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January 29, 2003

Hoping in God While Single (Part 1)

I’ve had two very good conversations today about God and His glory. Sweet fellowship indeed. However, at the end of the day, I still can’t help but bring up the J.I. Packer quote I’ve referenced several times now:

To be sure, there have always been some who have found the thought of grace so overwhelmingly wonderful that they could never get over it. But many church people are not like this. They may pay lip service to the idea of grace, but there they stop. Their conception of grace is not so much debased or non-existent. The thought means nothing to them; it does not touch their experience at all. Talk to them about the church’s heating, or last year’s accounts, and they are with you at once; but speak to them about the realities to which the word grace points, and their attitude is one of deferential blankness. They do not accuse you of talking nonsense; they do not doubt that your words have meaning; but they feel that, whatever it is you are talking about, it is beyond them, and the longer they have lived without it the surer they are that at their stage of life they do not really need it.

While the fellowship is indeed sweet, I feel like this most of the time. I cannot get over grace. I simply can’t. I don’t want to. 1 John 1:4 says:

These things we write, so that our joy may be complete.

What completes John’s joy?

…eternal life… that you may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. (1:2-3)

It is seeing his writers experience eternal life. What, as in eternal life in the future? Sort of. What do you think is up with 3:15?

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in Him.

Has eternal life abiding (present tense) in him? That’s odd. Eternal life is not just a destination, but it can abide in you? What is eternal life?

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, and in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. (5:20)

That we may know Him who is true… Jesus Christ… this is the true God and eternal life. Do you see something there? The song is right: Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You; there is no greater thing.

Tying this all together, I see that when John says that his joy is not complete until his readers experience eternal life, and if eternal life is knowing Christ (knowing meaning an intimate understanding, as a man “knows” his wife is a euphemism for sexual relations in the Bible), then John can’t experience full joy yet.

You ever wonder what drove people like Paul and other great, seemingly perfect and incredible Christians to such radical missionary endeavors? It wasn’t that they were so incredible; their tastebuds were entirely different from ours. Their joy was not complete until that joy was duplicated in others. There was a sort of godly discontentment. Read Ephesians 3 and see why Paul was so passionate about the Gentiles being brought in. Here’s what he says in Phillipians 3:8,

More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.

There it is again, black and white! Paul viewed knowing Christ as the end to everything. This is synonymous with Ephesians 1’s “to the praise of His glory.” Knowing Christ and His receiving glory… they’re one. They’re the same.

Glorious truth! Wonderful consolation! Tremendous peace! I could fill another megabyte full of exclamations expressing how I feel about it.

But many do not understand this. Indeed, some have not yet heard, and some that have heard don’t understand.

Faith, which in Future Grace Piper rightly defines as “being satisfied for all that God is for us in Christ Jesus,” this faith comes by hearing the Word of Christ. And so I tell it! I shout it! I live it! I talk about it incessantly. I eat it, I drink it, I sleep it, I want it, I desire it, I long for it. And I want others to, too.

So when my passion is met with “deferential blankness,” and I see people who will more readily scream and yell about a sporting event or their girlfriends before they’ll shout about God, I want to pull back the veil and let God shine forth in His glory in their lives. It’s like I’ve found a source of crystal clear spring water, and I look over and see a guy digging in the ground, putting his mouth to the dirt, trying to suck moisture out of it. Is that horrid to you? It is to God.

Be apalled, O heavens, at this, and shudder, be very desolate, declares the Lord. For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, to hew cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jer. 2:12-13)

And until glory, I will always be seeing people sucking dirt. I’m not talking about X-rated videos. I’m talking about marriage. I’m talking about music. I’m talking about anything that is loved not for God’s sake. God’s gifts can be our greatest enemy.

Give up your dirt! Marriage is good, my single friends, and I indeed look forward with anticipation toward the day… but on the other hand, I could take it or leave it. My satisfaction on this planet does not hinge upon my being married or not. If God gives me that gift, with thanksgiving I will receive it and seek to enjoy it maximally, pursuing my joy in my wife’s joy (a tremendous concept, one whose praise I ought to sing for hours about). But if God doesn’t give it to me, can I be satisfied? Oh, yes! Yes! The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life!

Can you take marriage or leave it? If I take it, I want to take it for Christ’s sake. If I leave it, I want to leave it for Christ’s sake. But until you get to that point where you can honestly say on the deepest level that you can take marriage or leave it, for Christ’s sake, marriage is an idol in your life. If you believe that marriage is an essential component of your happiness on this planet, and until you have it you will be “incomplete,” you’re not getting it.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m sure that when I’m married, I will easily and joyfully admit, “She completes me. My weaknesses are made up in her strengths.” But why will I say that? Because God is the one who created the void to fill. This is very different from saying, “God created a hole in man’s heart to be filled by woman.” No, God created a hole in man and woman’s heart to be filled by Christ, and marriage is the closest relationship we can experience that imitates that Christ-centric relationship. Where I differ is to say that unless we have this shadow, we cannot experience and be complete in the reality.

But whether we marry or not, we are Christ’s! “For if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14:8) That’s my point. I just see so many of my dear brothers and sisters who will profess to valuing God more than marriage, who will pay it lip service, but ultimately can’t be happy until they’re married. And marriage won’t solve their emptiness. God’s glory can.

If the prospect of marriage is in your life and God is your consuming passion and exceeding joy, then pursue it recklessly! Dive in! Enjoy it! What a gift! What kind of awesome God would create something as beautiful as marriage? Write your songs about it, write your journals about it. But my prayer is that through it, the supremacy of God would be the entire band on which the jewels of the necklace rest. Because the moment the prospect of marriage is threatened, if God is not your exceeding joy, then despair and depression will be your companions, not weeping and hope.

<sigh> I feel the deferential blankness just because I can’t put this down the way I ought. I’ve tried and tried, but it just doesn’t come off sounding the way I want. Christ… He’s worth selling everything you own in order to have. Until you’re willing to sell it all with joy… you’re missing out. And Jesus says you’re not worthy of being His disciple.

Scary? Yes. Because just maybe what we’ve built our lives upon is really sand. On Christ the solid rock I stand. Stand with me. See Him. Savor Him. Sell everything you have to own Him as your chief treasure and joy. Then you’ll see His gifts in a whole new light.

Posted by rob at January 29, 2003 09:30 PM

Comments

Oh my gosh, this excites me beyone belief! It “rings true” in my spirit… and did when I first read it a year or so ago, not just now. Let me tell you, there is NO “deferential blankness” here; and you did put this down exactly the way that you ought to have.

To treasure Christ. THAT is life’s greatest joy! Anything else is idolatry, pure and simple. Yet, along the way of our treasuring Him, He sees fit to bestow blessings upon us. I am beginning to see His gifts in a whole new light!

Posted by: Rosanna at February 22, 2005 05:40 PM

Thank you, dearest friend. That Edwards quote I had been meaning to put in my last letter that illustrates enjoying the Giver in the gifts is this one:

The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will for ever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another; but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in any thing else whatsoever that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what shall be seen of God in them.

Praise God that, two years after writing this, I am in a relationship like the one we have where the above is a reality. And praise God that He is showing you the same things that He has been showing me.

Posted by: Rob Hulson at February 22, 2005 06:15 PM

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