circumstances appeared in the moment.

Let Your Heart Take Courage

I can only speculate what may have passed through the minds of the Jewish leaders as they heard the very last of Jesus’s last words. But I have no doubt that the words, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” were pregnant with meaning from the entire psalm when the Word cried them out.

Which makes Jesus’s quotation of half of Psalm 31:5 the most profound and powerful commentary on this psalm ever made. We now read it through the lens of the crucified and risen Christ.

And one crucial dimension we must not miss is this: at that moment of his death, no one but Jesus perceived the faithfulness of God at work. He shows us that God can be acting most faithfully in the very moments when it appears he’s not being faithful at all.

We all experience such moments when we must, like Jesus, sit in the first half of Psalm 31:5 (“Into your hand I commit my spirit”). As we sit, we can lean into the faithfulness of God to keep his word, trusting that he who holds all our times will bring to pass the second half of the verse when the time is right (“You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God”). We can also, with David, sing the psalm all the way to the end:

Love the Lord, all you his saints!
     The Lord preserves the faithful
     but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride.
Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
     all you who wait for the Lord! (Psalm 31:23–24)