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An UNboring Gospel

 NOTE: This posting is in response to an article by Pastor Geoff Thomas that appeared in my Facebook feed today.  You can read it here.

Not long after I started pastoring, I found myself chatting with a lady in my church who had been teaching children for, oh, about a hundred years, and was frustrated at the kids’ inability to sit still in Sunday school.  I told her that I had recently heard someone say that “It’s a sin to bore children with the Gospel.”  Her incredulous look surprised me – until I realized that she thought that I was saying that it’s a sin to teach children the Gospel, because she assumed that the Gospel is inherently boring, and that there is no other way to teach it than to keep it boring. 

This is the first of several errors that Geoff Thomas makes in this article.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ is absolutely, categorically, overwhelmingly not boring!  Shouldn’t that be startlingly clear to anyone who has found themselves staring into the holiness of God, comprehending the depth of their own sin – who has experienced their own death, felt the searing of the cleansing of God, and heard His voice speak to them with a life-giving and irresistible call? Oh, how I love Isaiah 6!  And how I LOVE to go back to that story – so much like my own – and be reminded again and again of the endlessly exciting and glorious Gospel!  How can anyone find that boring?  How can anyone think it’s OK – or, worse yet, imperative – to bore anyone – especially children – with this amazing news!  And how can anyone not repent when they realize that they have done such a thing?

The assumption that the Gospel is inherently boring has led to a dearth of Christ-exalting, God-glorifying worship and preaching.  At one end are those who seek to remedy the “boringness” of the Gospel by making it entertaining, or by twisting its purposes and promises to make them all about things that are not boring – like health, wealth, power and temporal happiness.  At the other end are those who decide that boring is good, and that being excited about anything – especially God – is sure to lead us away from a Godly, boring life.  The first errs by embracing worldly definitions of excitement and trying to morph the Gospel to match those notions.  The other errs when it refuses to find the beauty, joy and excitement that is inherent in the Gospel, and tries to redefine the Christian life as boring and insipid.

The one place where I must concur with Thomas is with his disdain for offering worldly entertainment to our children – and ourselves – as a remedy for boredom.  But I vehemently disagree with his assumption that entertainment is the only alternative to a boring Gospel or a boring life.  The far better answer is to fight the temptation to give in to boredom.  I know personally how hard that is. Boredom can actually be quite pleasant, as it gives us permission to do nothing, and to amount to nothing.  It lets us believe that, if our day-to-day experience offers nothing to excite us, then we should just accept it and remain bored, boring, and ineffectual for Christ. 

John Piper offers this remedy for a boring life and Gospel:

"My simple pastoral plea to you this morning is that you ... go to the word of God and let the Lord of glory speak life and energy and hope and zeal and passion and earnestness into your spirit. ... God calls you to invest your life in something great. There is not Christian warrant for the culture of acedia. Christ is too great for that. Boredom with Christ and his kingdom means we are blind. Open your eyes this morning and let him inspire in you afresh a passion for his supremacy in all things, including the cause of truth and life in our tired and decaying culture.”

I am convinced that if we are not igniting that kind of passion in ourselves, our people and, above all, our children, we have failed in our Gospel calling.

Geoff Thomas is right to come against a culture of entertainment, but he is sorely mistaken when he suggests that we must embrace boredom as a necessary part of life and the Gospel, and that we need to teach our children to do the same.  This only serves to create lazy, lethargic Christians who fail to fully embrace the joy and excitement of Kingdom living.

But that’s not all that Thomas does wrong in this article.  Regarding children, while he does make one valid point – that prior to hearing and responding to the call on their lives, children are unregenerate. This is true of adults as well.  But other than that, his view of children is tragically distorted and belittling.  He seems to think that children are not only unregenerate from birth (which, again, they are), but that they are unable to embrace the Gospel until they learn to be bored long enough to sit still without being a distraction to the adults and certainly without anything other than their folded hands in their lap and “sweetly learn to ... cry from their childish hearts to the Lord.”  But this poses two really BIG problems.  First, we must figure out how to convince “unregenerate” children to sit still for that long – and be sweet about it (which is nigh unto impossible), and second, we need to teach them to be bored (which seems to be Thomas’ primary thesis.)

But when I look for Jesus’ teaching about children, this is what I read:

 And they were bringing even their babies to Him so that He would touch them, but when the disciples saw it, they began rebuking them. But Jesus called for them, saying, "Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all." Luke 18:15-17 (NASB) 

There are four things that Jesus tells us about ministering to Children, and none of them are, “bore them.”

First, Jesus calls for them.  So it is with all of us.  None of us can begin to come to Jesus until He first calls for us.  Like Isaiah in the temple, we are dead in our sin, deaf in our ears, and blinded by the light of His glory.  He must make the first move.  We know this, and we act on this, when we evangelize adults; why, then, do we inflate our importance to think that, when it comes to children, we must set them up for salvation?

Second, Jesus commands us to cut them loose, to permit them to go to Him, even when they are very young.  My daughter came to Jesus when she was in Kindergarten – not even in our presence, much less at our prompting.  And she was baptized when she was 6 – some said it was too young, but the pastor who baptized her ran her through quite a one-on-one interview first and was convinced that she was ready.  So often, I see parents who set up way too many hoops for their children to jump through – hoops that only serve to hold them back from responding to Jesus’ supernatural call on their lives. 

Third, Jesus warns us to not get in their way as they run to Him.  A couple of days ago, I watched as my son-in-law coached my grandson to take his first short bike ride without training wheels.  I stood by the garage, and Matthew stood at the end of the driveway.  No one hovered over Isaiah as he tried – and failed – to ride the 50 or so feet.  And certainly no one set up obstacles to assure that he was really ready to ride, or that he really wanted to.  But hey, that’s just a bike ride – a little kid’s thing.  Coming to Jesus – that’s for grown-ups, and we need to make it hard enough that we know they are making a grown-up decision.  We must hinder them – just to be sure.  Right?  Jesus?  We do, don’t we?

Fourth, Jesus tells us to watch them; he doesn’t tell them to watch us: Jesus tells us to learn from Children. “The kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”  Elsewhere (Matthew 18:1-3), when Jesus was asked, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven,” he grabbed a kid.  That’s not what we would do.  Rather, we would side with the apostles.  We would look at these noisy, hyperactive, immature, unregenerate little brats and see anything but the Kingdom of heaven.  We would hold them back until they are ready, quiet, patient, sweet and happy with being bored.  We would tell them to become good little ladies and gentlemen – like we all are – before they could be worthy of the Kingdom.  But Jesus – well, He always seems to get things backwards, doesn’t He?

And that’s especially true in his final lesson about the kiddos.  In case you missed it:  “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” Or, again, from Matthew 18:3 “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” I find it very interesting – and not a little scandalous – that Jesus never tells children to behave like adults.  But He most certainly tells adults to be like children.  Or, “you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.” 

Yes, it is time to repent.  We need to repent of our stupid notion that children need to be constantly entertained, as that has raised a generation of adults that think they must be constantly entertained.  But we also must repent of the sin of boring people with the most amazing, exciting, glorious, wonderful thing ever set before us.  We especially need to repent of doing that to children, because in doing so, we have raised not just one or two, but many generations of people who run from the Glorious Truth and now pursue a false “gospel” that won’t bore them.

And finally, we need to repent of holding children back from Jesus with our belief that they are not simply unregenerate like the rest of the unsaved around us, but that they are SO unregenerate that they need to stop being children before they can go to Him.  We need to repent of holding them back until they learn important things in life, like how to be bored and like it.  We need to repent of our failure to watch them as they joyfully, noisily, energetically and with great abandon and utter lack of decorum run to the arms of Jesus.  And we need to repent of our refusal to learn about the Kingdom of Heaven from them, lest we miss it altogether.

Traveling to Thailand

Since that next-to-last post below, Finding Our Purpose By Finding Hope Where Others See Only Despair, God really has been pulling me along, leading me deeper into his heart for broken children. Cherie and I have stuck with Zoe Children’s Home, and we now support two little girls, Tui (age 8) and Gai (age 10). (In reality, Gai is sponsored by Mike Turner, who cuts my hair but has me send the money to Zoe instead of paying him. I like it that way; it lets me share in the joy of his sponsorship.) We don’t know much about either of these girls, except that they are real cute little kids (got pictures to prove it!) and that their names, which are both translated “My Heart,” are not their real names. The stories and names of the children of Zoe are held in trust, treated with the reverence and privacy they deserve.

I also know something else. But before I continue, I need to issue a “content advisory.” As I said in my post of last August, there are a lot of people who see horrible things and are get stuck in despair, and there are others who look through the despair and see hope. If you are one of the “despair” crowd, you might be tempted to skip over the next paragraph. But I hope you don’t, because, while these things are unspeakable and unthinkable, they are still things we must think about, things we must speak of, if we are to experience that “God-infused delight that awaits those who seek the welfare of children, especially the ones who have no one else to care for them,” which I spoke of below.

You see, this is what I do know: As I write this, it is 10:00 AM here in Minnesota. That makes it 10:00 PM in Thailand and Cambodia, both major centers for the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC). Right now, tens of thousands of children, mostly girls between the ages of 8 & 14 (some even younger), are beginning another night of serial abuse and rape. Many will be forced to “serve” 20 or more “clients” before the night is over. And when morning comes, some of them might return home, taking the money they have earned with them to help feed their brothers and sisters who may starve without it. Others – the majority – will continue to be held captive while their pimps get rich by selling them again and again. If they try to escape, the police will capture them, return them to the brothel, and receive their unjust reward.

Yet there is hope. In the midst of such darkness, there is light. In the spiritual and emotional (and sometimes even physical) death, there is life.

“Zoe” is Greek for “life.” And Zoe Children’s Home is one of many ministries that bring life and light into this atrocity. They do it by rescuing and providing a safe haven for children who have been sold into sexual slavery, or are at high risk of being sold, as well as orphans. By receiving and enfolding these little ones into a loving family environment where they are shown the love and care of Jesus, the Zoe parents provide healing and wholeness to about 60 girls and an increasing number of young boys. Over time, and often very quickly, these children learn that they are no longer alone, that they are safe, and that they are valued and cherished for who they are. They learn to face their past with courage and victory, as they receive counseling and a full education complete with vocational training that will enable them to graduate to independent lives, often in the service of others who are suffering as they once did.

At the same time, Zoe reaches out into the surrounding community and even ethnic villages in the mountainous regions of Thailand’s northern hill country. Working hand-in-hand with other Christian outreach ministries, they enter the places from which many of the children are taken, where they address the economic, cultural and spiritual issues that often lead to children being sold or tricked into slavery. As they share the Gospel of Christ, they work to start churches in places where the name of Jesus may otherwise have never been known.

For close to 20 years, I have hoped to travel to Chiang Mai to participate in a ministry exactly like Zoe Children’s Home. By God’s grace, I now have the opportunity to do just that. On November 29, I will travel with 20 others from across the US to visit ZCH where we will meet and pour love all over these precious children, assist the staff in their care, and teach them new things. We will also take a few days to travel into the northern highlands to visit a village or two and share Jesus with the local families and perhaps the school children. We will take the message of His Good News into the market places of nearby Chiang Mai, a city of about 150,000 but with an international airport that serves close to 4 million passengers per year.

Clearly, these are places where the enemy is working hard and is jealous of what he thinks is his territory. And he is calling on the forces of hell to thwart anyone who would come to rescue Jesus’ little ones. We are not going there to take a vacation; this will be hard work, both physically and spiritually. So, as I prepare over the next few months, and while I am on this trip, I will need the support of many prayers. If you would like to support me in prayer, and receive periodic updates on my preparation, my trip, and follow-up stories, please send me an email by clicking here.

There are also some costs involved. The total cost of this trip will be approximately $2,950.00, which includes visa, air & ground transportation, food, lodging, training and ministry materials. One-half of that amount is due July 15, 25% is due September 30 and the remainder is due October 30. If you would like to help with these costs, you can donate online here. Please be sure to enter “Craig Rasmussen, December 2012” in the comment box at the bottom of the form. Any amount would be deeply appreciated! Alternatively, if you prefer to send a check, you may send it to: ZOE Children's Homes, P.O. Box 221510, Santa Clarita, CA 91322. Please put my name on the memo line.

If you have any questions at all related to the trip, the costs, or the issue of child sex trafficking, please send me an email, or leave a comment here. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for any response you sense that God would have you make.

Defend the weak and the fatherless; 

uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. 

Rescue the weak and the needy; 

deliver them from the hand of the wicked. 

Psalm 82:3-4, NIV

All That Matters

Tell your children:
"God is great.
God is good.
Nothing. else. matters."


Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts;
let them proclaim your power.
I will meditate on your majestic, glorious splendor
and your wonderful miracles.
Your awe-inspiring deeds will be on every tongue;
I will proclaim your greatness.
Everyone will share the story of your wonderful goodness;
they will sing with joy about your righteousness.

The Lord is merciful and compassionate,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
The Lord is good to everyone.
He showers compassion on all his creation.
All of your works will thank you, Lord,
and your faithful followers will praise you.
They will speak of the glory of your kingdom;
they will give examples of your power.
They will tell about your mighty deeds
and about the majesty and glory of your reign.
For your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.
You rule throughout all generations. (Psalm 145:4-13, NLT emph.added)

Finding Our Purpose By Finding Hope Where Others See Only Despair

It’s hard to imagine that over a year has past since my last post here. So much has happened during that time; some of it has been rather inconsequential, but other things have clearly been God-things with major ramifications. If I’m able to stick with this blog, I will eventually talk about some of those events. In the meantime, for the impatient, feel free to ask. The prodding may (or may not) produce results.

But in all of these things, my pursuit of Sole Delight has not waned. Indeed, it continues to grow and produce more fruit of its own. Most recently, Sole Delight has combined with various other developments to move me in a new direction that I expect will stick with me for a very long time.

About six weeks ago, our church, The Crossing in Elk River, held a one day conference for church leaders. I was only able to make the final talk given by Pastor Eric Dykstra. (Eric, if you are reading this, please forgive me for oversimplifying, but …) The take-away for me was his challenge to identify the one thing that God is calling me to do, then go for it, stick with it, and “Don’t give up before the breakthrough!” In his usual “I mean business” manner, Eric then asked us to commit to that one thing God is calling us to do by standing. I stood.

A few minutes later, I ran into another of our pastors and admitted that I really didn’t know what I was standing for. “I'm ready to commit, but I don’t know to what,” I told him. “There are about four things going on right now, any one of which I’d be ready to stick with and not give up before the breakthrough, but I don’t know which one God wants me to do.” Jason’s response was, “You’ll know soon enough.” Brief pause. Then I reached in my pocket and pulled out a little slip of paper that permitted me to pick up my grandchildren from the children’s program, and I offhandedly said, “Well, I guess I need to go rescue some kids.” Another brief pause. Then I turned to Jason and said, “I think that was my answer.”

About 15 years ago, I first became aware of a God-enfused delight that
awaited those who seek the welfare of children, especially the ones who have no one else to care for them. It was this promise of joy that led us to adopt out third child, Valya, in 1999. Now everyone who knew us then, including Val herself, can testify that this promised joy seemed to be quite elusive for the next decade. But that joy began to shine when, ten years later, Val gave birth to a beautiful little girl and immediately committed one of the greatest acts of love I have ever witnessed. As she left the hospital, she handed her brand new baby over to a new mom, whom we all knew would take wonderful care of little Kate. That joy has continued to shine as Val, and we, have been able to stay in touch with Kate and Mike & Lindsay, visiting this beautiful child a few times a year.

Add to that other joyful events and developments over the past year, and even I begin to understand how God could lead me to take another risk, and reenter the world of hurting children. No, we’re NOT going to adopt again! No need to call the guys in the pretty white suits.

Part of what I learned fifteen years ago, part of that captured my heart, was the ghastly horror of little children – mostly girls, some as young as 5 – caught in Satan’s grip of child trafficking and child prostitution. At the time, that was not where God was leading me to go. But six weeks ago when I stood to commit to whatever God wants me to do next and “not give up before the breakthrough,” some kind of involvement in the rescue of these precious little ones was one of four things that were in my mind. I just didn’t know if it was the “one thing.”

Then I pulled out that little piece of paper and heard myself say, “I need to go rescue some children.”

Seriously, Does it need to get any clearer than that?

Well, whether is needed to or not, it did. Within a few days, I found a book in my personal library called, Children in Crisis: A New Commitment. Next to it was, Sexually Exploited Children: Working to Protect and Heal. On another shelf was Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions. None of these had been opened, much less read. It almost seemed like “somebody” had put them there years ago just for such a time as this.

Then I quite literally stumbled on one in the public library: Terrify No More, the story of the International Justice Mission raid in 2003 on Svay Pak, Cambodia, known to be one of the leading international Mecca’s for child prostitution. It was the first time I ever finished a book, set it down, and prayed through my tears. It was that powerful. My current read is, Forgotten Girls: Stories of Hope and Courage. (For now, I would suggest this one to anyone who is interested in finding their place in defending the girl child of the developing and third worlds. It’s hard-hitting, but very full of hope & practical steps.)

Then there’s the missionary who along with his family just arrived in Thailand, where he will pastor of a church that connects with missionaries, including some who address this issue; he’s helping me find connections. Or the missions pastor of a church in Dallas who sends short-term teams to Svay Pak and hopes to visit with me when we are in Dallas next month.

I find myself asking, What is it about me that draws me to this? Like most people, it repulses me, it makes me angry, it breaks my heart. Why do I absorb it like a sponge?

I think most people look at this and are not only repulsed, angry and broken-hearted, but also hopeless and defeated. It drains them. It depresses them. And, other than contributing some (much needed) money, they don’t feel a desire to step into the swamp. But, for some reason, I look at it and I’m repulsed, angry, and broken-hearted, yet I’m also filled with hope and I see victories even before they have been won. I know what it’s like to be in the swap – it can been literally hellish – and still I’m anxious to get back in. Because it connects with my pursuit of Sole Delight.

There’s another possibility: I’m just deluded. But I don’t think so. I think, rather, that I have found something that I’ve been seeking for a long time – the one thing that I can do that will make a difference in the world, and is something that not a lot of people want to do or can do. I can look at the problem of child prostitution and see hope, and that hope gives me joy. It energizes me. It fills me with delight.

Thus, the title of this post: Finding Our Purpose By Finding Hope Where Others See Only Despair. It’s kind of a “Sole Delight” way of finding one’s calling. If I can find hope, beauty and victory where others see only hopelessness, ugliness and defeat; and if that is in a place that desperately needs Jesus but where very few people want to “go,” – literally or figuratively – but I do, and if the thought of the Enemy’s attacks only make me want to do more, then maybe that is exactly where God is calling me.

But this blog is not meant about me. It’s about God, and it’s about you. It’s about you finding your Sole Delight in God and God Alone. So, my prayer is that you would look past my story, and ask yourself a simple question. Where in your life do you see hope when others only see hopelessness? Where do you see a yet invisible victory that only a few are able to see with you? Where in your life, or in your heart, is that place that desperately needs Jesus, but you are the only one who really, really wants to go there.

I tend to believe that God has placed in the heart of every Christian a passion, a dream – not your dream, HIS dream – one that’s so big you know that, once you set out to do it, either He steps in, or you will fail miserably. But you also know that if you succeed, you will deliver a blow to Satan, a victory for the Kingdom of God, and everlasting Sole Delight for yourself.

I urge you to find that place, Then, by all means, Go for it! Stick with it! And don’t give up before the breakthrough!

The Waiting Game

Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you,
and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.
Is 30:18 (ESV)

One of the board members of an organization I work for has distributed a daily prayer sheet that begins each day with a verse or two. This was today's verse, and as I began to meditate on it, some exciting things started to emerge.

The verse is chaistic, with the first and last lines forming one idea and the second and third lines, a supporting or explanatory idea. In addition, lines 1 and 4 display a second chiasm of their own: "Therefore the Lord waits" connects with "those who wait for him," and "to be gracious to you" connects with "blessed are all." (Here, a note to the reader who may not be familiar with poetic chiasm. If you look at the verse above and draw lines that illustrate these connections, you will see that the lines form an "X." The Greek letter "X" is called, "Chi," hence the name for the structure, "chiasm.")

Taking a look at that second chiasm, we ask, What is the writer trying to tell us? First, it seems that he is saying, "God is waiting for us to wait." That sounds like a quick way to get nothing accomplished. Countless are the times Cherie and I have found ourselves stalemated because I was waiting for her while, it turns out, she was waiting for me. Such mutual inaction, however, is not what this is about. This is more like waiting at a stop light for the cross traffic to get the red light that tells them to wait so I can move. God is telling us, "I'm waiting for you to stop moving so I can have my turn." Now that makes sense. How often I go about my plans, seeking my agenda, trying to find my happiness in my successes that fulfill my dreams and my vision, when God is saying, "Let me know when you decide to stop. I'd like to have a turn."

Have a turn doing what? That's the second idea in that second chiasm: He is waiting to be gracious to us so that we can be blessed. Looking back at verses 15 & 16, He is offering salvation and strength, but we are riding off on our horses trying to win our own battles. He is offering all that we need, but we are so busy trying to meet our own needs that we miss his blessings and His grace. He is waiting for me to stop fighting my own battles and stop seeking my own happiness, my own purpose, my own meaning and just wait for Him to shower His grace on me and fill me with everything the world can't possibly give me. Oh God, cause me to stop! Let me see that my hope is in You, not in my own endless pursuits.

Now, moving on to the second half of the "big" chiasm -- the second and third lines. "Therefore" tells us to look back again: Because God longs to be gracious to us, He exalts Himself. The next phrase repeats the thought: "To show mercy to you" is the reason that He exalts himself. To our way of thinking, that seems backwards. How can God's self-exaltation be connected to His blessing us, or his display of mercy toward us? Shouldn't it say, "therefore God condescended to us..."?

Indeed, God did condescend to us in His Son who "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself..." (Phil 1:6-7, RSV). But the that passage continues (v. 9): "Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name." (NIV). Indeed, it was not the humiliation of Christ alone, but rather the exaltation of Christ in His resurrection and his eternal station at the Fathers right hand that brings us salvation. As Paul said, "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins." (1Cor.15:17, NASB) Indeed, it's not just here, but throughout the Bible God commits and recommits Himself to the pursuit of His glory above all other things. It's been said before and bears repeating: If it's a sin for us to worship anything above God, it is also a sin for God to worship anything above God.

This brings us to the third line of this verse: "For the Lord is a God of justice." Justice means that God does what is right. It is right for Him to magnify His own glory. It would be wrong for Him to let sin go unpunished. It would be unjust for God to allow our sinful, prideful, independent ways to take precedence over His rightful requirement of absolute sovereignty. Therefore, He guarded His own justice, His own righteousness, His own glory while at the same time provided the way for us to receive His gracious blessings in Christ. We just need to get out of the way and let God be God! He is waiting for me -- for you -- to stop and wait for Him.


Twitter: spiritualpyro

Spiritual Pyromania?

For roughly the first half of the first decade of this century I worked for a ministry that tried to encourage people and churches to learn more about, and become more involved in missions. I went from church to church, trying to light a fire under missions leaders and congregations. But a while ago I can across a comment – “If you really want to motivate people, don’t light a fire under them; fan the flame within them.”

That’s what Spiritual Pyromania is all about. There is clearly a flame burning within hearts and souls of many Christians I meet – a flame for joy, for God’s Glory, for delight in God, for missions and the unreached peoples of the world. I don’t need to light fires in them. But what I do want to do it to fan that flame, make it grow, pour a little gas on it. I want to make that flame explode!

My dear 80-year-old dad who always likes things to be peaceful told me that he didn’t like that imagery of pouring gasoline on a fire – that it sounded too destructive. I told him it was meant to be, because we – spiritual pyromaniacs – are all about destroying a few things. We want to destroy mediocrity. Divided hearts. Anything that holds us back from total, unfettered commitment to the cause of Christ in today’s world. We want to destroy the shackles of society and culture that tell us to not get so lathered. We want to destroy the cold water we throw on the flames of God-enthralled youth who have the audacity to believe that they really can change the world. We want to destroy expectations that say, “You need to settle down, get a good job, and make lots of money so that you can live comfortably, retire early, and spend your best and brightest years living on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico and collecting shells on the seacoast.” We want to destroy anything and everything that would cause the people of God to waste their lives.

[Twitter: spiritualpyro]

Pushing Through

There's a group of us at Central Church here in Fort Wayne wou are working through this whole idea of "sole delight." We're using the book, "Don't Waste Your Life," and we're discovering that the only way to not waste our life is to take delight in God and God Alone, to develop a passion within for more and more of God, and to use every opportunity to enable others to find their delight in Him as well.

But there's this question that keeps creeping in: How do I find my delight, my joy,my pleasure, my happiness -- whatever your word is -- in God? It's one thing to know in my head that He is ultimately desireable, but delight itself is such a viseral -- an emotional -- response that seems rather difficult to control.

That's where "pushing through" comes in. When we have an experience that delights us, there is a very strong tendency to stop with that delight and enjoy it for what it does to me. Whether it's a kiss from the one we love, a taste of our favorite food, or a view of a breathtaking sunset, we take it in for the pleasure it brings us, we savor it, as we go no further. It we are ever to learn to delight in God, we need to push through that stopping point to the One who made it possible, to the Grace that grants all good things, and to the Cross that delivered that grace to us. In other words, we need to push through everyday pleasures to turn them into moments of worship and sweetness with God.

More later ...

Piper at New Word of Life Conference

Sooner or later, it will become evident to the reader of this blog that I have been and continue to be a student of John Piper. His books, his messages and his conferences have been places where God has met me to reveal to me the glorious reality of His Glory and my one and only real purpose – to reflect that glory as much and as far as He enables me to.

Piper has much to say about this subject of suffering, and most recently, he delivered two messages at the New Word of Life Conference in Wales. I highly recommend these. They may be heard and downloaded at:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ConferenceMessages/ByDate/2008/2718_Treasuring_Christ_and_the_Call_to_Suffer_Part_1/

and

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ConferenceMessages/ByDate/2008/2722_Treasuring_Christ_and_the_Call_to_Suffer_Part_2/

Below are some personal applications I took from these talks. If you take time to listen to them, you will, most likely, find even more.

(Note: Unless otherwise noted, the reference numbers are verses in Romans 8)

1. I must embrace my suffering as a means to my glorification. (17: “we suffer with Him in order that we may be glorified with Him.”) Therefore, each suffering prepares me more for my glorification.
2. I must look upon the suffering of all creation (which includes natural disasters) as God’s demonstration of the horror of sin. (20-21)
3. Because I, and all others who have received the grace of Christ, no longer stand under condemnation, I must receive my own suffering, and that of by fellow Christians, not as judgment, but as purification. (1-2)
4. I must look through my sufferings to see its ultimate purpose – and the ultimate purpose of the universe – to perceive the glory of God in the crucifixion of the Lamb of God. (Rom 8:20-21, Eph 1:6; 2 Tim 1:9; Rev 13:8)
5. I must magnify Christ in my suffering as the one who will, now or in the age to come, deliver me from all suffering and heal me of all infirmities. (1 Peter 2:24)
6. I must glorify Christ in my suffering as the one who is infinitely satisfying even as I suffer – so satisfying, in fact, that the greater my suffering, the greater His satisfaction is revealed. (18-19)
7. I must rest on the promises that:
1. After this suffering, we will see His all-satisfying beauty and greatness. (18)
2. My sufferings will lead me to a glorious state where I will have the capacity to enjoy the glory of God fully.(19)
3. All creation will be freed from its present futility to become a fitting place for the eternal, unfettered worship of God. (21)

When Bad Thngs Happen

Recently my good friend and very dear brother in Christ, Eric, lead pastor of The Crossing At Woodland Fellowship gave a talk on the perennially thorny question: Why do bad things happen to good people? It was a good talk. Eric has what it takes to give good talks – A gift for gab, an understanding of his culture, a love for his people, and an unrelenting, uncompromising passion for the Word of God. And it got my thinker going, especially over how this question connects with the theme of this blog: Sole Delight.

My first thought was that the question itself, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is flawed, but I think we already knew that. “Good” and “people” are oxymoronic. We think there are good people in the world because we don’t really understand the horror of sin. But, once we recognize that sin is real, pervasive, and incredibly ugly, we remember that there really is no such thing as “good people.” But let’s not get hung up here. We know what is meant.

Second, it brought to mind a conversation I had with David Clark, Professor of Theology at Bethel Seminary back around my second or third year there. I was considering writing a paper on the problem of evil, and was chatting with him about it. I suggested that the answer might lay in our incorrect definitions of both “good” and “bad.” He said that I wasn’t the first to think that, and that I might want to go with that thought. I didn’t, opting instead to write on something else.

But, like I said, the talk got me to thinking about that again. Is it possible that we have a wrong idea of what is evil and what is good? We seem to define both terms with an eye toward the effect that an event has on “me.” If it fits my notion of what I think I need or want (health, money, dopamine…) then I call it “good.” But if it makes me sick, poor or unhappy, then it is “bad.” I realize that is a drastic oversimplification, but, for the sake of the discussion, allow me to be simple for a moment. Because, when it all comes down to it, the complexity is really nothing more than a matter of degree. Really bad stuff is stuff that makes me really sad, really poor or really sick and really dead. Or, it’s a matter of contrast. When really good people (like, say, children or Randy Pausch) experience those kind of things, then this is really bad, and we ask theologically faulty questions like, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”.

We need to start by redefining “good” and “bad.” Rather than think of it in terms of what an event does to us, we need to think of what it does to God’s glory. Of course, that means we first need to learn to value the glory of God above our own self-defined “happiness.” We need to come to the point that we understand that God’s first and foremost object of affection and worship and joy is in the only thing worthy of affection, worship, and joy, and that is Himself. Think about it: If we worship anything other than God, that’s called idolatry. If God were to worship anything other than God, that would also be idolatry. It is only when God and all of God’s creation comes to value Him above all else that we find things coming together as they were meant to be, and we discover what real joy and happiness is. As long as our affections are on anything other than God, we are loving the wrong thing, and we will always be unhappy.

God knows that. He knows that we can’t be happy until our hearts are turned away from the stuff of this world so that we love only Him. So, because he loves us, He comes to us and removes those things that can lead us away from Him and His glory, away from treasuring Him above all else, away from finding our pleasure in the only One who is truly pleasant, our purpose in the only One who is truly purposeful, and our hope in the only One who is truly solid and true.

Maybe you’ve heard it asked – or maybe you have wrestled with the question yourself – Doesn’t God’s passion for His own glory stand at odds with my desire to be happy? The answer, of course, is that God’s passion for His own glory and my happiness are not opposites, but are, in fact, the same thing. The goal of the first is the goal of the second. And the means to those identical goals are also identical.

I have come to believe that the same is true for God’s allowance of trouble and suffering in my life on one hand, and His love for me on the other. By human wisdom, they appear to be opposites. But, in truth, they are really the same thing. His love compels Him to come to me and remove anything that could draw my affections away from Him and place it on something, or someone, else. That hurts. And the more I love that thing, the more it hurts. But also, the more I love it, the greater the danger that that love could supplant my love for the One who gave it. When that happens, I become an idolater, and God takes second (or third, or fourth, or 125^th) place in my affections. We need to grasp just how awful that is, and therefore how loving it is of God to let that be taken from us.

This brings to mind another friend who has now gone home. Dan Roelofs was the founding pastor of Woodland Fellowship (the predecessor of The Crossing @ Woodland) who struggled for 15 months with a cancer that ultimately took his life on his 33^rd birthday. During that painful journey, Dan kept a journal, and in that journal he wrote of his mixture of suffering and joy. And, in the process, I think he settled the problem of suffering for me, once and for all.

Thank you for calling me your ‘beloved.’ Thank you for the trial of cancer that has shown me that you are enough for joy. Your power and love are so great that not even cancer can remove the joy from my life. Thank you for communicating your heart to me through your Word. You are a wonderful, powerful Savior. To walk with you has been the greatest adventure of my life.

Lord, I open my hands to you. What you want is my desire. What you want is so much better than what I would seek to provide for myself. I want to receive from you. I choose to rest and stop trying to meet my own needs. You are my provider, my Master, my Lord and Savior, and I trust you. Have your way in me.

It’s here where this takes us from the theological to the pastoral. How do we answer the “theologically flawed” but pastorally very valid question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”.

It’s not an easy answer, not because it is complex, but because the answer itself asks us to give up even more than we have already lost. What we have lost is something or someone that is very, very dear to us. Pastorally, we need to recognize the reality of that loss, and the depth of the pain. It’s real, and comfort is needed.

But, to really answer the question, we must ask for more to be given up. We must ask that we give up the idea that God’s love for us means that we should never experience this kind of loss, or that He would never require of us something this precious. We must let go of the notion that we should define the manner of God’s love.

The truth is that God’s love for us is not about making us feel good. Rather, it is about Him equipping as and molding us into people who find our inexpressible joy, delight and fulfillment in Him alone. We think we know what will make us happy, but God knows that there is really only one thing that will: Him. He is far, far, far more valuable, more precious, more delightful, more wonderful than anything, and I do mean anything this world has to offer.

This means that Romans 8:28-30 is more than a glib throw-away line that sounds nice when “all things” includes nothing worse than a bent fender on Daddy’s old Fairlane. No, it is an amazing, profound promise that God’s purpose for us is glorification – that state in which we are fit to see Him face-to-face and spend forever in the incomparable joy of His unfettered fellowship, and that Hw will used all things, all things, yes ALL THINGS to get us there.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;

and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

Romans 8:28-30 (NASB)

Sole Delight

“O God, rid my heart of all that isn’t Christ,

And cause me to find my sole delight in You.”

Delight. I like how www.dictionary.com, defines it:

1. a high degree of pleasure or enjoyment; joy; rapture: She takes great delight in her job.

2. something that gives great pleasure: The dance was a delight to see.

–verb (used with object)

3. to give great pleasure, satisfaction, or enjoyment to; please highly: The show delighted everyone.

–verb (used without object)

4. to have great pleasure; take pleasure (fol. by in or an infinitive): She delights in going for long walks in the country.

I love the breadth of this definition: pleasure, enjoyment, joy, rapture, satisfaction. All wrapped up in this single word. It doesn’t seem to leave out any human desire. It is a list of all that we long for, all that drives us. We are wired, it would seem, to look for delight. I don’t expect much argument here. Whatever it is that delights me, give me more, and more, and more of it!

But, hold on a second. Sole delight?? As if there is only one thing I should delight in? How dull can that be? And if I only delighted in one thing, I wouldn’t be very well-rounded, would I? (Well, unless that “one thing” was Extreme Chocolate Moose Tracks Ice Cream. Then I’d be a bit too well rounded. In fact, now that you mention it…)

Well, actually, there’s a difference between “Sole Delight” and delighting in only one thing. At least, the way I’m using the words. What I mean by “sole delight” is that one thing through which and for which I delight in other things.

For most people (and I have certainly been counted among the most) delight – that is my personal delight – is it’s own goal. Or, to put it another way, I take delight in whatever makes me feel good. If I believe that something will make me happy, or give me pleasure, or displace my sorrow and replace it with joy, I will pursue that thing. That can be something as simple as a bowl of my favorite ice cream (see above), or grand as a mountain view, as beautiful or as the face of a smiling child, or as seemingly altruistic as shoveling my neighbor’s walk. (Please, Barry, if you read this, don’t stop shoveling my walk!) If they are done because they make me feel good, they are done for the sole delight of, well, My Self Delight.

My Self Delight, then, becomes the standard against which I measure all other delights. That is, the desirability of a given experience is determined by how it makes me feel. Now, If I have a fairly well developed deferred gratification pattern, I may be able to find a less than pleasing experience to be desirable if I can look down the road a few minutes, a few days, or even a few years, and see that this experience will, eventually, make me happy. For example, I may find the unpleasantness of spending some of my money on a pretty girl if I expect that, eventually, she will return my wooings with her affections, and thus make me feel good. Or I can face the long hours of study if I can see that, eventually, I will earn that diploma or degree, and I will feel very good about it. Or I can stay in an odious job if I know that, at the end of the week, I’ll get a paycheck which I can spend on things that will make me feel good.

But there’s a problem with that. Because, when I measure the desirability of all things against the standard of My Self Delight, I attest to the fact that My Self Delight, my feeling good, is the most important thing in my life. It becomes my object of worship. It becomes my god.

And, as a Christian, that is a serious problem. As a Christian, I know that my object of worship, my god, must be none other than the one and only true God, Himself. Yet my desire for delight has led me to the wrong place. How do I fix that?

Some years ago, when I began to comprehend this concept, I came to realize that My Self Delight was really a delight in many things – anything in that would make me feel good. Fortunately, I had a degree of common sense that said not everything that makes me feel good for the moment will make me feel good in the long run, and not everything that will make me feel good in the long run will make me feel good for the moment. Nonetheless, there were many things in which I delighted, because there were many things that made me feel good. I had many delights, many affections.

But I was beginning to see that this was a problem. My delights, my affections, were leading me to the deadly end of self-worship. I needed to turn the whole thing around. I needed to get rid of the goal of self-centered living and start over with the right goal – God-centered living. But to do that, I had to check my long list of delights as the door, and I had to establish a new ultimate, singular delight – one that didn’t answer the question, “Will this make me feel good?” but rather the ultimate question, “Will this lead me closer to the heart and face of God?”

In other words, I had to replace My Self Delight for a new Sole Delight – a delight only in those things that pleased Him, glorified Him, and drew me closer to the One and Only who is truly worthy of delight: God Himself.

The question was: Was I willing to let go of those affections? They were so deep, so ingrained in me, and so many of them were so “right,” that I struggled to let them go. So, God gave me a simple prayer: O God, rid my heart of all that isn’t Christ, and cause me to find my sole delight in You. I knew from the moment that thought entered my mind that it had the power to transform my affections and, therefore, the power to lead me to a true, consistent worshipper of God. So I prayed it. Occasionally, often only half-heartedly. It scared me to think that it would make me let go of so many things I had come to love. So, God let me keep those things, and He let them keep leading me back into Self Delight. But he never let go of me. He never let me abandon that desire to find My Sole Delight in Him.

It’s been a long struggle. But God has stepped up the pace in this pursuit of My Sole Delight. He as expelled so many things from my heart that at times it feels rather empty. But then He steps in and fills it with more of Himself – fills it to overflowing. And out of that overflow, He allows me to find delight once again in those things that he had removed. But it is a different delight. It’s not a delight in those things because they make me feel good, but it is a delight in them because, in them, I see the excellences of God, or the sacrifice of Christ, or the drawing power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s been a long struggle, but I have yet to arrive. Every day brings new awareness of things yet unaddressed, things that still grab my affections, but don’t draw me closer to God. Things like Extreme Chocolate Moose Tracks Ice Cream. And stuff that’s even worse. But by His enormous grace, He’s giving me the guts to pray that prayer with more conviction, and He’s answering. He’s slowly, piece by piece, ridding my heart of all that isn’t Christ, and causing me to find my sole delight in Him.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.

When a man found it, he hid it again,

and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

Matthew 13:44 (NIV) (emphasis mine)

One Thing

One thing I ask of the Lord,

this is what I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

and to seek him in his temple.

Psalm 27:4, NIV

I call that my “life verse;” the thought upon which I hang all of my hopes and dreams, by which I measure my successes and failures, and through which I know I will find the thing we are all looking for: true happiness.

But what does it mean? Does it mean that I aspire to find a church someplace where I can sit 24/7/365 and stare at some image – physical, mental or spiritual – of God? Of course not. And I don’t’ think it meant that to David, either. What it means is that I have come to understand that God’s greatest gift to me – to all people – is not a gift of stuff, or wellness, or friends and family, or even salvation. Rather, it is that through all of these things, God has built a way for me to experience His greatest gift: Himself.

It means that, for all the days of my life (which, if I count heaven, will be forever!) I will seek after and treasure and adore and cherish and behold and experience the One who is, Himself, the fulfillment of all my deepest desires. Augustine said it well: You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You. Not in things, not in painlessness, not in people, not in anything but Him. Period. That is His greatest and foremost gift, and it is my purpose to pursue that gift will all I have in me.

That does not mean that I shun His other gifts; I just see them as ways to lead me to behold Him through them. Some examples:

I love waterfalls. Whether the immense power of the Niagara that screams of Him amazing power and strength, or a tiny fall of a mountain stream along a ledge of the foothills of Rainier, that reminds me of the simple intricate beauty of his flowing sweetness, they remind me of God.

And oh, do I enjoy a good storm. The lightning and thunder, the winds, the swirling clouds and even the tornadoes. I think of that line in the movie, Twister (I think), where someone asks what an F-5 tornado is like. After a pregnant pause, one of the storm-chasers says, with appropriate awe in his voice, “That’s the Finger of God.” Exactly!

But even more, I love the faces of the nations. An old Afghani Tajik man. A little Miao boy from southwest China. The Fulani peoples of West Africa. A Kazak woman from northern Xinjiang, China. A little Kalasha girl from the valleys of the Hindu Kush mountains in northern Pakistan. I look at their pictures and I see the Image of God in the diverse beauty of His creation. And I am filled with joy. But, at the same time, I am filled with sorrow, because I know that the face I see in those pictures is likely one that does not know Christ. And I sense again the real purpose of my life on this planet – to do whatever I can to see heaven populated with people from every tongue, tribe, people and nation, so that the glory of God will shine all the more fully through those who surround Him with eternal praise.

Oh, how I long for that day when my faith will be sight, when God’s glory will be revealed in all His fullness, and I will be joined with the millions upon millions of the redeemed, beholding the glory of God in the Face of Christ, and reflecting that beauty back to Him.

As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

Psalm 42:1-2a (NIV)