Michael Kelley's Blog, page 21

The Insidious Lie of Self-Fulfillment

Let’s begin with three perspectives that might sound familiar to you:

Perspective 1: I know that I’ve been in this marriage for a long time. And we have tried hard to make it work. But the truth is that I just don’t fit here any more. I need space to pursue my own dreams. And though once upon a time I might have thought I could be fulfilled in this kind of life, I now see that I must be true to myself and move on.

Perspective 2: I no longer experience God the way I need to in this church, so I have to venture out. I need to explore other avenues of faith, because I know God might speak to you through those traditional means, but I need the freedom to pursue Him on my own terms. To find the way He speaks specifically to me and the way I experience Him.

Perspective 3: I can no longer stay in this job. My heart tells me I was made for much more than this, and that surely God would want me to find a line of work where I can be more fulfilled. It’s true that the job I have is a good one, but I need something more than that. 

The problem here is two-fold, I believe.

The first problem requires us to ask a very simple, but very fundamental question: Can we really trust ourselves? Because that’s what each of these three perspectives is doing.

Implicit in the leaving of this marriage, or this church, or this role, is that I am actually capable of determining what is best for myself. And having determined that, that I am actually capable of knowing myself well enough to know what that is. Both of these assumptions are wrong, as any person who is actually self-aware will tell you. For a person who does possess a degree of self-awareness knows, paramount to most anything else, is that they are not to be trusted. Not with something as important as our own hearts.

We lie to ourselves on a near daily basis, for we are weak and frail creatures who are pulled from the truth by anything from a passing fling to a juicy hamburger. We are, as Paul lamented, those who know the good we ought to do and yet convince ourselves to do something else. Constantly. That’s why it’s such good news to know that we don’t have to trust ourselves. We can trust in God, and His willingness and ability to tell us the truth, far and above trusting in our own ability to do so.

The second problem is that in each of these cases, the person in question is pursuing at the cost of everything else their own self-interest. Self-actualization. The terms that most favor themselves. And that fundamentally violates what it means to be a Christian – namely, that following Christ is a life of self-denial. True enough, the other side of that self-denial is indeed self-actualization, but it’s a different kind of cut from what we find masquerading as true fulfillment in many spiritual circles.

True fulfillment actually embraces self-denial, and finds great joy in making much of Jesus as we do. The kind of self-actualization described in the perspectives above is not true fulfillment, but instead self-gratification. And there’s a big difference between the two.

Fulfillment is when we are aware of and are working toward our deeper desires while gratification is simply concerned with the feeling of the moment. It’s the difference between being fed with a hearty, 3-course meal, filled with healthy protein and vegetables, and eating 3 bean burritos from Taco Bell just because you’re hungry. In both cases you might end up full for a time; but only in the first you are truly fulfilled.

When you boil away the over-spiritualized language and mantra, I fear at the bottom you find the same old thing which tempts us every day and in every way – and that is the lure of self-lordship. It is our outright refusal to accept what comes from God’s hand as being for our good and for His glory, and instead picking up our own self-determined way of doing or thinking or feeling.

Lord help us.

Help us to see that in Jesus, not in ourselves, do we find the truest Truth. And help us to see the great beauty of self-denial for the sake of Christ.

The Simplest Way to Grow Your Love of the Bible

Here is an expression that, even if you don’t use it, I believe will resonate with you if you’re a Christian:

I want, to want…

“Wanting to want” means this: It means that as Christians, we are to have a different value system than that of the world. We are to value things that, in the eyes of the world, might often look like a waste of time. We are to make eternal kingdom investments rather than spending our time, finances, and emotional energy on earthly things.

Take, for example, the practice of prayer. Prayer is valuable. And it is beneficial. Prayer is the means by which we enter into a deeper relationship with our Creator in whose presence there is fullness of joy. Further, prayer is the God-ordained means by which we can bring real change into the world. By any measure of logic, then, we should not only make it our practice to pray, but that we should actually want to pray.

Problem is we don’t. We want to watch Netflix and chill. That leads us to wanting to want when it comes to something like prayer. Ideally, we should desire to pray, and not just pray because we know we should. So we want to want.

That’s true for all kinds of things in the Christian life because our emotions are just as broken by sin as everything else is. As the Spirit of God is making us more like Jesus, He is not only changing our behavior; He is redeeming our emotional lives as well. Someday, in heaven, our emotions and our actions will be brought into harmony with each other. We won’t just do the right thing; we will feel the right thing. But until then, we want to want.

Which brings us to the subject of the Bible. Here’s what we want to be true about us:

That God’s Word is a lamp to our feet and light to our path (Ps. 119:105).That we treasure God’s Word in our hearts (Ps. 119:11).That we delight in the statutes as revealed in the Bible (Ps. 119:16).That the ordinances of the Bible be sweeter than honey dripping from a honeycomb (Ps. 19:10).

That’s what we want. But here is our reality:

Many mornings it’s a discipline rather than joy to open God’s Word.It feels like we are too busy for 10 minutes with an open Bible.It’s hard to understand exactly how these verses relate to my life today.

So again, we want to want when it comes to the Bible. But is there a way for us to move in the right direction? Is there some action we can take that will propel us down the road of discipline to joy when it comes to Scripture? There is, and it’s a very simple way indeed:

The way to grow in our love of God’s Word is through reading God’s Word.

Think about it like this: Let’s say there is some other activity in life that you know you should do, but you don’t necessarily enjoy doing right now. Something like exercise. No doubt you should exercise. No doubt it’s beneficial to do so. But it’s been so long since you’ve done it, it’s just hard to keep going. How do you increase your value of that practice? And how do you increase your enjoyment of that practice? You do it, by doing it.

Another way to say it is this – your heart is going to follow your investment. You will care more about those things which you are giving yourself to. This is a very encouraging thing because we can’t control how we feel. We feel what we feel. But we can control what we invest ourselves in.

There are, then, really two options before us if we find ourselves wanting to want to read the Bible. Option 1 is that we are paralyzed by this state of being. That we stay stationary in our wanting to want, pining away at our lack of desire. Or, there’s option 2. Option 2 is that we recognize our emotions are broken, so we pray that God will change our hearts when it comes to reading the Bible. That we would not just do it, but love it. And then in faith, we start reading, believing that God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

If we make that investment, by God’s grace, our emotions will follow our actions, and we will not just read the Word, but love the Word.

This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. God is Eager to Forgive

What a beautiful truth, especially against the backdrop of a society when forgiveness is so often withheld.

2. The Spiritual Battle of Teen Screen Time

This is a good reminder that in such things we are really dealing with a discipleship opportunity, and not just a behavioral correction.

3. Disappointment as Opportunity

When our plans are frustrated, it’s always an opportunity for renewed faith and hope, directed in the right place.

4. Taylor Swift Fantasy Football Guide

Just a fun read here. And a reminder that fall is coming…

4 Great Therefore’s of the Bible

Indicatives and imperatives. You find them both in the Bible.

Indicatives are facts. They are realities. And in the Bible, they are firm and secure because the Bible is the unchanging Word of God.

The imperatives are commands or implications. They are statements of direction, made with authority, that have a direct and expected act of obedience expected to follow.

Now often, the indicative is linked with the imperative. It’s a statement of fact with an implication of response. And most often, the indicative is about what God has done and the imperative is about what we must do, or think, or believe in response as a matter of response and obedience. The order is important here – we response because God has done. Not, we behave so that God will do. It’s the simple difference between something like “God loves you” therefore you respond, and “I am obedient” so God will love me.

The link between the indicative statement of fact and the imperative statement of response is the word “therefore.” And again, you find it all over the Bible. That single word has great power because it brings together the work of God and the response of humanity. You might even say that the entire Christian life is built on understanding these “therefore’s”.

Here are just a few of the examples of this powerful word:

Therefore, put to death what belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry (Colossians 3:5).

Here is the command. We are not to casually associate with things like sexual immorality or impurity; no – we are to kill them. Put them to death. Even crucify them. But what is the indicative that drives this violent imperative? That, glory to God, we have already died in Christ and been raised to new life. With a new self. And a new heart. In this new life in Christ, then, we have been changed to fully embrace who we really are in Him and put to death what remains of our old selves.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship (Romans 12:1).

In the previous eleven chapters, Paul explained the universally hopeless nature of sin. He gave us the pathway of faith. He told us how we were set free from sin and death by the great sacrifice of Jesus, and that there is now no condemnation for us. Even more, that God is working all things together for our good and that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Therefore…

Therefore we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. We are to give ourselves wholly and completely, and joyfully, over to God. But don’t miss this – that Romans 12 is a chapter about the church. That not only us as individuals, but also we together as the body of Christ, should become a living sacrifice in light of the truth of the gospel.

Therefore write what you have seen, what is, and what will take place after this (Revelation 1:19).

John was taken up in a vision, and beheld the glorious Son of God. There was no longer any mistake about his identity as there was when John had previously walked with Him; not any more. Now He saw not the common looking tradesman-turned-Rabbi from Nazareth, but the ruler of the cosmos before Him. And what was the therefore of that vision?

To write it down because this One, this Jesus, is saying it. And if this Jesus says it, then it’s rock solid. Write it. Record it. Believe it. Come back to it. So that we might come back to it again and again today.

Therefore I will give him the many as a portion,
and he will receive the mighty as spoil,
because he willingly submitted to death,
and was counted among the rebels;
yet he bore the sin of many
and interceded for the rebels (Isaiah 53:12).

This “therefore” is different from the others. The context is the great Messianic passage of Isaiah 53, in which we get a true picture of God’s anointed one. The one who would bear our sorrows and sin. The one who would be despised and rejected by men. The one we would consider stricken by God because of the cross. And yet, in a great reversal, God would therefore lift up this chosen one, because of His obedience, and give Him many as a reward.

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord that our eternity hinges not on our ability to live out a “therefore” but on Jesus’ righteous life on our behalf.

4 Things Spiritual Growth is NOT

Once upon a time, I went out into the woods when I was pondering a question about the future and resolved I would not come back until God told me His will for my life. Then I got cold and went home.

I’ve never seen a burning bush or a message written in the clouds; there have been plenty of times I’ve asked God to reveal His will about this question or that one, but the answers have always come through a process of searching Scripture, listening to trusted friends and mentors, and then trying to make the wisest choice possible.

But there are some things we don’t have to ask about; some things we absolutely know for sure are God’s will for all of us:

“Give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:18).“For this is God’s will, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality…” (1 Thess. 4:3).“For it is God’s will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good” (1 Peter 2:15).

And then, of course, there is the fact that it is God’s will for every believer that they grow into maturity. Spiritual growth is God’s will for each and every one of us. But what is spiritual growth? Much ink (some of it mine) trying to qualify and quantify what spiritual growth is, what it looks like, and how we help each other in that effort. Part of the reason for all that ink is because though all spiritual growth has some things in common, people progress at a different rate and in different seasons and, sometimes, through different methods. So what if we looked at it from the opposite perspective? Maybe knowing what spiritual growth is NOT can help us avoid some of the tendencies that can eventually stunt that growth.

Here, then are four things that spiritual growth is NOT.

1. Spiritual growth is not passive.

That’s because no one drifts toward Jesus. If left to our own devices, and without exercising some intentionality, we will always, always, always drift from Jesus – not toward Him. Much as we might not like to admit it at times, in order to grow spiritually we must actually discipline ourselves, exercising acts of obedience and engaging in the spiritual disciplines. In doing so, we fight against the flesh that seeks to hang onto our new lives in Christ and embrace the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

2. Spiritual growth is not educational.

A caveat here – it’s not that spiritual growth is not educational at all, but that it’s not primarily educational. There is certainly an element of education involved in spiritual growth, for we must know the Word of God and constantly remind ourselves of the truth of the gospel so that it’s pressed further and further into our souls. But if we think of spiritual growth exclusively in educational terms, we can very easily find ourselves in a situation where our knowledge far outpaces our obedience.

3. Spiritual growth is not isolated.

This is tough news for introverts like me, but if we want to grow spiritually, we must embrace the community of faith God has placed us in. He has given us the gift of the church, not so that we might have a membership card or boast about the size of our gatherings, but so that we can help each other follow Him. Sometimes that means we encourage each other, but other times it means we speak difficult truth. Sometimes it means we rejoice with each other but other times it means we weep. But in all those seasons, we do those things together. Not in isolation.

4. Spiritual growth is not complicated.

People are complicated. But growing in Christ, when you boil it down to the simplest terms, is actually not. Perhaps we tend to make it so because complicating the process gives us an excuse to not involve ourselves deeply in it. But spiritual growth is really, at its core, a willingness to surrender yourself to the work of the Holy Spirit, who will teach you through His Word, the church, and God’s people to live out God’s will in everyday life. Everything else might be helpful, but the core is constant, pure, and gloriously simple.

This is God’s will for you. And it’s God’s will for me. Not that we stay in a state of spiritual infancy, but that we commit ourselves to growth. As we do, let’s make sure to remember that this spiritual growth we are experiencing is not passive, educational, isolated, or complicated, and give ourselves to what God is doing in and through us.

—

This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

Why “Is God With Me?” is the Wrong Question to Ask

Life is about making decisions.

From the moment we wake up, we start doing it. We decide whether to hit snooze or not. We decide what to have for breakfast. We decide which route to take to work. And then we keep deciding all the rest of the day. We make decisions about work, about money, about our families, and everything in between. True, some of these decisions are so common and everyday that we don’t even think about making them any more. But every once in a while, we come up against a larger decision – one that requires a pro / con list, much prayer, and the advice of many counselors.

I’d like to think that these bigger decisions don’t cause me as much angst as they once did, and perhaps they don’t, but even so – at the end of most days, even the ones without the big decisions, I find myself thinking something like this:

I sure hope that was the right decision.

I sure hope that was the right conversation to have.I sure hope that was the right life transition to make.I sure hope I didn’t add to many counseling bills to my kids’ future right there.

Those times I think I’m expressing a sentiment that is pretty common in the life of the Christian. At the core of all those “I hope’s” is another “I hope”:

I hope God was with me in that decision.

Now I know what you’re thinking, because it’s the same thing I’m thinking as I write this – God was, of course, with me, because the presence of God doesn’t ebb and flow like the tide. He has sealed Himself to me (and to you, if you’re a believer in Jesus) with the promise of the Holy Spirit in our lives. So of course God is with us. But in these particular circumstances, “with” isn’t so much a question of presence as it is support. What I’m really hoping is that God is in favor of the decision that I’ve made and will bless it.

I read this week a little passage in 2 Chronicles that made me think perhaps I’m asking the wrong question.

In the days of King Asa of Judah, there had been relative peace and prosperity in the land for 10 years. But then a challenge from an enemy came as Zerah the Cushite marched against the army of Judah with 300 chariots. Asa called our to God, asking for His divine assistance, and the Lord went to battle before His people. He struck down the Cushites and the men of Judah carried off a tremendous amount of plunder and returned to Jerusalem (2 Chron. 14). That’s when the Spirit of the Lord came upon Azariah and he went to meet King Asa with these words:

“Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you with you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you… (2 Chron. 15:1-3).

The question for Asa on the heels of this victory was not, “Is God with us?” The question moving forward was, “Are you with God?” Because when you are with Him, He will be with you. It’s not unlike the experience Joshua had the night before he was to confront the mighty walled city of Jericho:

“When Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in His hand. Joshua approached Him and asked, “Are You for us or for our enemies? ”

“Neither,” He replied. “I have now come as commander of the LORD’s army” (Joshua 5:13-14).

Are you with us, God?

Wrong question, Joshua. God is not on a changing agenda. He’s never had a mid-course correction. He’s never had the moment when He had to reevaluate His priorities and devote more energy to one place than another. He has, from the beginning of beginnings been doing the same thing. With the same goals. With the same end in mind. Of these things, that God has, is, and always will be for, there is no question. He has given them to us in His Word, and they’re not rocket science.

God is FOR the sake of His own name being made great among the earth.God is FOR the salvation of people from all the earth.God is FOR the building up of His church.God is FOR the transformation of His adopted into the likeness of of His only begotten Son.God is FOR marriages reflecting the greatness of the gospel.God is FOR parents raising their children to know, love, and fear Him.

We know these things. Given that we know these things, then the question for me is not so much God is with me in all my individual pursuits, decisions, and endeavors; it’s whether or not I am with Him. Because He’s not going to change.

It’s certainly a more sobering way to measure the rightness or wrongness of a decision, but one I think would profit me greatly. That maybe today, in all the decisions I will have to make, I won’t simply say, “I hope God is with me;” maybe I’ll instead ask myself, “Am I with Him on this?”

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Cynicism Isn’t a Spiritual Gift

“There is a fine line between the prophetic and the cynical. One brings needed critique, the other brings unneeded criticism.”

2. Boring Kingdom Growth

This is a good reminder that the gospel doesn’t need our innovation; it is sufficient to do what it is meant to grow – grow like a seed.

3. Mutual Care in an Age of Self-Care

Everywhere we turn we hear messages about “self-care.” What we find in the church is different – it’s mutual care.

4. Brady Won’t Play Again

Well, we’ll see, won’t we?

2 Wrong (And 1 Right) Response When Confronted with the Shortness of Life

Not long ago, I celebrated another birthday. It was a chance, as it is for many, to not only celebrate, but to also contemplate. I had a great sense of gratitude when I thought about our family, our station in life, and the faithfulness of the Lord inside it all. But I also had a tinge of something else – it’s a “something else” that has been growing louder and louder during these moments of introspection as the years continue to go by. It’s the sense that time is short.

Maybe it’s because we are moving into a new stage with kids going off to college; or maybe it’s just the realization that I’m probably at least halfway done on the earth. For whatever the reason, time just feels short. And in light of that, I’ve spent a lot of time reading, and reading again, the Bible’s reflection on the brevity of life contained in Psalm 90:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place
    throughout all generations.
Before the mountains were born
    or you brought forth the whole world,
    from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You turn people back to dust,
    saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
A thousand years in your sight
    are like a day that has just gone by,
    or like a watch in the night.
Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
    they are like the new grass of the morning:
In the morning it springs up new,
    but by evening it is dry and withered.

We are consumed by your anger
    and terrified by your indignation.
You have set our iniquities before you,
    our secret sins in the light of your presence.
All our days pass away under your wrath;
    we finish our years with a moan.
Our days may come to seventy years,
    or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
    for they quickly pass, and we fly away (Psalm 90:1-10).

Moses, who wrote this psalm, clearly had done some reflecting of his own. He got it; life is short. It’s a breath. It’s like the morning grass that is only here for one day. It’s a vapor that is here one moment and gone the next.

That’s not morbid; it’s reality. No matter how much we, as a society, try to extend life, it’s an empty pursuit. Indeed, part of growing older is not running from that fact, but instead embracing it. But embracing it to what end? It seems to me that there are a couple of different ditches we might fall into when confronted with the reality of life’s shortness, both of them wrong in their own way.

1. Laziness.

Ditch number one is laziness. It’s fatalism. It’s a “why should I put forth any effort at all given the time I have” kind of attitude. And frankly, it’s easy to fall into that ditch because life is not only short; it’s hard. Moses knew that, too, and acknowledged that in our seventy or eighty years of being alive, even the best of those years are filled with hardship and difficulty. 

We know it from our own experience, as life often feels like it’s moving from one trouble to another; indeed, we sometimes divide our lives between sad and painful events, marking it into “before’s” and “after’s” of each one of those circumstances. So given all that, yes, it’s easy to simply bide our time, try and enjoy what we can, but not put forth too much effort.

2. Panic.

Ditch number two is on the other side, and it looks like panic. It’s a frenetic pace that aims to squeeze everything out of every moment because, again, life is short. There is no rest; there is no real enjoyment of life either; there is only one speed, and that’s full go.

And if we live in this ditch, when we get to the end of our lives, we look back on them with an ironic sense of regret. That’s because we will see that, despite our best efforts, so, so many things were left undone. 

Accepting the reality of the shortness of life should not lead us to either ditch, at least not if we are Christians. Instead, it should lead us to the same place that Moses prayed it would lead him:

Teach us to number our days,
    that we may gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12).

This is the right way. This is the middle road. This is the end of not only knowing but accepting the very limited nature of life. It’s not laziness; it’s not panic. It’s wisdom. 

Wisdom to know the best way to spend our time. Wisdom in knowing our own limitations at doing so. Wisdom so as to be good and faithful stewards of our already numbered days. Wisdom so that we aren’t engaged in all kinds of foolish laziness or foolish panic. This is what a person of faith finds once they accept their own mortality.

May it be so for us as we continue to celebrate one birthday after another, that our wisdom is increasing as surely as the number of years we’ve been alive.

There is Only One Way to Follow Jesus

I became a Christian when I was eight years old. The pastor of the First Baptist Church of Canyon, TX, was Brother Jim Hancock, and Brother Jim was faithful to present the gospel almost every single Sunday. By the time minute 27 of the sermon rolled around, he would close his message with something like this:

“I want everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes. I’m going to ask you a question. If you were to die tonight, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? And if the answer is no, I’m going to ask you to just lift up your hand and pray a prayer silently after me.”

I heard this week in and week out, and eventually, the reality of my own death and need for forgiveness fell down on me. So one Sunday I walked down the aisle and Brother Jim led me to Christ at the altar and I was baptized a few weeks later. That’s my story.

Perhaps it’s similar to your story, but then again, perhaps not. Maybe you came to Christ later in life. Maybe you came to Christ after a night of partying when your life felt empty. Or when a roommate gave you a Bible and you started reading. Or when one of your children came to Vacation Bible School and then you started attending church. Or because, as is the case with with many of the Muslim faith, you had a dream. There are a myriad of ways in which God draws us to Himself. From our perspective, some are boring and mundane and some are exciting. Some are gradual and some are immediate. 

And yet despite all these ways we might come to Christ, there is really only one way that we can follow Christ – that is completely. A little illustration to help:

As He was passing along by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew, Simon’s brother. They were casting a net into the sea, since they were fishermen. “Follow me,” Jesus told them, “and I will make you fish for people!” Immediately they left their nets and followed Him (Mark 1:16–18).

The same call goes out today. It’s simple in its wording, but profound in its implications. To everyone of us, Jesus still says, “Follow me.”

But there is a little detail at the end of these verses that’s slyly descriptive of some of the implications of embracing that call of Christ. The detail in question is here:

They left their nets…

Why would Mark drip this little detail into the account? Perhaps he was just trying to be descriptive. They were holding something, and then they weren’t, and Mark wanted us to have a full picture of what happened. Except for the fact that Mark is known, as a writer, to use an economy of words. His gospel is the most streamlined and the most brief, and so he isn’t the writer who would want to paint a verbal picture.

No, there is something else here. And the something else involves not just the physical presence of those nets, but what they represented for these men.

These men were fishermen. And they were fishermen because their daddy was a fisherman. And his daddy was too. In a society in which there wasn’t the same upward mobility through education and opportunity as we have today, these nets were not only a tool of the trade. They were the source of family stability and security. Even more, they were emblematic of their identity in the community. When you take all that together, those “nets” aren’t so easy to drop.

But they did. They dropped their nets. They symbolically left their old way of life. They broke with the past—their past vocation, their sense of self, and their identity— and fully embraced the future with Jesus. That’s what a disciple does. 

But according to Jesus, not only does a disciple drop the nets. The disciple takes up the cross. Taken from the same gospel of Mark:

“If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

Thing is, you can’t pick up the cross if you’re still holding onto the nets. You can’t follow Jesus is you’re still holding onto your old marks of self-identification and preservation. You can’t embrace the Savior if you’re holding onto yourself.

Once again – there is only one way to follow Jesus. And that is completely.

Disciples recognize the worth and value of the One who calls and see the “nets” in their hands in comparison to Him. They suddenly realize that they have a greater purpose than merely fishing; so they leave and follow Jesus instead. For disciples, following Jesus is both an exit and an entrance; an ending as well as a beginning. They lay down, they pick up, and they follow Him and Him alone.

—

This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

How the World Should React When It Sees a Christian Suffer

Trouble? Anxiety? Pain? Disappointment? Suffering?

These are all part of the human experience, and Christians are not immune to them. Though we are sometimes surprised when our lives take turns into the difficult, we really shouldn’t be – after all, Jesus told us it would be like this:

“In this world you will have trouble….” he said (John 16:33), and he was telling the truth. In some ways, this is really what life is about – it’s moving from difficulty to difficulty; in fact, these events are things that mark our lives into segments. They are the dividing points – there was life before the cancer, and after it; life before the job loss, and after it; life before the argument, and after it. And all of these things are painful to varying degrees.

Painful, yes – but also redemptive. Though it’s hard to see and accept in the moment, there is indeed redemptive purpose in the pain. Sometimes the redemptive purpose is in us, as God uses these things to sharpen our hope and refocus our gaze on the things that matter and are eternal. Sometimes the redemptive purpose is through us because these difficulties, when we are faithful in and through them, become powerful evidence of our faith to the world around us.

So what is it that we want the world to see when it sees a Christian suffer?

Many things, but perhaps an illustration might help. Think back to one of the most familiar stories from the Old Testament. It’s a story about faith. About standing against idolatry. It’s about courage. It’s about God’s faithfulness. And it’s also about what we want the world to see when we suffer as Christians.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood before the gigantic golden statue the king of the foreign land had erected in his own honor. The law had been passed; every citizen of the kingdom was required to bow low and pay homage to this statue, and the king the statue represented. This was too far for these Israelites.

Sure, they had lost their home. Yep, they had been stripped of their families and national identity. Absolutely, they were living in the midst of a foreign culture. But they would not bow, and they were ready to face the consequences. In this case, those consequences meant sudden and certain death. In light of the serious threat before them, the king was curious about their resolve, so they were questioned:

“Now if you’re ready, when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, drum, and every kind of music, fall down and worship the statue I made. But if you don’t worship it, you will be immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire—and who is the god who can rescue you from my power?” (Dan. 3:15).

They would not bow, and the king made good on his threat. They were cast into the furnace, but then the unthinkable happened:

Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, “Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?”

They replied, “Certainly, Your Majesty.”

He said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods” (Dan. 3:24-25).

Isn’t this how we want a watching world, a world outside of faith, to respond to difficulties in our lives? If you zoom out a bit, you can see the characteristics:

The people. Assumed in this response is that we will be in relationship with people outside of the faith. That people would know us well enough to know when that we are facing some really hard circumstance in life.The fire. And those people out in the world would recognize the deep, deep pain we are in the midst of. They would look at the fire in which we find ourselves and recognize the danger. The heat. The struggle.Something else. At the same time, in the way we are responding in the middle of the fire, that they would see there is “something (someone) else” in the midst of it with us.

We ought to walk through suffering so that a watching world recognizes that there is no good reason why we should have the hope we have. The peace we have. The continued joy we have. Not in a fire like that.

And though they might not yet be able to identify with clarity the reason why, though the One who is with us might seem to be hazy and different, they will nevertheless recognize the presence of the “fourth” – someone that is making all the difference in the fire.

But perhaps, over time, that “fourth” will become all the more clear to them as well. They will come to know that the one who looks like a son of the gods is, in fact, the Son of God.