May 2003 Archives

Blow the trumpet!

I'll be at this amazing gathering of some 40,000 believers who are going to humble themselves for one straight day of prayer and fasting, asking God to pour out, by His Holy Spirit, a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all people. This is where deep doctrine meets deep emotion, and a time I have been looking forward to for some time.

I get teary thinking about it. May God be glorified as I pray for 1) my church, 2) my country, and 3) the nations (Uganda in particular), because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

Long I sought for the earth's hidden meaning; Long as a youth was my search in vain. Now as I approach my last years waning, My search I must begin again.

Across the forty years that separate me from that poem I can hear the fearful refrain, "I've wasted it! I've wasted it!" Somehow there had been wakened in me a passion for the essence and the main point of life. The ethical question "whether something is permissible" faded in relation to the question, "what is the main thing, the essential thing?" The thought of building a life around minimal morality or minimal significance--a life defined by the question, "What is permissible?"--felt almost disgusting to me. I didn't want a minimal life. I didn't want to live on the outskirts of reality. I wanted to understand the main thing about life and pursue it.

-John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), p. 14

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.... For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:12, 20)

Passive. Active. Did you catch the contrast in the statement from Piper?

"What is permissable?"

"What is the main thing?"

One says, "What am I able to do?" The other says, "What will I do?" The first is seeking permission for anything; the second is active involvement in something specific.

O, how I look upon my generation and see a continual asking of permission, and then when anyone is actively involved and sold out to something in particular, that person is viewed as "out of balance" or "a (label)-ite." We ask, "Is it okay to see this movie?" when we should be asking, "What should I be doing tonight to get the most joy?"

"The main thing is to keep balanced," the mantra of modern Western Christianity tells us. "Don't have too much fun, but don't be too spiritual, either." It is wrongly presupposed that spirituality and fun are in conflict or are opposites in which we need to maintain an equilibrium.

Sure, it sounds right. I mean, we can glorify God by watching a movie. We can glorify God at a basketball game. We can glorify God whether we eat or drink or whatever we do. Therefore, if we can, we just need to balance our basketball games with our witnessing, our movies with our helping widows.

There is a freedom that comes when we realize the truth that all things are lawful. Many are coming to this realization. But then nobody bothers to take the next step, which is "Okay, if all things are lawful for me, which ones are the most profitable?"

The author of Hebrews puts it this way:

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. (Hebrews 12:1)

"Every encumbrance"? That seems a little extreme, a little out-of-balance, here.

Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules. (2 Timothy 2:3-5)

"The affairs of everyday life." Someone should tell Paul that he needs to be more balanced.

I am submitting to you, brothers and sisters of my generation, that we need to change what we're asking. Instead of saying "Is this okay to do?" we need to be asking, "What is the one thing I can do to bring me the most lasting joy?" We need to lay anything aside, sin or otherwise, that is holding us back from being about this one thing.

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of His love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not His enemies but His gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God Himself, the idolatry is scarecely recognizable and almost incurable.

John Piper. A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997), p. 14.

This thought is just beginning to take root in my mind, and I'm far from bearing fruit with it. But the thought is this: Stop trying to figure out if it's okay for us to do something and think in a positive way: What is the most profitable way I can glorify God? Because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied (I.e., happy, joyful) in Him.

I am wanting more and more to lay aside anything holding me back. I am by no means perfect in this. The author of Hebrews doesn't call it "the sin which so easily entangles us" for nothing. But let's give up this notion that the happy Christian life is the one where we simply find "balance." Rather, let it be the life that finds maximum happiness in God in whatever He has called us to do.

I'm out of steam for now. I need to think this over some more.

My youth pastor gave the sermon today (graduation Sunday and all). While his sermon was good and worth an entry itself, I wanted to highlight in particular a point he made about Romans 8:28 and verses like it.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good, to those who love God...

This is often posted on cards and emails and you name it. It's what he called a "Bible soundbyte." I call it, with Piper, a "pearl" or a "nugget" mentality. Certainly there are verses that hit us with their impact in summing up of truth. "O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt His name together!" (Psalm 34:3) is a favorite of mine.

But what about the rest of the verse and v. 29, which gives meaning to v. 28? Why don't people find comfort in those truths?

...to those are the 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.

What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? (Romans 8:28b-31)

Paul will go on, having laid the foundation of our hope in the midst of the "all things" mentioned in Romans 8:28. What I see in modern Christianity is a massive tidal wave of people whose mentality is:

Just tell me I'm loved.

If all God wanted to relay through Paul to us is "I'm going to be nice to you," we wouldn't have the rest of the Bible. But there is more than just a soundbyte in Romans here that will give us hope! All of that, from the foreknowing, the predestination, the calling, the justifying, the glorifying... these are meant to give you and I hope, brothers and sisters!

When Piper was going through Romans 1:16-17, he said:

...and it is apalling how many Christians don't care about v. 17, thank you. They just want to know v. 16. "Tell me that there's good news that will save me," and then close the book. "I believe it; that's all I want to know."

Now there's something wrong, here. If God inspires His authoratative apostle to tell us things... He wants us to know them. I am not asking you to take a course in theology. I'm asking you to care about v. 17. I am asking you to care, "How does He save? How does He get me through wrath? How does He take a sinner like me, unjust, unrighteous, corrupt through-and-through... He's holy, He can't look on sin, and yet, there's supposed to be some good news that gets me through wrath, through judgment, through His holiness, and into His fellowship where I'm His friend and enjoying Him forever and ever... God wants you to know how that happens.

If He did not not want you to know that He would not have Romans in the Bible, in fact, He wouldn't have a Bible. And I just plead with you, I am pleading with you this morning to be serious about the serious things in the universe....

And so I'm pleading with you to take the book of Romans with me and in a few years, you call it a course in theology if you want, but all I'm going to be doing is pointing you and pointing you and pointing you to words and sentences. The Gospel is the power of God to save believers for one reason, and not another reason. What's the reason?

He goes on to explain how the Gospel is the power of God to do all of the above and how it is good news. It's not just that God loves us and that's all. It's glorious truth, waiting to be enjoyed by our whole hearts.

Well, my first real post in my new phpBB-driven journal setup. We'll see how this goes, I suppose. I really like using phpBB as my primary setup since I'm so familiar with how all the code works.

If the Christian life has become the path of ease and fun in the modern West, then corporate worship is the place of increasing entertainment. The problem is not a battle between contemporary Christian worship music and hymns; the problem is that there aren't enough martyrs during the week. If no soldiers are perishing, what you want on Sunday is Bob Hope and some pretty girls, not the army chaplain and a surgeon.

John Piper, The Hidden Smile of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 167.

I'm finishing this book today, and it's quite a feast compared to some other books I've read lately. What I love about that statement is that it begins not with the outside form, but an inward change. I am not convinced by any stretch of the imagination that if we change the music in our churches, we'll change people. I am convinced that if we get to the heart of the Gospel, that holy God has had mercy on us, sinners though we are, and made a way for us to drink at the river of His delights in Christ, people will change. As a result, the debate won't merely be about forms of music, but about a heart saturated with God. And in so doing, I can't help but think that people will start becoming uncomfortable with certain types of forms and expressions of sound.

We must start from the inside and work our way out, and no, it's not about God being an "antithesis of the culture." Otherwise, we'll seek to be different just for the heck of it. We'll equate righteousness with some form of action in a negative light, what you don't do.

I'm rambling and I'll add more later. I want to begin the laborious process of converting all my past journal entries to this system. Fun stuff, yo.