Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 30
May 2, 2024
Questions about Faith and Doubt with Ray Ortlund
Ray Ortlund is a dear friend and mentor who is the founding pastor of Immanuel Church in Nashville, Tennessee (where I now have the privilege of serving). He is the author of several books including The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ and Proverbs: Wisdom that Works .
1) What does “I believe, help my unbelief” mean to you?Well, who doesn’t have a hard time making up their mind, especially when everything important to us is on the line? We’re talking about the ultimate meaning of our lives and the eternal consequences that hang in the balance. We have to get this right, because we have no reason to believe we’ll have a second chance after this life. That is very sobering to me. But it leads me to this realization. My capacity for belief is not measured by my certainty but by my need. Faith is not my bringing the great questions of existence under my control; faith is turning to the Lord, in his all-sufficiency for my desperate need, to hear and receive what he has to say to me. “I believe” is that childlike capacity to accept whatever he says, and “help my unbelief” is that standoffish pride of mine that folds my arms as I listen to him and responds, “What else you got?” When I am unsatisfied, I have to ask if it’s because I am being unsatisfiable.
2) Do you have a favorite passage about belief and doubt?Yes. Psalm 73. The psalmist walks us through his personal crisis of doubt. He believed in the goodness of God (verse 1), but it wasn’t working for him (verse 2). Why? He saw how everyone does everything wrong on purpose, and they succeed (verses 3-12). Then he got to feeling really sorry for himself, how sacrificial he was, how much fun he was missing out on by obeying God (verses 13-14). But he couldn’t admit to anyone what he was really thinking (verse 15). Just when he was about to cave, he saw something new (verse 16). He thought he had seen too much of reality, but he hadn’t seen enough of reality; he hadn’t seen where it was all going (verse 17). Then, looking again with new eyes, he saw how flimsy the whole God-neglecting system is (verses 18-20). [I think, for example, of John Lennon.] Now he was embarrassed by his own stupidity (verses 21-22). But God had still held onto him, even when he couldn’t hold onto God, and God will never let him go (verses 23-24). Finally, he collapses in contented defeat, having nothing but God in all this world to count on as his own, and feeling rich and amazed and talkative (verses 25-28).
I love Psalm 73 because I identify with the poet at every step of the way.
3) What is belief in God?Belief in God takes us beyond a naked intellectual persuasion that a Higher Power is out there. Real belief, by apostolic standards, is — to use the language of Jonathan Edwards — a new sense on our hearts that God is really there and really wonderful (Hebrews 11:6). Even more boldly, it is a vivid awareness, an implicit certainty — it is Christ himself dwelling powerfully in our hearts, so that we are rooted and grounded in his love, it is knowing the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that our hearts are filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:14-19). Anything less is pathetic. Which means we live much of our lives in a pathetic state. But let’s call it what it is. Real faith in God is living on the edge of inner miracle moment by moment.
4) What do you see as the relationship of faith and doubt?Wherever the fault line between faith and doubt appears inside me at any given moment, that is where the Holy Spirit is gaining new ground. There are vast continents inside my internal world, most of which remain unexplored and uncivilized, vast jungles of disorganized impulses and moods, dark continents of unbelief I’m not even aware of yet. But the Holy Spirit is bringing the kingdom of Jesus into me, little by little, but inexorably. The struggles I become aware of take place where his power is pushing into my unbelief, debunking by tired old thoughts, creating new faith, advancing the felt presence of Jesus. This will continue, by grace, until my dying day.
5) How can a person strengthen their belief in God?Read the Bible a lot. Go to a credible church every Sunday. Hang out with believable Christians as much as you can. But hang out with smart non-Christians too. Never shy away from a doubt, difficulty, or question. Finally, take a risk. Put something of yourself on the line, something costly, in obedience to Christ, and see how he comes through for you.
“I believe; help my unbelief” is one of my favorite phrases in scripture. It captures so much of what it means and takes to be a follower of Christ, encapsulating struggle, faith, doubt, obedience, wandering, and repentance. It is deeply theological and personal. For these reasons and more I wrote a book called Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not The Enemy of Faith which explores what real belief is and its relationship with doubt in the life of a believer. The challenges of that tension are not unique to me; they’re nearly universal among Christians no matter position, maturity, or church tradition.
May 1, 2024
New Podcast – Curious Curmudgeons
Today my friend Adam Read and I launched a new podcast called Curious Curmudgeons. “Curious” because we love to explore ideas, life, and truth. “Curmudgeon” because sometimes life is ridiculous, deserves an eye roll, and maybe to be told to get off our lawn.
If you love Jesus, love considering life deeply, thinking through big ideas. . . but you also can’t hold your tongue or help rolling your eyes at some of life’s crazy, then this podcast is for you. In this first season we discuss some of life’s most significant turning points ranging from career changes to moving cross country to stages of parenting to switching churches.
LISTEN TO THE PODCASTSubscribe and listen to Curious Curmudgeons wherever you get your podcasts
Follow the ShowKindle Deals for May 1
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April 30, 2024
Kindle Deals for April 30
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April 29, 2024
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Children of God
“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15)
Have you ever thought about what it means to be a child of God? It’s a phrase we often use in the church, but it’s easy to skip right over its amazing and beautiful significance. Romans 8 helps us understand. Verse 15 says, “you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
When we become Christians, something incredible happens: we become children of God. This isn’t like children of the Boys & Girls Club or children of the Boy Scouts. No, we are adopted into the family of God as his own beloved sons and daughters. God invented adoption, the embrace of a person into a family as one of its own. It isn’t temporary or incomplete. Adoption is final, complete, and permanent.
And it comes with all the family’s love, affection, and privileges. He adopts us into his delight, and he adopts us into familial rights. Romans 8:17 tells us we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” As his children, we become inheritors of His glory, riches, kingdom, and joy for all eternity with Jesus, his Son.
This isn’t something we can earn. And once we get it, we don’t need to worry about losing our place or status. If we are in Christ, as believers, we are in the family of God–His children forever.
I originally wrote this post for my church, Immanuel Nashville, in our Daily Pulse email. If you want encouragement from God’s word delivered Monday thru Friday to your inbox, I encourage you to subscribe!
April 27, 2024
Kindle Deals for April 27
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April 26, 2024
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April 25, 2024
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December 21, 2023
The Birth of Christ
Caesar Augustus was the most powerful man in the world. The Roman Empire touched three continents and had subjected numerous nations to its rule, including the little crossroads of a nation – Israel. When Augustus decree that a census be taken it was for historical purposes – to record and commemorate his power and worth.
When a dictator says “jump” his subjects say, like it or not, “how high?” and they hop to it. For Joseph, a carpenter in the town of Nazareth, that meant packing up his fiancée and making the seventy-mile trip to Bethlehem. Why? Because he had to be registered in the town his family was from, the place his roots were, the city of David, his ancestor, the great king from whom the Messiah would come.
So Joseph made the trip with his very pregnant fiancée, Mary. I’m sure the trip was difficult, what with her condition and the tenuous understanding he likely had about the nature of her pregnancy. He wasn’t the father, she claimed it was a miracle of the Holy Spirit, and an angel had told him the same in a dream – all very confusing. After seventy hard miles of walking over three or four days they arrived in Bethlehem only to find it swarming with people there for the same reason they were. The only place they could find to sleep was a stable alongside the animals.
Apparently a three-day walk is an effective way of inducing labor because Mary’s time had come. There, in that stable, she gave birth to a son, her mystery baby. She wrapped him snugly in cloth to keep him warm against the night’s chill and held him close like good mothers do. They laid him in a feed trough to sleep when the time came. It was the humblest of beginnings and a story to regale the family with at get-togethers for years to come. Almost unbelievable really, the sequence of events.
But isn’t that often the case? When God moves the mundane and inconvenient becomes pivotal in His plan. The decision of an emperor to magnify his own glory led to the birth of the King of Glory. And not just the birth but the fulfillment of prophecies dating back centuries. Caesar decrees a census and the emperor of emperors is born. In seven short verses God reveals the difference between the world’s idea of kingship and His own – Rome vs. Bethlehem, royal robes vs. swaddling cloths, thrones vs. troughs. The wisdom of man is foolishness to God and God’s wisdom is revealed in the unlikeliest of times, ways, and places – like a small barn in a small town in a small country where the Son of God entered the world to save sinners and rule for all time.
This piece was originally published at He Reads Truth, a website of whose purpose is “To help men become who we were made to be, by doing what we were made to do, by the power and provision that God has given us to do it, for the glory of Jesus Christ.” They do this by providing scripture reading plans accompanied by reflections that can be accessed for free online or purchased as print books.
