Michael Kelley's Blog, page 31

The Right Assumption to Make When Someone Overreacts

“The straw that broke the camel’s back.”

It’s a familiar saying, but where did it come from?

The earliest recorded use of the phrase is from Thomas Hobbs, an English professor, during a theological debate during the 17th century. Here’s the variation of how he deployed the phrase:

“The last Dictate of the Judgement, concerning the Good or Bad, that may follow on any Action, is not properly the whole Cause, but the last Part of it, and yet may be said to produce the Effect necessarily, in such Manner as the last Feather may be said to break a Horses Back, when there were so many laid on before as there want but that one to do it.”

Though he used an earlier version of the phrase, in which it’s a feather breaking a horse’s back, the meaning is the same. Today we still use the colloquialism to describe a minor action and causes a disproportionate reaction. It’s not because the thing in and of itself is so egregious; it’s because of the cumulative effects of many things. This last thing, though it’s actually pretty small, is just the final thing in a long series of frustrations.

It’s a phrase we use when we experience an overreaction to something. You’ve probably used that phrase, but even if you haven’t, you’ve experienced it. Perhaps it was with one of your children. Maybe it was with a co-worker. Maybe with your spouse. The issue presenting itself was something that might have been mildly annoying or frustrating, but it was just the final link in the chain and you blew up. Exploded. Yelled. Threatened.

The reaction was disproportionate in nature.

And it’s also probably happened to you. Maybe even recently. Someone blew up on you when, from your viewpoint, such a reaction was entirely unwarranted. So how do we typically react when that happens?

Well, we’re usually surprised at first, but surprise often gives way to anger. Maybe bitterness. Maybe a sense of victimization or unfairness at having been treated that way. And in the midst of all those things, we start to make assumptions usually about the person who has blown up on us.

We assume they are a jerk. Or at least they aren’t as nice as we thought they were. We assume they are bad tempered or impatient or reactionary as a whole. Now those things may or may not be true, but there is one other thing that we should always, as Christians, assume when we are on the rough end of an overreaction:

We should assume there is something else going on.

Rather than assuming things about another person’s character, we would do better to assume that this overreaction has less to do with us, and more to do with whatever that person is currently walking through. That sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But in the heat of the moment, when we have just born the brunt of someone else’s anger, it’s much more difficult because we feel personally attacked.

But assuming something bigger must be going on? That is the posture of humility.

Pride sticks out its chest and feels entitled to better.

Pride demands an acknowledgment of mistreatment.

Pride focuses on what has been done to me rather than on another.

But humility recognizes there is always more going on than what’s on the surface.

Humility recognizes the person in front of them is still a person on the road to Christlikeness.

Humility seeks to serve and love, even at personal cost.

Humility is secure enough in God’s love that they are able to love another even when that person is difficult to love at a given moment:

“Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1).

Chances are you will be in an encounter, not long from now, in which you feel the twinge of wrongness. Because of Christ’s love for you, assume there is more to the story. And maybe even ask another person what that “more” actually is.

3 Bible Passages to Feed Your Hope

There’s an old and often told bit of wisdom which says that in every person live two wolves. One wolf is named greed or fear or anger or bitterness. The other wolf is named generosity or courage or peace or forgiveness. And every day, in every moment, these two wolves fight each other.

The one that wins is the one you choose to feed.

There is a lot of truth in that little tale – there is the recognition that all of us are threatened from the inside by our own sinful desires. But then again, there is also the Spirit of God working in us. And then, of course, is the main truth of the tale – we get to choose which one of these wolves wins. 

To stamp out bitterness, stop feeding it.

To stamp out greed, stop feeding it.

To stamp out envy, stop feeding it.

And so the list could go on. Of course, it works the other way as well – that we can choose to feed our joy. Or our generosity. Or our grace. Or our hope. But what do we feed these things? They hunger for more than mere circumstantial evidence; they need real nourishment. And for that, we turn to a greater source of truth than what our senses can behold. We turn to God’s Word.

If you want your hope to grow, then, look to God’s Word. Feed it with His truth. And here are three specific Bible passages that do just that:

1. Isaiah 40:30-31.

Even youths grow tired and weary,
    and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.

This passage feeds our hope because it reminds us that all of us – no matter how young or energetic or naturally optimistic – will be discouraged. But all of us can also find new strength if our hope is positioned rightly.

2. Romans 8:24-25.

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

These verses feed our hope because they remind us that the nature of hope itself is one of longing. We don’t need hope if we have what we long for. So our hope is fed by grounding it in reality. Even though we do not have what is coming to us, we hope with certainty because it’s only a matter of time.

3. Titus 2:11-13.

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ…

And here our hope is fed because we find the basis of our hope. This passage focuses our hope to the right place – it’s not for a change in circumstance or income or position or anything else – our true hope is in Jesus coming back. For when He does, He will make everything right. Just as it should be. Then – and only then – will we hope no more, because there will be at long last no need to do so.

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. Obedience When You Don’t Understand the Command

We are all prone to think we are better judges of what is good than God is. Obedience, when we don’t understand, is an expression of our lack of confidence in ourselves and our confidence in God.

2. A Parent’s Worst Nightmare

While we can’t control whether our children come to Christ, we can control whether they learn of Him and His saving work.

3. Rollercoaster Ministry Isn’t Healthy

Most of us live like this – from spiritual high to spiritual low to spiritual high. But that kind of life in Christ leads to disillusionment.

4. Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special

Yep. This is a real thing that’s happening.

Scripture Memory Fills the Vacuum

“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” or so the saying goes.

I think I understand what it means – it means that we should beware idleness and boredom, because it’s during those moments when we don’t think we have anything to do or think about it or construct or whatever – it’s those moments when temptation is most dangerous.

When we are idle, whether it’s because we’re tired or lazy or even so overwhelmed that we just don’t know where to start, that idelenss creates a kind of vacuum. And a vacuum is going to be filled by something. Jesus actually taught a similar principle to this:

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first” (Luke 11:24-26).

A vacuum is going to be filled. In Jesus’ teaching, the vacuum happens when a spirit comes out of a person. But if that person, who now has a space inside them previously occupied by something else, isn’t diligent to fill it themselves, then it will be all the worse. Because that space is going to be filled.

Surely you know what this is like. Imagine, if you would, one of those evenings in which plans have fallen through. You thought you were going to be occupied with this or that, but now you don’t have anything going on. At first, there is a feeling of relief because you have some time to yourself. But then you start to sit. And you sit. And you sit. And the more that you are alone with your own thoughts, the more they seem to betray you.

You start to worry about that conversation you had earlier in the week, second guessing how you handled yourself and how the other person took your remarks. You start to consider the broader state of the world, the conflict overseas, and political climate of our own nation, and you wonder about the future. You think about your own bank account and how you probably should have saved more for retirement by now. And suddenly the vacuum is filled.

If left to our own devices, we are most likely going to fill that vacuum with all the pent up cynicism, fear, anger, and anxiety that we don’t have time to think about when we are consumed with other matters. And we would do well to recognize that fact, and proactively think about what it is that we actually want to fill that vacuum.

This is one of the incredible things about memorizing the Word of God. The psalmist wrote in Psalm 119:11 that he hid God’s word in his heart, and perhaps that language is instructive for us. When you hide something, you put it out of sight. Tuck it away. In fact, you might even forget that it’s there. This is what it’s like when we make a habit of memorizing Scripture. We tuck it away, and we might even forget that it’s there, but it is. It’s taking up space way down deep in our hearts, and in those moments when we find ourselves in a vacuum we will be glad it’s there.

It’s in those moments that what has been hidden in our heart makes a reappearance. And we need something to battle all the other fear, anxiety, bitterness, and cynicism that’s also hidden in our hearts. Scripture can fill that vacuum.

After all, something is going to. What better than God’s word?

Jesus is Making Us Whole People

The Book of Romans is the greatest theological document ever written. In its chapters, you find a description of the universal nature of sin and the indictment of all humanity, the primacy of faith in Christ as the only solution, and the innumerable blessings afforded to the Christian when they believe and become a child of God. You find, along with these foundational theological truths the practical application of those truths both as an individual and as the body of Christ. And couched about halfway through this letter, you find Paul’s very honest admission of his own struggle with sin in chapter 7:

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Rom. 7:15).

Surely anyone who has ever taken seriously the demands of following Jesus can relate to that. It’s the feeling of being torn in two directions; it’s the internal argument that comes on the one hand from the new identity and call to holiness we have in Christ and, on the other hand, the sinful nature that stubbornly clings to life. And as a result, we find ourselves frequently in the mindset of “wanting to want”:

We know what the right thing to do is, but we “want to want” to do the right thing.

But many times we don’t want to do the right thing. We want to do the wrong thing. And it’s only by faith that we actually do the right thing, because by faith, we actually choose to do something we don’t want to do:

We know we should be generous, but we don’t want to.We know we should serve, but we don’t want to.We know we should forgive, but we don’t want to.

And so we feel torn. We “want to want.” But, praise God, we won’t always have to want to want.

From the moment we believe in Jesus, God puts us on a journey of transformation. We are, day by day, moment by moment, being formed in the likeness of Christ. We are becoming like Him. And while that progress is painfully slow sometimes, we can look back over the course of our lives in Christ and say along with John Newton:

“I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”

We – all of us – are still in process. Still growing. Still changing. Still becoming holy. Because God has already made us His children and given us the righteousness of His Son, we are becoming what we have already become. Now typically we think about that transformation in terms of our behavior – we are committing less and less sinful actions and choosing more and more righteous ones. But this transformation goes deeper than that. We aren’t just doing better; we are feeling better. Thinking better. Gloriously, over time…

Jesus is making us WHOLE people.

Whole people, who don’t act one way but think another. Whole people, who don’t choose one thing but desire another. Whole people, who don’t have to “want to want” any more.

This is where we are headed. Toward Christlikeness, yes, but also toward wholeness where there is no more discrepancy between the inside and the outside.

Where Does My Help Come From?

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
    where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip—
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord watches over you—
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all harm—
    he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and forevermore (Psalm 121:1-8).

Psalm 121 is a vivid description of a God who is active on behalf of His people. The people stumble and trip; the Lord keeps them from falling. The people snooze and doze from exhaustion; the Lord does not slumber but is always wide awake. The people are oblivious to coming trouble and attack; the Lord protects and shelters them though they are not cognizant of His protection. These are immensely comforting words for a people who can feel forgotten. Who wonder if God is aware. Who find themselves in constant need of help. People like us.

The good news here is that by faith, we believe that God is a busy God. He’s an active God. And we, as the people of God, are the beneficiaries of His activity. In these verses, the people of God aren’t to manufacture opportunities or bolster their own forms of self-protection. The job of the people of God, in light of God’s awareness, activity, and advocacy is simple:

We look to the hills. Among the myriad of God’s activity, His people are to look to the hills. This is where our help comes from.

So we do. We find ourselves in the day of trouble, incapable of altering our own situation, so we look to the hills. Now that might not make much sense to us. After all, there are a lot of other places we might look in order to find help. We might look to our friends. To our families. To the government or another organization or our education or our emergency fund. This is where we would look.

But the hills? Why would we look there? The answer is found in a little phrase that might well be overlooked.

While the text of Psalm 121 is above, if you read up in your own Bible, before verse one, you’ll see a little annotation before this psalm: “A song of ascents.” See, Psalm 121 is among a series of songs classified as “songs of ascent” because they were intended, on their first use, to be sung by pilgrims as they were traveling to Jerusalem. As they were coming to the city, they would be ascending, for Jerusalem was built on a hill.

As the people approached the holy city, they were walking uphill. And as they walked, these songs were meant to be their soundtrack.

Look to the hills, pilgrims. Look to Jerusalem. That’s where the temple is. That’s where the help comes from, for it is said to be the dwelling place of the God of Israel.

But for the Christian, the hill becomes even more specific. When we look to the hills, we don’t just look toward the hill of Jerusalem. We look to another hill that’s outside the city gates. The hill of execution. The place of the skull. We look to the hills, and we see the cross of Jesus Christ.

Yes, this is from where our help comes from, for this is where our greatest need is met. Our greatest need is the need for forgiveness. For reconciliation. For righteousness. And for peace with God. It’s only on this hill that we find our true help. And if we find that kind of help there, surely we will also find other kinds of help as well. Help for our daily cares and troubles. Help for our lingering anxieties. Help for our loneliness and our plaguing fears.

We look to the hills, and we see the one hill. On that hill there is a cross. And when we see it, we know that our help has come indeed. Once and for all.

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. Jesus is Still Working in a Secular Age

Yes, we are living in an increasingly secular age, and that’s going to continue. The hope, though, is in Jesus who works regardless of the age we are in.

2. Want to Survive College? Join a Church.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Here is a message we are repeating over and over in our house right now.

3. The Most Dangerous Type of Christian Parenting

This is a good way to think of parenting in broad strokes – are you a “reputation” parent, or a “sanctification” parent?

4. The New Manning

I thought this was a fun story, because there’s another one. And he’s really good.

The One Thing We Can’t Do in an Age When It Seems We Can Do Anything

My oldest child is 18. That means many things for our family – it means we have three voters in our home. It means we are on the verge of college admission, and it means that we will likely have four people under one roof instead of five very soon.

And for him? Well, 18 years doesn’t seem like such a long time until you consider everything that’s happened in that time. When he was born in 2004, there was not yet an iPhone. A gallon of gas hit a record high of $2.04. Most restaurants still had smoking sections. And Blockbuster was just starting to close locations.

The world has changed much in the last 18 or so years, and one of the things that has changed the most is change itself. The velocity of change, driven by technology, seems to have steadily increased during his lifetime. Today we are having discussions that 18 years ago seemed like the still distant science future. We talk about electric cars, self-learning algorithms, and space travel not in terms of “if” but “when.” It seems increasingly that due to scientific advancement, we are capable of just about anything.

Of course, there is the danger that comes along with that – there is an ever present danger when the answer to “can we” is so often “yes” that we stop asking the question, “should we?” And that question of “should we?” is increasingly absent in our culture.

But in the midst of all the things that we “can” do, in an age of seemingly limitless possibility, there is one thing we seem absolutely incapable of:

Moderation.

It seems as though in the midst of continually pushing the limits of everything imaginable, we have lost the ability to moderate. Everything – everything – is taken to the extreme, and we see that extremity all around us.

We see it in our food choices in that it seems like everything is bad for us, or nothing is really bad for us.

We see it in our conversations with each other in that everything is the best and is worthy of unquestioning allegiance, or everything is the absolute worst and should only be treated with outright contempt.

We see it in our media usage in that we glut ourselves over and over on this device or that show and are unable to hold back from the binge.

Moderation is gone, and we are worse for it, because one of the reasons why we can moderate anything is because we are thoughtful people. Ironically, then, all of our advancement has made us less considering. Less pondering. Less thoughtful. Our lack of moderation is symptomatic of our general shallowness. And the Bible has something to say about that, and it does so in the description of a certain group of people: the Bereans:

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true (Acts 17:11).

This short description of the Berean Jews comes just after the account of the people in Thessalonica who, when they heard the preaching of Paul and his companions, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. This wasn’t because Paul was incendiary in his language; in fact, it seems he was quite the opposite. With the Thessalonians, Paul “reasoned” and explained” (v. 2, 3). He didn’t shout and argue or taunt or enflame – he spoke. And yet they responded with violence. One might say they responded with extremity.

But the Bereans were different. They were eager, but not eager to the extreme; rather, their eagerness propelled them to greater consideration and thoughtfulness until they did indeed come to believe in the truth of the message. There was a sense of moderation in their response.

And though there are moments when extremity is required, surely it should not be our overall posture. So where are the Bereans of today? Where are those who might initially react with either excitement or trepidation, and yet not be so ruled by that emotion that they lose all sense of logic and reason? Where are those who will think, consider, and contemplate? We are in desperate need of them today.

And in our own extremity how do we regain a sense of moderation? Surely it’s only through the one thing that can go to war against the anxiety, the fear, the pride, and the bitterness that fuels all that extremity – surely it can only come through the relative peace that comes from knowing Jesus. It can come from the peace in knowing that our future is secure in Him and we have nothing left to prove because Jesus has proven it all at the cross.

Understand God… in Light of God

“God is kind of being a jerk, isn’t He?”

It wasn’t the response I was going for. There we were, sitting around our eggs and toast, just like most mornings. We had the Bible open for the morning devotion, reading from Genesis 11 – the story of the tower of Babel:

The whole earth had a common language and a common vocabulary.  When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth”(Gen. 11:1-4).

You remember the rest of the story. To stop their tower building, the Lord confused the languages of these people and scattered them throughout the earth. We had read this story to our kids, and that’s one of the responses that came back:

“It sounds like God is being a jerk.”

Interesting. And an unexpected challenge over breakfast. So we tried to dig in a little bit more to understand the thinking behind the statement. In the minds of our kids, there was a disproportionate response to the actions of the people. After all, it was only a tower. And people in cities build towers all the time, don’t they? And God just drops in and confuses their languages? Sounds like some kind of cosmic bully.

Kids have a way of cutting to the heart of the issue, don’t they? They aren’t yet so polite as to hide the truth behind platitudes…

This post originally appeared at thomasnelsonbibles.com. Read the rest here.

4 Reasons to Fight Boredom

“I’m bored” is not a welcome phrase in our house. Our kids have learned that their mom has a prescription for boredom. Any child who makes that declaration will immediately be handed a dust rag and told to clean the baseboards of the house.

Get it? Bored? Board? See what we did there?

We are trying to help our kids see that boredom is a state of mind, not a state of circumstances, and that giving into the impulse of boredom is also a refusal to exercise your imagination. That’s the idea anyway – the jury is still out on the effectiveness.

But perhaps the same thing is applicable to us in a spiritual sense. There are so many Christians who are, frankly, bored. And most of the time, we tell them the solution to that sensation is to take risks! Try a new worship style! Go on some grand adventure with God! Or some other thing like that. I tend to largely disagree with that perspective (I wrote a whole book about it), arguing that there is really no such thing as ordinary, even in the most ordinary parts of life, because of the great meaning infused into the ordinary by an extraordinary God.

The thing about boredom, for most of us, is that we want to sit around and wait for something exciting to come in and change the conditions we’re in. Sometimes that happens, but most of the time it doesn’t, and we have the choice to either sit around and be bored in our marriage, our parenting, our jobs, or whatever else, or we can choose to actually fight boredom.

This fight is actually a spiritual thing. It’s another component of our discipleship, of our growth in Christ. Here then are 4 reasons why we should fight boredom:

1. Boredom leads to sin.

In The Screwtape Letters, Uncle Screwtape comments to this effect: “My dear Wormwood … I have always found that the trough [boring] periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations.”

This was the case for King David who, when he found himself with not much to do, found himself wandering out on the rooftop to, you know, see what he could see. If we don’t occupy our minds and hearts, if we don’t take every thought captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), then something else will occupy us. Rest assured.

2. Boredom minimizes the glory of Jesus.

Think of a passage like Psalm 19:1-2: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims the work of His hands. Day after day they pour out speech; night after night they communicate knowledge.”

This same King David who later wandered out on the roof was captured by the declaration of the heavens. With such beauty to behold, with such glory to bask in, when we choose an attitude of boredom we are subtly commenting on the sufficiency of Jesus to hold sway over our minds and hearts.

3. Boredom corrupts our ambition.

When we don’t fight against boredom, we will find ourselves dreaming more and more about what might be. This can take many forms, but one of them is certainly our ambition. We daydream and we begin to convince ourselves that we can do more, do better, and are the victims of our circumstance.

Ambition in and of itself is a neutral attribute and because it is it can either be used for good or for evil. But if we’re not careful, our boredom will lead us to think more highly of ourselves and corrupt what might otherwise be godly ambition. Such is the warning given through the prophet Jeremiah: “But as for you, do you seek great things for yourself? Stop seeking! For I am about to bring disaster on every living creature’-this is the Lord’s declaration-‘but I will grant you your life like the spoils of war wherever you go.'” (Jer. 45:5).

4. Boredom reflects an ungrateful heart.

When we give into boredom, we are simultaneously expressing dissatisfaction with where the Lord has seen to put us, who He’s put us there with, and what He’s given us to do. In contrast, the Christian is to pursue contentment which flows from practicing gratitude.

While boredom is rooted in the constant desire for the ever elusive “else,” gratitude recognizes the sovereignty and generosity of a good, good Father.

Don’t be bored, Christian, but also don’t wait to stop feeling bored. Fight it. Actively. And honor Jesus the giver of good things as you do.