Michael Kelley's Blog, page 42

One Question to Keep Asking After Easter

Easter is a season for answering questions. It always has been.

The early followers of Jesus had plenty questions between Good Friday, when Jesus was crucified, and Sunday morning when He rose from the grave:

How did this happen?What do we do now?Was Jesus who He said He was?Was our faith in vain?

And then there were the more personal questions from those like Peter who, though he had opportunity to make good on his boastful claims of allegiance, scattered and ran instead of standing by his friend. Surely his questions were even deeper:

What do I really believe?What did Jesus think of me?How can I continue on after what I’ve seen – and what I’ve done?

But Easter is about answering questions. The resurrection of Jesus placed a stake in the ground, once and for all, for the sake of truth. The resurrection validates Jesus claims about Himself. The resurrection invites people into a proven and justified relationship with God. The resurrection puts our guilt and shame to rest and ushers into freedom. He is risen, and questions are answered.

Paul dealt with many of these questions in 1 Corinthians 15. Though the letter was written years after Jesus rose from the dead, and though it was written to a church of professing Christians, Paul nevertheless took them back to what was “most important”:

Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain (1 Cor. 15:1-2).

In the verses that follow, Paul not only reminded the Corinthians of the facts of the gospel; he also reminded them of the questions the resurrection answers. It answers the question of the reliability of Jesus. It shows us our ultimate future in Christ. It reveals how God deals with the last enemy of death. The resurrection answers all these questions and more.

But then you get to the very end of this chapter – the “so what” of Paul’s recounting of the resurrection. Here is how he closed this section:

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58).

See, Paul’s end game was not only for the Corinthians to know the truths of the gospel; it was for them to see that the resurrection changes the way they live in their day to day lives. In light of the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, we should still be steadfast. We should be immovable. We should always be excelling in the Lord’s work.

In other words, I believe the resurrection of Jesus should lead us to be asking one question over and over again:

How is __________ impacted by the reality of Jesus’ resurrection?

You can fill in the blank in any way you want, and we should fill in the blank a hundred times a day:

How is my calendar impacted by the reality of Jesus’ resurrection?

Well, if Jesus rose from the dead, then I should make sure I discipline myself to treat the time God has given me as a steward for what’s most valuable to the kingdom. Further, if Jesus rose from the dead, then I should feel the freedom to say “no” to certain things without worrying about how I will look or proving myself to other people.

How is my discipline of my kids impacted by the reality of Jesus’ resurrection?

Well, if Jesus rose from the dead, then it means that I ought to have a long game approach in talking with my kids. I shouldn’t fly off the handle or hand out quick punishments without considering how I can shepherd these kids’ souls and not just curb their behavior.

How is my frustration at work impacted by the reality of Jesus’ resurrection?

Well, even if I’m frustrated at work, I should remember that if Jesus rose from the dead, that He has the ultimate say over my self worth. He alone can tell me who I am regardless of how important others see me. In fact, because Jesus rose from the dead, the greatest place in the kingdom is probably the least recognized position of service here on earth.

And so on. The point is that we ask the question over and over again. We discipline our minds to look at our daily lives in light of the resurrection. Now that Jesus has put a myriad of question to rest, we ought to be applying the truth of Easter to our everyday lives.

Wednesday Links

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

1. Inside a Ukrainian Baptist Church

Really important profile here. And a multitude of reasons to pray.

2. 6 Ways to Love Missionaries When They Come Home

This is a good word from someone who has recently returned from the field. Lots of practical wisdom here.

3. Excellent Parenting is Remarkably Ordinary

Well, that’s encouraging! Seriously, though, I could not agree more. It’s hard, but it doesn’t have to be that complicated.

4. The Time Crunch of Toy Story 2

This seems like a remarkable feat given the deadline.

4 Reasons to Read Genesis 1 Today

“In the beginning, God…”

This is how the Bible begins. But it’s not just how the Bible begins; it’s how everything begins. Those four words form the foundation of reality. Everything we perceive with our senses, everything we know, everything we feel – it all begins here.

“In the beginning, God…”

Notice the nuance here – it’s not that God had a beginning, but at the beginning of everything else there was God. He has no beginning Himself, but rather He is the beginning of everything else. So simple, but so powerful at the same time.

In fact, you could argue (rightfully) that all of our social issues, all of our consternation, all of our battles find their root in whether or not these first four words are true. Because if they are, then they imply not just initiative and power, but also authority and ownership. These four words set the stage for everything else because they establish God as the One who rules and reigns over everything, for in the beginning, He was.

This is what we believe as Christians. And yet as Christians, this is also something we need to be reminded of. Because even if you have believed for a long, long time that God is the Creator and Owner of all, it’s easy to become so enthralled in the issues of the day that you forget. There is great benefit, then, in re-reading and re-believing this simple principle today. And here are three specific benefits to doing so:

1. To re-establish your sense of order.

It’s easy to get a sense of vertigo when you look at the world today. Things are moving fast, and they continue to get faster. Politics, societal issues, wars and rumors of wars – the world is moving along at such a breakneck kind of speed that it feels out of control. But then you read Genesis 1, and you re-believe that God is actually a God of order.

As you progress through the creative activity of God, you find your equilibrium returning. You see that He created not haphazardly but intentionally, and you believe again that there is yet still order in the universe. You breathe deeply because no matter how fast things seem to be moving, God has – and is still – ordering things the way that suits Him.

2. To increase your gratitude.

“It was good.” Here is a phrase you see over and over again in the first chapter of the Bible. The formula is simple: God creates, and His creation is good. Re-reading these well worn verses increases our sense of gratitude for God and what He has done.

It’s a good and right thing for us to live as grateful people – grateful for creation. For God’s providential care. Grateful for His wisdom and power. We see all these displayed in this one chapter, and the result is that today we can look around us and not feel discontent or angry or frustrated – but grateful for all God has done.

3. To take responsibility.

At the same time, reading Genesis 1 gives us a renewed sense of responsibility. Yes, God is the Creator, but He has given the responsibility of stewardship of the creation over to human beings. Regular, normal, human beings are meant to take care of this great creation in all its facets.

There is a weight to that stewardship that we should feel; there is a sense of responsibility that gives importance and meaning to the regular, boring parts of life. And we were made to feel the joy of bearing that weight.

4. To love your neighbor.

God created everything, and yet when it comes to the creation of human beings there was something different. Human beings alone were created in the image of God. Every, single one. No matter where they come from, no matter what their gender, no matter how rich or poor or educational level or social prowess. All these human beings were created in God’s image, and because they were (and are), each one warrants respect and kindness.

Perhaps one of the ways we regain civility in our culture is not just through trying hard to be nicer; it’s through reading Genesis 1. Again. And reminding ourselves of just who it is we are dealing with. Not just people, but image-bearers of God.

Give it a try today, won’t you? Read Genesis 1 and let it sink in. Feel it, and let is frame not just your understanding of reality, but the way you walk in and through your day today.

3 Things That Will Suffocate Your Prayer Life

I almost choked to death once when I was in middle school.

Perhaps it wasn’t quite that dramatic in reality, but at least that’s how I remember it. I was in the cafeteria, having just bought my daily ration of cheeseburger and onion rings, and was steadily plowing through the burger when I sucked an un-chewed bite of burger into my windpipe. I couldn’t breathe.

I remember my eyes going wide and feeling a sense of panic, partly because I was choking, but also partly because I was immediately embarrassed. Rather than grabbing someone next to me and motioning for help, I stood up, moved behind my chair, and doubled over the top of it trying to perform the Heimlich maneuver on myself. It worked, I coughed up the burger in my mouth, and then and sat back down. Crazy enough, no one even noticed, and I just went on eating.

The thing that sticks in my mind today as I remember that experience was how sudden it was. I was talking, laughing, eating – and then all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. It was an immediate emergency that required immediate action. And sometimes we experience emergencies similar to that in our spiritual lives. There is an occasion of sin, or pain, or panic that requires immediate attention.

Sometimes that happens, but far more often, the things that happen in our spiritual lives are much more gradual. The changes – either positive or negative – happen slowly. So slowly, in fact, that sometimes we don’t even know they’re happening until they’re already done. Our spiritual lives can deteriorate in that slow fashion that’s barely perceptible. In the negative sense, then, it’s more like suffocating than it is like choking.

One of the arenas in which that occurs is in our prayer lives. We can turn around one day and realize that we are barely even communicating with God at all, and wonder what happened. How did it get to be this way? How did we lose touch? It wasn’t like one thing suddenly happened and we stopped praying; it was a slow process of atrophy. We didn’t choke; we slowly suffocated. What might make that kind of thing happen to our prayers? Here are three potential causes of that slow, steady decline:

1. Guilt.

Surely you know the feeling in a human relationship when there is something between you and another person. Maybe some way in which you have wronged another person, and though they say they forgive you, it still feels like there is a block between you. Things are awkward. Uncomfortable. And slowly, the communication starts to decline. The same thing happens in our prayers.

If we are unconvinced that God has truly and completely forgiven us in Christ, then we will slowly but surely stop talking to Him. Stop trusting Him. Stop believing that He can and will intervene in any other circumstance. The more we live with a sense of guilt over our sin, the less intimate we will be in prayer to the Father. And when we are feeling this way, we must continually fight, for the sake of intimacy in that relationship, with the truth:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:1-2).

2. Cynicism.

We live in an increasingly cynical world. We think we have seen everything, heard everything, experienced everything, and therefore nothing really brings us delight any more. Rather, we assume ulterior motives and nefarious reasons behind everything. We constantly wait for the other shoe to drop and find ourselves moving away from simple trust in a God who loved us enough to die for us.

This kind of cynicism might help us shrewdly navigate the corridors of culture, but it will choke the life out of our prayers. That’s because prayer, when you really boil it down, is built on just a few very simple principles: God loves me. God knows what is best. God wants to hear from me. God will do the right thing. Cynicism challenges all of that, and we find ourselves, over time, losing a simple posture like this:

In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice;
    in the morning I lay my requests before you
    and wait expectantly (Psalm 5:3).

3. Prosperity.

When you think back over the course of your life, when were you most fervent in prayer? When were you most passionate in your pleading? Surely it was during a time when you sensed a great need in your life or in the world around you. Sad as it is, the more prosperous we think we are, the less we think we need to come to God in prayer.

What we fail to realize is that our need for God and His care and intervention does not wax and wane with our personal prosperity; it’s only our perception of our need that changes. Your next breath? Your next heartbeat? The world continuing to spin on its axis? All these things are held together in the hands of God Almighty. We need Him as much during days of plenty as we do in want, but the days of plenty lull us to sleep. Be careful, then, that the comfort of the every day is not slowly suffocating your prayer life:

“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap” (Luke 21:34).

Prayer is a gift. A tremendous gift. But it is also one that must be nurtured and grown. Beware the tendency toward sluggishness, friends, and fight it with the truth – the truth that we are forgiven, that life does not have to be that complicated, and that we are still people of great need.

Joy in Jesus is the Foundation for Joy in All Things

When I was in high school, my physics class was assigned a project that I’m sure was not unique to our school. We were given limited material materials, mainly Popsicle sticks and wood glue, and instructed to build a bridge with specific parameters. On the appointed day, all of us brought our bridges to class and they were placed over a gap between two desks. Then small weights were systematically hung to the bottom of the bridges to text and see how much weight they could bear. Of course, in that environment, the greatest thrill wasn’t just winning the most sturdy bridge, but also watching as structure after structure was eventually obliterated under the increasing weight.

The weights weren’t added all at once; they were added slowly. One at a time. And they were added knowing that eventually every bridge would reach its capacity and crumble. No one thought that we could do something like stand on top of the bridge; though we didn’t know how much, we knew they would be destroyed under far less weight than that of a person. These structures weren’t made to support that kind of mass.

There is a similarity between those science projects and the direction of our joy. If you look around you, you’ll see all kinds of things that you enjoy. Opening Day of the baseball season. A steak perfectly grilled. Birthday parties. Christmas mornings. A good movie. All good things and all things for us to enjoy. And here’s the thing:

We should enjoy them. Not only is there nothing wrong with doing so, but there is actually everything right in doing so. So long as we understand that there is a difference between enjoying something and finding our joy in something.

Take the first thing on that list – Opening Day. Here is something I enjoy. I think a lot of us do. Freshly cut grass. The sound of a ballpark. The not-yet-too-hot sun of the spring. It’s enough to make you stop and listen to Terrance Mann tell Ray Kinsella that “people will come… to Iowa.”

But what if it rains? Or what if there’s an emergency at work and you miss the first pitch? Or what if there’s something crazy like a labor stoppage and that day is delayed?!? Well, you might be disappointed, but you wouldn’t be crushed. And that’s the difference between enjoying and finding your joy.

Like the physics bridge of old, all these things and so many more simply were designed to be the source of our joy. The weight of that expectation is simply too much, and they will eventually be pulverized underneath it. In fact, there is really only one thing that is strong enough to sustain the weight of human expectation. Only one thing that is sturdy enough to bear up under the weight of our need for joy. And that’s Jesus Himself:

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
    and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
    and you will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:1-2).

This is the great invitation from the Lord in the Old Testament, and then fulfilled by Jesus. It’s only in Him that we can find true satisfaction. True contentment. True joy. He can bear up under that weight.

Not only so, but it’s only when we find our joy in Jesus are we actually free to rightly enjoy all these other things. That’s because we are no longer looking to those things to sustain our hearts, but instead, are treating them as they were designed to be treated – as good things for our enjoyment. We are free to enjoy them without adding the weight of our hearts to them. And so our joy in Jesus is not only rightly placed, but it also becomes the foundation of our ability to rightly enjoy other things.

There are many things in life to enjoy today, friends. But only one that can bear the weight of your joy. Jesus alone. He will not crumble.

Wednesday Links

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

1. Parents, You Don’t Need to Be Cool

Well, thank goodness for that. Seriously, though, we have a much higher calling than to be the cool parents.

2. Please Waste Some of Your Prayers

There are some people we “know” will never come to faith. But perhaps we should “waste” some prayers on them anyway.

3. The Unique Wonder of the Sunday Gathering

What are we really doing when we meet together on Sunday mornings? Here is a reminder.

4. An Unbreakable Love

France and PSG star Jean-Pierre Adams was in a coma for 39 years. His wife never left his side. What a remarkable story.

The 3-Step Order of Our Lives in Christ

“God is not a God of disorder but of peace…”

Order matters. Though Paul wrote the words above specifically to address an orderly sense of worship in the supremely disorderly church at Corinth, the broader principle applies. God is a God of order and peace.

If you go back to the very beginning, back to the garden, there was order. Stability. And therefore peace. This order is what God brought out of chaos when He spoke the universe into existence. In so doing He established repeatable patterns. The sun goes up, and the sun goes down. The earth revolves around the sun. All in an orderly pattern; all repeatable.

Order should also matter to us, not just in terms of what happens in the church, but what happens in all of life. And not just in terms of organization, but the actual order in which things happen. For example, I recently (and somewhat painfully) learned that it actually matters what order you combine ingredients in a recipe. You combine all the dry ingredients, then all the wet ingredients, and then combine the two. And if you get it out of order, the recipe doesn’t come out right.

Order matters, and when things get out of order, there are consequences.

We have the tendency when we look at our lives in Christ to get things out of order. But, it seems to me, that Paul the apostle wove a thread of the correct order throughout his writings. And the order of God’s work in and through us matters much – if we get these things out of order, we will drift away from a gospel-centered perspective into either moralism or license.

Order matters, so here is step 1:

1. Believe.

Of course, you can go back further than this – the gospel must be preached in order for a person to believe it. But true life in Christ begins when someone not only hears, but hears the message of the gospel, knows their need, and sees Jesus as supremely valuable. That person turns from their self-lordship and embraces the new life in Christ. They believe the gospel, and they are once and for all born again into Him:

“When you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed in Him, you were also sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. He is the down payment of our inheritance, for the redemption of the possession, to the praise of His glory” (Ephesians 1:13-14).

2. Become.

When someone believes the gospel, everything is changed. We have the tendency to sell the implications of believing the gospel short, seeing it as only a question of where a person will spend eternity. But the response to the gospel does more than determine a person’s trajectory; it determines a person’s identity. It does more than change where you’re going, it changes who you’re becoming:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

When we believe the gospel, we are made new. New identity. New desires. New goals. New Lord. New everything. Though we are made new on the inside, the Holy Spirit continues to invest His transformative power in us so that our outer actions catch up with our inner identity. God gives us a crown, as co-heirs with Christ, that we grow into over the course of time.

3. Behave.

This process of growing up in Christ happens as we time and time again embrace, through the Holy Spirit’s power, what God has done for us in Christ. Sanctification happens as our behavior falls into line with our identity. Paul’s theology, the “believe, become, behave” model, recognizes that we have already become something new in Christ. We are already different. That means that the behavior part is not an effort to become something different; it’s about recognizing and living out the newness that is already in us. That kind of theology is God-centered and grace-centered, and teaches us to make much of the cross, because that’s where our righteousness resonates from. You see this pattern over and over again with the apostle:

Ephesians 1-3 is about new life and the new society God is building through Christ. It’s not until chapter 4, verse 1, that he says, “As a prisoner of the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received…”Colossians 1-2 is about the greatness of Christ and what it means to live in Him. It’s not until chapter 3 that Paul says, in light of this, that we should live a certain way, setting “our hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God…”Romans 1-11 has every bit of theology imaginable in it, from the universality of sin to the greatness of grace and faith, from predestination to the role of Israel in the end times. But it’s not until chapter 12 that he says in light of all of this mercy from God, you should “present your bodies as a living sacrifice…”

Order matters. But we have the tendency to take these things in the wrong order, and when we do, we get a misshapen view of our life in Christ. For example, a “believe, behave, become” model that implicitly teaches that if you behave in the right way, you can at last become something good and acceptable to God. That’s not the gospel; it’s moralism in which we are trusting in ourselves to do the work only God can do.

Order matters. It matters a lot. When we understand and embrace the order of God’s work in us and others, we are prepared to grow not in our self-righteousness or our self-permissiveness, but in the gospel which prizes Christ above all things.

3 Things the Gospel Says When You’re Overwhelmed

The city pool was a refuge in the summertime when I was growing up. Kids from all over the community would converge there for hours, largely unsupervised, to find some relief from the hot West Texas sun. We would play games, go off the diving board, eat melted M&Ms, and never put on sunscreen.

I remember one particular time we were involved in a particularly heated game of Marco Polo, and I ventured beyond the rope that marked the slope into the deep end to escape the person who was “it.” The water was over my head, and so I would go under, then push myself up with my feet, grab some air, and then go under again. Until one time I couldn’t come back up.

See, it was a mass of humanity in those waters. Kids were shoulder to shoulder. And I got caught in the tangle of arms and legs and couldn’t find the surface until finally I was able to grab the shoulders of some unsuspecting teenager and pull myself to the top, grasping for air.

Sometimes I think about that – of feeling like I had the situation under control, just bobbing my way through the traffic. And then suddenly to realize that I couldn’t breathe because of everyone crowding in on me. I think about that because there are days that still feel like that – when I feel overwhelmed. Maybe you know what that feels like, too.

To feel overwhelmed by the pressures of work. To feel overwhelmed by what’s happening in your family or in your relationships. To have so many people, so many responsibilities, so many troubles, so much stuff pressing in around you that you feel trapped, intertwined with all these arms and legs of circumstance. Feeling overwhelmed like that can leave you breathless, struggling for the oxygen of life.

More often than not when I feel like that, there is going to be some tiny little thing that sends me over the edge. I’m trying to juggle everything else that’s happening around me, and then one of my kids will do something, or say something, or spill something, and I’ll fly off the handle. It’s not because what they’ve done is particularly heinous in some way; it’s because it was the final straw that sent all the other plates spinning in life crashing down, and that kid just happened to be the easy target that gets the brunt of all the frustration.

There is a better way. For the gospel has some things to say to us when we are feeling overwhelmed. Surely more than these things, but the gospel says at least these three things:

1. Peace to you.

This is exactly what Jesus said to His disciples when they were feeling overwhelmed. They had seen the crucifixion. They had heard rumors of the resurrection. And they had no idea what was coming next. The only thing they knew was that they were frightened. And that’s when Jesus stood in their midst and delivered this simple message: “Peace to you” (John 20:19).

This is a good word for us when we feel overwhelmed, because when you feel that way you feel anything but peace. You feel torn; ripped apart by competing priorities and responsibilities. And yet in the midst of it, the gospel reminds us that we have true peace because no matter what else happens, we are right with God through Christ. Because we are, there is nothing left to prove. It doesn’t make the responsibilities and the tasks go away, but it does remind us that we can live in a state of peace because Jesus has finished His work.

2. God is working in you.

When you feel overwhelmed, it might seem impossible to reflect on anything except all the things that have to be done in a given moment. And yet the gospel forces us to a deeper level of realization. The gospel reminds us that through all these circumstances that are cluttering our hearts, that God is at work in us to make us more like Jesus.

In other words, the gospel pushes us to remember that these things are not just tasks to be done – they are tools in the hands of our Father who is more concerned about who we’re becoming than what we are doing. And He is committed to completing His work in us. So when we feel overwhelmed, the gospel reminds us that ultimately, these things are for our good so that we might grow in our perseverance, holiness, patience, and all other qualities that come together in our spiritual growth and discipleship.

3. Do the next right thing.

Finally, the gospel actually equips us to move through being overwhelmed. When we are reminded that we have peace with God, we can actually buckle down and do something about being overwhelmed. But because of the gospel, we don’t have to work at a frenetic pace, we can instead take a breath, and focus on the next right thing.

We don’t need to worry about the 14th next thing – instead, we can just focus on the next right thing in front of us. And that next right thing might be to have dinner with our family. It might be to plan a meeting at work. It might be to go to our kid’s baseball game. Or it might be to listen to a co-worker. Whatever it is, we can attack it with gusto because we are secure enough in Jesus to be able to set our priorities in a given moment.

Are you feeling like you can’t breathe today? Feeling like the circumstances are too much? Then pause, and remember that Jesus died for you. And your life is secure in Him. Because that’s true, you can live in peace in the midst of the turmoil. You can embrace the work God is doing in you to make you more like Jesus. And then you can get busy on the next right thing for His glory.

3 Surprising Effects of Finding Your Confidence in God

Though impossible to measure, my general observation is that “confidence” is at a pretty low point in the world right now. I don’t necessarily mean self-confidence, though that might also be low right now. Instead, I mean our collective confidence in those institutions and people which once held the implicit confidence of society.

Think about it with me – if you were to go into the street and begin asking people at random a question that started like this:

“Do you trust…” and then filled in the rest of that sentence with any number of things, my hypothesis is that the answer would largely be no. You could fill it in with things like “the news;” or “the government;” or even – sadly – “the church” – and the answer would be the same. It does indeed feel like in the last decade there have been a variety of reasons – some valid, and some invalid – to call almost everyone and everything into question. As a result, our confidence has been shaken. So what do you do when that happens? I suppose you could swing the pendulum to the other side and cast the constant wary eye on everyone and everything, viewing the entire world with suspicion.

Or, conversely, you could treat that erosion of confidence as a spiritual opportunity. The psalmist was asked a question of confidence in Psalm 11:

“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Ps. 11:3).

Rather than quaking with fear, the psalmist used the question as an opportunity of redirection. Here is how he answered:

The Lord is in his holy temple;
    the Lord is on his heavenly throne.
He observes everyone on earth;
    his eyes examine them (Ps. 11:4).

The opportunity, when confidence in everything else starts to crumble, is to find new confidence in God. The person whose confidence is firmly in the Lord of the Universe thinks differently. He acts differently. She walks differently. What what specifically characterizes a person who has true confidence in God? Here are surprising aspects to consider:

1. A willingness to apologize.

Why is it so hard to say “I’m sorry” without justification or equivocation? Surely a big part of our inability to do so is because implicit with that apology is a blow to our self-esteem. We are admitting that we were wrong. That we made a mistake. That we behaved badly. And we are doing so without excuse. If our confidence is in ourselves, then that admittance is too threatening of a hurdle to jump over. If, however, our confidence is in God, then we are free to admit when we have fallen short.

2. A desire to ask for help.

In a similar way, we find it difficult to ask for help from others because asking for help is humiliating. It is an implicit admittance that we are not smart enough, talented enough, or experienced enough to do something for ourselves. An ability to regularly and unselfconsciously ask for help is visible evidence that our confidence is in something greater than ourselves. People can think we are weak – and that’s an okay thing with our confidence is in God. Because we are weak. Very, in fact.

3. A capacity for listening to others.

Ironically, it takes a person of great assurance and confidence to listen to someone else. That’s because when someone shares something with you that is contrary or disruptive or troubling, the natural tendency is to feel threatened. And we fight back with our words. But a person whose confidence is in the Lord is no longer bound by fear. As a result, we can calmly and silently listen.

God has given us great reason to place our confidence in Him. He has shown Himself to be trustworthy time and time again. And, in these days, when so much confidence has eroded, we have an opportunity to be confident in something better:

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
    whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit” (Jer. 17:7-8).

Wednesday Links

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

1. 5 Questions for Young Christians About Social Media

This not just a battle for parents, but is increasingly THE battle. These are good, overarching, and evaluative questions to help our kids ask.

2. We Don’t Know What To Do

Here is a great encouragement for prayer: “We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

3. The Goal of the Metaverse

Let’s not make any mistake about the true intentions of the innovators of the metaverse. The goal is for it to become our “primary” reality.

4. Ping Pong on Steroids

If you aren’t playing it already, welcome to pickle ball.