We just got done with the 2008 Desiring God National Conference. I was completely amazed by Mark Driscoll's message, How Sharp the Edge: Christ, Controversy, and Cutting Words. Highlights to follow.
I hope to be back. :o) TBI is taking a lot of time, but it's opening me back up to the use of my MIND.
Before getting into point #1, it would be well for us to examine what Edwards said just before his list of why God has ordained that He bless us through our not letting go of Him until He does so. I found this to be encouraging and beautiful. All these quotes are taken from The Blessing of God: Previously Unpublished Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, Broadman & Holman, 2003, pp. 22-23.
As I told my small group on Tuesday night, I used to picture this whole scene with Jacob and God wrestling as if God were some cloudy, shadowy, ninja-like character appearing out of nowhere and wrestling with Jacob. Of course we all know that if indeed He was a ninja, he wouldn't be able to be seen. Even so, it's always seemed odd to me that Jacob, in the middle of wrestling with this Being... asks to be blessed? Edwards speculates that it was more like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, where Jesus appeared to them and was so pleasing in His fellowship that they didn't want Him to leave. I like this interpretation and it seems to answer to me why, when a person whose fellowship was so amazing as this was about to leave, Jacob didn't want Him to and argued and wrestled with Him in order to get Him to stay. And the only way he'd let Him go is if He promised to bless him. Edwards compares this to prayer and the way we intercede with God for the blessings we desire.
So why has God ordained that we receive the blessings we seek of Him through a process of "wrestling" with Him through persistent prayer? Edwards tells us,
'Tis not that God needs it to make him willing to bestow the blessing. Or that the will of God is properly overcome by men's importunity.
In other words, God doesn't need the desire of people to be blessed that makes Him desirous to bless them. It's not like we have to wear Him out by making Him so uncomfortable with our whining that He finally does the thing we ask, like a child who complains often and loudly enough to a parent before they begrudgingly give in to the child's demands.
God did not need Jacob's wrestling with him in order to make him willing to bless him. God was willing before and came to him with that design to bless him.
The blessing didn't come out of nowhere, as if it dawned on God that this was a good idea. "Oh yeah, what a great idea, Jacob! Blessing you, yeah, I think I'll do that." He came to Jacob with the intention of blessing him, and entered into this "wrestling match" in order to bless him.
God is willing to bless his people, and this is the reason he stirs them up to wrestle with him for a blessing. When God seems to delay and to give repulses to what they seek, 'tis not that he is unwilling, 'tis not because he is backward. He is all the while exceeding ready, for God delights to bestow his blessing as much more than man delights to have him. And therefore they don't tire him out, though the part be much the same as 'tis with men when they are tired out with importunity and so are represented by it in Christ's parables.
I love that section. God delights to bless His people more than they even desire to be blessed. He is an inexhaustible fountain of blessing. If fallen, imperfect, evil human beings know how to give good gifts to their children, doesn't the perfect Heavenly Father know much more how to do so?
With that in mind, why do the whole wrestling thing? If God is so very willing to bless us even more than we desire to be blessed, why are we encouraged to labor in coming to Him over and over again? That seems odd. Edwards cites four reasons, and we'll tackle #1 right now.
Reason #1: Because not letting God go except He bless us reveals the value and necessity of the blessing we seek.
'Tis very suitable and becoming [appropriate, fitting] that before men have the blessing they should this way show their sense of their need of it and of the value of it. 'Tis very suitable that before God bestows his blessing upon them, persons should be sensible [personally aware] that they need it. And 'tis by their importunity and earnest seeking of it -- their not letting God go except he bestows it -- that they show their sense of their need of it.
'Tis very suitable that before God bestows his blessing, persons should be sensible of the great value of the blessing and the advantage it will be to them. They show also a sense of this by their not letting God go except he bestows it.
The first reason that this is an appropriate method of receiving blessings, Edwards states, is because it shows to man the value of what he seeks. It reveals to him whether this is valuable or not. There are times where we ask for things from God that, if we really stopped and thought about it, aren't things we should have or might be detrimental to us if we received them.
Going to God over and over again shows us whether the thing we ask is truly valuable or not. When we find that it is, it puts us into an eager state to seek it from Him until He grants it. At some point, something that we more or less prayed for weak-heartedly becomes something that we've become zealous to receive.
God wants you to really want what you want. You'll be much happier when you get what you strongly desire. Does that make sense? Through this process of wrestling with Him through persistent prayer, it makes us want the blessing more and, as we'll see in the next few steps, how this prepares us to receive the blessing we seek. Enough of Edwards for now, let's turn to what Jesus told us in Matthew 6:8.
For your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
The question is, do we? Do we know what we need? By not immediately giving us everything we ask for, it gives us a chance to feel the weight of its value. Evidently, we're prone to lose heart when we pray because God doesn't normally answer immediately. This is why Jesus told the parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18.
And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.
I regularly lose heart in prayer for at least two reasons:
I need a remedy, and Edwards has helped me. Listen to the story Jesus told in order to help us not lose heart in persistent, "Not-Letting-God-Go-Except-He-Bless-Us" prayer,
In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man.
So we have a godless, loveless man in a position of power and authority.
And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, 'Give me justice against my adversary.' For a while he refused....
A widow (in that day widows were much more powerless than they are today) "kept coming to him" with a petition, and the wicked judge kept denying her. But she needed justice because of her opponent and knew that only this judge could grant it. She had a need and the answer to her petition was very valuable to her.
But afterward he said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.'
The unrighteous judge granted her request because of her persistence. An unloving, selfish, and godless man may be worn out and overcome by persistent petitions. That's the way that humans can be. Jesus commented on His own parable with this:
Hear what the unrighteous judge says.
Read it again. Now. :o)
And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?
The contrast is that God isn't unloving, selfish, nor godless, like the unrighteous judge. He loves His elect and hears their cries way more than a selfish judge hears the cry of a widow. If they keep crying to Him, will He delay long over them? It's important to note that He does delay, which is the whole point of this sermon from Edwards. God delays, but why? And here's the hopeful part: does He delay long?
I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.
Wow. Speedily... after a delay.
Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
Jesus' question makes me think that there's a way to pray in faith that receives what it asks for. Faith is the key, here. We know that because of Jesus' words in Matthew 21:22,
And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.
This is continually mentioned throughout the Gospels. My problem has been that I just didn't know what to do with these promises because God seems to delay when I ask Him for things.
Soooooooo, Edwards' first reason is that by delaying, we are given the chance to stop and think about the value of what we're asking, and see if we're really asking Him in faith for a very good thing.
I'm done for now. More to follow. I think I'll go pray.
The following few posts will be about a sermon I read from The Blessing of God: Previously Unpublished Sermons of Jonathan Edwards. The sermon is entitled, The Way to Obtain the Blessing of God is Not to Let God Go Except He Bless Us. He based it on the account of Jacob's wrestling with God and asking for a blessing in Genesis 32:26-29,
Then he said, "Let me go, for the day has broken." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." And he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." Then he said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him.
The bottom line message of the sermon is that there is a persistency and fervor we should nurture and develop in seeking after God for the blessings we desire from Him, and He will grant them if we don't lose heart. First and foremost, Edwards' concern is with the best blessing of all: the new birth. But he doesn't limit it to that, which is the part I'm trying to figure out in my life and theology. There's a very fine line between the promise of Psalm 1, "In everything he does, he prospers" and the idea that God always gives everything we want to us when we ask for it, and that suffering isn't to be a normal part of the Christian's life (John 16:33, 2 Timothy 3:12-13).
Whoever wrote this on the Wikipedia entry on Prosperity theology said it well:
While some proponents claim that [Prosperity theology's] ultimate purpose is the funding of evangelism and Christian charity throughout the world, critics argue that the teaching actually is a teaching of materialism masquerading as theology. Futhermore, it seems to promote more self-gratification than true spirituality.
True enough, and there's no doubt in my mind that this happens. Even so, I still get back to 2 Corinthians 9:10-11, because it outlines the thing that the "critics" above argue against.
He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.
That includes material blessings! I find myself somewhere in the middle of this, feeling the pull in both directions. This doesn't mean I'm balanced; it means that I see the reasonableness of both positions and haven't chosen one or harmonized both satisfactorily in my mind. On the one hand, I know that God is the supreme treasure of my life and that even if He kills me, yet I will hope in Him (Job 13:15). On the other, I know that He is a God of immeasurable abundance and that He blesses us so that we may be a blessing to others, and that doesn't exclude material blessings!
Edwards' sermon has helped me get a better grip on walking this fine line. It must be walked, in my opinion, especially if you're an American Christian. You can't ignore either side of this equation and side with just one. There's tension, the tension that true Christians know all too well because we do not understand fully, only in part right now.
Therefore if you're interested in what Edwards has to say, I will give you an outline of what he says and labor over each point in the next four posts. It is proper, he says, that we obtain the blessing of God by not letting Him go until He blesses us because:
it shows to us the value of the thing we're asking from Him. It makes us sensibly aware of the great benefit we will have if we receive what we're asking from Him,
it causes us to examine ourselves and see if there's anything in us that would give God a cause to deny us the blessing, thereby causing us to seek the blessing in a humble -- not demanding -- demeanor,
it makes us realize that only God can truly give us this blessing, that He is the source of it, and makes us all the more earnest in prayer and dependency on Him, and finally,
it shapes and fashions us so that when we receive it, we're in a right state to acknowledge Him to be the reason we've received it instead of solely our own ingenuity and not make a god out of the thing we've requested.
I will begin with #1 within a few days.
Could you describe your interest in God as mathematical? As in, God is an equation of some kind to be solved, and if He doesn't add up, you lose interest in Him?
For example, God is described as "love." God is described as "powerful." And yet bad things happen. Evil things happen. Just yesterday, for example, the five-year-old daughter of Steven Curtis Chapman as accidentally killed by her older brother in a freak car accident (story). How can a God who is described as loving and powerful allow such a heart-breaking thing to happen?
So we quest for some kind of solution to this mathematical conundrum. Something isn't "adding up" in this equation. We're driven to dismiss God altogether, put Him on the shelf for the time being, or look for alternative explanations to make the equation pan out.
But God isn't a math problem. He isn't a "problem" to be solved. He's a Person to be enjoyed and adored. Pastor John mentioned this as a key idea that gave him the desire to change from a professor at Bethel to a pastor at Bethlehem. This is what he said he learned about God from Romans 9.
I will not simply be analyzed, I will be adored. I will not simply be pondered, I will be proclaimed. My sovereignty is not simply to be scrutinized, it is to be heralded. It is not grist for the mill of controversy, it is gospel for sinners who know that their only hope is the sovereign triumph of God's grace over their rebellious will. (from The Absolute Sovereignty of God: What is Romans 9 Is All About?)
God is way bigger than something you're supposed to "solve." He's Someone who takes your breath away when you see a true glimpse of Him. His God-centeredness is a cause of wonder and mouth-stopping amazement. This is what Job said in Job 42:1-6 after he had been questioning how just it was for God to take away his health, wealth, and family:
Then Job answered the Lord and said:
"I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 'Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.' I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
When we're granted the immeasurable blessing of having "eyes to see" the living God, in a mere moment all of our questions become moot. And this seeing can happen even today, not just after we die. We are being changed, as Paul said, from "one degree of glory to the next." We get access to these glimpses, according to the Bible, by turning to the Lord. To me, that involves turning from something so that I may turn to Him.
But when one turns to the Lord, the veil [that blinds us from glory] is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:16-18)
So if you're struggling in trying to understand the infinitely high and unsearchable ways of God, start by turning back to Him and searching for Him with your whole heart. Trade your affections in other things for affections for Him. He has never disappointed me when I've sought Him in this way.
Speaking of, I owe you guys a post on that Edwards sermon I referenced before. It totally applies here. Putting that into Things.app as we speak.
Good post from John Piper, What Does 'God-Centered' Mean?
What we mean when we say God is "God-centered" is that he acts like that. He saves for the sake of his name. He saves to make known his own power.
And what we mean when we say we are God-centered (or desire to be) is that we like to have it that way. It satisfies us to have God save us for God's sake. We are happy that this is the way it is. We get pleasure in seeing it and savoring it.
We like to talk about God doing it that way.
That's the heart of why I'm in Minneapolis and not still in Edmond, OK. It's why I'd move my new wife and myself to a city where I didn't know a soul. I wanted to be around a group of people who had this as their foundation, their overarching theme, and who put it into practice. How does one minister, preach, and love other people from this worldview?
It's what the book Desiring God is about. Thank you, Nathan Carr, for recommending we study this. And if you want to get into my head, there are few better places to go. Maybe Future Grace would be better, I don't know. Thank you, Josh Williams, for giving this to me at Steve's Rib in January of '01. You have no idea just how much your generosity is multiplying a harvest of goodness in this world.
