Christian Living

Do You Want to Be Wise?

Do You Want to Be Wise?

I was never the biggest fan of the book of Proverbs. The 31 chapters packed full of aphorisms felt a little too self-helpy for my taste. I struggled with what felt like the lack of grace in the book, the apparent void of the need of the redeeming work of Christ. I was challenged by the fact that it felt like there wasn’t enough nuance. I found myself scratching my head in response to verses like “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich” (Prov 10:4), and asking, “But what about the diligent born in Venezuela?”[i]

But now I get it!

As so often happens, when you’re forced to sit in a book in prayer, the book comes to life in fresh ways. We’ve had the gift of preaching through the book of Proverbs over the past month. You can check out the series here, if you want to follow our journey through the book of Proverbs. I’ve felt the book coming to life in ways I never have before.

I want to proclaim the joy and power of Proverbs from the rooftops. Who doesn’t want to be wise? I long for wisdom, and Proverbs has made me thirst for wisdom and the author of wisdom all the more.

If you long for wisdom, I encourage you to sink your teeth into Proverbs. If, like me, you need some companions along the way to help you appreciate the book more, I encourage you to check out these two great introductions to the book of Proverbs.

40 lessons for 40 years

40 lessons for 40 years

This past week my wife, Angel, turned 40. As an opportunity for reflection, she decided to consider what the most important lessons God has taught her. What follows captures her heart and wisdom well. I love seeing how these are lived out in her walk with Christ, our marriage, her parenting, and her counseling practice.[i]

May God’s wisdom through Angel abound to you.

John


40 Lessons for 40 years

  1. God is always for me.

  2. Sitting at the feet of Jesus is the most life-giving, soul-filling, peace-giving place to be. I walk in the overflow of my time with him. I don’t have to set an agenda for that space. I can just be and learn to wait in silence.

  3. I am not my own.

  4. To know who I am in Christ: beloved, adopted, chosen, a priest, a son, the bride, a sheep, free, a saint are non-negotiables in my life that no one and no thing can take away from me. This is who I am and it gives me permission and power to step into my role as wife, mom, and counselor.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1. How My Mind Changed About End-of-Life Care: Justin Taylor explains well the challenge of considering how to make end-of-life decisions. He shares that, “Many Christians—myself included—have assumed that being pro-life means extending life as long as possible. If, for example, a feeding tube can provide the food and water, or a ventilator can pump oxygen, then we should always use all the means at our disposal to preserve a human life.”

2. No Condemnation, but What About Consequences? Courtney Reissig reflects on her cervical cancer and concludes, “Sin is serious. Sin has consequences, sometimes deadly ones. But sin has a remedy. In him, it is finished. Shame has no place. There is no condemnation for those who trust in Christ—not now, not ever.”

3. How to Know You’ve Become a Pharisee: Randy Alcorn offers this parable. He begins, “Imagine yourself moving into a house with a huge picture window overlooking a grand view across a wide expanse of water enclosed by a range of snow-capped mountains.”

4. Save Me From Myself: My friend Anne Imboden transparently shares about her struggle with social anxiety, the fall-out of that struggle, and God’s transformative work in her heart. She begins, “There’s a big part of my story most people don’t know about. I don’t share it very often and when I do, the response is usually one of surprise. No, I’m not talking about my ten years of playing softball. Though really, why is everyone so dumbfounded that I have a history of athleticism? (Actually, don’t answer that.) I’m talking about depression and social anxiety; demons I faced for years in my early adulthood. “But you’re such an extrovert!” “I’d never have known! You’re so comfortable in a crowd!” “Really? You’re always so confident around people!” These things are all true, though my extroverted tendencies have been dialed back considerably since my recovery.”

5. Ouch!: If you like physical comedy, enjoy this 60 seconds of ridiculousness.

In Honor of My Beloved on Her 40th

In Honor of My Beloved on Her 40th

Tomorrow my beautiful wife, Angel, turns 40. I’ve known Angel since she was 14, a freshman at Canyon del Oro High School. She has the same magnetic personality she did then, but the years have added depth and wisdom.

Marrying young is hard. God had a lot of work to do on me and Angel (and still does!). But there is also joy. It is an honor to be a close companion to God’s refining work in another’s life for so long. It is a mercy to know and be known.

I’ve seen God shape Angel’s flighty spirit into grounded stillness. I’ve seen God transform Angel’s heart that, at times, struggled with discontentment, to a heart that overflows with gratitude. I’ve seen God patiently draw Angel into a vocational calling she wrestled with (those God has blessed by having Angel enter their lives as counselor are grateful she submitted!).

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1. Growing My Faith in the Face of Death: Tim Keller reflects on his spiritual journey through his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, “This change was not an overnight revolution. As God’s reality dawns more on my heart, slowly and painfully and through many tears, the simplest pleasures of this world have become sources of daily happiness. It is only as I have become, for lack of a better term, more heavenly minded that I can see the material world for the astonishingly good divine gift that it is.”

2. Is the World Getting Better or Worse? Yes. Colin Smith explains this question is at the heart of the parable of the weeds. He says, “You look at the weeds of evil in the world and you wonder: How can there be a God who is good when his world is in a mess like this? Is God really in control? Can I actually believe in a sovereign God in a world like this?”

3. Four Evangelical Approaches to Race, Politics, and Gender: I found this way of breaking down contemporary Christian perspectives on these hot button issues by Kevin DeYoung illuminating.

4. Four Barriers That Keep You From Being a Multi-Directional Leader: Trevin Wax’s thoughts on what he calls “multi-directional leadership” are significant for any leader today. He explains the difference between this and “one-directional leaders”: “One-directional leaders are skillful in spotting and thwarting threats to the sheep that come from a single direction of the field. But because they focus on fighting battles on one front, they leave the flock vulnerable to problems from other sides.”

5. 600 Drones Recreate VanGogh’s Famous Paintings: This is pretty fun.

Do You Want to Change? There’s Only One Way

Do You Want to Change? There’s Only One Way

Are you stuck? Do you fear that you will never be able to change, never break free from the sin that has you in its clutches? You can change! I promise. No matter what the sin is, you can break free from its clutches.

The most rewarding gift pastors and biblical counselors receive is the treasure of watching God transform hearts. God has blessed Angel (my wife, a counselor at Whole Hope Christian Counseling) and with the opportunity of seeing many break free from the shackles of sin.

Let me share with you one story of change. Kimberly (she has given me permission to share her story and her words, although I am changing her name), was trapped in bitterness toward God and her husband and ensnared by sexual sin. Her heart raged with hatred toward her husband: for the ways he had neglected her, not treasured her, and abandoned her spiritually, emotionally, and physically. In a desire to experience freedom and to make her husband pay for his neglect, she began to hook up with men and eventually had a series of affairs.

After years, the tip of the iceberg of her indiscretions were discovered. Despite her hardness of heart and spiritual blindness, Kimberly was willing to meet with her husband for counseling. Her rage so blinded her that she was unwilling to repent of her sin. She demanded that her husband repent to her, recounting detail by detail of his offenses to her numb husband. In fact, we would later learn that she was continuing on in her adultery even through our counseling. If you would have met Kimberly in this season, you would have likely thought Kimberly was a lost cause. Any time spent on her was wasted effort.

Many friends and family of hers voiced this opinion. Without the Spirit, they were right.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1. Help! I Don’t Like the Music at My Church: Matt Merker deals with a struggle of many. He asks, “How do you feel about the music at your church? Are you ever disappointed by it? Why?” I appreciate this piece of advice, “Often we feel distaste at a style of music because we are less familiar with it. Take a music appreciation class. Ask friends for album recommendations. Try to understand why other people enjoy the music your church uses. It may not become your favorite genre, but you might be surprised to find that your tastes are more flexible than you once assumed.”

2. I Just Can’t: Excellent post on when we can’t, but Christ can. Susan Lafferty says, “So, today, when I hear myself saying, ‘I just can’t,’ it’s a signal for me to check. And ask. Am I piling a to-do list on my life without seeking Him first? Am I trying to do this all in my own strength? Am I willing to keep in step with the Spirit, learning from Him?”

3. A Typesetting God: Melissa Edgington with a “it just so happened” story of God’s abundant goodness.

4. When It’s Time to Leave A Church: I wrote a series on this topic a couple of years back that I’m thinking about refreshing because it’s a significant issue right now, in the meanwhile, HB Charles offers solid advice on how and when to leave a church. I appreciated this point, “Consider how your transfer will affect others. Christianity is not about you. It’s about Christ and others. If your heart is right, you will feel the weight of how your potential move will injure or influence others. If you can leave without affecting anyone, you were not a good member.”

5. Transient 3: 6 months of storm chasing in a jaw-dropping 3 minutes.

Neither Forward Nor Backward

Neither Forward Nor Backward

Are you progressive or conservative? A simple enough question, but let me complicate it for you. The terms are both tethered to time. The term progressive looks forward. Progressives believe that the best is yet to come. We are growing, evolving and our policies ought to reflect our progressive enlightenment. Conservatives, on the other hand, are trying conserve that which is good from the past. America’s luminaries cast a compelling vision in their words and lives. It is our job to aspire to and embody the charter set forth by our founding fathers.

The past several years, the country has begun to ask questions of its heritage. Does America have a past we should celebrate? Or mourn?

Our politics have forced us to two sides of ring: those looking back and those looking forward. These totalizing lenses have robbed us of a fully orbed biblical ethical vision that directs our eyes forward, and backward, and straight down. And, above all, it focuses our vision on a person.

Drawing inspiration from the letter to the Hebrews, let’s consider how we are to look:

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1. What Is the Unforgivable Sin? How to Know if You’ve Committed It: Clear and concise explanation by Murray J. Harris. Harris compares the two different references to the unforgivable sin. He concludes, “In sum, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable, not because God is unwilling to forgive but because the repentance that is the necessary precondition for God’s forgiveness is absent. The heart has become so hardened that no need for repentance is recognized, and so no request for forgiveness is offered.”

2. Why Sexual Immorality is a Big Deal: Darryl Burling begins, “Western society argues that the human body is insignificant. We are told that our bodies are of no value in determining identity and that sex is purely a physical need—of no significance to our personhood.”

3. Only the Christian Faith Begins at the Top: Tim Challies with an astute observation, “A plumb line hangs from a point that has been fixed above it. As long as the laws of gravity remain intact, that line will always hang perfectly straight so that whatever parallels it will be equally straight…But imagine if the builder of that tower had taken that same line and anchored it below instead of above.”

4. What Do You Pick Up From Your Pastor’s Preaching? It’s true, isn’t it, that you pick up on what stirs your pastor’s heart? What do you pick up from my heart?

5. How to Respond to the Problem of Evil: In this brief video Greg Koukl illuminates why the existence of evil supports the existence of God.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

How to Avoid Being Satan’s Miserable Comforter

How to Avoid Being Satan’s Miserable Comforter

The heavenly host surrounds the Almighty. The Enemy enters. “From where have you come?” God asks the Opposer. Satan sneers, “From going to and fro on the earth.” God asks him to consider his servant Job, “a blameless and upright man.” Satan mocks, “Does Job fear God for no reason?”

Like Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry, the Adversary saunters across the scene and challenges his foe, “Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?” Unlike Dirty Harry, Satan does not work alone. He manipulates, coerces, and cajoles us to join him in his cause to multiply the ranks of those who curse God.

Job’s wife is the first to be lured by Satan, “Curse God and die!” she urges husband. Job’s friends soon join in. “Miserable comforters are you all[!]” (Job 16:2) Job sputters, provoked by their arrogance and lack of empathy.

You’ve been there, haven’t you? You were passed over for a promotion and it stung. “God has something better,” your friend assures you before empathizing. Miserable comforter.