January 2005 Archives

This is a response to someone who recently asked whether I agreed with the statement, “God helps those who help themselves.”

I disagree if that’s all there is to the statement.

But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands; to you the helpless commits himself; you have been the helper of the fatherless. (Psalm 10:4)

God loves to be leaned upon. No, that doesn’t mean sitting on your Laz-E-Boy and watching TV. But an earnest leaning upon the grace of God that we did not deserve yesterday, we cannot deserve today, and will not deserve tomorrow… that is living by faith. It is not passive, but it is a leaning hard on God and then doing great things in His name… from loving a smelly homeless guy to changing a dirty diaper.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6)

Other versions use “helpless” in the place of “weak.” That is GOSPEL. The good news is that God has helped those who could not help themselves. And shame, oh shame on us if we put ourselves out of the position of being a beggar in God’s economy! The good news is also good because God hasn’t just helped us, but He helps us. He will do so tomorrow again, and we are always to lift up the cup of our salvation and call on His name (see Psalm 116:12-13).

Of course that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work. But how do we work in such a way that utterly leans on God?

On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10)

10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:10-11)

That is the main reason I object to the statement: “In order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” To those who work their tails off, do it as one who works his tail off with the strength that God supplies, not originating from self-determination and autonomy. So, practically, work your tail off! And when you do, start it and end it with a recognition that everything you’re about to do or have just done was because of the grace of God in you, not anything else.

I think it cuts at the very heart of God’s goal in redemptive history if we adopt the above statement without a heavy acknowledgment of our complete dependence on Him for everything, even our strength with which we “help ourselves.”

24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. (Acts 17:24-25)

What, do you think that your getting up and doing something didn’t require the oxygen you took in through breathing? And who gave you that breath?

A fine example of this is found in 2 Chronicles 16:1-9, where Asa relied on Syria to win against the Northern Kingdom rather than relying on the Lord. The way the prophet Hanani, the rebuker of Asa, argues is noteworthy:

Were not the Ethiopians and the Libyans a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, he gave them into your hand. (2 Chronicles 16:8)

Hanani is not telling Asa, “Because God graciously delivered you from the Ethiopians and the Libyans, you should be grateful for that and go defeat the Northern Kingdom.” No, the argument is: you were helpless against the great armies of Ethiopia and Libya, and you relied on Me, and I acted on your behalf. Do it again.

Ugh, how prone we are to treat salvation like God’s big debt-creating act in our life that now requires us to somehow make installment payments regarding. Salvation is the debt-eliminating act of God whereby we are freed from the wages of sin and become debtors to other people (not to God!). We are always beggars in God’s economy, and as we stray from that with statements like the above one, so will our repugnance to the design and tenor of the gospel itself be[1].

Footnotes

1. In his sermon entitled God Glorified in Man’s Dependence, Jonathan Edwards wrote, “Now whatever scheme [of divinity] is inconsistent with our entire dependence on God for all, and of having all of him, through him, and in him, it is repugnant to the design and tenor of the gospel, and robs it of that which God accounts its lustre and glory.”

There has always been something about Jars of Clay that has appealed to me. Maybe it’s the somewhat ambiguous poetry they write that you can sing and feel like you’re expressing your heart. Maybe it’s the way their songs can be sung to people as well as to the Lord. Maybe it’s because they’re honest about how weak they are. Maybe it’s just because their music is just plain cool. They’ve come along way from their first album (their latest is fantastic). I seem to recall someone saying that they spent some time with the church in China, and they realized their music meant nothing to these people. They’ve shifted a bit in how explicit they are about biblical imagery and terms, which I’m thrilled to see.

I recently got two of their albums, completing my collection. The Eleventh Hour and Furthermore. There’s a song in the latter that I found some great comfort in.

Redemption
by Jars of Clay from their album Furthermore

We made it to a strange town,
Going down the wrong road.
Like any story retold,
Couldn’t find a common ending.

We’re way gone, beyond, looking for our own way…
We needed a distraction;
You said You were redemption.

We knew it as a wrong turn,
We couldn’t know the things we’d gain
When we reached the other border.

We look out, way down, past the road we’ve come from:
We’re looking at redemption.
It was hidden in the landscape
Of loss and love and fire and rain.
Never would have come this way
Looking for redemption.

We were looking out past the road we came from:
Looking at redemption
Hidden in the landscape
Of loss and love and fire and rain
Never would have come this way,
Looking for redemption
In the eyes of sorrow, eyes of rage…
What sordid histories they played.
The drama of redemption.
Redemption.

While perhaps this song spoke differently to you than it did to me the first time I heard it, I look back on 2004 as a year of loss and love and fire and rain, of eyes filled with sorrow and rage. And examining what led up to 2004, it’s definitely a sordid history of my life.

But when I examine it all, as if looking back down a road I traveled, I can see that the entire landscape is a portrait of redemption. All the loss, all the love, all the fire and rain… it was redemption. It is redemption. It is God pruning me of my indwelling sin, of my unbelief, of my lack of genuine love for others, of my dependence on myself or who I wish I was instead of being who I am in Him and not fearing what others think. I don’t know, I feel like I grew up in 2004.

The song says “Never would have come this way.” That’s true. I wouldn’t have chosen this road (though in some sense, I did through what I was sowing). And part of me wishes I could go back and change some things that happened last year, some wrong decisions I made, some awful attitudes I had, some unloving and selfish expressions I made…. But 2004 remains and it cannot be changed. It is forever etched into the history of Rob Hulson and those whose lives he shared his with.

And with all the warts, all the blemishes, all the ugliness, God’s hand is still seen through it. I don’t see all the ends, as the song says, “We couldn’t know the things we’d gain / When we reached the other border.” There have been things I have gained through 2004 that God, for His wise purposes, knew I needed to learn. And I guess I’m to the point where I’d say I’d go through it again if I was able to see Jesus as He has shown Himself to this blind, wretched, and miserable beggar. Piper expresses this beautifully in his poem on Job:

There are no words
To speak the substance of my soul
And joy to God, nor yet extol
His worth above the vast rebirth
Of all my dreams. No dancing mirth
Can suit or satisfy the kind
Of tearful pleasure that I find
When I recall what I have lost
By his decree, and what it cost
to see my God.

One thing I still struggle with is how it wasn’t like I was innocently and blamelessly walking down the road and God did all this to me. I was sowing to the flesh and I reaped what I sowed. Yet the sweet good news, the Gospel truth, is that God does not declare me to be righteous based on my righteousness, but on Christ’s. This was most clearly revealed to me on October 19th while reading John Piper’s When I Don’t Desire God. He pointed out Micah 7:8-9.

8 Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
the Lord will be a light to me.
9 I will bear the indignation of the Lord
because I have sinned against him,
until he pleads my cause
and executes judgment for me.
He will bring me out to the light;
I shall look upon his vindication.

Piper said of this:

Micah is ashamed and accepts God’s anger. “I sit in darkness.” He puts his hand on his mouth and accepts the sorrow and gloom that hang over him. No quick fix here. There are many times in the Christian life like this. It is foolish of us to make light of them, or trivialize them, or try to deny that they exist. God is holy, and he disciplines the children whom he loves. There is a fatherly anger that is no longer the wrath of a judge (Heb. 12:5-11). (Piper 87)

I sat there for several days like that.

Astonishingly, in all his contrition and gloom under God’s anger, Micah gets in the face of his enemy and says, “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise.” The enemy is rubbing it in. The enemy is saying that the sin of Micah cuts him off from his God. The enemy is lying and trying to make Micah hopeless. (Piper 88)

I was definitely hopeless. I was suicidal on multiple occasions last year, thinking that no one could ever love me because of how sinful I was and how much indwelling sin remains in me. I still have my doubts on that, that my past is insurmountably difficult for a woman to embrace me if she really knew how sinful I was and am apart from Christ. Seriously, reader, if you knew my past you might wonder how I can sit here and type thoughts about the God I’ve so often despised in my thoughts & actions (then again, if you’ve ever been broken over your sin, maybe you can relate). But regardless of that horizontal future imperiled, it was the vertical reality that came crashing in.

He says, “When I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me.” Remember, this darkness is the Lord’s discipline. God’s indignation burns. And in the midst of the darkness imposed by God, Micah says, “God will be my light.” He counts on God’s light in the darkness that God himself has sent. That is gutsy. That is what we must learn to do in our darkness — even the darkness we have brought on ourselves because of our sin. Yes, I am under the gloom of failure. Yes, God has put me here in his displeasure. But no, I am not abandoned, and God is not against me. He is for me. Even in the darkness that he imposes, he will sustain me. He will not let me go. Though he slay me, he will save me. We must learn to preach to ourselves like this in our fight for joy. (Piper 88-89)

That, to me, was revolutionary and the most freeing truth my heart needed to hear. My righteousness is in heaven; God does not look at me tomorrow based on today’s obedience and say “You are more righteous than you were yesterday.” Nor does He look at my past and say, “You were less righteous then.” The reason is because when He looks at me, He doesn’t see me, He sees Christ.

And the good news gets better. It doesn’t just leave me in my current state and simply cover me (which is very good news indeed!). My covering, my justification, is very, very good news. But He does not let me continue with the same sinful desires and actions; He works to change me as well. This is where the good news keeps getting better. We have joy they we’re justified, but we’re still rotten, and that ought to break us.

A powerless gospel is not good news. A gospel that only wins lip service is not different than any of the other philosophies of the world. Such a gospel produces a Christianity that is a game of words…. [The true Gospel is] good news because it creates a flavor for eternity in all we do. It’s good news because it militates against religious gamesmanship which the world knows is just a game of words. It’s good news because it honors the purpose of God in Christ to destroy the works of the devil and not just put a new name on the works of the devil, namely, “justification.”

John Piper, Let Us Walk in the Light of God

That’s great news! That’s wonderful news! That’s true redemption! If all that God does is say, “Okay, Rob. You’ve really done a lot of awful things, but I’ll not take them into account,” but still leaves my heart unchanged, that’s not good news because is is from my heart that all those awful things came forth.

Has my heart changed? Yes. Is it where it ought to be? No. Is it different than it was six months ago? YES. And that is good news! Not only is His wrath against my sin removed, but He is working so that, little by little, I become more like Him in my desires and actions. I don’t want forgiveness for my sins so that I can continue in them, but I want to be freed from the desires and deeds of my flesh.

And God, through 2004, set me upon that with a blood-earnestness that cost a great deal. But, in the end, it will not be a loss. All of my discipline is bought by the blood of Christ and is a mercy. Yes, even His discipline for the sin in my life. I do not deserve the comfort His loving rod and staff give.

Behold the mercy of our King
Who takes from death its bitter sting
And by His blood, and often ours,
Brings triumph out of hostile pow’rs
And paints with crimson earth and soul
Until the bloody work is whole.
What we have lost, God will restore:
That, and Himself, forevermore.
When He is finished with His art:
The quiet worship of our heart.
When God creates a humble hush
And makes Leviathan His brush,
It won’t be long before the rod
Becomes the tender kiss of God.

(Piper’s Misery of Job and the Mercy of God)

Wow, that was a lot more than I had intended on writing. But redemption is too good to be quiet about.

WORKS CITED

• Piper, John. *The Misery of Job and the Mercy of God*. (free to read online @ www.desiringgod.org)
• Piper, John. *When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy*. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004.

I’m tired of the word “will.”

I was out jogging tonight under a sky of semi-visible stars and a chilling breeze, my warm little iPod playing the tunes from some new CDs I just got, one of them being Matt Redman’s Facedown (which I wholeheartedly recommend). The song I was listening to was Gifted Response. The chorus is as follows:

And we’ll sing the glory of Your name,
Celebrate the glories of Your grace;
We will worship You! We will worship You!
And we’ll make Your praise so glorious,
Singing songs of everlasting praise;
We will worship You! We will worship You!

There I was, rounding the corner back into my neighborhood, swinging my gargantuan black 4-D Mag-Lite around like a drunk police officer as I silently shouted out the words. But on one of the repeats of the chorus, my heart sank. I didn’t desire to sing, “We will worship You.” I’m tired of singing “I will such and such” when it comes to being with Jesus.

There’s nothing wrong with it, but I’m just longing for the day when I won’t have to tell Jesus, “I will worship You,” or “I will bless You at all times.” I’d like to simply say, “I worship You” or “I bless You at all times.”

Instead of looking forward to the day that Jeff Deyo speaks of in his song All I Want….

One day we’ll look on Your face
And see You in all of Your glory.
And we won’t need the sun, and we won’t need the moon:
All we will need… is You.

…I’d rather just see His face, in all of His glory. I don’t want to sing “All we will need… is You.” I want to say, “All I need… is You.”

Maranatha. Get me out of this wretched body, this body of death. And until then, let me take some people with me.

New book I’m reading. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. An odd book, an approach that’s very non-theological, blunt, but yet so far has found a connection with my soul that I find hard to explain. So struck by it, I’m still up at 1:53am reading it and have gone so far as felt the need to post something about it. My thoughts on it are available by clicking the above link.

Available from Amazon.com for $10.49

Hmm. This is an interesting book that I was given by my friend Josh Williams. I’m not done reading it yet, but that begs the question: why is it 1:50am and I’m up and cannot find it within myself to put this book down?

Further, why am I online writing about it?

I’ll keep you updated. It’s certainly been a fascinating and frustrating read so far. Yet, I can’t stop reading it and find myself agreeing more than I do disagreeing. I found this statement to ring true, especially in light of what I wrote in this entry in which I said:

Why are we sometimes (or oftentimes) afraid to boast in the Lord? For me, it is owing to the fact that I feel that I must intellectually defend Him and don’t feel prepared to do so. I do not really think that He can authenticate Himself to those who would hear my boast without my being a great orator or defender of the truth.

Anyway, here’s what Miller said, in quoting the words of an unsaved friend of his:

The thing I loved about Nadine is that I never felt like she was selling anything. She would talk about God as if she knew Him, as if she had talked with Him on the phone that day. She was never ashamed, which is the thing with some Christians I had encountered. They felt like they had to sell God, as if He were soap or a vacuum cleaner, and it’s like they really weren’t listening to me; they didn’t care, they just wanted me to buy their product. [1]

That’s food for thought. Do I feel like I need to sell God? Do I listen to them only to wait for the chance to force my presentation of Jesus onto them? Or, am I listening to their hearts, trying to understand them, and transposing Jesus and His kingdom into their particular situation? Do I realize that God pursues His own as uniquely as He created them to be, and His truth, while unchanging in its substance, He desires to be changed in its appearance?

WAKE UP, ROB! My God, haven’t you ever read Galatians 4:5-6?

5 Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. 6 Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

Ugh. We cookie-cutter the gospel, don’t we? We think there’s only one way to present the kingdom of heaven. And we try to run everyone through that mold, when the way Jesus presented Himself to others, if you read the Gospels, was rarely the same way twice. The truth was always the same, but how He used different metaphors, and how He responded differently to the person, depending on where the were spiritually.

I need to keep reading.

Update I finished reading the book. I’ve quite forgotten about it except for the time he set up a confession booth at his college and confessed his sins to the students. It was a good read while reading it, it hasn’t really impacted me in a lasting way. Ah well.

End Notes

[1] Miller, Don. Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2003. p. 46.

Available for $16.99 from Discerning Reader

This is a new book given me by John Zimmerman, signed by the editor, no less! It contains a multitude of sermons by Edwards that up to this point have been previously unpublished. I am looking forward to digging in more deeply.

A meditation on Psalm 34:1-2

1 I will bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
2 My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
let the humble hear and be glad.
(Psalm 34:1-2)

Yesterday, two personal encounters confirmed to me the importance of the opening lines to my favorite psalm (Psalm 34). I remember having a conversation in early 2003 with Janeé (Critchfield) Pederson regarding this passage. Something stood out to me as we read verse two that perplexed me initially but began making sense as I meditated on it.

The first verse reveals the inescapable result of a heart set on Christ: it overflows in speech. The second verse shows an effect of such speech to others. Before I develop these two ideas, let me explain yesterday’s situations.

First, I had a conversation with someone in my Sunday school class of whom it seems obvious to me has a heart set on God. When this person has spoken in class, it has always been about God’s supremacy and our position before Him. This person has boasted in the Lord, and as we talked I was reminded about why this was so refreshing to me.

Second, I spent the night staying late closing at Super Target (where I work as a cashier), and I was able to, at length, have a discussion with one of my coworkers about the Lord and how He affects our lives. To my joy, I have found a brother who is also seeking to know the Lord more and is desirous of true communion with another in Christ. This is the first connection with anyone at work on a spiritual level and I am astounded at how I neglected the obvious for so long at work: boast in the Lord, and do it verbally.

Blessing the Lord at All Times

Verse one is the overflow of a heart set on Christ: it speaks well of the Lord continually. A soul satisfied in Christ is not content to be silent before others. According to Jesus’ words in Matthew 12:34, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” Whatever is filling our hearts is what our mouth will surely speak of. If what is filling our hearts is the the next big movie, we will speak of it. If it is a new lover, we will speak of her or him. If it is the latest excellent restaurant experience, we will speak of it. The things we delight in we cannot help but speak of. A heart filled up with pleasure overflows in speech about that pleasure.

So, when I read that David says that he will bless the Lord at all times and that His praise will continually be in his mouth, I see a soul that is filled with Christ, the image of God, that cannot help but speak of Him continually.

And this is what we, as Christians, should be doing. I do not mean that we should speak of what we do not possess. Woe to us if we speak of Him when we are not feeding on Him! As Richard Baxter said:

Oh what aggravated misery is this, to perish in the midst of plenty! — to famish with the bread of life in our hands, while we offer it to others, and urge it on them…! If such a wretched man would take my counsel, he would make a stand, and call his heart and life to an account, and fall a preaching a while to himself, before he preach any more to others.

Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (emphasis mine)

To perish from starvation when we are passing out the Bread of Life (John 6:35) would indeed be a tragedy. We must partake of Him ourselves. We must, as David says later in Psalm 34:8, “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

The second part of Baxter’s quote also applies very well to the verses we have been considering. Verse one is the result of preaching the gospel of the glory of Christ to ourselves, and verse two is the preaching of that same gospel to others.

The Rejoicing of the Humble

In verse two, this praise that the psalmist says is continually in his mouth has an effect: when the humble hear it, they are glad. I wondered when I first read it, “Why does he speak of the humble? How have they become humble? Why is it that being humble results in being glad?”

The best answer I have to offer is that when a person who has been humbled by God through the power of the gospel hears another person boasting in the Lord (as opposed to themselves, which is pride), the humble person’s heart agrees, loves to see God exalted in that way, and rejoices in His exaltation. The true saint loves to see God exalted and man abased. He loves to see God glorified and man as dependent on Him.

So, when two people who have been humbled by the Lord come into proximity with one another and one boasts in Him, the other will hear it and be glad. Why? Because the humble love it when God is exalted, whether by their own lips or the lips of others.

Boasting in Real Life

When my friend in Sunday school was boasting in the Lord, I rejoiced. We connected on a spiritual level rapidly and found true fellowship nearly instantaneously. This is, on a side note, the true basis for any relationship among believers, from friendship to marriage. This is fellowship, when two people have in common their participation in the love that is shared between the Father and the Son (1 John 1:3-4). There is nothing sweeter than that communion.

So it was at work that I decided to boast in the Lord before my coworker by exalting His work on the cross on my behalf and His majesty in creation. We had been talking of secular things for a little while, but I felt no shame in explaining that I believed at that moment that Jesus’ work on the cross was the most amazing thing in the world to me. I didn’t know how he would take it, but I did not want to speak of mere trivial things. My soul desired to boast in the Lord, and it did. He heard it and was drawn to it. After we were done over three hours later, he told me that it was the best closing experience he had ever had and that the time we had spent went by quickly. I had to agree with him that I felt the same way.

Why are we sometimes (or oftentimes) afraid to boast in the Lord? For me, it is owing to the fact that I feel that I must intellectually defend Him and don’t feel prepared to do so. I do not really think that He can authenticate Himself to those who would hear my boast without my being a great orator or defender of the truth. But you know, it is becoming more my experience that my relationship with Christ is so much deeper and richer than what anyone has encountered, and to speak of Him in such terms as boasting of my dependency on Him is something they do not know how to deal with. If I say, “Jesus was a real person who lived 2,000 years ago,” that is a fact they can dispute. While there is great benefit to researching the historical reliability of the Bible, most people are not going to initially do that before coming to faith in Him. I am agreeing more and more with John Piper in his epilogue to his beautiful book, Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ [1]. In it, he says:

Stated most simply, the common path to sure knowledge of the real Jesus is this: Jesus, as he is revealed in the Bible, has a glory — an excellence, a spiritual beauty — that can be seen as self-evidently true. It is like seeing the sun and knowing that it is light and not dark, or like tasting honey and knowing that it is sweet and not sour. There is no long chain of reasoning from premises to conclusions. There is a direct apprehension that this person is true and his glory is the glory of God. (119-120)

The place where this is seen is in the Bible. But I believe that our presentation of Him to the world also intends a similar effect when our boasting is based on the truth in the Bible. As we boast in Him, as verse one indicates, it will be used to awaken others to His glory, as verse two alludes to. Yes, we ought to be sure of the things we have learned (which is why Luke wrote his gospel, as he states at the onset in Luke 1:1-4). But what is going to impact those around us is if we speak of the truth with joy. There must be a hope within us that others see and hear (1 Peter 3:15).

The result of my friend’s boasting in Sunday school and my boasting at work was verse three.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together!

And that is one of the most important verses to me in the entire Bible. My joy is doubled when my rejoicing is doubled in another person. Like the Apostle John, I boast in voice and in writing in order that others may have fellowship with me and so complete my joy.

3 That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4 And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (1 John 1:3-4)

End Notes

[1] John Piper, Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004.