Michael Kelley's Blog, page 4

“Love God… and Do Whatever You Please”

Augustine, the great North African theologian of the fourth century, once wrote this:

“Love God, and do whatever you please.”

Was he right? Maybe there’s part of you, like me, that bristles at that statement. And maybe that bristling comes from the fact that we know ourselves a little too well to fully endorse what the great theologian is saying. We know, for example, that there are many times throughout the day when we want the wrong thing – we want to be angry. Or lustful. Or greedy. 

Or the opposite side of the coin – there are many other times when we DON’T want what we should. We don’t want to be compassionate. To care deeply. To weep with those who are weeping and rejoice with those who are rejoicing. 

The problem we have with Augustine’s quote is that “whatever we please” doesn’t seem to be aligned with what the Bible tells us to do. 

But to understand Augustine’s point, we have to look below the surface a bit and try and see how Augustine understood the gospel. Yes, he saw the gospel as God’s grace to us in Christ. Yes, he saw the gospel as the great expression of God’s love toward sinful people. Yes, he saw the gospel as the only way we can be brought into right relationship with God. But he also saw the gospel as transformational. 

In other words, the gospel is the means by which we become something brand new.

Consider this passage from Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:17-21).

Do you see the transformational nature of the gospel here? The old has gone and something new has come in its place. And what is that new thing? It’s us, for we have become the righteousness of God.

When we come into Christ, we are given a new heart which comes with new desires. New tastes. New ambitions. Yes, it takes time for that newness to take hold, but over the course of our lives, we actually begin to not only do the right thing, we start to want to do the right thing. Indeed, the very fact that we feel a tension inside us between doing what we know to be good and right and true and that which, though we might desire it, we know to be sinful, shows we are being transformed. Here again from Paul:

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18).

Back to Augustine’s quote. When we truly love God, which we are able to do when we are born as new creatures in Christ, that love transforms our desires and aligns them with His will. When we love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, our actions will naturally flow from that love, and our will will become conformed to His.

Friends, we are on the road to this. True enough, right now we choose holiness and goodness by faith because we don’t always feel it. Or want it. But someday we will. Someday we will be whole people in which we not only do the right thing, but feel the right thing. Until then, we stay in faith trusting that the Holy Spirit is making us into the new creation that we have already become.

3 Reasons Why the Bible Pays So Little Attention to Your Feelings

We feel, therefore we are.

That seems, more and more, to be the cultural mantra we are all living under whether we recognize it or not. We use that gauge to determine increasingly every decision we make, from the restaurant we want to eat at for lunch to the person we choose or do not choose to remain married to right down to the fitting room we choose to use in a clothing store. If you imagine our lives as locomotives, then the engine at the front of that train – the one that pulls everything else along – is the engine named “feelings.” We feel, therefore we are, and therefore we act.

Our feelings also take the lead in our theology. We read a difficult text, hear some tough words from Jesus, or start to wrestle with a biblical doctrine that just seems so out of date in the modern world, and often the trump card is our feelings. We pick and choose and interpret even the words of the Scripture using our feelings as a grid. The ultimate question, then, is not what is true, but what do we feel.

Given how important feelings are to us, it’s surprising to see just how little the Bible seems to care about them. Now don’t misunderstand here, because the Bible is very honest when it comes to our feelings. The Psalms are an incredibly emotional set of songs filled with gut-wrenching doubt, sorrow, and anxiety. The Psalmist pulled no punches in acknowledging his own feelings, and neither should we. So it’s not that the Bible doesn’t honestly acknowledge our feelings; it just doesn’t seem too concerned with addressing them beyond giving us space to feel what we feel and even speak those feelings out loud to the Lord.

Why might that be? Why doesn’t the Bible tell us what and how to feel? I’d suggest three reasons:

1. Because feelings are liars.

As Eugene Peterson puts it, “Feelings are important in many areas but completely unreliable in matters of faith.” That is true, and the Bible tells us so along with Peterson: “The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable—who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9).

Like all parts of us, our emotions have been corrupted by sin. We aren’t made happy by the truly joyous things, and we aren’t nearly grieved and outraged enough by those things that truly grieve and outrage a holy God. We simply can’t trust our feelings, and the Bible knows it. It is a fearful thing to live in the knowledge that you can’t trust yourself. But that fear can either paralyze you, or it can make you look outside yourself for the ultimate source of truth and guidance. This is what the Bible is concerned with – revealing to us that source of truth which, unlike our own hearts, can indeed ultimately be trusted.

2. Because God is primarily concerned with faith.

The Book of Hebrews explicitly tells us this:

“Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb. 11:6).

God is looking for faith. True, genuine faith. And, as the writer of Hebrews also pointed out, faith is all about confidence in what we cannot see; it’s about a lasting hope in what we hope for in God. The very essence of faith is predicated upon a different reality than is immediately apprehended by our senses. We can’t see it. We can’t touch it. We can’t smell or taste it. That’s why we must have faith. And we can extend those five senses into the realm of feelings. We can’t feel “it”, but we nevertheless believe “it” to be true. That is faith.

So the Bible recognizes the primacy of faith in our lives and wants to teach us what to believe about God, the world, and ourselves. Not what we should feel.

3. Because actions, not feelings, are the truest window to the heart.

Is your faith real? Is mine? Feelings will not dictate the answer to that question. Nearly the whole Book of James tells us that actions, not feelings are the truest window to the heart:

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him?” (James 2:14).

Church history (and even our own pasts) are riddled with stories of those who knew they ought to feel one thing, and yet they did not. But the issue does not end there. We might not feel like reading the Bible; or singing in worship to God; or being faithful to our spouse; or reporting our income honestly on our taxes. The question, though, is not what we feel; it’s what we do. For it’s those actions that are the truest reflection of whether we have actually been deeply changed by the gospel.

Friends, none of us feels exactly what we ought to feel. All of us have hearts that lie to us and lead us astray. But thank God we have a Bible that tells us the truth even if we can’t do the same thing for ourselves. And thank God that someday, gloriously, we will be made whole – whole in body, whole in spirit, and even whole in our emotions.

3 Mistakes We Might Make When Thinking About Faith

The word “faith” appears approximately 250 times in the New Testament. But that word is a noun, and when you include the verb expressions of that word, there are far more. These would be words like “trust” and “believe.” Based on the number of mentions alone you’d have to include that “faith” is an important concept in the Bible. 

And of course that’s true. As Christians, we are people of faith. Faith is not an ancillary part of our lives but rather the driving force behind everything we do. Our faith is what forms the grid by which we understand and process reality. It is our main operating system; the means by which we approach everything else. Not to mention the fact that faith is what God desires from us more than anything else:

Without faith, it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6).

Given its important, we should have a firm idea of what faith is. By that I don’t mean only what the object of faith is, but what faith is in and of itself. So to get at that understanding, it might be helpful to approach the issue from the other direction. That is, what are some misunderstandings we might about the nature of faith? 

Here are three of them:

1. Faith is ONLY an intellectual acknowledgment.

Faith must have an object, and that object is very important. So important you might say that the amount of faith is irrelevant if the object is not trustworthy. Fortunately, we have an object that is the most trustworthy and the most proven. But here we must be careful because yes, faith does involve an intellectual acknowledgment of what is true. But it is more than that.

Faith, in the Christian sense, is active. It is not merely acknowledging the truthfulness of something but instead is an active trust. It is not only agreeing but leaning. Put another way, it is a very different thing to agree that Jesus was an actual historical figure and placing the weight of your eternity upon Him. In a similar way, it is a very different thing on a day to day basis to acknowledge that God is in control and is working all things for your good and choosing to trust Him to the degree that your life is not filled with anxiety.  

2. Faith is a condition you fall in and out of. 

The world around us sees the concept of love like this. You fall in love and you fall out of love and you don’t have any control over it. Instead, love is just a condition – either you feel it or you don’t. As Christians, we would take issue with that understanding of love, but we must be careful not to view faith in the same way.

Yes, faith is a gift from God. Jesus said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44). Philippians 1:29 says, “To you it has been granted for Christ’s sake… to believe in Him.” Add to that what Paul says in Romans 3 that no one seeks God, not even one. Faith, at the outset, is a gift. But beyond that, faith can be grown. It can be stretched. It can be chosen.

And this is what we do on a daily basis. We are confronted with circumstances that seem to contradict what we believe – that God is not wise. Or not loving. Or not in control. And what do we do in those circumstances? Just sit around and hope we have faith?

No – we choose to believe. 

3. Faith is a purely internal attribute.

We must also be careful not to think that faith is a purely internal attribute. That is, we believe in our hearts and the only real effect that belief has is a little less worry. A little more peace. A little more confidence and a little less apprehension. Now all those things are true, but the kind of faith we have as Christians is a transformative faith.

James 2 speaks of a “false faith” we can possess:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds (James 2:14; 17-18).

Faith changes us. It works itself out in tangible ways. Put another way, our works are the “vital signs” of a living faith. 

Faith is not just an important thing for Christians; it is THE important thing. Faith alone in Christ alone, as the Reformers would say. But as we emphasize the necessity of faith, let’s make sure we understand that it is more than intellectual agreement. That it is not passive. And that it is transformational.

One Mistake We Often Make When Reading the Bible

If you want your life to change, then read the Bible.

If you want to know God, then read the Bible.

If you want to grow in your faith, then read the Bible.

If you only have a minimal interest in spiritual things but want to fuel that flame, then read the Bible.

Read the Bible. Read it again. Simmer in the truth; submit to God’s authority; memorize its truth. Read the Bible, Christian, and you will grow.

But as you read the Bible, keep in mind that there is a way we can read it wrongly. We can, for example, read the Bible from the perspective that I am the center of the story – that the Bible is primarily about me. It’s not – the Bible is primarily about God. Of course, we see ourselves in its pages, but we see ourselves in the bigger story of who God is and what He is doing.

Or we might make the mistake of reading the Bible without its context. We might forget that each book of the Bible was written for a specific purpose at a specific time in a specific situation. We need to remember that the Bible doesn’t say now what it has never said, so as we interpret it, we must do so with an eye on the original context.

But here’s one other mistake we might make when reading the Bible is that we apply its truth singularly. To me, and me alone. The reason that’s a mistake is because, if we remember the original context, we will remember that the Bible was primarily written to be read, understood, and obeyed by the people of God. Of course, there are exceptions to that – there are some of Paul’s letters written to an individual like Timothy or Titus. But by and large, this is a community book.

See, God has always been on a mission to not just redeem individuals, but to build a people. A family that extends beyond traditional lines of race, social standing, and national origin. This is where we’re headed – not merely to our glorification as individuals, but toward a redeemed people:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away (Rev. 21:1-4).

Notice the plural pronouns here. Live with “them.” “They” will be his peoples. God will be with “them.” God is making all things new, and one of those new things is this new community. Among other things, this means we fall short when we only look to an individual application of the Bible. We would do well to ask the question together:

“What does this mean for us?”

3 Things We Can Learn From Paul’s Prayers

At the first of his letters, Paul took a generous amount of time and space to write out a prayer for the congregation at Ephesus or Corinth or Thessanolica or Rome. We generally just skim through this section, treating it like more or less the small talk at the front end of a conversation.

“Hi there.”

“Hope you’re doing well.”

“Maybe we can connect soon.”

Blah, blah, blah.

Except it’s not “blah, blah, blah” material. Like the rest of the Bible, these sections, too, are the inspired and infallible Word of God. That means there is something here for us. In fact, there are at least three things:

1. Paul’s prayers are the key to understanding his whole letter.

A good rule of thumb in biblical interpretation is this: The smaller the passage the greater potential error. Think about it – you can find a verse in the Bible to justify almost anything. You want to bash in the heads of your enemies? There’s a verse for that. You want to marry a thousand women? There’s a verse for that. But we must read those verses in context.

What does the paragraph around it say? And what does the whole chapter say? And what does the whole book say? And what does the whole Bible say? It all fits together if we zoom out. Accordingly, Paul used his prayer as a simple outline of his main points in his letters. So if you want to have a good idea of his overall purpose in writing Philippians, read the prayer, and you’ll find a clue to the issues he was addressing in the congregation.

2. It’s okay to pray articulately.

These prayers of Paul are not haphazard; they are instead well thought-out and articulate. You might even say they are beautiful in their use of language. And that’s a good thing, though sometimes we might not think it is.

We believe, as Christians, that we can approach the throne of grace boldly and with confidence, as a child comes to his or her father. One of the things that means is that we don’t have to perfectly plan our prayers. Sometimes the language is messy or desperate or hardly even intelligible. That, too, can be a good thing if it truly expresses the depths of your heart and soul. There is a beautiful kind of authenticity that comes with spontaneous prayers, but there is also beauty with carefully crafted ones.

In these lines, you find wonderful, grace and Christ-centered language that rolls off the tongue and pen like poetry. I can’t help but think the Lord takes delight in beantiful language like this.

Too often we have used spontaneity as an excuse for laziness in praying.

3. Don’t pray generally.

It’s amazing that Paul, a man constantly on the go to new frontiers, actually knew the specific situations going on in these congregations. Maybe the reason our prayers sound like, “God just bless them today,” or “God I pray that you would be with them today,” is because we don’t actually know the people we claim to be praying for. If we knew them, we would pray more specifically – like the apostle did. We would know that they struggle with disunity. Or with self-worth. Or with a particular misunderstanding of the gospel. And the words would roll off our tongue, not in generalities, but with specific promises of God associated with them.

Friends, as you open your Bible day after day, don’t skip these sections. They’re not meant to be thrown away. Let them fuel your understanding of the Bible. And then let them shape your prayers with beauty and specificity.

You Are God’s Child, But Don’t Mistake Intimacy for Frivolity

God desires intimacy with His people. It has always been this way.

When God created the first humans, He looked for them as He walked in that garden in the cool of the day (Gen. 3:8-9).He ordered the construction of the tabernacle for Him to dwell in the midst of His people (Ex. 29:45).John tells us that Jesus became flesh and literally “tabernacled” among us (John 1:14).Jesus taught His disciples to pray not from a distance but with an expression of this intimacy by calling God “Father” (Luke 11:2).That term, Father, expresses His desire well. God desires to relate to us as a heavenly parent, not in isolation, but in intimacy. God wants to be in a relationship with His people that’s not marked by fear but love. Not apprehension, but an appreciation of His great grace and compassion. He wants to be our Father through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That’s where the love of God takes us. John described it like this in 1 John 3:1: “Look at how great a love the Father has given us, that we should be called God’s children.” God’s great love doesn’t make us His servants. It doesn’t make us “the people He puts up with.” God’s great love makes us His sons and daughters.

God is committed to making sure we understand the nature of the relationship we have with Him. In fact, He wants us to know Him as Father so much so that one of the primary functions of the Holy Spirit is to remind us of the reality of His closeness:

All those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies together without spirit that we are God’s children (Rom. 8:14-16).

The Holy Spirit of God that lives inside of us is there for many reasons, but a big part of His role is to rise up in us and remind us of our true identity. He’s there to whisper over and over in our spiritual ears, “You are the child of God. He is your Father.” The word, Abba, points to the familiarity and intimacy God desires.

Now many have said that this term, Abba, puts a kind of exclamation point on that intimacy, claiming that the word doesn’t just mean Father; it means “daddy”. That is true from a modern interpretation – in twenty-first-century Jerusalem, it does indeed mean “daddy,” or “papa.” But in Jesus’ time, it was also used by adult children to their fathers. And it’s at this point we need to be careful, because calling God “Abba” is meant to emphasize intimacy, not frivolity. There is a great difference between those two things.

Think about it like this – you might be walking down the hallway of your office building and see one of your closest friends. As a greeting, you might say something like, “Hey, buddy!” In that sense, the word “buddy” is a term of intimacy. But you might also be walking down that same hallway and see someone you barely know. In fact, you might not even remember his name. So you greet him in the same way: “Hey, buddy!”

The same term is used to emphasize familiarity, comfort, and care that is used in a frivolous, careless kind of greeting.

When the Bible tells us that God is our Abba, it doesn’t mean we should be frivolous in the way we approach Him. We must, therefore, be careful to draw that distinction. The teacher in Ecclesiastes had a helpful word for his audience about how to approach the house of God:

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Better to approach in obedience than to offer the sacrifice as fools do, for they ignorantly do wrong (Ecc. 5:1).

But for the Israelites, it was not only a word of caution – it was an architecture of caution. If you go to the temple in Israel today you can still see how the builders constructed that temple in order to emphasize it. The original southern steps – the ones that led up to the temple and the ones the worshippers had to ascend before coming into the temple courts – are all irregular in size.

You might find one step that has a depth of one foot. But the next one might be double that. Not only that, but the depth of the steps also vary as you are going up them. A person coming into the temple to worship had to quite literally guard their steps or they would fall on their face. It was a careful kind of approach.

Oh yes, friends – we have been given access to a greater and better temple than that one. And yes, friends, we are meant to come boldly into it time and time again because our Father invites us to do so. And yes, friends, we would still do well every once in a while to remind ourselves of the reason why we can come there to begin with. The cross of Christ ought to be those same irregular steps that make us pause – not in fear, but in gratitude of what was given for our sake.

So let’s be grateful for a God who invites us into intimacy. But let’s not mistake that intimacy for frivolity.

Let Your Joy Be Fueled by Your Faith

“This is the day the Lord has made; let’s rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).

Rejoicing is serious business for the Christian. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that joy “just happens.” We drift in and out of a lot of things in life, but joy should not be one of them. To the Christian, joy is an issue of obedience. We are commanded to pursue joy, to find joy, and to not settle for anything else. Rejoicing in the Lord, then, is not merely a suggestion or a tip for a better day; it’s an issue of obedience. So says the psalmist, and so says Paul in the New Testament:

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4).

Rejoicing is the end of this verse; that’s what we want to get to.

Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? But take a look at your schedule. Take a look at your agenda. Take a look at the host of things that simply must be done this day, consider how many of them are part of the regular routine of life, and it becomes more problematic. Rejoice in the paying of the bills? Rejoice in the next zoom meeting? Rejoice in the folding of the laundry or the making of the lunches? Maybe not.

Combine that with the fact that this day is happening now, in the midst of whatever else is happening in your life. Now in the midst of uncertainty. In the midst of anxiety. In the midst of all the gladness and pain and hope and grief and everything else. Much as we might want to rejoice, some days make it difficult to do so. But like all issues of obedience, our rejoicing isn’t primarily about the will. It’s not just about deciding to rejoice, or waiting for the circumstances around us to make us rejoice, or trying as hard as we can to work up some rejoicing. Our joy is rooted in what we believe to be true about God, and therefore what we believe to be true about everything else. And that’s the link between the two halves of Psalm 118:24.

Our joy ought to be fueled by our faith.

In other words, our willingness to believe Part A of this verse leads to our practice of Part B of this verse. And that’s where we come to an exercise that might help to connect the two halves to each other.

The exercise is built on Part A – in the simple statement, “This is the day the Lord has made.” When you start to look a little deeper into those few words, you find some powerful truths that drive our rejoicing. Let’s do that together:

This is the day.

In Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo once remarked to Gandalf: “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” as he lamented the fact that he had lived to see the evil advancing from Mordor. Gandalf responded: “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

This day. This one right here. This is the day at hand, and it will do me no good to wish for another day. A different day. The day that someone else is having, or the day of another time. This is the day that I’ve been given. This day, full of the mundane and the ordinary, full of opportunity unexpected. This one, the one that’s beginning right now, is the day.

That the Lord has made.

Regardless of what this day holds, it is the day that the Lord has made. He is not some cosmic clockmaker who set the universe in motion and then stood apart, watching it tick away. He’s still in the business of making days, and He’s made this one for me. For us. And although we know very little of the potential ups or downs or highs or lows that this day holds, it is nevertheless the one made by the Lord. Because it is made by the Lord, I know that along with making it He has also given me the resources I need for it. I have the grace I need. The patience I require. The perseverance necessary. The discipline to do and work. Along with this day He’s made He has also given me His limitless supply which I take hold of by faith.

I will rejoice and be glad in it.

That’s why I can rejoice. It doesn’t mean everything today will make me happy; none of us are naive enough to believe that. Surely things today will make me frustrated or sad, angry or disappointed. But this is the day. The one that the Lord has made. And because I know something of the nature and character of God, I can rejoice in this day, the one He has made for us, and be glad in it, trusting that though it might not feel like it at the time, everything that happens today has been filtered through the loving hand of a loving God.

So I wonder if you would make this exercise a part of your morning. Perhaps a part of many mornings to come. To pause and remind yourself first of all, that this is the day. This one. Right here.

That the Lord has made. He has given you this specific day, and He has done so on purpose. And let those truths then drive rejoicing.

For rejoicing in the day at hand means embracing the sovereign work of a loving God. Otherwise, I’ll be wishing for another day. Feeling bombarded by seemingly random circumstances. And I’ll be far from rejoicing when my head hits the pillow tonight.

3 Reasons Why God’s Discipline is Good News for You

It seems to me the older you get, the more discipline is required. Just one example here – when we were younger, it felt like we could eat what we wanted, when we wanted it, and suffer no ill-effects. At all. But times, they are a-changin’. 

These days it takes a lot more discipline. Discipline to maintain a routine. Discipline to keep priorities in line. Discipline to stay on track. And it’s not necessarily pleasant.

That’s a no-brainer though. I know it. You know it. The Bible knows it:

No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful (Heb. 7:11).

The context of this acknowledgment in Scripture deals not with our willingness to discipline ourselves, but rather God’s ongoing discipline of us. But just as it’s not necessarily fun to impose discipline on yourself, it’s neither particularly pleasant to experience the discipline of the Lord.

Enjoyable? No. Good? Yes. Very good, in fact:

Endure suffering as discipline: God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline—which all receive—then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had human fathers discipline us, and we respected them. Shouldn’t we submit even more to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time based on what seemed good to them, but he does it for our benefit, so that we can share his holiness. No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed instead (Hebrews 12:7-13).

These verses give us three reasons why, though not enjoyable at the time, God’s discipline is very, very good news for you.

1. God’s discipline means He is an involved parent.

What kind of parent exercises discipline on their children? The involved parents – it’s those who know, and care, what their children are up to and who they are becoming. God’s discipline is evidence of the fact that He is intimately involved in our lives. He knows when we get up and when we lie down; when we come and when we go. He even knows the inner parts of our hearts that we ourselves might be blind to. So even though His discipline might not be pleasant, it is a sure and certain reminder that God is not some absentee Father who just shows up around Christmas to throw a gift or two your way. No – God is an active and engaged Father who actually cares enough about our lives to play an active role in shaping them.

2. God’s discipline means you are a legitimate child.

Not only does God’s discipline say something about Him and His divine parenting, it also speaks about our identity as His children. I think about this fact in light of my own children. When they have friends over to our house, I might give some general direction, but it’s not my role to discipline them. At least, it’s not my role to discipline them as I would my own kids. Why? Because they’re someone else’s children.

If God is willing to discipline us, it means that we belong to Him. We are in His family. And our place there is as legitimate as legitimate can be.

3. God’s discipline means He is shaping your character.

Finally, God’s discipline is good news because He cares about who we are becoming. He cares enough to take an active role in shaping our character into the image of Jesus. That’s really what discipline is about – it’s not about punishment; it’s much more forward-thinking than that. God disciplines us so that we might continue to grow in holiness in the future – to be the people He created us to be and enjoy Him in the way we were created to enjoy Him.

Yes, Christian, you will be disciplined by God. And yes, it probably won’t be pleasant when it happens. But in the midst of the unpleasantness is an opportunity to remind yourself that this discipline is not evidence of God’s anger, but His love. It’s not evidence of His abandonment, but His presence.

3 Things That Make a Christian “Unavailable”

The word posture is defined like this: “position, condition, or state, as of affairs.”

In a physical sense, your posture is how you generally hold yourself. It’s not a static term, meaning that you always are sitting or standing or bending. All of us do those things a thousand times a day. Your posture, though, is the general position. In fact, it’s your posture that influences the way you hold yourself in all those other movements. It determines just how you stand or sit or bend.

I have wondered, from time to time, what my posture is in life, especially as it relates to the gospel. What is my general position? What is the manner in which I hold myself which influences all the other particular motions and movements that I might make? What is the general position that influences how I work? How I parent? How I attend worship services and go to the movies?

There are many things we might say about the posture of a Christian – that it is humble; that it is grateful; that it is confident. But we must also say that the gospel compels us to have a posture of availability. Here’s how Paul described such a posture in Ephesians 5:15-16:

“Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise— making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”

Be available. You have a finite number of minutes each day, and each of those minutes has opportunities to press the gospel further out and further in. A posture of availability recognizes this reality and acts accordingly. A posture of availability is convinced that God is active, and as His agent, we should be aware of opportunities that will come into our path.

Sounds simple enough, I know, to be available to make the most of the opportunities before you. So what keeps us from having such a posture? Here are a few things that can distort our state and make us unavailable for what is coming our way in the day ahead:

1. An inflated ego.

Sometimes we don’t have an available posture because we think too highly of ourselves. We don’t want to engage in a conversation with this person or that one because, truth be told, we think we are too educated, too important, or too busy to do so. Ironically, though, our inflated egos might not necessarily find its root in thinking too highly of ourselves, but too lowly. We might be convinced that we are the only ones on earth with difficulty, and because we are, we spent all our time in a spiral of self-focus, thinking only about our own lives and issues and therefore becoming completely oblivious to those around us. In either case, though, whether our egos are inflated because of our relative prosperity or relative suffering, we find ourselves in an unavailable posture because of our heightened sense of self-importance.

2. An overcommitted lifestyle.

A posture of availability is contingent upon, well, being available. And when we are overbooked, with our schedules and commitments running over the top of the minutes we have in the day, we cannot be available. If, for example, we constantly press and press and press and then when we eventually come home we are too exhausted to engage with our children, to talk with them about life and the Lord and the gospel, we are ignoring the opportunities right in front of us. In order to assume a posture of availability, we must take an active role in our schedules to make sure there is room. Always room.

3. A forgotten past.

Paul the apostle, in his teaching, seemed always intent on reminding people of who they once were. Maybe that’s because he lived with the knowledge of who he once was. This isn’t some kind of morbid fixation on the past, but rather an intentional effort to keep in mind that we, like the apostle, like everyone else, once were lost in darkness. We once were going our own way. We once didn’t know up from down or right from left. But having believed the message of the gospel, our eyes have been opened and we have been set on the path of righteousness. But when walking on that path, we sometimes forget where we came from. When we do, it’s easy to be unavailable to those on that same path.

God in the gospel has brought us into the light. And having been positioned there, it is our good and right posture to be available. To make room. To create margin. And to actively look in our availability to press the gospel further out and further in.

3 Things You Should Expect if God is Your Father

“Father is the Christian name for God” according to JI Packer. He goes on to say:

“’Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption. What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance, and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has.”

Through Christ, God has brought us into His family. He has adopted us, and now the primary way in which we relate to Him is as our Father. As difficult as that might be for those who have had troubled and destructive relationships with their earthly fathers, it is nevertheless true that God desires to be in the kind of relationship where we know Him as Father.

But beyond a way in which to address God, what does that name mean for us? What is it we can expect if God is our Father? Many things, but surely at least these three:

1. Intimacy

God is committed to making sure we understand the nature of the relationship we have with Him. In fact, He wants us to know Him as Father so much so that one of the primary functions of the Holy Spirit is to remind us of the reality of His closeness:

“All those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies together without spirit that we are God’s children” (Rom. 8:14-16).

The Holy Spirit of God that lives inside of us is there for many reasons, but a big part of His role is to rise up in us and remind us of our true identity. He’s there to whisper over and over in our spiritual ears, “You are the child of God. He is your Father.” The word, Abba, points to the familiarity and intimacy God desires. That’s a term of closeness. It’s a term of love. Of affection. If God is our Father, then we should expect the kind of intimacy that ought to be a part of that relationship.

2. Care

As Jesus was teaching about prayer in the book of Luke, He pointed to the kind of care that we can expect from God as our Father:

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:11-13).

Jesus’ point is that if we, who are imperfect, know at least a little bit about giving good gifts to our children, then surely our perfect Father knows much more. Problem is, though, care might be misunderstood as comfort.

Because God is the perfect Father, He doesn’t just give good gifts; He give right gifts. In terms of the passage, He knows the difference between a fish and a snake. The same can not be said about us.

Surely there have been times in all our lives when we were convinced we were asking our Father for a fish only to later realize we were actually asking for a snake but didn’t know it. Or, we might have looked in what God was providing for us in His care and thought it was a snake only to later realize it was a fish.

3. Discipline

A good Father exercises discipline on His children. In fact, discipline is one of the ways we know He loves us as a Father:

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all (Heb. 12:7-8).

God uses all kinds of things to discipline us. Circumstances, relationships, decisions to be made—these can all be tools of discipline. Our inclination when we face difficulty is to try and get out from under it as soon as possible. But perhaps we should respond with reflection rather than retreat. If we do, then the question we have during times of difficulty changes from “Why is this happening to me?” to “What is God forming in me?”

God is our Father. And He’s the perfect One. We should expect all these things, and more, from a Father like Him.