Michael Kelley's Blog, page 231
June 26, 2012
The Story of the Gospel
Beautiful video here. More beautiful story:
June 25, 2012
The Scrubbing of the Dragon Scales
In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace, the selfish boy who was turned into a dragon because of his greed, was at last to be turned back into his true self. This process, the scrubbing of the dragon scales, was both painful and wonderful at the same time:
The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. but the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I dont know if he said any words out loud or not.
I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and , instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I jsut stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.
But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.
Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
The the lion said – but I don’t know if it spoke – ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
The very first tear he made was do deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.
Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. You’d think me simply phoney if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they’ve no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian’s, but I was so glad to see them.
After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me – (with his paws?) – Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other: in new clothes – the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact. and then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream.
Behold, the great joy and great pain of sanctification, whereby the Holy Spirit scrubs us of our old selves and we find ourselves fresh and new – the way we were meant to be. Behold, the ruthless love of God in making us more like Jesus.
June 22, 2012
Fridays Are For One Question
This is pretty incredible: It’s a zipline, open now in the Himalayas, that is over 2,000 feet high, over a mile long, and reaches speeds of 90 mph. Check it out:
My wife would do this in a heartbeat. Me? Well, I’d take some convincing. But it does inspire today’s question:
“What’s the best thrill ride you’ve ever been on?”
June 21, 2012
True Wholeness
The following is excerpted from my book, Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God:
The gospel is about wholeness. It’s about fractured, broken people being the gift of life through the life of another. In Christ we become complete and whole people—people who are in want for nothing.
Consider the amazing truth Paul expressed in Ephesians 1 when he said that we have been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing. Or again in Romans 8 that we will be given all things in Christ. Or back to Ephesians when he talked about the truly mind-boggling concept of inheritance.
In Ephesians 1:13–19, Paul used the word “inheritance” twice. The first occurs in verse 14: “He is the down payment of our inheritance, for the redemption of the possession, to the praise of His glory.”
Paul talked about the Holy Spirit as earnest money. If you’ve ever bought a house, you know that you have to put down some earnest money as part of the contract. The earnest money isn’t the full amount, but it’s the amount of money you have to forfeit if you back out of the contract. To Paul, the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence is like earnest money. It’s a deposit given to us by God that makes us sure He will uphold His end of the deal. It makes us sure that He will carry us onto completion, and we will receive our whole inheritance.
So what is that inheritance? We could say it’s heaven, eternity, mansions, streets of gold, no more tears, and all the other stuff heaven brings along with it. But ultimately, I think you have to say the inheritance is the thing which makes heaven so heavenly—our inheritance is God. It’s knowing Him fully and completely. That’s what makes heaven so good, and that is what’s waiting for us. The fact that God is giving us the greatest of all gifts, namely Himself, should bring us closer and closer to that sense of completeness.
But Paul wasn’t done.
If we skip down to verse 18, this is what we find: “I pray that the perception of your mind may be enlightened so you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the glorious riches of His inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe.”
Do you see the difference? In this verse “inheritance” isn’t talking about God or heaven; it’s talking about us. We are the inheritance. So who is inheriting us? Who is waiting for us? Who considers us so valuable? God. We are God’s inheritance.
It’s unfathomable to think about what Christ did on the cross, that He bought something for us, but He also bought something for God. Jesus secured both our inheritances, and now God waits in expectation to fully inherit His. And God’s inheritance? That’s us.
Not only do we have an inheritance stored up for us, but we are of such value to the Creator that we are stored up for Him to the praise of His glory. This is a good reminder to me as gas prices are high, the economy is down, and jobs are in question; . . . but we are nonetheless rich in God. And maybe He’s rich in us, too. The gospel reminds us that we are absolutely and completely whole. Complete. In Christ.
Is it any wonder, then, that in virtually all of his letters, Paul’s greetings to the followers of Jesus consisted of two words: “grace” and “peace.” Perhaps he chose those two words because they represent the gospel well. We are the beneficiaries of the lavish grace of God in Christ. And because of the gospel of Jesus, we are whole. We are complete. We lack nothing in Him. Now that’s shalom.
Get your Kindle edition of the book here, currently on sale for $2.99.
June 20, 2012
June 19, 2012
True Redemption
The following is excerpted from my book, Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God:
Redemption doesn’t mean you stand in triumph over your circumstances. And it doesn’t mean that the “new” makes you forget about everything that happened in the “old” (although in heaven someday these light and momentary afflictions will pale in comparison). Redemption is about the confidence that God is bringing good out of the bad, prosperity out of desolation. God’s not interested in evening things out; He’s interested in taking those things which are so painful, earth- shattering, and devastating and turning them into marks of His goodness and kindness.
Moses was a shepherd for forty years, but God redeemed his experience in the desert. He gained a knowledge of the land that would be vital because he spent the next forty years leading the children of Israel through the same desert. David spent his childhood learning how to defend sheep with meager weapons. God redeemed his defensive skills as he shepherded the people of Israel, slaying giants with small stones. Luke had an obsessively ordered and detailed mind, but God redeemed it, enabling him to record in a logical way the ministry of Christ and the early church. Paul spent years studying and memorizing the Torah, and God redeemed that knowledge as he became an apologist in the midst of Jews and Gentiles alike.
We often think God is in the business of swooping down and plucking us out of our circumstances. He rescues us to be sure—from sin and death and hopelessness. But His rescue incorporates those sad, tragic, devastating circumstances we want, in the moment, to see removed. In redemption God takes the shattered blocks of our lives and slowly, methodically, but faithfully, puts them back together in a way we couldn’t have imagined at first. In the end there is something new and different, and yet it’s made up of those same pieces of life that once looked so broken on the ground.
Get your Kindle edition of the book here, currently on sale for $2.99.
June 18, 2012
The Poor Sexual Training of Porn
Consider these two pictures. The first picture is of a man who has set himself toward a commitment to sexual purity, and is living in sexual integrity with his wife. In order to fulfill his wife’s rightful expectations and to maximize their mutual pleasure in the marriage bed, he is careful to live, to talk, to lead, and to love in such a way that his wife finds her fulfillment in giving herself to him in love. The sex act then becomes a fulfillment of their entire relationship, not an isolated physical act that is merely incidental to their love for each other. Neither uses sex as means of manipulation, neither is inordinately focused merely on self-centered personal pleasure, and both give themselves to each other in unapologetic and unhindered sexual passion. In this picture, there is no shame. Before God, this man can be confident that he is fulfilling his responsibilities both as a male and as a man. He is directing his sexuality, his sex drive, and his physical embodiment toward the one-flesh relationship that is the perfect paradigm of God’s intention in creation.
By contrast, consider another man. This man lives alone, or at least in a context other than holy marriage. Directed inwardly rather than outwardly, his sex drive has become an engine for lust and self-gratification. Pornography is the essence of his sexual interest and arousal. Rather than taking satisfaction in his wife, he looks at dirty pictures in order to be rewarded with sexual arousal that comes without responsibility, expectation, or demand. Arrayed before him are a seemingly endless variety of naked women, sexual images of explicit carnality, and a cornucopia of perversions intended to seduce the imagination and corrupt the soul.
This man need not be concerned with his physical appearance, his personal hygiene, or his moral character in the eyes of a wife. Without this structure and accountability, he is free to take his sexual pleasure without regard for his unshaved face, his slothfulness, his halitosis, his body odor, and his physical appearance. He faces no requirement of personal respect, and no eyes gaze upon him in order to evaluate the seriousness and worthiness of his sexual desire. Instead, his eyes roam across the images of unblinking faces, leering at women who make no demands upon him, who never speak back, and who can never say no. There is no exchange of respect, no exchange of love, and nothing more than the using of women as sex objects for his individual and inverted sexual pleasure.
By logical consequence, he achieves sexual gratification at the expense of women who have been used and abused as commodified sex objects. He may imagine a sex act as he fulfills his physical pleasure, but he almost certainly does not imagine what it would mean to be responsible for this woman as husband and accountable to her as mate. He can sit in his soiled underwear, belching the remnants of last night’s pizza, and engage in a pattern of one-handed sexual satisfaction while he “surfs the net” and forfeits his soul.
These two pictures of male sexuality are deliberately intended to drive home the point that every man must decide who he will be, whom he will serve, and how he will love. In the end, a man’s decision about pornography is a decision about his soul, a decision about his marriage, a decision about his wife, and a decision about God.
June 15, 2012
Fridays Are For One Question
Sunday is Father’s Day. And I can’t really think about Father’s Day without thinking about this:
This clip inspires today’s question, and it’s related to gifts for Father’s Day. Specifically, less than awesome gifts for Father’s Day. So chime in, friends:
“What’s the worst Father’s Day gift you’ve ever given or received?”
June 14, 2012
June 13, 2012
“It’s a God-Thing”
“It’s a God thing.”
I’m not sure when I first started hearing (or using) this phrase. It’s been years. Maybe you’ve said it, too.
Something happens that causes you to step back in amazement. It’s something you never saw coming – a seemingly chance encounter, a culmination of circumstances, a case of being at the right place at the right time – and you are caught in a moment of wonder. The only way to explain what just happened was to attribute it to God, so you say:
“I don’t know any other way to explain it. It was a God thing.”
But in my own usage of the phrase, I wonder… When was the last time I said it about the sun coming up in the morning? When was the last time I took a breath, and then uttered, “That was a God thing?” When was the last time I reflected on the fact that I was dead, in my transgressions and sins, and yet God reached into my chest and gave me a new heart? When was the last time I experienced the forgiveness of my wife, the unconditional trust of my children, a brief cloudburst of rain, a squirrel running across the ground, or pretty much anything else and said in response:
“That was a God thing.”
You see the problem? Our use of the phrase exposes something deep within us – namely, that we have cornered God into the “big” areas of life. No doubt He’s responsible for those things, but there’s also no doubt that He’s equally as involved in the small, even so small as a bird falling from the sky.
The problem with saying it is that everything is a God thing. Everything. In fact, I’m coming to see more and more that our desire for the sensational in life is a huge barrier to embracing the fullness of the work of Christ in and through us.
So try something with me. Breathe in. Now breathe out.
That was a God thing.
