Jon Bloom's Blog, page 7

Direct Your Heart

“Follow your heart” is a familiar phrase — essentially a pop cultural creed — representing a belief that our heart is a kind of compass that will lead us to true happiness if we just have the courage to listen to it. As I’ve explained previously, I think this belief is both misleading and dangerous.

It’s misleading because “follow your heart” can sound like a sacred quest — as if not following your heart violates your truest self — when all it really means is “pursue what you desire.” And stated that way, we can all more clearly see what makes the phrase dangerous, since desires arising from remaining aspects of our fallen nature are “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9) and can lead us into deep trouble.

I believe a much more helpful phrase for Christians is “direct your heart,” which is given us in Proverbs 23:19:

Hear, my son, and be wise,
     and direct your heart in the way.

Direct your heart. This more accurately captures the way Scripture as a whole instructs us to relate to our hearts, the part of our inner being that loves or hates, that treasures persons or things or despises them. According to the Bible, our hearts, when left unchecked, follow that love or hatred in all sorts of directions (Matthew 6:21, 24). Therefore, our hearts need to be directed away from following deceitful loves and treasures, and toward what is truly lovely and valuable.

New Heart with Old Problems

What can make directing our hearts confusing is that, in the present age, Christians live with what the Bible calls two “selves.” We have our regenerated “new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness,” and we have our “old self, which belongs to [our] former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires” (Ephesians 4:22–24).

We all know from experience that our affections “are at war within [us]” (James 4:1). The new self “delight[s] in the law of God,” while the old self “wag[es] war against [God’s] law” (Romans 7:22–23). So, because we experience both of these selves for now, the Bible generally encourages us to direct our hearts rather than follow our hearts. We direct our hearts away from the corrupt, destructive things that delight our old selves, and toward the pure, profoundly wonderful realities God has designed to delight our new selves.

So, if God wants us to direct our hearts, how do we do that? And where do we direct them?

Counsel for Directing Hearts

Proverbs 23, which gives us the phrase “direct your heart” (Proverbs 23:19), actually provides good (and practical) examples. The chapter is chock-full of a father’s wise, heart-directing counsel for his son. Let me entice you with some summary statements of the wisdom he encourages.

1. Direct your heart to acquire God’s wisdom.

The writer knows that “the way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice” (Proverbs 12:15). And God provides us with crucial relationships through which we receive such instruction. So, he exhorts us, his readers, to carefully listen to our parents (or parental figures, Proverbs 23:22–25), diligently seek out instruction from knowledgeable people (Proverbs 23:12), and lovingly impart knowledge to our children (when necessary, through needed discipline, Proverbs 23:13–14). We must direct our hearts toward the wisdom of humbly receiving instruction from God and others (Proverbs 1:7).

2. Direct your heart to discern dangerous people.

The world is filled with people whose hearts want things that will harm us if we’re not careful. Powerful people can use their status, influence, and wealth to compromise us if we don’t keep a clear head and exercise self-control (Proverbs 23:1–3). Calculating people can deceive us through initially appearing gracious, only to later reveal themselves as conniving (Proverbs 23:6–8). And overtly sinful people seem to prosper so much we are tempted to envy them (Proverbs 23:17–18), yet their end is destruction (see Psalm 73). We must direct our hearts (often through seeking good advice) to discern how power, manipulation, and sinful gain can lure us into danger.

3. Direct your heart to avoid and escape sinful snares.

Beware of falling in love with money. Don’t serve it (Luke 16:13), for it is an unsatisfying and ephemeral treasure, and will betray your devotion (Proverbs 23:4–5). Beware of using your power to take advantage of vulnerable people, for God will call you to account if you do (Proverbs 23:10–11). Beware of sexual temptation and don’t underestimate its power to tempt you to insanely pursue what will devastate your life and those around you (Proverbs 23:26–28). And beware of giving yourself over to life-controlling self-indulgence (Proverbs 23:19–21), and the enslavement of chemical addiction (Proverbs 23:29–35). We must direct our hearts to recognize the strong, seductive power these snares wield, and do whatever is necessary to escape them.

While the wisdom of this counsel is likely obvious to most of us (often through painful experience), God gives us even better counsel, counsel that clarifies this father’s advice to his son — and, in fact, makes it possible.

Follow the Good Treasure

The better counsel is captured in Psalm 37:4:

Delight yourself in the Lord,
     and he will give you the desires of your heart.

This is both the promise and the increasing experience of the new self, the regenerated Christian. The more we delight in the Lord as our great Treasure — the more we see and savor all God is and promises to be for us in Jesus — the more we will grow to love “whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable” and excellent and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8). Loving him directs and purifies all our other loving.

Jesus gives us a picture of this transformation in Matthew 13:44:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

When we are born again, we glimpse and desire the Treasure: God himself. And the more we see of him, the more we desire him and all he desires for us. And the more we grow to hate all that might rob us of that Treasure.

So, direct your heart. Most importantly, direct your heart to delight in the Lord. For if you do, God himself will give you the desires of your heart.

Right in Our Own Eyes: How Pride Keeps Us from Counsel

When it comes to making important decisions or working through difficult, complex, and painful issues, experience has taught me two lessons about myself. First, if I wisely seek counsel — meaning I really attempt to inform myself with the necessary information and perspectives — the outcome is always better than if I don’t. Second, I frequently don’t want to do this.

Now, in light of the first, why do I struggle with the second? It seems foolish, and it is. For Scripture says,

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes,
     but a wise man listens to advice. (Proverbs 12:15)

The truth is, thanks to my remaining sin nature, I have an inner foolish part of me that believes I don’t need advice, or that seeking it will expose me in ways I don’t want others to see. Which means pride, fear, and shame can play roles in why I’m tempted to avoid seeking counsel.

My experience has also taught me that this is more or less true of everyone. We all need help in recognizing when our inner fool is influencing us to take a destructive course of action. Given my limited space here, I’ll save the issues of fear and shame for the future and focus on how pride can distort how we listen to advice. Let’s consider how the kind of foolishness we’re all prone to led one man to disaster.

Learning from a Bad Example

In 2 Chronicles 10, King Solomon has just died, and his son, Rehoboam, is preparing to assume Israel’s throne. All the people of Israel had gathered for his coronation. But before pledging their allegiance to him, the people present him with this request: that Rehoboam relieve the burdensome load of forced labor they had endured under Solomon. If he would grant this, they pledged, “We will serve you” (2 Chronicles 10:4). Before Rehoboam gives his answer to the people, he seeks out counsel first. By all appearances, this seems wise.

This is a defining moment for the heir to the throne. Rehoboam is about to illustrate the truth of Proverbs 12:15, but not in a flattering way.

First, he gathers the older men who had advised his father, men whose knowledge is surely seasoned with years of hard-earned experience, and he asks their advice. They offer this recommendation: “If you will be good to this people and please them and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever” (2 Chronicles 10:7).

What we’re told next, however, should set off our “wisdom level low” warning lights: Rehoboam “abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him, and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him” (2 Chronicles 10:8). Abandoned? Already?

The younger advisors give Rehoboam different advice: what he really needs to do is flex his regal muscle and subdue the people with brutal force (2 Chronicles 10:11). This is precisely what he does, and it results in a royal disaster. When he announces to the people his intention to be harder on them than his father was, most of Israel’s tribes renounce all allegiance to Rehoboam and choose their own king, splitting the nation in two.

Now, we should want to learn from Rehoboam’s disastrous example, since we have the same sinful pride dwelling inside us. We’ve all at times played the fool, believing we were right in our own eyes. I believe this story shows us three all-too-common ways our sinful pride can tempt us to foolishly turn away from listening to sound advice (Proverbs 12:15) and destroy the joyful deliverance and benefits God promises to those who walk in wisdom (Proverbs 28:26).

1. We underestimate our ignorance.

First, pride can tempt us to underestimate our ignorance. It’s amazing how much unfounded confidence we can place in the very little we know. We see this in Rehoboam. Regardless of how many decades the older men had in actual governing experience and their urgent sense of the people’s deteriorating trust in his father’s administration, the new king and his peers believed they knew better.

Their foolishness is clear when we read this story, but have we not also made poor decisions and errant plans, having ignored or neglected to even seek counsel, all because our uninformed perspective appeared right in our own eyes at the time? That’s what makes this manifestation of pride so dangerous: we often don’t perceive our error till it’s too late. Therefore, the wise man listens to advice even (and especially) when he thinks he knows what’s best.

2. We avoid appearing weak.

Second, pride can tempt us to avoid appearing weak. In the ancient Near East, the most respected, successful kings were typically strong and ruthless (and projected that image loud and clear). Rulers didn’t allow subjects to set the terms. What message would Rehoboam send domestically and internationally if he capitulated to his people’s demands?

Fear was likely at play too, since weak kings were targets for coups. And then there was that long shadow cast by his strong, famous father to escape. Therefore, Rehoboam’s decision was made not with faith in God’s power, nor with his people’s good in mind, but with his desired reputation primarily in view.

We, like Rehoboam, tend to be inordinately influenced by how our peers and cultures define strength and weakness. Our prideful reluctance to be viewed as weak can easily distort our decisions and plans. Therefore, the wise man seeks out and listens to advice that helps him to fear the Lord more than he fears appearing weak (Proverbs 1:7), and to love people more than he loves his reputation.

3. We predetermine the counsel we’ll accept.

Third, pride can tempt us to predetermine the counsel we’ll accept. We can see indicators in Rehoboam’s story that he already had determined what he wanted to do before seeking any counsel. It’s hard to imagine him carefully listening to both advisor groups, taking into consideration their relative experience, judiciously weighing each piece of advice in the context of his people’s condition, and reaching the conclusion he did.

His foolishness can’t even be chocked up to youthful naivete, since Rehoboam was 41 years old by that time (1 Kings 14:21). He already knew his young counselors’ perspective because they “stood before him” (2 Chronicles 10:8) — they were his team of advisors. And since we all know how power dynamics work, it’s likely these advisors were feeding Rehoboam what they already knew he wanted to hear. He wasn’t really looking for advice; he was looking for official validation of his predetermined plan.

This symptom of pride is subtly deceptive, both for us and for our counselors. We are prone not only to seek advisors who already agree with our perspective, but we can also frame an issue to more objective advisors in ways that invite the advice we desire. In other words, we can appear wise, while foolishly pursuing what’s right in our own eyes. Therefore, the wise man does not pack the jury or skew the evidence, but listens to advice offered by honest advisors from multiple perspectives who have heard all the relevant information.

Joyful Promise of Wisdom

Another proverb that puts a slightly different twist on the lessons from Rehoboam’s failures is this:

Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool,
     but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered. (Proverbs 28:26)

This proverb contains a precious promise for us if we’ll choose not to underestimate our ignorance, avoid appearing weak, or predetermine what counsel we’ll accept: deliverance from disastrous decisions. Rehoboam’s example illustrates the kind of devastating consequences that result from walking in foolish pride — pride we all recognize in ourselves and are tempted by.

The challenge of walking in wisdom, of seeking out wise counselors and listening carefully to their advice, is that on the front end it usually feels challenging and humbling. We’re told things we don’t want to hear. And yet, if we’ll walk this path of wisdom, it will, like “all the [faithful and loving] paths of the Lord” (Psalm 25:10), lead to joy and deliver us from self-inflicted disaster. Jesus says, “The way is hard that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14), and “Whoever would save his life will lose it” (Matthew 16:25). The path to joy is often through self-denial, while the path to misery is often through self-indulgence.

That’s why, when it comes to important decisions and plans, only a fool will trust his own mind, but the wise man will listen to good counsel.

You Don’t Need to Understand Now

Jesus spoke many profound and important words to his disciples the night before his crucifixion. But there’s one statement we might easily pass over, because of the context in which he made it. Yet it is loaded with personal meaning for each of us who follows him:

What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand. (John 13:7)

In that one sentence, Jesus captures a profound reality that is our frequent, and to some extent continual, experience as Christians: not understanding what God is doing (or not doing) and why. It’s crucial that we grasp the wider implications of what Jesus said here, for if we do, it will help each of us immensely during the times we wonder why our Good Shepherd is leading us down such confusing and painful paths.

We often do not know what God is doing now. And the crucial truth is, we don’t need to know what God is doing now to follow him in faith.

You Do Not Understand Now

During that Last Supper, Jesus did something strange. He removed his outer garments, tied a towel around his waist, grabbed a basin of water, and proceeded to wash each disciple’s feet. I doubt this hits any of us with the force it did the disciples since the cultural mores of that region and time are so distant and foreign to us. But to the disciples, it felt more than strange; it felt disorientingly inappropriate.

It sure did to Peter. All his life, he had understood that washing someone else’s feet was about as demeaning a task as anyone could perform — a task fit only for slaves, or, if lacking those, for children. It would have been disgraceful for men of honor. So, as he watched Jesus, the most honored Person in the world, humbling himself by taking the form of a common slave, washing off with his own holy hands God only knew what uncleanness clung to those feet, he felt indignant. This was completely backward! If anything, Peter should be on his knees washing his Lord’s feet.

When Jesus got to Peter, the earnest disciple pulled his feet back and asked, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus looked at Peter and with patient kindness replied, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand” (John 13:7).

And there it is: a massive principle for every Christian’s life of faith, indeed a summary of a motif woven throughout Scripture from beginning to end, captured in a simple reply to a confused disciple’s question.

Legacy of Little Understanding

Peter, in not understanding why Jesus was doing what he was doing at that moment, was in very good company. Redemptive history recounts story after story of saints finding themselves in this perplexing position, being forced to trust God to make sense of it later. Think of:

Abraham, having waited so long for Isaac, only to be instructed by God to offer the boy as a sacrifice (Genesis 22);
Jacob wrestling with God, and being lamed in the hip, just before he was to meet Esau (Genesis 32);
Joseph wondering what God was doing as his young adulthood wasted away in an Egyptian prison (Genesis 37–41);
Moses not understanding why God would choose him to lead Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 3–4);
Gideon being given far more than he could possibly handle (Judges 7);
Jehoshaphat being instructed to send a choir as his military vanguard against an overwhelming foe (2 Chronicles 20);
Nehemiah having to deal with so many seemingly unnecessary adversities, obstacles, and inefficiencies that slowed down the work in rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls (Nehemiah 4);
Joseph trying to navigate so many unforeseen, confusing detours in the first few years of Jesus’s life (Matthew 1–2);
The man born blind, who didn’t know until midlife what purposes God could possibly have in his suffering (John 9);
And Martha’s and Mary’s grief-laced bewilderment over why Jesus didn’t come to heal Lazarus (John 11).

Of course, that’s just a small sample. Not understanding what God is doing now (and having to wait till later to understand) is the experience, to greater or lesser degrees, of every saint in every age — whether “later” means within a few minutes, as it did for Peter during the Last Supper, or in the age to come, as it did for his fellow disciple James, who wasn’t delivered from execution (Acts 12:1–2). It is a necessary, humbling part of what it means for us to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

You Must Trust Me

Being content to not understand now doesn’t come naturally to us. It surely didn’t for Peter. He found Jesus’s reply perplexing. And patience not being one of his strong suits, he didn’t wish to wait till later to understand. So, he declared, “You shall never wash my feet” (John 13:8).

It seems to me that Peter simply didn’t want to dishonor his Lord. This may have been well-intended, but it was wrongheaded. In responding this way, Peter actually became guilty of what he was trying to avoid: dishonoring Jesus. For the great dishonor wasn’t Peter allowing Jesus to wash his feet; it was Peter’s not trusting what Jesus said. And this is a crucial point for us to note: We are never on more dangerous ground than when we believe we understand better than God.

I think Jesus fully discerned Peter’s well-intended motive. But he also discerned the danger of Peter’s wrongheaded, overly self-confident tendency to trust his own understanding. Which is why Jesus’s response was so serious. It shocked Peter to his core. “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me” (John 13:8). No share with me. Distrust in this meant exclusion. Peter got the point immediately and repented by exclaiming, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” (John 13:9).

And what was Jesus’s point? Peter, you must trust me. You must live by the ancient proverb, and trust what I say with all your heart, and not lean on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). The only way you as a branch will abide and be fruitful in this Vine is if you believe my word (John 15:1–5, 7). If you insist that you must understand now before you will trust me, you will be like a branch broken off, and you will spiritually wither and die (John 15:6).

You Don’t Need to Understand Now

Many of the experiences that confound us as we follow Jesus feel far more painful and confusing than foot-washing. Peter would sympathize; most of his confounding experiences were far more painful and confusing than that too. Just think of what desolation was approaching for Peter in the hours following this brief mealtime interchange. Sometimes it’s lessons we learn in less extreme moments that stand in clearest relief and help steady us during more extreme ones.

The plain fact is, we often do not know what God is doing now. And the crucial truth is, we don’t need to know what God is doing now to follow him in faith. God has his reasons for concealing his purposes. Sometimes it has to do with his timing, as it did for Peter. And sometimes, because God’s ways and thoughts are so beyond ours (Isaiah 55:8–9), it’s simply God’s mercy toward us to withhold knowledge too heavy for us to bear.

We don’t need to understand God’s purposes now; what we need to do is trust God’s purposes now. For it is through our trust, not our own understanding, that God will direct us along our confusing paths (Proverbs 3:6). And we can trust him that later, when the time is right in the near or distant future, he will give us all the understanding we need.

Why Do You Want to Go to Heaven?

While I was attending a class at church in my twenties, we took up the topic of heaven — what it will be like and why we would want to go there. I distinctly remember that one of the class leaders said, in all seriousness, “I can’t wait to have my mansion and my Maserati!”

Now, given how little I knew of this man (and how careless I myself can be at times with words), I will not assume his statement captured the whole of his deepest longings for heaven. However, it did have an immediate and lasting effect on me. As I pondered a vague mental image of a celestial mansion with a luxury sports car parked outside, it filled me with a profound sense of emptiness. This was not because big houses and expensive cars never held much appeal for me, but because the clearest, most passionate expression of someone’s anticipation of the joy of heaven that morning didn’t mention God.

I don’t know how well I could have articulated it back then, but intuitively I knew that if God wasn’t, far and away, the greatest joy of heaven, if the eternal reward for Christians was essentially enhanced forms of the earthly things we enjoy most now, it would be no heaven at all — at least not a heaven I wanted. The idea had the ring of Ecclesiastes-like vanity. It left me with an aftertaste of despair.

That class was a moment of clarity for me. I began to see that I didn’t so much long for eternal life as I longed for the One Thing that would make eternal life worth living. I didn’t so much want the created delights of heaven as I wanted the One Thing that made those delights delightful. At bottom, what I really wanted was, in the words of the old hymn, the “wellspring of the joy of living,” the very thing that made heaven heavenly. I wanted God.

Heaven on Every Page

In referring to “heaven,” I’m just using the common shorthand term for everything a Christian experiences after the death of our fallen bodies, from the intermediate state (2 Corinthians 5:8) to the resurrection of our bodies (John 5:28–29) and the new creation (Romans 8:18–21) — everything we anticipate in “the age to come” (Luke 18:29–30).

In one sense, the Bible tells us relatively little about the specifics of heaven. Descriptions of heaven are often analogical or symbolic, framed in archaic images we might find strange. In another sense, however, the Bible speaks of heaven all over the place, and in ways very relevant to us. The Bible, on almost every page, speaks not so much of the mansions and Maseratis that may come, but of the great Satisfaction for which our souls deeply long.

C.S. Lewis put it this way: “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else” (The Problem of Pain, 150). What he’s talking about is the desire at the core of all our desiring, the thirst that is never quenched by anything we find in this world: our desire for God.

Our Unappeasable Want

Lewis calls this core desire “the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work” (152).

This “unappeasable want” is a daily experience for us to lesser or greater degrees. Its presence is pervasive in our pursuits. Yet quenching this thirst eludes us in every earthly well we drink from. And no heavenly mansion or Maserati will satisfy it either. Only One Thing will. As Randy Alcorn says,

We may imagine we want a thousand different things, but God is the one we really long for. His presence brings satisfaction; his absence brings thirst and longing. Our longing for Heaven is a longing for God. (Heaven, 165)

God himself is “the fountain of living waters”; apart from him every other cistern we dig will leave us dry (Jeremiah 2:13). Only he can give us the drink that will forever end our deepest thirst (John 4:14). Our unquenchable thirst, our unappeasable want, is a desire for God (Psalm 63:1–2). This is what the Bible reveals from cover to cover.

Heaven of Heavens

We hear this desire for God throughout the Psalms, especially ones that express the broken emptiness of earthly cisterns:

Whom have I in heaven but you?
     And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
     but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:25–26)

We hear this in their declarations that “a day in [God’s] courts is better than a thousand elsewhere” (Psalm 84:10) and that God was their “exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4).

We see this desire in the prophet Moses, who “considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward” (Hebrews 11:26) — the only reward he really desired: God (Exodus 33:18).

We see this desire in the apostle Paul, who “count[ed] everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus [his] Lord” and “suffered the loss of all things . . . count[ing] them as rubbish, in order that [he] may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8) — the one prize he really valued (Philippians 3:14).

And we hear this desire on the very lips of the Lord Jesus himself: “this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). God does not merely give us eternal life, he is the life, the very source and essence of eternal life (John 11:25–26).

In this sense, the Bible is very much a book about heaven. For at the center of redemptive history, the apex of biblical revelation, we discover that the very reason Jesus came to earth, the reason he “suffered [on the brutal cross] once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,” was in order “that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). And in giving us God, he is giving us heaven. God, in his Trinitarian wholeness, is himself our life, our ultimate gain, our great reward, our exceeding joy, our portion forever, and our eternal home. He is the very Heaven of heaven.

Substance, Sun, Ocean

Few have seen the Heaven of heavens as clearly from Scripture as Jonathan Edwards:

The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows, but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the ocean.

This does not devalue the shadows, the scattered beams, the streams of this world. Every good gift comes from God (James 1:17). The gift of himself, however, is what gives every other gift its inestimable value in the first place. They only devalue when separated from the Substance, the Sun, the Ocean.

And every good and perfect gift we receive from God in the age to come, whether mansions and Maseratis or whatever else he has prepared for us, will be far better than those we’ve received and experienced in this life (1 Corinthians 2:9). But still, they will never compare with the Joy of joys, the Love of loves, the Light of light, the Life of life, the Heaven of heavens. For God will always be, as Lewis says in Till We Have Faces, the one satisfying “place where all the beauty came from.”

Secret Allies in the Human Heart: The Advantage We Have in Evangelism

One warm, dusty midday, Jesus sat alone near Jacob’s well outside the Samaritan town of Sychar. His disciples had gone into town to buy food, but he had planned a different meal for himself (John 4:34). Soon a solitary woman arrived at the well with a large clay jar and began to draw water. Jesus asked her for a drink.

So began one of the most famous evangelistic conversations in history.

And this conversation is remarkably relevant to us twenty-first-century Christians. Because in it, Jesus demonstrates that hidden in the human heart are secret evangelistic allies, as Scottish preacher James Stewart once observed (Heralds of God, 53). These secret allies are deep-seated intuitions and longings that can help a person recognize the truth of the gospel. And like Jesus, if we listen carefully and prayerfully, both to the person and the Holy Spirit, we can engage these allies in the pursuit of that person’s ultimate joy.

Obstacles to Evangelism

In numerous ways, this woman would have appeared to most of us as an unlikely candidate for conversion.

First, she was a Samaritan, which meant she was viewed and hated by most Jews as a member of a heretical, idolatrous religion. We would have assumed she reciprocated the hatred. She was a woman, which meant (according to ancient Near Eastern social norms) that she would have been reticent to enter into such a conversation alone with a strange man. And given the odd, hot time of day she chose to fetch water, we might have intuited some social estrangement from her own townspeople.

In other words, there were layers of complex awkwardness about the whole situation — the kind of awkwardness most of us want to avoid, the kind we tend to assume will make fruitfulness unlikely. But Jesus, alert to the Holy Spirit and lovingly eager for this woman to experience grace and forgiveness and liberation and joy, stepped into the awkwardness. And notice how he navigated this conversation, engaging several secret allies along the way.

Secret Allies in an Unlikely Convert

It began with a mundane-sounding yet provocative request: “Give me a drink” (John 4:7). This simple question caught the woman off guard. Not only was a man addressing an unaccompanied woman, but a Jew was addressing a Samaritan. In doing so, however, Jesus acknowledged her as an image-bearer of God, according her the dignity due such a creation. Her deep, intuitive knowledge of the rightness of this became one secret ally in helping prepare her to receive the grace and mercy he offers.

Then, given the immediate context of their conversation, Jesus used the metaphor of thirst to raise the issue of the woman’s deep, inconsolable longing for lasting hope, joy, meaning, and love — a longing she shared with all fallen humanity (John 4:10–15). He wasn’t put off by her skepticism and derogatory comments. He was after her joy, not defending himself. What he did was engage her soul-thirst as a secret gospel ally for her highest good.

Then he gently stepped into another very awkward place: the woman’s sinful, painful past littered with the ruins of broken relational cisterns that had only left her more parched (Jeremiah 2:13; John 4:16–18). And he offered her the only water that could quench her thirst: the gracious, merciful love of God. Her pain proved to be the pivotal gospel ally in her heart (John 4:39), because she had an undeniable desire and need for God’s forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption.

But there was one more massive issue to deal with: What about the deep, bitter, complex, hostile, centuries-old ethno-religious disagreements between the Jews and the Samaritans (John 4:19–22)? Notice where in the conversation Jesus chose to address this (he ignored the controversy in verse 9). Jesus discerned that this woman needed to taste God’s care and kindness toward her before she would be open to hearing that she and her ancestors had worshiped in ignorance (John 4:22). So, he did deploy the ally of the truth she already knew from Jewish Scriptures, but not until he had developed some initial trust first.

Having glimpsed the Great Well and tasted the living water (John 4:23–24), this woman forgot her jar by Jacob’s well and ran back to town to share the good news she had received (John 4:28–30). And her testimony resonated with the secret allies in the hearts of many of her neighbors in Sychar.

Common Secret Allies

This evangelistic conversation is admittedly exceptional because Jesus is exceptional. We rarely receive such supernatural insight into someone else’s life — though such gifts sometimes are given to believers by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 14:24–25). But we can still learn from how Jesus engaged secret evangelistic allies in the hearts of his hearers. And while we may not be able to discern all he discerned as the God-man, we can still ask good questions, listen carefully, and pray for the Spirit to help us identify allies in each conversation.

Certain allies are specific to particular people, like the Samaritan woman’s painful past. But there are allies that God has implanted in the hearts of every person. Here are some of them:

We all instinctively recognize design in creation (Romans 1:19–20).
We all are irresistibly drawn to transcendent glory (Psalm 8:1–4).
We all have an intuitive knowledge of providence — that there is a purposeful intent to the created world, the events in it, and our own lives (Acts 17:22–31).
We all know deep down that nihilism (ultimate meaninglessness implicit in metaphysical naturalism) is not true (Ecclesiastes 3:1–14).
We all know we must have hope to keep going (Psalm 43:5; Lamentations 3:20–24; Romans 15:13).
We all have an irrepressible longing for joy (Psalm 16:11; 43:4; Ecclesiastes 3:12; John 15:11; 1 Peter 1:8).
We all intuitively recognize the moral law (Romans 2:14–15).
We all know that we have transgressed the moral law and to some degree long to be free from guilt (Romans 3:23–26).
We all at various times experience an undeniable desire for justice to prevail (Deuteronomy 16:19–20; Job 19:7–11; Proverbs 17:23; Micah 6:8; Matthew 12:18–21).
We all have a sense of eternity in our hearts — we instinctively know death is not our ultimate end (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
We all recognize the supreme beauty of love (Matthew 22:36–40; John 15:13; 1 Corinthians 13:13; 1 John 4:7–8).

In claiming that we all know these things, I don’t mean that we all admit them, recognize them to the same degree, or explain them in the same way, but they are all part of the universal human experience. And the fact that we continually discuss and debate them is evidence of their presence. They are internal witnesses and pointers to the existence and nature of God, and in that way they become allies in our evangelism.

Take Them to the Well

On that warm, dusty day, on the slope of Mount Gerizim, the Lord himself became one massive, momentous fulfillment of the words of the old prophet:

How beautiful upon the mountains
     are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
     who publishes salvation,
     who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isaiah 52:7)

He employed gospel allies already residing secretly in the heart of an unlikely convert to lead her to the living water she so desperately needed and longed for. Isn’t that essentially our story too?

When it comes to evangelism, we can be too easily intimidated, especially when someone looks unlikely to respond well. It can appear to us like the ground isn’t level, like we occupy the less defendable ground because our hearer is likely to judge our gospel as foolish or weak (1 Corinthians 1:22–25).

In truth, the ground is often not level, but not in the way we might fear. Often, we have the advantage because, as with Jesus that day outside Sychar, we have unseen gospel allies residing in the hearts of our hearers. And if we listen carefully and prayerfully to our hearers, the Holy Spirit can show us how to employ them. Because when it comes to the power of God in evangelism (1 Corinthians 1:18), “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

We don’t need to be experts in apologetics or trained theologians to share the good news with others, even with the most resistant and entrenched. Often, we simply need to care more about helping them find the living water they so desperately need than about protecting our reputation or demonstrating how right we are. And if we do, we will find that we have secret allies in the pursuit of that person’s highest joy.

Meaningful Lives in a Purposeful World: How Providence Changes Everything

In order to live with real hope in this world, you must have a view of reality that can bear the weight of reality.

What do I mean by “reality”? I mean everything. We humans are designed to pursue understanding not only of the physical world (material reality) but also of the metaphysical world (ultimate reality). It’s not enough for us to know how everything works; we need to know what everything means.

We want to know why we exist. Where did the world come from? Why is there such breathtaking beauty and incomprehensible macroscopic and microscopic wonders in the natural world? Why does evil seem to infect and affect just about everything? Why is there so much suffering?

We want to know why our parents divorced. Why did I survive that accident? Why did my dreams crumble? What will happen when I die?

But when we ask such metaphysical questions, most often what we really want is not highly detailed answers, but to know whether or not, at the core of ultimate reality, everything has a purpose. Or is it all just meaningless? In other words, we must have what social scientists call a worldview — an interpretive grid or lens through which we see everything in order to make sense of it all.

So the question is, What view of ultimate reality, what worldview, can bear the full weight of the incomprehensibly vast and complex reality in which we live?

Worldview of the Bible

The Bible makes a clear, bold claim about what ultimate reality is: the triune God (Genesis 1:1; John 1:1–3; Matthew 28:19; Acts 17:28; Romans 11:36). But how would we describe the Bible’s worldview — the interpretive grid or lens, shaped by the ultimate reality of God, through which the Bible shows us what everything means? I suggest the Bible’s worldview is the providence of God.

What do we mean by the providence of God? John Piper captures it in a phrase: God’s wise and purposeful sovereignty. So why not just describe the Bible’s worldview as God’s sovereignty? Piper explains that while God’s sovereignty “focuses on God’s right and power to do all that he wills . . . it does not express any design or goal.” But “God’s providence carries his [sovereign] plans into action, guides all things toward his ultimate goal, and leads to the final consummation.”

If God’s providence is the biblical lens through which he wants us to see and make sense of ourselves and the world, what does the Bible teach us to believe about his wise and purposeful sovereignty?

[The Bible teaches us to] believe that God upholds and governs all things — from galaxies (Isaiah 40:26) to subatomic particles (Colossians 1:16–17), from the forces of nature (Psalm 147:15–18) to the movements of nations (Psalm 33:10–11), and from the public plans of politicians (Proverbs 21:1) to the secret acts of solitary persons (Proverbs 16:9) — all in accord with his eternal, all-wise purposes (Psalm 104:24) to glorify himself, yet in such a way that he never sins (Deuteronomy 32:4), nor ever condemns a person unjustly (Romans 2:11–12); but that his ordaining and governing all things is compatible with the moral accountability (Romans 3:19) of all persons created in his image. (Desiring God Affirmation of Faith)

This is the worldview of the Bible. And if this is what we believe is true about ultimate reality, we will see the world — as terribly infected with evil, sin, and suffering as it is — infused with great meaning. And we will live with an undercurrent of profound hope.

But if this isn’t what we believe about ultimate reality, if we believe the world is a product of mindless forces, we will see everything as fundamentally meaningless, and live with an undercurrent of despair. What we see through what we believe makes all the difference in the way we approach life.

World Without God

This difference can be seen in the way two remarkably brilliant and influential men of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell and C.S. Lewis, understood ultimate reality.

Russell was a metaphysical naturalist. He did not believe God exists; for him, therefore, material reality was ultimate reality. With no divine providence to guide the world, he viewed it as “the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms” and therefore “void of meaning.” Which meant, when it came to the story of humanity, he believed

that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.

C.S. Lewis well understood Bertrand Russell’s worldview, having once been a metaphysical naturalist himself. But after undergoing a gradual, arduous conversion to Christianity, the way he saw everything changed.

World Guided by God

Looking through the lens of biblical revelation, Lewis saw a cosmos enchanted, bursting with purposeful meaning, everything pointing him to the one thing that could possibly address his “inconsolable secret” (29), his undeniable “desire [for joy] which no experience in this world can satisfy” (181): God.

When it came to the story of humanity, what Lewis came to see could not have been more different than what Russell saw:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. (The Weight of Glory, 46–47)

Oh, the difference a worldview makes. Through his understanding of ultimate reality, Russell saw a meaningless world in which one must build one’s life “on the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” But Lewis, through his understanding of ultimate reality, saw God’s providential hand guiding all things toward his ultimate goal, a significant part of which is ultimately giving to those who love him what their souls most deeply desire: himself.

What Can Bear Our Reality?

Both Bertrand Russell’s metaphysical naturalism and C.S. Lewis’s Christianity are logically coherent ways of believing what’s ultimately real — both make internal logical sense. Whose belief, however, more accurately aligns with what is truly, ultimately real?

I believe a clue lies in how we answer this question: What view of reality can bear the weight of reality? No one can really build a life on “the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” No one can really bear existential hopelessness. We need the firm foundation of ultimate meaning to fuel the hope we need to live and thrive in a world like ours. Deep down at the most visceral, intuitive part of our being, we need to know that our lives, with all their joys and agonies, somehow fit into some larger purpose.

In other words, whether we articulate it this way or not, we need to see the world through the lens of the providence of God. As John Piper says,

That is where ultimate meaning is found. If we are going to understand anything, at the most important level, we start with this reality: God created the world, holds it in existence, and governs all of it for his purposes. Everything relates to everything because everything relates to God. The knowledge of this, and the fear of the Lord, is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:12).

This is the view of reality that bears the otherwise unbearable weight of reality, for while it doesn’t answer all our confounding questions, it provides us with the framework for understanding our profound existential questions. And in doing so, it addresses our soul’s deep, unshakable needs for real hope and lasting joy.

Faith Is Forged in Crisis

The Bible is a blood-earnest book. It’s a book about reality. And reality, as we know all too well, is often brutal and bloody. The Bible doesn’t sugarcoat this fact at all, but describes reality with disturbing forthrightness. Much of Scripture was written during brutal, bloody times by embattled, distressed, weary, even depressed authors. And at the pinnacle of the Bible’s story, at the core of the Bible’s message, is the Son of God dying a bloody death on a brutal Roman cross.

So, when we open our Bibles, rarely are we going to find a little light reading.

Even in the book of Psalms, this collection of inspired spiritual poetry that has brought immeasurable comfort to an incalculable number of saints across the centuries, we are frequently faced with distressing themes. In numerous psalms, we read writers’ wrestlings over what it means to trust the God they treasure as they witness some brutal and bloody reality, a reality that challenges their understanding or expectations of God’s promises and purposes.

These psalms fit into a category we call psalms of lament. In certain lament psalms, like Psalm 10, we’re reading an inspired author’s faith crisis captured in verse.

Can We Say That to God?

We see this immediately in the opening verse:

Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
     Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (Psalm 10:1)

That’s a remarkable thing to say to God. Could a Christian Hedonist actually pray this way?

Why would I ask that question that way? We at Desiring God believe that the Bible teaches an approach to life we call Christian Hedonism. We see in Scripture that a Christian is not someone who assents merely intellectually to core Christian propositional truth claims. A Christian loves God with all his heart (Matthew 22:37), values God as his greatest treasure (Matthew 13:44–46; Philippians 3:7–8; Hebrews 11:24–26), and seeks God as the source of his greatest and longest-lasting pleasure (Psalm 16:11). The triune God of the Bible is to be a Christian’s “exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4). Summarized in a sentence, Christian Hedonists believe Scripture teaches that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

We can certainly find lots of Christian Hedonistic prayers in the Psalms, like Psalm 73:25–26,

Whom have I in heaven but you?
     And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
     but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

But what about Psalm 10, where the writer laments his agonizing bewilderment over unjust, greedy, violent acts against innocent, helpless people? He’s not only disturbed by the wicked acts he’s witnessed; he’s disturbed that the wicked are prospering from their wickedness. And God, the righteous Judge, appears to be letting it happen. So, in typical biblical candor, he asks God, “Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” If a person truly loves, trusts, and treasures God above all else, can he pray like that? Can someone who rejoices in God ever lament God’s apparent distance and disregard?

In short, yes. In fact, Christian Hedonists pray to God this way at certain times because he is our “exceeding joy,” because we treasure him, because we love him. And because sometimes God’s ways and timing are agonizingly difficult to grasp. We see this sorrowful-yet-rejoicing dynamic in the brutal realities of Psalm 10.

Why Did God Feel Far?

First, we need to understand what was troubling this psalmist. He pours out his distress:

“In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor [because he is] greedy for gain” (Psalm 10:2–3). He “curses and renounces the Lord” (even denies God’s existence) (Psalm 10:3–4). “His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression” (Psalm 10:7). “In hiding places he murders the innocent” (Psalm 10:8). “He seizes the poor when he draws him into his net” (Psalm 10:9).

The poor are being exploited and even slaughtered by someone in a position of power (perhaps more than one) for the sake of financial benefit. The victims are in a “helpless” or defenseless position and so “are crushed, sink down, and fall by [the wicked person’s] might” (Psalm 10:10). These would be unspeakable deeds, except that silence would only compound the injustice of it all. Therefore, like Jeremiah, the psalmist “cannot keep silent” (Jeremiah 4:19).

What Faith Sounds Like in Crisis

The psalmist strives to put the wickedness he sees into words. We can sense his righteous anger. Such horrible oppression and injustice should make him (and us) angry.

But though the psalmist is addressing God with urgent earnestness, I don’t believe his anger is directed toward God. It’s directed toward the wicked who are wreaking such destruction. The psalmist is turning to God with his burning indignation toward evil perpetrators, and his tearful compassion toward victims because his hope is in God to bring justice and deliverance to bear. That’s why he prays.

We too witness, and sometimes are victims of, such wicked injustices. In our day, innocent, defenseless unborn babies are legally murdered, and children as well as vulnerable or entrapped adults are trafficked for sex, all financially profiting those perpetrating the injustices. In the face of such things, we cannot keep silent. First and foremost, before God. Out of compassion for afflicted ones and righteous anger toward perpetrators, we pour out our lamenting hearts to the God in whom we hope (Psalm 43:5) and from whom we receive hope (Psalm 62:5).

Learning to Cry Out in Crisis

But still, those opening lines of the psalm sound like God is the recipient of at least some of the psalmist’s anger:

Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
     Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (Psalm 10:1)

If that’s not anger or disillusionment or disappointment, what is it? It’s putting into words the painful perplexity of a crisis of faith.

Now, a faith crisis should not be confused with faith abandonment. Nearly every saint experiences faith crises of different kinds, and typically we must endure faith crises in order for faith to grow and strengthen — more on that in a moment. But the clearest evidence that this psalmist is not forsaking God is the presence of this psalm — the psalmist is praying! And in his prayer, he’s doing with God what all of us do with those we love and cherish deeply who act (or seem not to act) in ways we don’t understand: he’s honestly expressing his confusion and pain.

The psalmist’s soul is troubled that his biblically informed knowledge of God’s character does not seem to match the reality he’s observing. He believes “God is a righteous judge” (Psalm 7:11) who “executes justice” for the helpless and vulnerable (Deuteronomy 10:18). But he’s not seeing justice executed for the helpless and vulnerable. He’s seeing the wicked oppressor of the helpless “prosper at all times” (Psalm 10:5). Why God isn’t immediately stopping this injustice is beyond him. It’s a moment of crisis for him, and he’s telling God so.

I think it wrong, however, to assume that, because the psalmist asks God why he seems distant or hidden, he’s blaming God or scolding God for neglecting his responsibilities. What he’s doing is describing his experience of reality — the way the situation appears to him through his finite senses. And the reason he’s praying this way is precisely because he cares so deeply for God, because he loves and trusts God.

This is a faithful Christian response to a faith crisis. When we are painfully perplexed by the apparent discontinuity between what we know of God from the Scripture and what we observe in the world, when the mystery of God’s providential purposes meets the finiteness of our understanding, and it doesn’t make sense to us, God wants us to cry out to him. He wants us to cry out to him precisely because we love and trust him, even when our experience challenges what we believe.

Forging Christian Hedonists

The fact that the Bible speaks so honestly about reality is part of its self-authenticating quality; unvarnished honesty is one sign of sincerity and truth. And the fact that the Bible features a psalmist’s faith crisis over the problem of evil is part of why the Psalms have comforted so many for so long; we experience such crises too.

Sooner or later, every Christian experiences a faith crisis — some of us numerous ones. But a crisis of faith does not mean a loss of faith. In fact, it is often through faith crises that we learn what faith really is.

Scripture is full of accounts of saints enduring many kinds of faith crises, where the God who governs reality, in all its bloody brutality, does not meet the saints’ understanding and expectations, leading those saints to wrestle deeply. The Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith” is lined with such saints, who through crises learned what it really means to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

I mentioned earlier that Christian Hedonists love to pray Psalm 73:25–26:

Whom have I in heaven but you?
     And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
     but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

What I didn’t mention is that Psalm 73 is another account of a faith crisis, and this prayer is part of the fruit of that crisis. So, when your own crises come, don’t assume your faith, love, and joy are gone, but that God wants to grow them in the furnace of affliction. Because the forging of a Christian Hedonist often occurs in the fires of a faith crisis.

All Who Believe Battle Unbelief

“I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). This plea — this prayer — of a desperate father, who was interceding to Jesus on behalf of his afflicted child, expresses in five simple words a profound, difficult, confusing, and common experience. All followers of Jesus have both belief and unbelief, both faith and doubt, present in us at the same time.

We see this paradoxical presence elsewhere in Scripture. We see it in Peter, who walked on water only to start sinking when unbelief set in (Matthew 14:28–31). We see it in Thomas, who declared, “I will never believe” without physical proof of Jesus’s resurrection, while still believing enough to stay with the other disciples until Jesus finally appeared to him (John 20:25–26). We see it laced through the Psalms, like Psalm 73, where saints wrestle out loud with their unbelief. And we see it all too frequently in ourselves, which is why we identify with the desperate father’s prayer. Unbelief is a “common to man” temptation for believers (1 Corinthians 10:13).

But though it is a common temptation (and often a subtle temptation), it is a spiritually dangerous one, one that can lead us “to fall away from the living God” (Hebrews 3:12). It is an enemy we must fight vigorously.

We each fight unique battles against this enemy, because each of us has unique experiences and unique temperaments that make us uniquely vulnerable to certain forms of unbelief. Getting help to see our vulnerabilities to unbelief is crucial to winning our battles. And it is something Jesus is happy to help us with, if we ask him.

Desperate and Vulnerable Father

The father of the afflicted boy in Mark 9:14–29 surely had a unique vulnerability to unbelief. And it’s not difficult to understand why. Just imagine what his experience had been like up to the point when he encountered Jesus.

He had spent a number of years, likely doing everything he could, in order to help his son (Mark 9:21). The terrible affliction had a demonic source, which had tormented the boy since early childhood, causing violent seizures and preventing him from speaking (Mark 9:17–18). The father, and no doubt his wife, had saved their precious child — their only begotten son (Luke 9:38) — from death numerous times, rescuing him out of fire and water (Mark 9:22). Which means they lived with the daily dread that they might not be there in time to save him the next time. And they lived with the future dread of what would become of him when one or both were no longer there to save him.

They also likely lived with a deep fatigue brought on by continual vigilance night and day. They may have endured a kind of recurring relational strain on their marriage that often accompanies stressful and painful parenting situations. They likely lived with the numerous ways their son’s affliction affected them financially, from the direct costs of seeking out help for him, to the indirect costs of having less time devoted to earning a living. And on top of all that, they likely lived with the shame that perhaps they, or their child, had somehow sinned and brought this curse upon the boy — a shame compounded by knowing that others likely wondered the same thing (as in John 9:1–2).

Unique Battles in a Common War

Surely this beleaguered father had prayed often for his priceless son, but with no visible results. Surely he had previously sought out other spiritual leaders or exorcists to drive the devil out, but to no avail.

Hearing stories of Jesus’s power over disease and demons stirred in him enough hope that he brought his child to see Jesus. Not finding the famous rabbi, he pleaded with Jesus’s disciples for help. But they were no more effective than anyone else had been (Mark 9:18). We can understand why his hope, and therefore his faith, seemed to be ebbing low when Jesus showed up.

The reason I say all this is to show how this father was very much like us. His unbelief had roots in his unique experience. So does ours. His fears and disappointments shaped his expectations. So do ours. He was vulnerable, in deeply personal places, to losing the fight for faith. So are we. We can sympathize with this man when he pleaded with Jesus, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (Mark 9:22), because we’ve probably prayed or thought similar things.

We might expect Jesus to respond as gently and kindly to this desperate father as he did to the leper seeking healing, to whom Jesus, in pity, reached out and touched, saying, “I will; be clean” (Mark 1:40–42). But that’s not how Jesus responded.

Surprising, Merciful Rebuke

Jesus’s response to this father catches us off guard: “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23). This shocks us. And the reason is because most of us can identify more with the father’s struggle than with the leper’s. We expect Jesus to comfort this man, but instead he rebukes him. It makes us wonder, Is this how Jesus feels about our unbelief?

One way to answer is that, in the Gospels, Jesus consistently affirms those who express faith and rebukes those who express doubt and unbelief. The leper he healed is a good example. This man said to Jesus, “If you will, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40). This is a declaration of faith, and it moved Jesus to a compassionate response of healing.

But the father of this afflicted boy said to Jesus, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (Mark 9:22). There’s faith in this request; faith is why he sought Jesus out in the first place. But there’s also unbelief; part of him doesn’t expect Jesus will be any more successful than others had been. So, he receives Jesus’s rebuke, just like Peter did in the water and Thomas did when Jesus finally appeared to him (Matthew 14:31; John 20:27–29).

And here’s what we need to remember: Jesus’s rebuke to a believer who is allowing unbelief to infect and enfeeble his faith and govern his behavior is a great mercy.

Mercy of Discipline

Faith is the channel through which God’s graces of salvation and sanctification and spiritual gifts all flow. Unbelief obstructs the channel and therefore inhibits the flow of God’s grace (James 1:5–8). So, Jesus’s rebuke of the man’s unbelief is the mercifully painful, momentary discipline of the Lord intended to expose the disease of unbelief (to use a different metaphor) so the believer can see it for what it is and fight it; because if he doesn’t, he will not share the Lord’s holiness and will not bear the peaceful fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:10–11).

In that sense, Jesus is the good physician. He does not coddle doubt and unbelief, just like a good doctor doesn’t coddle cancer in a patient. If left invisible and untreated, it will kill. So, what Jesus is doing is helping this struggling father see clearly his sin of unbelief, just like he did for Peter and Thomas.

And it worked. We see this in the father’s desperate cry to Jesus: “I believe; help my unbelief!” And like Jesus pulling Peter out of the water, and showing Thomas his hands and side, he honored the father’s faith, however defective, and set the boy free (Mark 9:25–27).

Jesus Will Help You See Your Unbelief

All of us who believe in Jesus also have unbelief in Jesus. It’s not surprising, because we all live with deceitful indwelling sin (Hebrews 3:13). And we all live in a fallen, deceitful world. So, we all must frequently fight for faith (1 Timothy 6:12) by battling unbelief.

But the presence of unbelief in us is often subtle. We don’t always see it clearly. It has roots in our unique experiences and in our unique temperaments, which make us uniquely vulnerable to its deceitfulness. Our doubts can seem to us understandable, even justifiable. But like all sin and fallenness, unbelief is spiritually dangerous. What we really need, even though we might prefer to avoid it, is for Jesus to mercifully help us see our unbelief, even if it means his momentarily painful discipline.

Having followed Jesus for decades, I have experienced his discipline numerous times, including recently. I have learned to even ask him to discipline me when I recognize the symptoms of unbelief (which, for me, are a lingering, shadowy presence of doubt and skepticism and self-pity and self-indulgence). I ask Jesus to discipline me, not because I enjoy the pain and humbling of the exposure of my unbelief, but because I want the joy of fully believing that God exists and is the rewarder of those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6). And I want the channel of his grace toward me unclogged. And so I pray with the psalmist,

Search me, O God, and know my heart!

     Try me and know my thoughts!

And see if there be any grievous way in me,

     and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139:23–24)

I have found that Jesus answers.

And he will answer you. He will answer the prayer, “I believe; help my unbelief!” And he’ll help you fight your unbelief by exposing it, that place you want to conceal. But do not fear his discipline; fear unbelief. Unbelief will block the channels of faith, it will rob you of joy, and, if undealt with, it will destroy you. The momentary pain of the discipline, however, is the path to greater joy, for it opens the channels to more of God’s grace — to more of God.

Nothing Will Be Impossible with God: Christmas Through the Mothers’ Eyes

“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman” (Galatians 4:4). But few of the many who were praying and looking for the Messiah’s arrival recognized him when he came. The manner and form of his Advent, like the culmination of his salvific mission some three decades later, did not match their expectations. Both were more disturbing and wonderful than anyone imagined. Christmas truly proves that “nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37) — something two mothers, the teenage Mary and the middle-aged Elizabeth, witnessed in extraordinarily personal ways.

Luke tells the stories of the angel Gabriel delivering different divine promises to Zechariah, regarding John the Baptist, and to Mary, regarding Jesus the Messiah. Each report tells of how these saints responded to God in faith. And the responses are different. The two threads are beautifully woven together when Mary travels to stay with Zechariah’s wife, Elizabeth. In the end, we see God’s redeeming grace manifest in both.

Imagine a conversation between Mary and Elizabeth, shortly after the astounding moment when, upon meeting for the first time since both had become unexpectedly pregnant, they each erupted in worship (Luke 1:39–55).

The two women stood near the doorway for a moment in a holy silence, their teary eyes locked on each other’s in holy wonder, their hands on their abdomens holding holy children — Elizabeth’s belly noticeably swollen. Then Elizabeth quietly repeated what Mary had just exclaimed: “Holy is his name.”

Mary breathed heavily and steadied herself on the doorpost. A miraculous conception wasn’t sparing her waves of early-pregnancy nausea. “O Mary! Come sit down. What am I thinking?” Elizabeth guided her to a stool near the table. “You must be exhausted — and hungry! When was the last time you ate?”

“This morning,” said Mary. Elizabeth already had two small bread loaves on a platter.

“Well,” said Elizabeth, adding a healthy cluster of grapes, “no wonder you feel weak!” A few dates and olives were added, and she set the dish before the young mother, not yet sixteen. “Eat!” she commanded with maternal kindness, while pouring two cups of water. “Did you walk all the way from Nazareth?”

“Not all the way,” smiled Mary. “The Lord sent me a few kind strangers with carts.”

As Elizabeth handed Mary her cup, she said, “It must have taken you, what, four days?” Then she stopped and stared at Mary for a moment, perplexed. “What brought you here, Mary?”

“I was told that you were also expecting a child,” Mary replied, “and I knew you, more than anyone, would understand my . . . situation.”

“But hardly anyone even knows I’m pregnant,” said Elizabeth. “We kept it a secret for five months. I just recently began to tell others. Who in Nazareth could possibly know yet?”

Mary paused, and then said, “An angel told me.”

Elizabeth smiled knowingly. “Ah, I had a feeling,” she said. “Was it Gabriel?”

Mary’s eyes widened. “Yes! Did he come to you too?” she asked.

“Not me. Zechariah — when he was offering incense in the temple.”

“What did he say to Zechariah?”

“Well,” said Elizabeth, “I’m not sure I have the whole story yet. Zechariah hasn’t been able to talk about it.”

“Is he not allowed to tell you?” asked Mary.

“No, he’s allowed; he just can’t tell me. The angel made him deaf and mute. Zechariah can write, but no one who knows we’re expecting can read. So, all I know is what I’ve gathered from hand gestures and lip-reading. But I know that the angel Gabriel appeared to him, told him that we were going to have a child — after all these years! — that we’re to name him John, that he’s not to have wine or strong drink, and that he will be a prophet like Elijah.”

Mary looked down thoughtfully. Then quietly, almost speaking to herself, said, “Elijah . . . ‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet’ . . .”

Elizabeth picked up on the quote and finished it, “. . . before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes” (Malachi 4:5). They again locked eyes in holy wonder, and instinctively again placed their hands on their holy abdomens.

Then Elizabeth said, “That’s why he leaped, Mary!” She reached for Mary’s hand. “That’s why my baby John leaped for joy when we heard your voice! He wasn’t just rejoicing at the voice of the mother of our Lord. He sensed the presence of the One whose way he is to prepare!” Another holy silence. More holy tears. The Holy Spirit was powerfully present.

“Did the angel give you a name for your son?” asked Elizabeth.

“He said, ‘You shall call his name Jesus,’” said Mary. “Jesus . . .” savored Elizabeth, “The Messiah’s name is Jesus . . . Yahweh saves. Of course that’s his name.”

“And your John’s name,” said Mary. “Yahweh is gracious.” Elizabeth bowed her head to stem the tears.

“The Lord is very, very gracious to grant this old woman disgraced with barrenness the privilege of bringing his prophet into the world.” Then looking back up, she said, “And to bring the very young mother of my Lord . . .” Then it hit her.

“Mary! Did you have a wedding, and I didn’t hear about it?”

“No,” Mary replied, “I am still betrothed — to Joseph.” Elizabeth looked more confused. “I’ve not been with Joseph, or any man,” Mary said quietly. “The angel told me, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God.’”

Elizabeth gaped in wonder. Then she put her hand to her mouth and her eyes shone with joy. “That’s what it meant!” she said.

“What?” asked Mary.

Elizabeth said, “Those words that poured out when I saw you: ‘Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.’ I could tell the Holy Spirit was moving me to speak, and now I know fully what those words meant: You believed! You believed the angel of the Lord, even when he told you that your pregnancy would be a miracle — a pregnancy like no one else has ever experienced!” Mary smiled meekly.

Reaching for Mary’s hand again, Elizabeth said, “We don’t all have such great faith, Mary. Zechariah won’t mind if I tell you this. Like I said, I don’t know all the details yet, but I know the angel struck Zechariah mute because, when he heard the angel’s message, it seemed unbelievable. I mean, we’re old. We had stopped hoping. Anyway, Zechariah somehow questioned Gabriel and was disciplined.”

Mary smiled and said, “When the angel told me you were pregnant, he said, ‘for nothing will be impossible with God.’”

“He said that?” asked Elizabeth.

Mary nodded and said, “It was a gift to me to know that I’m not alone — that there’s someone who would understand my . . . situation. But I think it might be a gift for you too, to help you know that God is gracious to those he calls to believe what seems impossible to them.”

“Oh, God is gracious,” said Elizabeth. More tears. “But you, precious Mary. We struggled to believe God’s promise for what seemed impossible to us. But you believed God’s promise for what really is impossible with man. You didn’t have to be convinced that nothing is impossible for God.

“O Mary, blessed are you among women. And blessed is the fruit of your womb. And holy is his name.” Elizabeth paused just to savor it again. “Jesus.”

Zechariah’s and Mary’s different responses to Gabriel’s announcements fit the pattern woven throughout Scripture: saints experiencing glorious moments of great faith and ignoble moments of stumbling, weak faith. And usually the more Scripture tells us of saints’ lives, the more likely we are to see them experience both kinds of moments. Which is a mercy to us, since “we all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2) and know what it’s like to cry, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

This Christmas, whatever promises of God you are struggling to believe, remember Jesus — that Yahweh saves. And remember John — that Yahweh is gracious. And even if you, like Zechariah, are struggling to believe God’s promise because it just seems impossible to be true, God is still gracious with you, even if that means he first disciplines you to help you see and receive his steadfast love and mercy.

Christmas indeed reminds us that “nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).

The Universe Was No Accident: What We Still and Will Believe

“I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” (Apostles’ Creed)

The vast majority of people throughout human history have believed that God (or a god or numerous gods or some kind of divine being) created all that exists. The mythologies and cosmologies have differed, but the prevailing worldviews in nearly every culture have agreed that, when we survey the earth or the heavens, what we’re looking at is a creation.

So, for most of the Christian era, when Christians have confessed from the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth,” non-Christian hearers have not found the concept of God as the creator incredible. Hardly anyone could have possibly conceived of the cosmos just popping into existence on its own. Some deity must have made all this.

Today, however, at least in some parts of the world, it’s a different story. Increasing numbers say they find our confession about creation ludicrous. They claim to believe the cosmos, and we inhabitants, came into existence without any divine initiative. And while not yet the stated personal worldview of the majority of individuals, atheistic or agnostic naturalism, with its God-less origin and end-times visions, has become the most influential worldview of the popular cultures in Europe, North America, and other regions. And it poses a formidable challenge to the Christian belief in God the Creator.

But for Christians, such a challenge is nothing new. In every era, we have been called to bear witness to — and confess before — an unbelieving world, whatever its prevailing worldview, that God the Creator is ultimate reality, that there is profound meaning in all he has made, and that he is directing the course of the future of his creation not toward extinction, but toward a new birth of freedom. And this calls for Christian courage, because our confession will sound foolish to those who claim otherwise.

Audacious Confession

To believe that God the Father is the Creator of heaven and earth is to believe that God is ultimate reality. It is to believe

that the rock-bottom truth is God’s self-revelation as “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14), the self-existent One “from whom are all things and for whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6);

that God is the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:6) and “our Father . . . the Father of mercies” (2 Corinthians 1:2–3) for everyone who by faith is “in Christ” (Romans 8:1);

that this God is God, “and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22);

that not only is there no other god, but there is no absence of God, no ultimate nothing — that “in the beginning [there was] God” (Genesis 1:1). Period.

In a pluralistic world, this can seem like an audacious confession. And Christianity has only ever existed in a pluralistic world. It requires courage to stand in opposition to a dominant cultural worldview, and declare that ultimate reality is, in fact, radically different. And historically, Christians have often been called to confess the Trinitarian God as ultimate reality and the cosmos as his creation before cultures whose worldview is diametrically opposed (often with great hostility) to what we confess. It requires courage to be a confessing Christian.

For the most part, those other dominant worldviews have been fundamentally religious: animistic, pantheistic, polytheistic, or monotheistic. The debate has centered on which supernature is real.

But for most Christians in the West today, the most dominant alternative worldview in your culture is fundamentally nonreligious. Part of this is due to the way your nation is constitutionally constructed: to accommodate a plurality of worldviews, which, generally speaking, is good. But as we all know, it is also due to the influence of metaphysical naturalism (the denial of the supernatural). This belief has grown significantly over the last 150 years, largely as a result of inferences drawn from discoveries in various scientific fields, most famously Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Now the debate has centered on the very existence of the supernatural.

One significant reality at stake in the creation debate is whether or not the magnificent cosmos has any inherent meaning. And the implications of that question, in particular, are huge.

Hope of a Created Cosmos

When Christians confess that God the Father created the heavens and the earth, inherent in that belief are three truths: first, that God’s creation was originally “very good” (Genesis 1:31); second, that after the fall of mankind (Genesis 3), God subjected the creation to futility — in hope (Romans 8:20); third, that God so subjected it in hope “that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

This means that what Christians see all around them (or should) is a creation, one that is infused with profound meaning. We see “heavens [that] declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1) and an “earth . . . full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). Even in its futility and corruption, Christians see in creation God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature . . . in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). And the groaning of this corrupted creation, which we all keenly experience, increases (or should) our anticipation of “the [promised] freedom of the glory of the children of God,” when he will make the heavens and the earth completely new, and “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore” (Revelation 21:1, 4).

In other words, a cosmos created by “the God of hope” makes it possible for a Christian to be filled “with all joy and peace in believing, [and] by the power of the Holy Spirit . . . [to] abound in hope” (Romans 15:13).

Despair of an Uncreated Cosmos

Metaphysical naturalism, on the other hand, holds out no such hope. Famous twentieth-century philosopher, mathematician, and metaphysical naturalist Bertrand Russell, in beautiful prose and brutal terms, made clear what it means to embrace a belief in a cosmos “void of meaning”:

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins. . . . Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built. (“A Free Man’s Worship”)

Putting it even more personally, toward the end of his life Russell said of his approaching death,

There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere; only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.

Reading Russell, I’m reminded of Chesterton’s comment regarding a certain metaphysical naturalist he knew: “He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding “(Orthodoxy, 18). And it’s eminently debatable that science conclusively validates such a worldview, as Russell claimed. A host of credible, rational scientists have, upon examination of the evidence, come to the belief that God the Father created the heavens and the earth.

But Russell nails this point: metaphysical naturalism is hopeless. “There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere.” This is, after all, a worldview built on “the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” And herein lies a clue to the truth of what is ultimately real, one the human heart recognizes and longs for: hope.

Question We Can Answer

It can be intimidating to confess God as Creator in the face of a worldview that has an arsenal of purported scientific assertions and objections to our creed. We think we must be able to capably answer them. While some of us are called and equipped to do this, many of us aren’t.

But all Christians have something every other person desperately needs and can’t help but seek: hope. That’s why Peter said, “Always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). He didn’t mean all of us should be prepared to dismantle and invalidate another’s worldview. He meant we all should be ready to explain our hope.

Hope is necessary for human life. Our souls need hope like our bodies need food — we can’t keep going without it. Which means, those who embrace Russell’s description of ultimate reality hold a belief in their heads that their hearts cannot really bear. A faith (which is what naturalism is) built on a foundation of unyielding despair is vulnerable to a faith built on the foundation of hope.

Christianity sounds like “folly” to unbelievers (1 Corinthians 1:18). God designed it that way. He has chosen “what is foolish in the world to shame [those who believe they are] wise” (1 Corinthians 1:27). So, it should not surprise us when metaphysical naturalists call us kooky. But Christianity is abundantly rich in precisely what metaphysical naturalism is bankrupt of: hope. This can give us courage as we confess our audacious belief in God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth. For when we’re asked how “by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God” (Hebrews 11:3), we can be prepared to offer them what they most need: the God of hope.