Michael Kelley's Blog, page 39

One Truth to Help Us Live Simply

“More.”

We taught our children the sign for that word when they were babies. That, and other signs like please, thank you, and water. But the sign for “more” was far and away the one most liberally used.

There one of them would be, in a high chair, being fed one spoonful at a time. And as soon as the spoon would hit their lips, they would already be jabbing the ends of their fingers together quickly, frenetically signing, “More! More! More” even as they were still swallowing that initial mouthful.

And so it goes as we grow. That word – more – still so pervasive in our thoughts. Except these days, our appetites have changed. No longer do we desire applesauce; instead, we have a seemingly insatiable craving for more of other things. More money. More prominence. More options. More service. More, more, more. Like children in a highchair unable to appreciate what we have, we are waving our hands demanding increase. Always more.

Against that comes a biblical call to a different kind of life. To a life focused singularly on the kingdom of God. To an undivided heart that has a desire to follow Jesus far and above everything else. In this, the Bible is calling us to live in a much more simple fashion. And though that simplicity has many different applications, one of the most important is the way in which we view money.

Money, according to Jesus, is the chief competitor for our attention and our affection:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matt. 6:24).

Here again, inside of this warning about the dangers of money, we find yet another call to simplicity. We cannot be divided. There can be only one master. Simple.

Now if you feel the tug in your heart and know what it means to be divided internally, then this call to simplicity is appealing. It would be great not to have an undivided and fractured focus, and therefore, to be content with what God has seen fit to give you. To simply live and work and do good for the sake of the kingdom, and to be joyful doing it without craving more. That’s very appealing… but how do we get there? Well, the Bible gives us a truth to help us move into this kind of simplicity, though it might not be the truth we would expect:

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you;
    never will I forsake you” (Heb. 13:5).

The first part of the verse presents this simple, content, and focused kind of life. And once again, we see that money is the main obstacle to living this way. The second part of the verse is what we must believe in order to keep our lives free from the love of money and to live in a state of contentment. So if we believe in the constant presence of God then at least one of the results will be this kind of simple, content life.

That is a little surprising, isn’t it? I mean, we might choose any number of other truths that we think will drive us to simplicity and contentment:

That you will never have enough.That money and materialism is wasted energy because you can’t take it with you.That simplicity and contentment is the key to mental health.

And so on. Now all those things might be true, but specifically here, in Hebrews 13, the key theological truth that propels us to a life of contentment is the presence of God. So what is it about the fact that God will never leave us nor forsake us that makes us content people?

It is the fact that when we embrace the truth of God’s presence; when His presence is not merely an intellectual acknowledgment but something real and affecting to us; we see everything else in light of the great value, beauty, and worth of God. Having God doesn’t mean we can settle for not having everything else; having God means we have everything already.

This is how we grow in simplicity – it’s not just by setting a budget or having a garage sale (though those are good and fine things to do) – it’s by meditating on all we have in God through Jesus Christ. This is when, in the midst of a world craving more, we will finally be able to push away from the table and say, “I’m already full.”

One Way to Stoke the Fire of Gratitude in Prayer

“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

It’s a strange passage coming from a guy like Paul. Here’s a guy bitten by snakes, shipwrecked, beaten within an inch of his life on numerous occasions, a guy abandoned by his friends on some occasions, maligned by people he cared about on others, and yet a guy who stresses the obedience of joy and thankfulness almost as much as he stressed grace and faith.

And make no mistake – it is an issue of obedience. Often we think of joy and gratitude in the realm of feelings – either we feel joyful or thankful, or we don’t. And when we feel it, we do it. But obedience doesn’t work that way.

Obedience is doing regardless of whether you’re feeling. And there are certainly days when you don’t feel thankful. You might want to be thankful; you might seek to be thankful; but you look around your circumstances and it’s like staring at a brick wall. Obstacles and troubles everywhere. You know you ought to be thankful, but the fire of your gratitude has grown to a slightly glowing ember.

When that happens in an actual fire, we will often stir up the embers. We will grab a stick and move some things around to try and get the fire going again. So how do you do that with your gratitude? How do you stoke the fire of thankfulness in prayer?

One simple way is to change your perspective. When we think about gratitude, we often think circumstantially. We look at all the things that have happened in our lives and the lives of those we love, and we thank God for them. But that level of gratitude is based on our own ability to perceive the work of God. And we would all acknowledge that God is surely up to much more than we are immediately aware of.

Take, for example, the great promise from Romans 8 that God is working all things for the good of those that love Him and are called according to His purpose. The word “all” in that verse does not only mean the things you are aware of; it means “all.” It means “all” the little things that have escaped your attention as well as all the things that have caught your focus. Furthermore, God is working even the things that didn’t happen today for our good. And it’s in this way that you might stoke the fire of your gratitude in prayer.

Thank God for all the things He has done and is doing, but also thank God for the things that didn’t happen today:

By His grace, you didn’t lose faith.By His grace, the earth didn’t tilt off its axis.By His grace, you didn’t stop breathing.

And the list could go on endlessly, “for He is before all things, and by him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). It is because of Jesus and His sustaining power that a myriad of things didn’t happen today. 

So expand your gratitude, Christian. Stoke the fire of your thankfulness in recognizing the work of God which both gives and takes away.

Wednesday Links

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

1. Storytime and Family Discipleship

Love this. Though we don’t do so any more, our family spent a lot of time reading aloud together when the kids were younger and it was always a great time.

2. Hope Has to Be Learned

I wonder how many other things are like this – things we just think happen, as if by magic, and yet can and should actually be learned.

3. You’re Never Praying Alone

How amazing to think that every time we pray we are joining a conversation already in progress.

4. Darth Vader’s Hilarious Real Voice

Um… good move on switching it out.

Living Genesis 12 in 2022

Growing up in the church, I remember the words well:

“Father Abraham, had many sons, and many sons had father Abraham;

I am one of them, and so are you, so let’s just praise the Lord. Right arm!”

I’m fighting the urge to swing my right arm above my head even now as the lyrics are running through my mind. We sang it over and over again and included every part of the body, and it didn’t catch on with me until much later that there was some really good, lasting, profound theological truth in that song.

Abraham was promised by God that he would indeed have many sons. Very many. More than the stars in the sky and sand on the seashore. And that promise was fulfilled, though probably not in the way Abraham might have guessed:

So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham (Galatians 3:6-7).

It’s true! Do you believe in the same God Abraham did? Do you have faith in the One who raises the dead? If so, then you are part of Abraham’s family, not by blood, but faith. I am one of them. And so are you. So let’s just praise the Lord!

It’s a pretty staggering realization to see ourselves in that light – that we are part of the fulfillment of the promise God made to the father of the Jewish nation way back in Genesis 12:

“I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you” (Gen. 12:2-3).

But part of being included in that promise is being included in the responsibility of that promise. If we are children of Abraham by faith, then we have a responsibility to living out the rest of that promise in 2022. So how do we do that? Really just three, simple steps:

1. Recognize the blessing.

As children of Abraham by faith, we are blessed. And perhaps your mind drifts to the material blessings you have at your disposal right now. Disposable income. House in a good school district. Health, and health benefits with your job. All blessings to be sure, but let’s be careful and not neglect the greatest blessing – that we, by God’s grace, have been included among not only the children of Abraham, but the children of God. We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ because we have heard, understood, and believed the gospel. That is the truest, most lasting, and greatest blessing. That’s the first step in living Genesis 12 in the modern world.

2. Understand the blessing.

We have been blessed with the gospel. And yes, we should rejoice in the fact that we are the beloved, set apart, and secure children of God. But understanding the blessing goes a step beyond recognizing the blessing. Understanding it means understanding the same thing Abraham needed to recognize – that he was not blessed by God purely so he could sit back and enjoy being blessed; he was blessed for the sake of others:

“I will bless you… to be a blessing…”

“All the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you.”

God did not bless Abraham (then called Abram) at the exclusion of everyone else; he blessed him for the sake of everyone else. God’s intent is that this blessing is not hoarded, but rather it is shared far and wide, even to the ends of the earth. Understanding the blessing means understanding that we still have a role to play in passing it on through the message and demonstration of God’s grace in the gospel.

3. Embrace the opportunity of the blessing.

We recognize the true blessing for what it is. Then we understand the responsibility that comes with the blessing. All that’s left for us is to take advantage of the opportunity of the blessing, and the opportunities are all around us. They take the form of the person who is left out wondering if anyone will notice them; of the lonely one who is looking for true and lasting love; of the successful person at the end of their rope wondering if there is something more. The opportunity is the neighbor, the other parent on the baseball team, and the person who happens to wander into the church building.

To embrace the opportunity we have to believe the opportunities are there, and make the conscious but simple choice to take advantage of them. This is how we live out Genesis 12 in 2022. Not complicated, but definitely intentional. And when we intentionally make the choice to do so, we will find that the blessing is still living and active and read to be passed on.

3 Practical Ways to Pursue Simplicity

Thomas Kelly once said that God “never guides us into an intolerable of panting feverishness.”

In other words, life with God and through Jesus is not meant to be complex. There is a blessed kind of simplicity for the Christian who is convinced of the providential love of God in Christ. You find glimpses of this kind of simplicity expressed in Scriptures like Psalm 27:4:

I have asked one thing from the Lord;
it is what I desire:
to dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
gazing on the beauty of the Lord
and seeking him in his temple.

Or from the Lord Jesus in Matthew 6:33-34:

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Don’t you long for that? In an age of seemingly endless complexity, to live simply in mind and heart. To not wake up with a thousand different things running through your mind. To be able to sleep soundly knowing that your heavenly Father never does. To know that God is for you in Christ, and because He is, you do not make it your business to, as Kelly said, pant feverishly through life.

The pursuit of simplicity starts, and ends, with the gospel. Unless we truly know there is nothing left to prove before God, because of the sacrifice of Jesus, then we will spend our lives in an endless pursuit of self-justification. Unless we know that God has fully loved us in Jesus, then we will spend our lives endlessly seeking to create our own opportunities for safety and advancement. Unless we know that God is reigning over the affairs of the universe, no matter what our senses might tell us, then we will wring our hands in anxiety and worry.

Simplicity comes as an extension of our faith. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also pursue it. So how do we do that? In an increasingly complex world, how do we intentionally seek after simplicity of mind, heart, and action? Let me offer three practical ways to pursue simplicity in daily life:

1. Practice the discipline of saying “no.”

One of the main reasons we feel a sense of complexity is because we are simply involved in too many things. But before we start chopping commitments and obligations, we would do well to ask ourselves how and why we got into a situation of overcommitment in the first place. Why do we have trouble saying no?

I suspect that most of us have trouble declining certain opportunities because we actually enjoy being overcommitted. It’s a boost to our ego. A reminder of how important and in demand we are. But if we are convinced that we are accepted in Christ, then we should feel great freedom in saying no. But this is a discipline we need to develop. I’d suggest that to aid us, we ought to have a set of questions in our minds that helps us evaluate opportunities in terms of our calling, our families, and our current commitments. Asking these questions before saying “yes” will help us begin to say “no.”

2. Do the next right thing.

This is a phrase that is often said in the congregation where I serve as an elder. It has many implications, but for our purposes in this post, one of them is that you do the next right thing – one thing at a time. Another way to say is is that you commit to the next right thing knowing that there will be another next right thing after it. But you don’t have to worry about that one yet.

This relates to simplicity because we often feel complexity because we are not truly present in a given task or conversation or project at a given time. Rather, we are trying to multi-task – to talk while we are texting, to check email while we are working on something else. Simplicity is achieved in part when we are able to devote ourselves to one thing at a time.

3. Saturate your day with Scripture.

This principle can really be applied to almost any issue, can’t it? But specifically when it comes to simplicity, saturating your day with Scripture helps you constantly refocus your attention on the greater purpose. If you open your Bible right now, you’re not going to find a mystical message written to you that tells you exactly what to do next in your life. But you will find general principles about the will of God that can be applied specifically to situations.

The fact, though, that these are general principles teaches us how to think. It teaches us to make daily decisions in light of the eternal truth. And in so doing, it also simplifies all the myriad of decisions we have to make on a daily basis.

Of course, even in doing these things to pursue simplicity, there will be the temptation toward anxiety and fear. We will worry about the stuff we are saying no to, the things are aren’t directly influencing, and the decisions we are making in real time. But even as we do, the Word of God has another Word for us:

The Lord guards the simple-hearted;
I was helpless, and he saved me.
Return to your rest, my soul,
for the Lord has been good to you (Psalm 116:6-7).

COVID Creates Consumers

How has COVID changed us?

In general, it seems to me that the last two plus years have made us more suspicious people. We have all seen so many variations of what is real and not real, true and less true, that we have been baptized into the waters of skepticism. We are now the kinds of people who look with a wary eye on every news story and every report to see not only what’s being reported, but who is doing the reporting.

Also, in general, COVID seems to have made us more quick-tempered. As the days went by, our fuses became shorter and shorter. Some of what is understandable, I suppose, given the amount of stress we were under, but now, in the post-pandemic (if you’re ready to call it that), it hasn’t gone away. We are an angrier people now than we were three years ago.

And the list could go on. Of course, not all of the changes are negative. Some of us, by God’s grace, have been moved to listen more or be more patient or to be more courteous or even to appreciate something simple like going to a restaurant. Even so, when we look back many years from now and write all the books and do all the studies about how this time in history has affected us, I suspect it will largely be negative. And negative at the heart level.

Here’s the thing about these changes – they are not necessarily behavioral, although they result in behaviors. No, these are heart changes. Mindset changes. Posture changes. Changes down deep in us that work themselves out in tons of little ways. And because they are, the changes don’t just influence the way we interact with issues around COVID.

Our suspicion goes beyond the COVID circumstance. So does our anger. So does frustration and self-preservation and every other way that our hearts have been altered. So here’s one more to add to the list, another heart change that has come around in the post-COVID era:

We are more consumeristic than ever before.

What is a consumer? Well, a consumer is someone who consumes something. But more than that, it’s someone who demands a certain kind and style of product – something that has been tailored to their specific preferences. Of course, we were consumers prior to March of 2020, but now? Now our consumerism has been doubled down and multiplied to the nth degree.

Now this might seem a little counterintuitive at first, because we all remember when the world shut down and we couldn’t have things exactly how we wanted. We couldn’t travel, eat, or interact the way we desired. But our culture was quick to adapt, and very soon we found a way to have all (or most) of the same things we wanted, except now we didn’t have to actually put forth as much effort to get them. They came to us; we did not have to go to them. Our groceries came to us; our movies came to us; and yes, our churches came to us.

The point of the post is not to argue about whether those things should have happened, but just to state that they did. And since they did, we are now, more than ever before, insistent that things continue to come to us. Just like we want them.

But here’s the problem for us as Christians – Christianity is not about having a faith that suits our needs; it’s about bending our needs to the lordship of Jesus. It’s not about what we want or think we need; it’s about agreeing with God about what we should want and really need. It’s not about gaining our perceived version of real life; it’s about losing our lives for the sake of Christ and then finding true life on the other side.

And a consumer mentality is simply incompatible with what Jesus demands of those who follow Him. So here, friends, we have something heightened in our hearts to recognize. Something rising up that we have to fight. Something that entangles us as we seek to run the race set before us. Let us, in the face of COVID consumerism, return to what we know to be true:

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23-24).

Wednesday Links

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

1. In Praise of the Boring, Uncool Church

Be careful of a faith – and church – that caters to our consumeristic desires. Perhaps here the boring, uncool, but tested church is a good thing.

2. 44 Ways to Keep Kids Off Screens

Here’s a good post as we are getting into the summer months when the temptation toward screen time will multiply.

3. Older Saints Wanted

Yes! May God bring us more of these tried and true silent and steadfast warriors who can show us how to live faithfully in the long haul.

4. The Fan Who Lost His Autographs

Man. It’s stuff like this that makes me love baseball.

4 Ways to Make the Most of Your Family Dinner

One of the most precious times we have together as a family is at the table. True enough, these times are fewer these days than they used to be, but in a way, that scarcity makes these times all the more precious. The table provides one of the only moments during the day when we, consistently, sit down together with no distractions. And around that table, we’ve talked about presidential elections and their implications, historical events, problems at school, family dynamics, and a host of other things.

It’s important. It’s one of the places where we establish the culture of our families, where we share burdens, and where we find our at a deeper level the things that are really going on in our lives. It’s true, we can do this as parents with children individually, but hopefully as we share together we are not only helping our kids relate to us as their parents, but also relate to their siblings as well.

We have been fortunate enough to stumble into this importance. There wasn’t a moment when my wife and I made the conscious choice to always set this time aside to the best of our ability; it just kind of happened that way. But over these brief years, I have noticed the difference in mealtime when I, as a dad, come with the intent to make the most of that time we have together and when I’ve just showed up to eat. Hopefully, then, these simple things will be encouraging to you as well.

1. Outlaw the word “fine.” 

“Fine” is a throwaway word. It really doesn’t mean anything. So we have a rule at the table that we don’t use this word. We have to come up with some other answer to the question of “how was your day?” Our kids seem to have caught onto this – we don’t usually have to press on this very much. Still, I think we probably will more and more as we continue into the teenage years.

2. Be creative around the table. 

We have played a lot of games at dinner over the years, but they always have the purpose of sharing something meaningful that happened that day. Sometimes we play “Two Truths and a Lie”, where the kids have to tell us two things that didn’t happen, and one thing that actually did. We also play a game where everyone has to share three things: Something you saw, something you ate, something you felt. Of course, you can replace those three things with others. But we’ve found it helps to do it this way instead of just asking, “How was your day?”

3. Wait, and then wait again.

We have tried to enforce the practice that no one starts eating until everyone else is already sitting at the table. Similarly, the kids have to ask permission to leave the table. This is for more than just politeness, though – it’s to try and make the most of our time together. And, at the end of the meal, to hopefully not short circuit a conversation that’s going just because someone is done with their spaghetti.

4. Remember what you’ve prayed for.

Most mornings at breakfast, we pray with and for each other for things that are going to happen during the day. On the days when we, as parents, remember what we prayed for that morning, dinner provides an opportunity for us to ask specifically about how the Lord was faithful to listen to and answer those prayers.

It’s certainly not perfect, and it certainly isn’t a foolproof plan. But the more times we as parents have actively engaged in practices like this, the more fruitful those times have been. Maybe, by God’s grace, dinner with the family will actually continue to be something and somewhere our children look forward to being. And not just for the chicken pot pie.

2 Ways Christians are a Peculiar People

I don’t use the Old King James version of the Bible too much, but it is interesting to compare different versions of the same verses to see how they are worded. Case in point is 1 Peter 2:9. Here’s how it reads in the NIV:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

The previous verses find Peter expanding on two Old Testament verses, both of which mention “stones.” Peter’s understanding has grown to the point where he knows that Jesus is the cornerstone upon which everything is built – Jesus is what gives everything else shape and meaning and alignment. And when we believe in Jesus, He becomes the cornerstone of our very identities. In light of that, he comes to verse 9 to begin expounding on who we are as the people of God.

And now here’s the same verse in the King James version:

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light…

There’s a word in that translation that sticks out isn’t there? 

“Peculiar.”

We are a “peculiar” people. To our ears, it sounds, well, strange. It sounds peculiar. And yet it’s true. We are a peculiar people, and here are two reasons why:

1. Because we belong to God.

Apparently, the origin of the word peculiar is the Latin word, peculiaris. That word referred to something that was one’s own. Something personal. In English, during the time when the KJV was first printed, the word meant belonging to one person. It also had the meaning of something unlike others. Something special. Something remarkable.

So when the KJV says that we are a peculiar people, it really means the same thing that the NIV says: we belong to God. We are His chosen, special possession. And that feels good, doesn’t it?

We all need to be wanted. To be valued. To be treasured. It’s built into us, and when we don’t feel as though we are treasured by anyone, we slip into despair. But here, in a single word, we find the wonderful truth that God doesn’t “put up with us;” we find the truth that He actually, truly, deeply, really loves us. He treasures us. We are His; we are His peculiar people.

But there is another reason why we are a peculiar people, this one a bit more ironic…

2. Because we do not belong to the world.

Over the years, the word peculiar started to take on a different meaning. Now, when we say peculiar, we are referring to something that’s strange. Weird. Out of place. Ill-fitting. This, too, is an appropriate way to think of Christians. If just keep reading in 1 Peter 2, he comes to this idea next:

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us (1 Peter 2:11-12).

Foreigners. Exiles. That’s also who we are. We are God’s special and chosen possession, called out of darkness and into light, and as a result, we are no longer the possession of the world. It is not our home, nor does it have any claim on us. So in light of who we are in Christ, our lives should be so vastly different from those that are around us that they ought to look at us and use the same word:

“Peculiar.”

One word that reminds us of our true identity and that which we’ve left behind. One word that tells us about our true home and the place we currently reside. One word that reminds us where we are treasured and where we are strangers. 

“Peculiar.” What a beautiful word for the Christian.

Wednesday Links

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

1. 5 Ways to Raise Bible-Friendly Kids

Surely this is a worthy goal – for your kids to know the Bible for themselves. And, by God’s grace, to love it.

2. Keep It Simple

This is a good word about discipleship, a process we constantly tend to over-complicate.

3. The Lost Art of Courage

True courage is the melding of grace and truth. And – spoiler alert – is not meanness.

4. Damaged Honus Wagner Card Sells for $1.5M

Man. This was the holy grail of baseball cards for me when I was a kid.