Nancy Wilson's Blog, page 29

February 8: Sabbath Feasting

Ecclesiastes 9:7, “Go, eat your bread with joy, And drink your wine with a merry heart; For God has already accepted your works.”

Incarnational living means our Christian faith comes out in what we do and how we live. One of the central things we do each day is sit down around the table and eat together. We are to eat our bread with lots of laughter. We are to drink our wine with merriment and happiness. Our homes should be overflowing with the joy of knowing Christ, and the table is a perfect place for this to be happening on a daily basis, and especially on the Lord’s Day. The Lord’s Day is our weekly feast of celebration.

This is not pietism, but true piety. Piety is holiness, and of course that is a good thing. Pietism is a show of holiness which isn’t real holiness. Pietism is passing the butter with a long and guilty face and lifting the glasses because this is what we have to do. But we are feasting, rejoicing, and celebrating the Good News of our salvation because we get to, not because we have to.

Sabbath feasting is a victory celebration each week. We win! Jesus rose! God did not give us a list of foods we are not allowed to eat. Quite the opposite! (See Acts 10:9-16.) He did not require us to be teetotalers. We are to drink our wine with merry hearts.

Pietism is a desire to be holier than God. Pietism parades with long lists of no-no’s: do not eat this, or touch that, or drink the other thing, or even take a whiff of it.

The Gospel is all about grace, and some of this grace is in the bread basket and in the wine glasses. Even more is in the faces gathered around the table.

February 7: Proverbs 28:26

He who trusts in his own heart is a fool,

But whoever walks wisely will be delivered.

I recently saw a popular magazine that featured an interview with a woman who was speaking out about the things she has learned along the way. Having just come out of her third failed marriage, she has a lot of experience to glean from. The big thing that she said she had learned was that at the end of the day, you just have to follow your heart. Of course this is not a new insight from her; it is a often repeated and admired philosophy in the world. So much so that we cannot see the bad judgment in taking that kind of life and love advice from a woman coming out of her most recent exhausted marriage.

But here we have Scripture’s take on that little bit of insight from the world. Trusting in your own heart will make you a fool.  This is funny when you think about it. Your heart will just make a fool out of you if you are trusting in it. Do not follow it, unless you are hoping to be a fool. Trust your heart, and things will not be smart in your life.

Still, never do you hear an interview with an Olympic hopeful who says, ” I just really want to walk in wisdom as I pursue this.” When people are talking about big decisions – where to move, who to marry, whether to have children, whether to open a business, we are trained to think of it in terms of following our hearts, and not in terms of walking in wisdom.

The word of God (wisdom) is the bedrock. Here is a long, constant standard. When your heart is in submission to that standard, it can wave up and down, but it is still anchored. If your marriage (or job, or life with children) is not tethered to the Word of God, you will be careening wildly all over the place. Hearts are terrible leaders, but great followers. When you are walking in wisdom, your heart can follow wisdom. When you are trying to follow your heart, you will find yourself behaving like a fool. Our hearts are quitters. They are faithless. They are needy. They are selfish. They are fickle. They tire easily, and get fussy fast. Our hearts are not to be trusted with leadership.

If your heart is a bloodhound, get it on the trail of wisdom. Do not ask your heart to follow the illusive happiness squirrel, with you being dragged along behind it. Our hearts alone are fools. But there is a way to be delivered of their foolishness, and that is to walk in wisdom.

And of course this isn’t bad news. Instead of chasing after a little bit of skittish happiness, we are free to live in great joy. Joy is a side effect of faithfulness, and chasing after it in unfaithfulness is not a way of finding joy, just a way of always losing it. So take the advice of Scripture, and make your goal to walk in wisdom.

February 6: Proverbs 28:26

He who trusts in his own heart is a fool,

But whoever walks wisely will be delivered.

I recently saw a popular magazine that featured an interview with a woman who was speaking out about the things she has learned along the way. Having just come out of her third failed marriage, she has a lot of experience to glean from. The big thing that she said she had learned was that at the end of the day, you just have to follow your heart. Of course this is not a new insight from her, it is a often repeated and admired philosophy in the world. So much so that we cannot see the bad judgement in taking that kind of life and love advice from a woman coming out of her most recent exhausted marriage.

But here we have Scripture’s take on that little bit of insight from the world. Trusting in your own heart will make you a fool.  This is funny when you think about it. Your heart will just make a fool out of you if you are trusting in it. Do not follow it, unless you are hoping to be a fool. Trust your heart, and things will not be smart in your life.

Still, never do you hear an interview with an Olympic hopeful who says ” I just really want to walk in wisdom as I pursue this.” When people are talking about big decisions – where to move, who to marry, whether to have children, whether to open a business, we are trained to think of it in terms of following our hearts, and not in terms of walking in wisdom.

The word of God (wisdom) is the bedrock. Here is a long, constant standard. When your heart is in submission to that standard, it can wave up and down, but it is still anchored. If your marriage (or job, or life with children) is not tethered to the word of God, you will be careening wildly all over the place. Hearts are terrible leaders, but great followers. When you are walking in wisdom, your heart can follow wisdom. When you are trying to follow your heart, you will find yourself behaving like a fool. Our hearts are quitters. They are faithless. They are needy. They are selfish. They are fickle. They tire easily, and get fussy fast. Our hearts are not to be trusted with leadership.

If your heart is a bloodhound, get it on the trail of wisdom. Do not ask your heart to follow the illusive happiness squirrel, with you being dragged along behind it. Our hearts alone are fools. But there is a way to be delivered of their foolishness, and that is to walk in wisdom.

And of course this isn’t bad news. Instead of chasing after a little bit of skittish happiness, we are free to live in great joy. Joy is a side effect of faithfulness, and chasing after it in unfaithfulness is not a way of finding joy, just a way of always losing it. So take the advise of Scripture, and make your goal to walk in wisdom.

February 6: Mother’s Law

Proverbs is a great book for sons to read because a whole bunch of it addresses them directly. In fact, if you give it a quick look through, you’ll see many instances of paragraphs beginning with things like “My son, listen up!” Here are just a few samples:

(1:8) “My son, hear the instruction of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother.”

(2:1) “My son, if you receive my words, and treasure my commands within you…”

(3:1) “My son, do not forget my law, but let your heart keep my commands…”

(6:20) “My son, keep your father’s command, and do not forsake the law of your mother.”

Sons can sometimes forget that Mom is to be honored and obeyed just as much as Dad is to be honored and obeyed. And mothers can sometimes forget that fact themselves. God has given mothers authority over their sons as well as their daughters. They must learn to wield that authority in a godly way, not molly-coddling sons and not being dictatorial over their sons. Sons are to be brought up wearing Mom’s law like an ornament around their necks. A mom who honors and respects her son by teaching him wisdom will gain a son who will some day be teaching her wisdom himself. A mother who lays down the law is a huge blessing to a son, especially if the law is God’s and not something she has made up to suit herself.

Mom’s law should include some of these gems: Stay away from sinners who are trying to entice you to do stupid things (1:10). Keep your eye on wisdom (3:21). Pay attention to what I am saying (4:20; 5:1). Stay away from loose women (7:5). (And these are just a handful from the opening chapters.)

In order for mothers to instruct their sons and daughters wisely, they have to be reading Proverbs and doing Proverbs themselves. We have a treasure trove of wisdom in this book. Open it up for yourself and welcome your children into it.

The famous chapter 31 on the virtuous woman begins with “The words of King Lemuel, the utterance which his mother taught him.” King Lemuel’s mother taught him what to look for in a wife. And who better to do it?

Mothers should not abdicate when it comes to teaching their sons. Just because he is taller than you does not mean he doesn’t still need your instruction. Lay down the law like King Lemuel’s mom did. She taught him what’s what. And she must have been a Proverbs 31 woman herself because, as the saying goes, it takes one to know one.

 

 

February 5: Proverbs 16:32

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

I can’t read this verse without thinking of our two-year-old Blaire. She is very, very good at being two, and sometimes that runs into trouble. It is on these occasions that Daddy will say to her, “Blaire, who is the boss?” and she will admit, however reluctantly, that he is the boss. Then he always follows up with, “What are you the boss of?” to which she always very gleefully replies, “I the boss of my heart!!”

This verse is rather surprising in its way. You would think that such an admonition would result in self-control the whole world over, wouldn’t you? It is so simple – would you like to be better than the mighty? Better than those who rule cities? Well then, simply put – control yourself. Be slow to anger, rule your spirit.

But as we all know this is so easy to say, so difficult to do. The book of James makes it quite clear that it is no small task to rule your tongue, because the truth of the matter is that our spirits are manned by a bunch of tiny mutineers. If you want to control yourself in this way, you will need to do a solid bit of ruling. It isn’t a position you get in without work. In this case, it appears to be comparing ruling your own spirit to being a person who overtakes and rules a city. A city that did not, presumably, want to be overtaken and ruled.

The world does not encourage us in this. Everyone wants everyone to vent all of their emotions all over the place, all of the time. If you have ever watched even a moment of reality TV, I imagine you have had the opportunity to see how unable people seem to be to control themselves. Even a team of camera men is not enough to get you in control of your spirit. Look the camera in the eye, people, and show us all that you are not the boss of yourself.

This is something that Scripture puts a lot of  emphasis on. We are to control ourselves. We are to be the kind of people who can rule over our little crew of pirates.

There is an important distinction here, and that is that controlling yourself is not the same thing as squashing yourself. We are totally pleased with the spirit that we see in our little two-year-old. We love the spice, the sauciness. But what we want most of all is for the spice, the sauciness, the can-do spirit, the determination, the stubbornness, the hilarity – to all be in obedience.

And this should be the same for all of us. Our emotions are not the enemy so long as they are being controlled. There is nothing wrong with our spirits, so long as they are in obedience to God.

February 4: Philippians 4:6

 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

 

I imagine that this verse is familiar to most everyone. It is such a beautiful combination of a command and a promise.  Don’t be anxious, give it to God with Thanksgiving, and you will be protected by peace.

The thing that I love about this passage is the promise of a peace that passes understanding guarding your hearts and minds. Peace the guardian. Peace the fence. Peace, the mean dog. Peace that no one can understand, peace that can’t be outsmarted. Imagine a sign on your heart, and on your mind, “Beware of Peace.”

This peace is not some kind of ambivalence. It is not some kind of soft haze. This kind of peace is not afraid of reality – quite the opposite, it is the one thing equipped to deal with it. When we give into fears and anxieties, we often feel like we are looking realistically at things. Maybe we are worried that we can’t get pregnant, so we head off down that worry path, thinking that plumbing the depths of anxiety will in some way equip us for it when it comes.

Maybe we are worried that we won’t get married, so we think that wrestling with all of the fear of rejection, fear of what other people are thinking, fear of what God has in store for us will in some way be a protection. Like if we gather all the ugly things around us we are not being naive. Like having anxiety is just being realistic.

Scripture tells us otherwise. Here, the command is to cast your concerns on God. If you want to deal with your worry, this is where you start. Because the peace that God provides (and which passes all understanding) is not some tame cozy kitty cat. It is not a fuzzy security blanket. It is security from true threats, from true problems, from true darkness. This peace is a peace that is fierce. It protects your heart. It protects your mind.

We know the kind of enemies of our hearts and minds have. Why do we think this kind of peace would be small? Why would it be gentle? It protects us from the worst enemies that we have – the enemies that we cannot see, that we cannot understand.

So when we are tempted to worry, we need to follow this simple progression. We need to make our concerns known to God with thanksgiving, presenting to Him our worries and concerns. What is promised us here is that His peace will protect us. It will protect our hearts, and protect our minds. And that is a wonderful promise.

February 2: Preparing for Worship

God made us to be in fellowship with Him. When we are right with our Maker, we are all we were created to be. But when man fell, the image of God in man was marred and the fellowship was broken. So God in His mercy provided a way through His Son to remake us in Him. That is the purpose of the Cross of Jesus. We die in Him and are raised in Him to new life. We are recreated.

Why does God remake us? He remakes us so we can be in fellowship with Him. We are put right with our Creator God so we can worship and glorify Him. This is the chief end of man, and this is the high point of our creational purpose. In other words, we are most like ourselves, most like human beings, when we worship and glorify God.

Worship is what we are made for. Worship “tunes our hearts to sing thy praise” as the old hymn puts it. When we worship God, we are restored and refreshed and rejuvenated spiritually.

I should clarify what I mean by worship in this post. I mean the weekly gathering together of God’s saints on the Lord’s Day: the church service. I realize worship can include other things, but I am confining my comments here to this meaning.

Worship is the most important thing we do all week. It is the capstone and the foundation for the week. What could be of more consequence than presenting ourselves and our families to God and worshiping Him with His people? Nothing. So if we believe this, then we ought to prepare ourselves each week to worship the Living God, to love Him with all we have.

What essential things are involved in worship? We present our bodies (Rom. 12:1-2) to God, and we make ourselves available for service. This is like saying, “Send me Lord! Whatever you have for me, I am willing to go and do it.”

Worship includes the preaching of God’s Word. We need teaching, and God has appointed pastors and teachers to prepare to feed God’s people each Lord’s Day. But we can’t be nourished if we are asleep or distracted or bored. We need to be attentive to God’s Word. Some people complain that they just aren’t fed at their church. No doubt some ministers have greater gifts than others when it comes to preaching. But (as my daughter aptly pointed out) there is a difference between not getting fed and going on a hunger strike. Be willing to be fed, even if it is not the best cooking in the world. It will nourish you if you are humble and receptive. Don’t be wishing you were somewhere else.

One old Puritan minister said, “How many sermons have you heard? How many have you learned?” How many more will we be privileged to hear? How many more Sundays will God bless you with before your life is over? Steward these opportunities to praise and worship the Living God.

God communes with us and feeds us at His Table. Breaking the bread and drinking the wine is done in remembrance of what Christ has done for us. This strengthens us and builds us up in the faith. Once when my grandson had missed church a few times due to family sickness, he told his mom, “I miss church. I need the Lord’s Supper!” Exactly!

What is the effect of our worship? Our minds are renewed, and we are transformed, week by week. Worship keeps us from letting the world push us into its mold. Worship remakes us week after week as we renew covenant with God. We are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. Then we are sent out to practice what we have learned.

How can we prepare for this day of days each week? The first thing to do is to pray. Pray for your pastor, for the others involved in leading the worship service. Pray for yourself, that you will enter into worship with no hindrances. Be the kind of parishioner who is a joy to lead. Prepare your family to worship by praying for them on Saturday. Then do the practical things like getting everyone’s clothes ready and making sure the kids are bathed and fed. Sunday should be a day the family anticipates with joy and expectation.

“This is the day the Lord has made! We will rejoice and be glad in it!”

 

February 1: Courtesy

Sometimes we may think that the cultural rules of courtesy are extra-biblical, so they are optional for Christians. But courtesy is a Christian virtue. 1 Peter 3:8 says, “be courteous” in the midst of other directions for Christian behavior. What is it to be courteous? Though its expression may vary from culture to culture, courtesy is basically kindness in the little things.

Ephesians 4:32 says “be kind to one another.” How do we show kindness? Thousands of ways, but if you think about it for a minute, most manners are ways of showing kindness. Aren’t all table manners just expressions of kindness? Don’t chew with your mouth open, we tell our children. Why? Because your neighbor doesn’t want to see your half-chewed food. You are being kind to everyone at the table when you take small bites, don’t burp, keep your hair out of your plate, use your napkin and not your sleeve, don’t grab food, and don’t reach across the table. All these and myriad other table manners are courtesies, ways of loving the other people seated at the table with you.

Good manners are a sign of good breeding. And what does that mean? It means your parents took the time to teach you lots of things to do and not to do in public. Things like “Don’t scratch. Don’t pick.” These are courtesies. When we teach our children these things, others will enjoy their company more. We are teaching them to be a blessing to others.

When we demonstrate good manners, we are living the way described in Philippians 2:3-4. “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” We let others go first. We don’t elbow our way to the front of the line. Courtesy is humility, which is the central way we imitate Christ.

So when you teach your children manners, don’t think you are wasting your time. This is really teaching them the Christian worldview.  It is teaching them that the world does not revolve around them and their wants. They must put others first. They must look out for their little sister. They must listen and not interrupt. These are all expressions of humility.

The person with the excellent manners may not necessarily be a Christian. But the Christian should have excellent manners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 31: Proverbs 18:13

He who answers a matter before he hears it,

It is a folly and shame to him.

Scripture has a lot to say about being quick to listen and slow to speak. Speaking from personal experience as a mother, it is very easy to feel like you already know what your children are going to say. In this realm especially it is easy to treat our children as half-people. Like the concerns that they are bringing to us are not the concerns of a friend, or the concerns of someone who is really struggling, but rather just background noise to our life. We treat their biggest problems as our littlest, and we brush them off. When they talk, we do other things. When they come to get help, we are mentally elsewhere, letting them tell us things that we don’t listen to, but then giving them counsel anyway. 

Children fall into the same sorts of sins repeatedly. They bicker with each other. They get their feelings hurt. They disobey and backtalk. All these things can make us want to rush right in and say something without actually taking the time to hear. I know this story, and it is old news. So why bother to listen? Why not just answer the matter with a vague response. Sometimes we think that listening to our children is a way of indulging the sin. They are being wrong, why should I listen? Why don’t I just tell them they are wrong at the outset?

Probably the easiest way to think of this is to imagine some kind of sin or problem that you fall into regularly. What kind of things do you repeatedly want to talk about? The hard day? The trouble you have with getting to the grocery store? The tiredness of not having a moment to yourself? Your weight? The dirtiness of the house, the needs of the kids, the temptation to anger you have? Think of coming to your husband with this kind of struggle in the evening and having him cut you off immediately with, “We’ve talked about this before, sweetie.”

Even if the problem you are bringing to him has been talked about a thousand different times, it hasn’t been talked about today. It hasn’t been talked about with these very specific details in place. It might not change the actual advice. He might actually be perfectly right if he doesn’t look up from his book but just says, “Be thankful. Your work is important. Your kids are worth it. You’ll get on top of the house soon.”

What should be clear to us is how much this approach would not be helpful. It isn’t just a bad idea to not listen when you don’t know what is going on, it is a bad idea to not listen when you do know. This verse tells us that it is more than just bad PR, it is a folly and a shame.

As parents, we forget how much those conversations mean to these little people. Listening first qualifies you to speak. When you are qualified, you can in turn be listened to. And not surprisingly, when we listen, we often find that God leads us to answer differently than our first impulse.

January 30: Night Instruction

“My heart also instructs me in the night seasons” (Psalm 16:8).

The middle of the night is a great time to have a worry-fest. You wake up for some reason, and then you don’t go immediately back to sleep, so your mind wanders. Before you know it, you are fretting over any number of things.

Often these things come in the form of self-examination. “I am too lazy. I am a bad mom. I should exercise more. I am a terrible wife. No body likes me. I will probably die of a heart attack if I don’t start dieting.”

I learned long ago that I am always a better mom in the morning than I am in the middle of the night. What I am getting at here is the tendency some of us might have of getting very negative in the middle of the night. (Or in the middle of the day…it doesn’t much matter when this happens.)

But the Bible says that our heart should instruct us in the night. We ought not to be listening to a bunch of false accusations about ourselves. Rather we ought to be instructing ourselves.

Let’s look at the context of verses 7-8: “I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel; my heart also instructs me in the night seasons. I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.”

God has given us counsel, so we can instruct ourselves late at night. What might we remind ourselves in the middle of the night? The Lord is always near….at my right hand. So I shall not be shaken.

The Holy Spirit is the Comforter, not the accuser. We must learn to distinguish these two. If you are accusing yourself, you are talking like the devil. That’s the language he speaks. The Holy Spirit counsels us, instructs us so we can instruct ourselves.

The result that follows is found in verse 9: “Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; my flesh also will rest in hope.” That means sweet sleep.