Category: Endurance

the long game of God

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[7 minute read]

I’ve begun rereading Philip Yancey’s Disappointment With God (highly recommend). His writing style has always appealed to me but his daring insights catch me out even more. Try this one on for size:

If you read Genesis in one sitting, you cannot help noticing a change in how God related to his people. At first he stayed close by, walking in the garden with them, punishing their individual sins, speaking to them directly, intervening constantly. Even in Abraham’s day he sent extraterrestrial messengers on house calls. By Jacob’s time, however, the messages were far more ambiguous: a mysterious dream about a ladder, a late-night wrestling match. And toward the end of Genesis, a man named Joseph received guidance in the most unexpected ways.

Genesis slows down when it gets to Joseph, and it shows God working mostly behind the scenes. God spoke to Joseph not through angels, but through such means as the dreams of a despotic Egyptian pharaoh…

…But shift for a moment to the perspective of God the parent. Had he deliberately “pulled back” to allow Joseph’s faith to reach a new level of maturity? And could this be why Genesis devotes more space to Joseph than to any other person? Through all his trials, Joseph learned to trust: not that God would prevent hardship, but that he would redeem even the hardship. Choking back tears, Joseph tried to explain his faith to his murderous brothers: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good….

— Philip Yancey, Disappointment With God, 71-72

Yancey really got me thinking about how God goes about his business…and not in the way we would expect. Of course you know this.

For example, the three matriarchs of Israel – Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel – were each affected with some form of barrenness at one time or another. You would think that God, in inventing a new nation, would have the foresight to choose fertile young women who could pop out babies right and left on a whim to launch his people-project. Not so.

God seems to go about his business in less than flashy style, the hard way. A virgin-born baby in a frontier town. Barren matriarchs who are hardly able to eke out a child or two. The runt of the litter as king of the nation. Even in creation, one of the grandest displays of his majestic purposes, God throws out a little at a time: day one, wait, day two, I’m good, day three, that’s enough for now, and so on. Why not fling everything into being all at once in a monumental great big bang?

He scripted a Church that would stymie the gates of hell… and who did he choose as its first adapters? A handful of rough-and-tumble blue collar types; the foolish, weak, and despised. His M.O. was so frighteningly scandalous he picked the Sanhedrin’s favorite hit man to reform and apostle the growing church toward spiritual maturity.

We know God can dazzle (Matt 17:2) but he specializes in the unnerving manner (to us) of plodding and waiting and delaying. He doesn’t do things the conventional way. He’s not in a hurry and he doesn’t do flashy all that often. We want him to call down fire but he wants us to pray for our enemies. Even when he stepped out of character to curse a fig tree, he walked away from it, leaving it intact… until the next day.

He’s liable to tell us that he has big family plans for us so we get busy preparing the nursery only to have it sit empty for a quarter of a century. My ways are higher than your ways, he reminds us. He’s liable to hear that we are sick unto death then wait four days to show up. By then it’s our funeral, not our sick bed.

Jesus shied away from being coronated too soon and, on other occasions, curiously charged his healed followers to keep it between them and their priest. Turns out, he was playing the long game.

I know how disappointment with God can creep in and lead to discouragement. I’ve been there more times than I care to admit. You might be there yourself. Yancey dedicated his book “For my brother, who is still disappointed.”

A sorely disillusioned Sarah laughed over the prospect of pregnancy in her well-past-due date, and when she did so, exposed a deep well of hurt inside her. Maybe at sixty-five, she sniffed, but not hardly at ninety. God recognized it at once and spoke a sure word into her void: “Is anything impossible for the Lord…?” (Gen 18:14)

Whatever you’re going through, however difficult it seems, just keep on trusting Jesus. Sometimes we’d like it better if God stopped playing the long game and wrapped things up all nice and tidy. Quick like. Allow me to share something with you that has anchored my soul in these recent days.

“As it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to Him. But we do see Jesus…” (Hebrews 2:8-9, CSB)

Read that again. Slowly. Let your soul bathe in those words.

Here’s the thing that mollifies me today. What does the writer of Hebrews emphasize time and again about what Jesus is doing right now? He’s sitting. He’s not pacing and fidgeting; he’s not wringing his hands worrying over how to turn the tide.

Jesus is sitting down.

On a throne.

Reigning like a boss.

Right now we’re in the disquieting realm of “yes, but not yet.” We just had no idea how long not yet was going to last. But right now Jesus is ruling and reigning and interceding. Imagine: the King of the Universe has our names on his heart day in and day out and is working behind the scenes causing chief cupbearers to suddenly remember, giving dreams to Pharaohs, putting you on a different platform, orchestrating famines in other places to bring hungry families to your doorstep, and reconciling and subjecting all things – and persons – to himself. He’s not just “sitting around,” mind you, he’s quite busy making all things new.

The present seems pretty messed up, if we’re being honest. But if we can manage to squint through the fog and gloom of the present “as it is,” and adjust our focus, we’ll see it all coming together — in Christ Jesus — just as God promised long ago.

Don’t lose hope, dear one, long game notwithstanding; I won’t either. See Jesus and, in the comforting words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Selah, beloved.

Before You Walk Away From Church For Good

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Pew Research says the Church in America is dying.1

Barna, in an earlier research project, says kids (and what demographic adds more life to the church?) are leaving the church in droves, starting at age 15.2

Lifeway Research says they’re not leaving for good, but they’re definitely on hiatus.3

Rachel Held Evans’ best-seller, Searching For Sunday, gives a millennial voice to an entire generation of young church-leavers.4

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I’ve read RHE’s book and found it fascinating, actually. So much in it resonated with me. Before I ever knew Rachel’s story I was already in the mode of moving from contemporary-for-the-sake-of-relevance liturgy to a more ancient or apostolic liturgy. The symbols of the sacraments were no longer just that to my seeking heart. They have become a deeper reality, a more meaningful expression of community worship. They are alive and effectual. Churches I’ve grown up in treated baptism and the Lord’s Table with the same passion as a quarterly church business meeting – which is the frequency by which they were observed, sadly. No, I’m not looking for robes and mitres and censers. But I’d like less emphasis on the band, the preacher’s hipness, the synchronized lights and (in some cases) the fog machine.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a diatribe against contemporariness (if that’s a word; auto-correct doesn’t think so). I’m just aching for something closer to the root of our apostolic faith, not dangling out on the end of some flimsy branch.

Barely a chapter in, I was already tweeting Rachel and thanked her for her reverent treatment of the sacrament of baptism. I verbalized that she and I might differ on some other matters (which we do, most assuredly), but she’s my sister and I celebrate her. This may be neither here nor there, but she replied to my tweet. Graciously. And she has at other times too. It speaks well of a well-known personality that they would respond to a lesser-known nobody like me. I’ve found it rare on social media.

But, I’m off topic. We’re talking about you, not me.

So you’re fed up with church. You’re moving dangerously in the direction of thinking you can get on without her. Think again.

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Oh, I get your angst. I know when you do the whole church, steeple, open the doors and wiggle your fingers thing, everything up to the fingers is okay. It’s the people that stop you in your tracks. Yes, churches contain mean people, judgmental people, hypocrisy and opulence at the expense of your community’s poor. No argument here.

Modern church experience can be akin to the “before” picture of a weight-loss ad. Nothing to get excited about there; more to be disgusted with to be sure. But give it time.  If your only church experience has been a “before” picture, switch magazines – or gyms! But you yourself need the running track, the ellipticals, the Zumba class, and the stair master too.

Why? Because you’re a walking “before” advertisement also.

Don’t leave the church. For all her faults, she is still the receptacle and conduit of hope and truth to the fallen world. For the love of all that’s good and holy, find a thriving community of faith and cleave to it, whatever expression. Just make sure the sacraments and elements of Acts 2:42 (and baptism!) are in play there.

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Let me close out this post with some articulate thoughts from Barbara Brown Taylor which Rachel Held Evans uses to close out her highly readable book. Okay, okay, settle down. Easy now. I make no apologies for quoting from two progressively-inclined women in Christianity. They are my/our sisters (which makes me happy) and both make helpful points here. Barbara first:

Whether you are sick or well, lovely or irregular, there comes a time when it is vitally important to your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address. After you have taken a good look around, you may decide that there is a lot to be thankful for, all things considered. Bodies take real beatings. That they heal from most things is an underrated miracle. That they give birth is beyond reckoning.

When I do this, I generally decide that it is time to do a better job of wearing my skin with gratitude instead of loathing.5

After which RHE flips the mirror:

This is the church. Here she is. Lovely, irregular, sometimes sick and sometimes well. This is the body-like-no-other that God has shaped and placed in the world. Jesus lives here; this is his soul’s address. There is a lot to be thankful for, all things considered. She has taken a beating, the church. Every day she meets the gates of hell and she prevails. Every day she serves, stumbles, injures, and repairs. That she has healed is an underrated miracle. That she gives birth is beyond reckoning. Maybe it’s time to make peace with her. Maybe its time to embrace her, flawed as she is.6

Let’s stem the tide of the recent exodus. Let’s quell the statistics. It’s the way of Jesus to give room, bear up with one another. Do I have stories? I was a pastor, remember?

I could tell you of the time an interracial couple left our church, loudly accusing my wife of racism because she didn’t give their son a solo in the children’s program – when he’d only joined weeks before (it was written, explained and understood by all that a child had to be a part of the choir for at least six months before getting an up-front part). Sandy went to their home to humble herself before them, but no matter. They saw only what they wanted to see and marred a gentle woman’s servant influence.

I could tell you of the woman who was healed of her cancer but through a series of misperceptions, left the church with a final curse of, “this church’ll close its doors a year after we’re gone.” That was years ago and the fellowship still faithfully gathers.

I could…no, I won’t. If I let it, these botherings would define the church for me. But I know different. These were the exceptions, not the standards. For every harsh punch-to-the-gut my wife and I have experienced, we are the undeserving recipients of exponential graces and blessings from our extended church family. Church is a family you choose, every week. Week after week. You put up with it, it puts up with you. And you both are better for it. Together.

So, friend, before you go for good, turn around and look again. You think it’s risky to stay? I tell you, it’s far more dangerous out there, on your own. Don’t go. You’re not alone. Stay and give beauty a chance to grow out of the ash pile. 

1 http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/

2 https://www.barna.org/teens-next-gen-articles/528-six-reasons-young-christians-leave-church

3 http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/may/dropouts-and-disciples-how-many-students-are-really-leaving.html

4 http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/searching-for-sunday-excerpt-body

5 An Altar In The World, Barbara Brown Taylor, pp37-8

6 Searching For Sunday, Rachel Held Evans, p168

IT’S STILL WORTH IT

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My wife and I are bereaved parents of a 24-year old son we buried nearly six months ago. In the wake of our beautiful ache, we both maintain the indicatives of this and my prior post. God remains good even in this, and it’s still worth any trial we must go through if we can but know Jesus more fully and intimately. Selah.

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My previous post (hopefully) encouraged the saints that in whatever circumstance of suffering or degree of disappointment, hardship, brokenness and despair you may find yourself in, IT’S STILL TRUE:

God is eternally Good to His own,

and is fiercely jealous of His own,

and eternally protective of His own.

That is unassailable Truth.

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Now I’d like to take it to the next level (as if there could be a higher level!) and leave you with this pinnacled truth: whatever bad business you’ve endured or are enduring, whatever mischief of hell cast against you, because of His promises, IT’S STILL WORTH IT!

(1) Because of His nature to love and guard His own, IT’S STILL TRUE: He is good.

(2) Because of the promises He folds into His new creation, IT’S STILL WORTH IT: I can go on. I won’t give up.

I can be strong in my trial because there is One who fights for me, wins my battles and makes me a (constant) overcomer in this life. I can endure because He will make my suffering worthwhile in an eternity bedecked with glories everlasting.

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IF GOD BE FOR US, WHO OR WHAT CAN BE AGAINST US?

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Steven Curtis Chapman sang a bold anthem, “Bring It On” and a year later, his son backed their car over their newly adopted little girl.

Bring it on
Let the trouble come, let the hard rain fall
Let it make me strong
Bring it on

Now, maybe you’re thinkin’ I’m crazy
And maybe I need to explain some things
‘Cause I know I’ve got an enemy waiting
Who wants to bring me pain

But what he never seems to remember
What he means for evil, God works for good
So I will not retreat or surrender

Bring it on
Let the lightning flash, let the thunder roll
Let the storm winds blow!

Now…I’m not advocating our throwing down the gauntlet and taunting the adversary but there is a blessed promise that we can boastfully claim. Nothing – absolutely NOTHING – the enemy brings against us will overcome and destroy us.

What does the intrinsic force of verse 31 do for you???

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Paul said it minimizes his trials. What they work FOR HIM is great and glorious, but what they do TO HIM is minimal compared to the greater work. Rom 8:18.

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― C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, illuminated this truth in an imaginative way:

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

But please take note:

It is not suffering itself, but my voluntary acceptance, submission and praise of it. To come under it, be trained by it (see Heb 12:11) that produces greater glory within.

Rom 8:17 gives further light. Not just any suffering, but suffering “with Him.”

“But if we are children, we are also heirs. We are God’s heirs and fellow heirs with Christ, if we really suffer with him so that we can also be glorified with him.” CEB

To VOLUNTARY ENDURE suffering is proof that we belong to the Age to Come…it is the hostility of THIS age that works against us (and is the doorway into future glory!).

But, look – LOOK! – saints, at the glorious promises that make our renovations, remodels, additions and painful constructions worth it!

(1) Our REVEAL as eternal sons and daughters (v19)

Creation – sun, stars, mountains, oceans, beasts of the field, fish of the sea, birds of the air, trees and flowers in the fields, the sunrise and sunset – even angels! – all wait with eager expectation for the revealing of the sons of God. For our wedding day to the Son, for God Himself to make His Home in His people.

Creation was not designed to frustrate man, but to serve him and reflect his glory. Gardens were to produce fruits not weeds, the animal kingdom was not fearsome to man, but friendly; his body was free from disease and sickness, the night was not terror-filled and the climate was calm and favorable.

In the curse, creation was subjected to decay and corruption and not friendly dispositioned to man but rebellious. But this is not the DNA of nature and creation. It knows it’s under bondage and will remain so until the saints are glorified.

If you’ve wondered at the aggression of climate and nature you only have to know these point to the increasing of birth pangs as creation’s convulsions are getting closer together in anticipation of the revealing of the sons.

(2) Renewed PURPOSE (v20)

“Futility” translates ματαιοτησ,
‘nothingness’, ‘pointless’ and ‘worthless because so twisted and faulty’

Man was made in God’s image but through the Fall and Death, perpetuated Adam’s image (Gen 5:3). Through new birth, we are again bearers of the image of God! No longer pointless, worthless, vessels of destruction, but with glorious new purpose and destiny!
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I am moved by the words of Sara Groves in her song “Why It Matters”. The lyrics were inspired by Vedran Smajlović, a former cellist in the Sarajevo String Quartet.

During the Siege of Sarajevo, he played his cello in the bombed out buildings and on the streets where mortars had killed his neighbors and friends. He called this “a protest of the darkness” and spoke of his cello as a weapon.

Like the statue in the park
Of this war-torn town
And it’s protest of the darkness
And the chaos all around
With its beauty,
how it matters,

How it matters.

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The redemptive work of our own suffering is a “protest” against darkness, letting in light to those around who are lost and blind and shielded from Truth. I posit there’s no greater evangelical “tool” than for the unsaved to encounter a saintly broken vessel that lets the Light of Christ shine into the darkness!

(3) Infectious HOPE for the earth’s redemption (vv20b-22)

The Greek for corruption is the opposite of ζωη αιωνιοσ (eternal life). So we should relish the pains of our redemption – the “gospel of weakness” – because they are the merits that point to a glorious rebirth for the earth!

(4) the REMOVAL of every last curse of the Fall against us, taking us into eternal life – THE life, unended, that we were created for way back in Genesis 1 and 2 (see Rom 8:23)

Revelation alert:

Have you seen that Romans 8 is taking us back to our intended purpose: no condemnation, adopted sons, glory, a submitted creation, reigning in Life with the Father, uninterrupted fellowship, conquering and ruling?

What we have access to, what Adam and Eve could not partake in, is the Tree of Life. They had innocence conditionally – so long as they didn’t eat off the wrong tree of self-rule, but we have His Life permanently within.

Their judgment shut them away from the Tree of Life.

Our salvation has His Tree-Life growing in us!

So, to wrap up:

It’s worth it because:

(1) I’m assured of Finished Glory – that my future state will be as the Glory of the sun, moon and stars in Glory

(2) I have a purpose that is eternal – a unique role I’m called to perform throughout eternity, that only I can do, and that will add Glory to the Godhead

(3) A glorious environment is being prepared for me.

(In Genesis, the environment was first prepared, but in the New Creation, God prepares His Man and Woman, then prepares a place worthy of the Glory they’ll share with the Son!)

(4) The Joy and Glory of Eternity is endless and exponential – that the afflictions of this lifetime will determine the affluence of my eternity and the pains I endure here will reciprocate to pleasures compounded daily for eternity

Say it with me:

It’s worth it.

I can go on.

I will go on.

By grace.

Through faith.

In victory.

And a song.

For His glory.

Amen and amen.