Category Archives: Thoughts From Scripture

When People Say the Wrong Thing

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In the last couple of years I have seen an abundance of articles about “What not to say to…” single people, a pregnant person, a childless couple, adoptive parents, a depressed person, the chronically ill etc. Some are actually quite helpful and enlightening. For the record, never ask a single person why they’re not married yet (they may be wondering the same thing themselves), or a couple when they’re going to start a family (it’s not our business, and if they’ve been trying without success such questions are extremely painful), or any lady when she’s due (unless you know she’s pregnant!) I remember when my husband and I were dating during college, whenever we’d come back from any kind of break, I”d hear remarks like, “Let me see that left hand!” or “Are you engaged yet?” I wanted to whimper, “We’re trying to figure it out. When we have news to share, you can be sure we’ll tell everyone we know.” We can easily make people feel hurt or pressured or frustrated by such questions. A friend shared on Facebook a chart of some of these common statements (or thoughts) to parents, and a lively discussion ensued of those on the receiving end of some of these comments:

how many kids

Sometimes it’s not so much hurtful speech as thoughtless speech.Years ago friends with the last name of Fox had their first child, and when I saw them at church I smilingly quipped the verse about “little foxes spoiling the vine.” The husband looked at me and said wearily, “Everyone says that.” I instantly realized what a thoughtless, inane statement that was, and later was convicted that it was a horrible misuse of Scripture.

Sometimes people can rival Job’s “miserable comforters,” who meant well, sympathized (at least at first), and said many true things, but misapplied much of the truth they shared. We need to be especially careful about telling people why we think God allowed something to happen in their lives. We don’t really know, but we can comfort and encourage them in many others ways.

Ephesians 4:29b reminds us make our speech “that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers,” and Colossians 4:6 says, “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” We need to be careful, thoughtful, prayerful, and edifying in what we say.

Yet not everyone is going to get the memo or read these kinds of articles. Eventually we’re all going to have someone say or ask something that hits us wrong. What’s the best way to react?

Avoid sarcastic retorts. Most times they don’t realize they’ve said something hurtful. Sending back a zinger will only escalate the incident.

Educate if needed. If they’ve never been in our situation, of course they are not going to understand. A friend with a child with severe life-threatening allergies has often had to shed light on common misconceptions, as have many others in different situations.

Appreciate their interest. At least they are interested in your life and they’re not ignoring you.

Give the benefit of the doubt. Most people truly do mean well. If they are trying to say hurtful things on purpose – then we need to have a different kind of conversation with them.

Realize sometimes we’re the problem. Sometimes something is meant well but we take it the wrong way.

View the opposite end of the spectrum. Sometimes, particularly when a person is in a very difficult situation like marital problems or illness or a death in the family, people are so afraid of saying the wrong thing that they say nothing and avoid them. We can foster that by too much complaining about the wrong things that have been said.

Give them grace, the same grace we would want people to extend to us if we said the wrong thing…because we likely will at some point. In fact, we probably have at some time without realizing it.

You may need to talk to them about why their comment hurt and try to resolve the issue. (Matthew 18:15: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.”)

Or you may decide just to overlook it (I Peter 4:8: “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins,” Proverbs 10:12: “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”)

But we need to deal with it one way or the other and let it go. Don’t hold it against them, don’t carry a grudge, don’t let it fester, don’t avoid them afterward.

We need to forgive:

Matthew 6:14-15: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

We need to forgive on the basis of the great wrongs we have been forgiven, not on the basis of whether or not they “deserve” it (See Matthew 18:20-35). We didn’t deserve God’s forgiveness, and He has forgiven us so much more than anything anyone has done or said to us.

We need to exercise patience and forbearance:

Colossians 3:12-13: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Ephesians 4:1-3: “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

We need to be filled with and manifest the fruit of the Holy Spirit:

Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.“

Whether we’re the speakers or the receivers, we need to walk closely with the Lord, seek His guidance, and manifest His grace.

(Update: I’m not saying there is anything at all wrong with those “What not to say” type posts. Sometimes they are very informative and enlightening and usually help dispel our notions of stereotypes. There is nothing wrong with telling someone that something they’ve said is off-base or hurtful. But I’ve known people to carry around a personal bitterness because of something another person has said in ignorance about their situation, and that’s not healthy.)

Book Review: Women of the Word

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WOTWI have to confess that my first thought when I saw Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin mentioned favorably around the blogosphere was, “Hey! She took my title!” That’s not a very spiritual reaction, I know. 🙂 I’ve been blessed to have been able to compile a ladies’ newsletter for our current church for a couple of years and for a former church for about 9 years, and one column I’ve had in it  for a long time has gone by that same title, “Women of the Word.” It began after a discussion about devotions during one of our ladies’ meetings and the realization that no matter how long one has been a believer, there are always going to be struggles either maintaining a devotional time or making it what it ought to be. So I began the column to encourage ladies along that line and have begun to wonder lately if perhaps I might put them all together and see if they might possibly form a book.

My second thought, after reading a little bit about this book, was that I must get it. Everything I’d heard about it indicated that the author had the same passion as I do for getting women into the Word of God.

And the book definitely did not disappoint in any way.

Jen is not content to just get you into the Bible, however. She wants to equip women to dig for the true meaning of the Bible rather than using the Xanax approach (just seeking something to get through the day) or any number of other faulty approaches. She reminds us that God wants us to love Him not just with our hearts and souls, but also with our minds. She says that when she first began to read her Bible, she approached it with questions like, “Who am I?” and “What should I do?” Though the Bible did give her some insight for those questions, she eventually realized that “I held a subtle misunderstanding about the very nature of the Bible. I believed that the Bible was a book about me…I believed the purpose of the Bible was to help me” (p. 24). She learned that “We must read and study the Bible with our ears trained on hearing God’s declaration of Himself” (p. 26).

When I read that God is slow to anger, I realize that I am quick to anger. When I realize that God is just, I realize that I am unjust. Seeing who He is shows me who I am in a true light. A vision of God high and lifted up reveals to me my sin and increases my love for Him. Grief and love lead to genuine repentance, and I begin to be conformed to the image of the One I behold.

If I read the Bible looking for myself in the text before I look for God there, I may indeed learn that I should not be selfish. I may even try harder not to be selfish. But until I see my selfishness through the lens of the utter unselfishness of God, I have not properly understood its sinfulness (pp. 26-27).

“It’s possible to know Bible stories, yet miss the Bible story” (p. 11). In our quest for Biblical literacy, “we may develop habits of engaging the text that at best do nothing to increase literacy and at worst actually work against it” (p. 37). “We must be those who build on the rock-solid foundation of mind-engaging process, rather than on the shifting sands of ‘what this verse means to me’ subjectivity” (p. 87).

The author then shares ways to read the text within the context and to read it for comprehension, interpretation, and application. There is  an excellent chapter as well for teachers, one section of which makes an excellent case for women Bible teachers. She appears to believe, as I do, that women should teach women rather than men, but she gives some excellent reasons why women should teach other women.

I also appreciated how she dealt with an issue in the conclusion that I have seen some up in just the last couple of years. These days, when you try to encourage Bible reading and study or try to bring to bear what the Bible says on a conversation, you can sometimes be accused of “worshiping the Bible.” Jen answers:

I want to be conformed to the image of God. How can I become conformed to an image I never behold? I am not a Bible-worshiper, but I cannot truly be a God-worshiper without loving the Bible deeply and reverently. Otherwise, I worship an unknown God. A Bible-worshiper loves an object. A God-worshiper loves a person (p. 147).

In short, I love this book and highly recommend it. I do more than recommend it: I don’t often do this, but I encourage you to get it. I’m more than happy that the title I was considering using for a book has been attached to such a one as this.

I’ll close with one last quote:

We must make a study of our God: what He loves, what He hates, how He speaks and acts. We cannot imitate a God whose features and habits we have never learned. We must make a study of Him if we want to be like Him. We must seek His face…

We see Him for who He is, which is certainly a reward in itself, but it is a reward with the secondary benefit of being forever altered by the vision (p. 150).

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Is This the Right Road Home?

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dark_forest_path_shadows_m44453

Is this the right road home, O Lord?
The clouds are dark and still,
The stony path is hard to tread,
Each step brings some fresh ill.
I thought the way would brighter grow,
And that the sun with warmth would glow,
And joyous songs from free hearts flow.
Is this the right road home?

Yes, child, this very path I trod,
The clouds were dark for Me,
The stony path was sharp and hard.
Not sight but faith, could see
That at the end the sun shines bright,
Forever where there is no night,
And glad hearts rest from earth’s fierce fight,
It IS the Right Road Home!

I don’t know the author to this little poem. I rediscovered it in a devotional book yesterday, and when I looked it up online today, found this neat story of God’s using it in the life of Rosalind Goforth. That’s probably where I had seen it before, in one of her books.  That link goes on to tell about its inspiring a song, which I’ve not heard.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh…

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. II Corinthians 4:7-11, 16-18.

Book Review: The Knowledge of the Holy

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Knowledge of the HolyI read The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer some years decades ago, but The Cloud of Witnesses Challenge inspired me to pick it up again, and I am so glad I did.

“True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time,” Tozer begins. He writes that the church has lost its view of the majesty of God and their awe of Him, and that in turn is having an effect on what kinds of Christians it is producing (if that was true at the time of the book’s publication in 1961, how much more is is true now!) “No people has ever risen above its religion…no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God” (p. 1).

“A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God” (p. 3).

“The one mighty single burden of eternity begins to press down upon him with a weight more crushing than all the woes of the world piled one upon another. That mighty burden is his obligation to God. It includes an instant and lifelong duty to love God with every power of mind and soul, to obey Him perfectly, and to worship Him acceptably. And when the man’s laboring conscience tells him that he has done none of these things, but has from childhood been guilty of foul revolts against the Majesty in the heavens, the inner pressure of self-accusation may become too heavy to bear.

The gospel can lift this destroying burden from the mind, give beauty for ashes, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. But unless the weight of the burden is felt, the gospel can mean nothing to the man; and until he sees a vision of God high and lifted up, there will be no woe and no burden. Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them” (p. 4).

Tozer’s purpose, then is to help people think about God “as He is in Himself, and not as…imagination says He is” (p. 16), at least as much as we can know about Him from His Word, for we could never comprehend Him totally. He does so in readable everyday language rather than that of a theologian.

“The study of the attributes of God, far from being dull and heavy, may for the enlightened Christian be a sweet and absorbing spiritual exercise. To the soul that is athirst for God, nothing could be more delightful” (p. 19).

After a chapter on the Trinity and on what an attribute is, Tozer then discusses some of God’s attributes one by one, from omniscience, self-sufficiency, and self-existence to His justice, love, mercy, grace and several others. As He discusses each one, he also discusses how they relate to each other.

“I think it might be demonstrated that almost every heresy that has afflicted the church through the years has arisen from believing about God things that are not true, or from over emphasizing certain true things so as to obscure other things equally true. To magnify any attribute to the exclusion of another is to head straight for one of the dismal swamps of theology; and yet we are all constantly tempted to do just that” (p. 123).

“We can hold a correct view of truth only by daring to believe everything God has said about Himself. It is a grave responsibility that a man takes upon himself when he seeks to edit out of God’s self-revelation such features as he in his ignorance deems objectionable. Blindness in part must surely fall upon any of us presumptuous enough to attempt such a thing. And it is wholly uncalled for. We need not fear to let the truth stand as it is written. There is no conflict among the divine attributes. God’s being is unitary. He cannot divide Himself and act at a given time from one of His attributes while the rest remain inactive. All that God is must accord with all that God does. Justice must be present in mercy, and love in judgment. And so with all the divine attributes” (p. 124).

“God is never at cross-purposes with Himself. No attribute of God is in conflict with another” (p. 136).

“Both the Old and the New Testaments proclaim the mercy of God, but the Old has more than four times as much to say about it as the New” (p. 140). (Interesting! Especially as people seem to think the NT is more “merciful” than the Old.)

“When viewed from the perspective of eternity, the most critical need of this hour may well be that the Church should be brought back from its long Babylonian captivity and the name of God be glorified in it again as of old. Yet we must not think of the Church as an anonymous body, a mystical religious abstraction. We Christians are the Church, and whatever we do is what the Church is doing. The matter, therefore, is for each of us a personal one. Any forward step in the Church must begin with the individual” (p. 180).

It’s not unusual for me to think of God as He is or to think high thoughts of Him: that comes with having regular times in the Word of God and hearing His Word proclaimed by faithful preachers. Yet too often my response is something like “Wow, that’s neat!” or a quick prayer of thanks as I go on to the next verse or go about the tasks for the day. Having this sustained time of focusing on what He says about Himself and Who He is has been both humbling and uplifting. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

I wanted to say just a word about reading what some friends have called “deep” books. It’s actually been a long time since I’ve read this kind of book, and I’m thankful to the The Cloud of Witnesses Challenge for encouraging me to get back into them. It works best for me to read a little bit from a book like this after my regular devotional time. It’s not that I couldn’t pick it up at odd times during the day and get something out of it, but personally I just get more out of it by regularly plodding through in the morning before my attention is diverted. For some people other times of day work best. Mere Christianity was a little easier to do this with because the chapters were very short: the chapters here were longer, so some days I was only able to read a few pages at a time. Someone encouraged me once that just fifteen minutes a day in a book will eventually get you through it, and get you through more in a year than you’d think. Neither of these books was hard to read or understand.

I’ll close as Tozer does:

Thus far we have considered the individual’s personal relation to God, but like the ointment of a man’s right hand, which by its fragrance “betrayeth itself,” any intensified knowledge of God will soon begin to affect those around us in the Christian community. And we must seek purposefully to share our increasing light with the fellow members of the household of God.

This we can best do by keeping the majesty of God in full focus in all our public services. Not only our private prayers should be filled with God, but our witnessing, our singing, our preaching, our writing should center around the Person of our holy, holy Lord and extol continually the greatness of His dignity and power. There is a glorified Man on the right hand of the Majesty in heaven faithfully representing us there. We are left for a season among men; let us faithfully represent Him here (pp. 183-184).

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: Loving the Church

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loving the churchI first noticed Loving the Church by John Crotts a few years ago when Carrie reviewed it. It struck a chord with me because I have seen a general trend in recent years of people leaving the church, primarily because of all its problems or imperfections or its lack of meeting their needs. When I commented to Carrie that I would probably get the book, she offered to send me her copy. And I am ashamed to say it has been sitting in my bedroom neglected all this time, mainly because I tend to gravitate toward fiction rather than nonfiction, even though this is a topic important to me. But the TBR challenge provided a good opportunity to get to some of those books I hadn’t yet, and I knew this was one I wanted to include.

Crotts begins the book with a fictional group of people coming together at a coffee shop. None are rebellious or malcontents, but all except one are not attending what we would call a conventional church for various reasons: one is involved in a fulfilling ministry, one attends a house church because it keeps his family from being split up into different groups, one has been deeply wounded by the way the church responded to her when she found she was pregnant while unmarried, one has sacrificed some depth of preaching for a high tech church with a lot of singles that he can identify with and where he can possibly find a wife. As this group discusses church, they decide to continue to meet together to study what the Bible says about the church.

They turn up here and there throughout the rest of the book, but the majority of the book is a straightforward discussion of exactly what the Bible says about the church and why believers should attend.

After a brief chapter on the trend away from church over the last few years, Crotts shares from the Bible why the church is valuable. A few of the concepts he discusses are that Jesus loved the church and gave His life for it: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27), and that the church is the “pillar and ground of the truth” (I Timothy 3:15) and described as the bride of Christ. ( Search for the word “church” in a Bible search engine to discover many more. I don’t remember if he includes this one, but one of the most intriguing to me is that “now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,” Ephesians 3:9-11. Somehow through the church God displays His wisdom to those principalities and powers.) It’s abundantly clear that the church is important to Christ.

Crotts then goes on to define the church and discusses the difference between what we call the universal church (all believers everywhere) and the individual local church. Some say that the verses about the church refer to the church universal, but the epistles were written to specific local assemblies which were called churches. “A local assembly…is not just some tiny part of the universal church, like the pinkie toenail in the universal body of Christ. It is better understood as a local expression of the body of Christ – complete in itself” (pp. 44-45).

Crotts also discusses the description  and function of the church from the Bible, the headship of Christ, the purpose of elders and deacons, the giftedness each member provides to minister to the others in the assembly.

Of the several quotes I marked, here are a couple that stood out to me:

The goal of mutual ministry within the church is maturity in Jesus. This is described as “the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God” (Ephesians 4:13). The combination of unity and the knowledge of Christ shows that Paul is not maximizing superficial togetherness by minimizing doctrinal content. Voices calling Christians to forget about doctrinal differences and just love Jesus do not represent Christian maturity….Community-wide gatherings or projects that merge churches that don’t believe in the Bible, Jesus, or salvation with churches that do, are a hollow shell of what the Lord intends when he commands us to be in unity around the truth. No matter how sincere the motives of people organizing such events, in the end, the truth becomes watered down instead of strengthened, and unfortunately, weak doctrine turns out weak Christians. In Colossians 1:28, Paul describes the goal of his ministry: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (p. 56)

Don’t you need shepherds to guide you? Jesus thinks you need them! It is terrible pride to assume that you don’t need what Jesus designed for his glory and your family’s good (p. 95).

What I find most refreshing about this book is that it is a discussion and exposition from the Bible, not just opinions or quotes from what this or that author says. It’s very readable but very thorough. I also appreciate that in general he didn’t go further than the Bible. I think he said some place, but I forgot to mark where, that every church in every time and culture will not look exactly the same because the Bible does grant a certain amount of latitude in exactly how to “do church.” Missionaries through the centuries have had to learn that their goal isn’t to replicate a church exactly like the one back home, but they’re to keep to Biblical principles and incorporate them into the culture in which they minister.

The last couple of pages of this book lists negative consequences of neglecting church, among them, “thwarting Jesus’ plan, unconsciously saying that your plan for your Christian life and family is superior to His,…rejecting a chief means He has given for your spiritual growth,…boycotting the place He designed for your service,…missing great opportunities for spiritual influence from like-minded believers,…teaching your children to disobey Jesus by your example” (pp. 129-130).

One thing I wish the author would have included was a brief history of the church. He didn’t really answer the question about house churches except to say that they don’t include the authority structure of elders and deacons that the Bible calls for. I’ve often wondered exactly how the early church in Acts met. Acts 2:41 says 3,000 were added to the church in one day, but Romans 16:5 and Colossians 4:15 refer to churches that meet in someone’s house. They didn’t have mega-churches or large places to meet in that day and obviously some did meet in houses. I don’t know if perhaps the individual house churches were connected to each other or exactly how it worked. I know some who have felt that house churches are more Scriptural, but personally I think that’s where the latitude of Scripture comes in: in Acts the church was a new enterprise and they were under persecution. A 21st century church in a country with religious freedom is going to look a little different. But I would say that making individual churches into little empires is going beyond from the Bible’s intentions.

Some will quibble about the author’s definition of pastors and elders, but I think that can be set aside for the larger purposes of the book (I think that is an area Christians can disagree on and still be friends). I may have disagreed with a minor point here and there, but nothing that I thought important enough to make note of. The only note that jarred me a little was his continual emphasis on Christians helping each other toward Christlikeness by helping them see their sins and blind spots. While that’s true, and overemphasis on that point can lead to nit-picking and fault-finding. That’s an area I admit to having a hard time finding the balance in. I tend to avoid confrontation, but when I feel most stirred up towards it, it is usually due to personal irritation and offense rather than a concern about the other person’s maturity in Christ. Sometimes we see things not so that we can jump in to do the Holy Spirit’s job, but rather to pray for the person involved. It takes a great deal of care, delicacy, and being closely in tune with and filled with the Holy Spirit to confront someone. I think the author would say that as well, and he is not advocating that we all become spiritual policemen. He does emphasize that  “love must mark a Christian’s motives and manner in ministering God’s Word to other believers” (p. 58).

I want to close with a brief comment about leaving church because of its faults and failures. The church has always been full of faults and failures because it is full of sinners. Many of the epistles are written to churches about how to correct their problems (which is an admission that they have them!), and in Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus commends and condemns certain aspects of seven churches. One of the things we’re supposed to do in church is help each other towards more Christlikeness, and all the Bible “one anothers” are to be exercised in the context of church (in everyday life, too, but they were given specifically in letters to churches). One of them is “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Colossians 3:13). There wouldn’t be a need for forbearance and forgiveness unless we failed each other or irritated each other. But because we do, we’re to “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering…And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness” (Colossians 3: 12,14). There may be times to leave a specific church if it falls away from the truth of the Bible, and in Revelation Jesus said some churches were in danger of their candlestick removed, but the Bible doesn’t portray completely leaving the church as an option.

I don’t know anything about John Crotts other than what I have read in this book, but I heartily recommend it.

For more on this topic, see also previous posts here on Why Go to Church? and The Community of Believers as well as Lisa’s 7 reasons why I still go to church. Incidentally, at the time of this writing Loving the Church is available in a Kindle format for $1.99.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Eternal Glories Gleam

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Our church was stunned and heartbroken yesterday to learn that our dear pastor has cancer of the liver and pancreas and is only expected to live 6 months to a year.

He had been losing weight over the past few months, had been really sick the past few weeks, went to the doctor – thankfully a member of our church and long time friend – last week for tests, where it discovered both his liver and pancreas are full of cancer. The pancreatic cancer is incurable and inoperable. He is having biopsies this week to confirm it, and there is a small chance that what they saw on the scans is not cancer, but everything else points to it. They are planning to start chemotherapy in hopes of slowing it down to some degree, but of course that carries its own set of problems.

He is in his early 50s with a wife and three daughters, two of whom are getting married this summer, and the youngest is schedule to go to college in the fall.

He has been preaching through the book of Romans, and providentially we were in the latter half of chapter 8 yesterday, which was so applicable to his situation. As he spoke to us yesterday, one of his concerns was that we think in a right way about his situation, that we not think God is mean or unfair or unkind. He had different men from the church read passages like Psalm 23 and II Corinthians 4:7-11:

.But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

And II Corinthians 4:16-18:

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

And II Corinthians 12:9-10:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

We know and love and take comfort in those truths but sometimes we tuck them away for “some day…”

Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.” Not that there is anything inherently wrong with feasting or celebrations: God created some for the Israelites to enjoy, and Jesus attended a wedding. But when someone faces death, certain truths crystallize into sharp focus. All of a sudden the petty irritation that was bothering me that morning wasn’t important. I was reminded that death comes to us all, sooner to some than expected, but God’s grace so wonderfully provided that we can be forgiven; that heaven is real; that this life really is but a vapor; that however good it is, heaven is better. I was reminded that we weren’t promised a life free from suffering on this earth; in fact, the Bible gives us plenty of warning about it and promises God’s help for it and assures us that He really, truly is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1).

Last night a line from a hymn kept coming to mind, “Eternal glories gleam afar.” I couldn’t remember what hymn it was from, so I looked it up this morning and was surprised to find it was from “I’ve Found a Friend,” a song I haven’t heard in ages. The stanza containing that phrase says:

I’ve found a Friend, O such a friend! All pow’r to Him is given,
To guard me on my onward course, and bring me safe to heaven.
The eternal glories gleam afar, to nerve my faint endeavor;
So now to watch, to work, to war, and then to rest forever.

In situations like this, those eternal glories aren’t quite so far off: they are up close and personal.

This is going to be a heart-wrenching journey, especially for this man and his family, but also for our church as a whole. I know you all have your own churches and issues and prayer lists, but if you feel led, I’m sure all involved would appreciate your prayers.

Repost: God Does So Much More Than Just “Show Up”

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(With different circumstances in my life right now, I am finding it a little difficult to have my brain working on all cylinders and be awake and alert when I have time to spend at the computer. I have a few posts percolating on the back burner that I hope to get a chance to work through soon. But I thought in the meantime maybe once a week or so I’d repost something from my archives here. I thought about making it a series and calling it “The Summer of Reruns.” 🙂 Seriously, though, sometimes going back over something God has taught or encouraged me with in the past makes for fresh blessings. I hope some of these will bless you as well, whether you saw them the first time or not.)

From October, 2009:

I have seen a particular phraseology going around recently that really bothers me:

“God really showed up.” “Pray that God shows up in a big way.” “I hope God shows up for this event.”

If you have said or written this, please don’t take offense or think I am fussing at you. I can’t remember for sure where all I have seen it. I’m speaking in generalities because I am starting to see this more and more and I want people to realize what it sounds like.

It bothers me for a few reasons.

1. God does not “show up.” He is omnipresent. (See Psalm 139:5-12, Jeremiah 23:23-24.)

2. Making our plans and then hoping God “shows up” is going about things backwardly. We should be seeking His guidance beforehand and all along the way.

3. The phrase “show up” seems to indicate the person wasn’t really expected, or at least his attendance was iffy. “I invited Tom, but I am not sure he’ll show up.”

4. The phrase also seems to indicate the person showing up took the invitation casually and just decided to “show up” — maybe on a whim, maybe because he couldn’t find any better options.

5. When I posted this the first time, someone commented that sometimes we say God “showed up” in a meeting when things got exciting. Sometimes we have more of a sense of His working or we’re touched in a special way, but that’s not to say He is not always meeting with us. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). We know He is present by faith, not when we “feel” it or when the bells and whistles go off.

I think I know what people mean when they want God to “show up”:

“I hope God really blesses this event/situation in such a way that people see it was something only He could do.”

“I want God’s presence to be manifested in a way that touches people’s hearts and draws them to Him.”

“I pray God’s power will be evident.”

Why not say it that way? It’s more accurate, more reverential, and more glorifying to God.

Here are some Scriptural examples of those desires:

“Help me, O LORD my God: O save me according to thy mercy:That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, LORD, hast done it.” Psalm 109:26-27.

“O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.” Psalm 63:1-2.

“This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.” John 2:11.

“Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” John 9:3.

“And [Moses] said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.” Exodus 33:18.

“That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the LORD, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the LORD your God for ever.” Joshua 4:24.

“And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.” I Kings 18:36-37.

How to Do the Job You Don’t Really Want To Do

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I was sorting through and organizing some quotes I have from Elisabeth Elliot this afternoon, and this one jumped out at me, so I thought I’d share it with you. This is from her book A Lamp For My Feet, but I think I originally saw it when her e-mail devotionals were sent out by Back to the Bible.

How to Do the Job You Don’t Really Want To Do

Certain aspects of the job the Lord has given me to do are very easy to postpone. I make excuses, find other things that take precedence, and, when I finally get down to business to do it, it is not always with much grace. A new perspective has helped me recently:

The job has been given to me to do.
Therefore it is a gift.
Therefore it is a privilege.
Therefore it is an offering I may make to God.
Therefore it is to be done gladly, if it is done for Him.
Therefore it is the route to sanctity.

Here, not somewhere else, I may learn God’s way. In this job, not in some other, God looks for faithfulness. The discipline of this job is, in fact, the chisel God has chosen to shape me with–into the image of Christ.

Thank you, Lord, for the work You have assigned me. I take it as your gift; I offer it back to you. With your help I will do it gladly, faithfully, and I will trust You to make me holy.

Book Review: Mere Christianity

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Mere ChristianityI first read Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis some seven or so years ago and tried to write a review, but ended up mainly just listing quotes, which is not a review. It wasn’t hard to read or to follow — for the most part Lewis’s thinking was actually pretty easy to track, and he writes in a logical, almost conversational style rather than like a theology textbook. It was more a matter of there being too much to take in and process and too many goods things to share to reduce it to anything like a review. I read a quote by Elisabeth Elliot (which I neglected to keep track of) something to the effect that she could understand Lewis by reading him through the first time, but needed to read him again to be able reconstruct his arguments. I feel the same way. I’m thankful The Cloud of Witnesses Challenge sponsored by Becky at Operation Actually Read Bible spurred me to pick this up again. I feel I got much more from it this time, maybe just because of a second reading, maybe because of several years of (hopefully) maturing in the meantime, maybe because our church has been talking about “Coffee Shop Apologetics” on Wednesday nights using some of Lewis’s material here and there.

It is interesting to read how Lewis came from an atheistic background and what the Lord used to convince him that Christianity was the truth. Although this book is not his “testimony” per se, he does touch on his own personal journey to faith.

The book is divided into four sections: “Right and Wrong as a Clue to Meaning in the Universe,” in which he argues for Christianity and why it is the best solution to universal moral and logical dilemmas, then “What Christians Believe,” “Christian Behavior,” and “Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity.” Originally the various segments were radio talks in the 1940s which were then tweaked to better fit written form.

I have many more places marked than I can possibly share here. Goodreads has a list of several quotes from the book, some you’ll recognize as classic Lewis. One of my favorite quotes about love comes from this book. Here are a few others hat stood out to me:

From the chapter “We Have Cause to Be Uneasy”:

For the trouble is that one part of you is on His side and really agrees with his disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation. You may want Him to make an exception in your own case, to let you off this one time; but you know at bottom that unless the power behind the world really and unalterably detests that sort of behaviour, then He cannot be good. On the other hand, we know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do. This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we must need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger -according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.

From the chapter “The Practical Conclusion”:

[The Christian] does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because he loves us.

From the chapter “Social Morality”:

I may repeat “Do as you would be done by” till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbor as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbor as myself until I learn to love God.

From the chapter “Sexual Morality”:

We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity-like perfect charity-will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

From the chapter “The Great Sin”:

Pleasure in being praised is not Pride. The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is praised by her lover, the saved soul to whom Christ says, “Well done,” are all pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you wanted (and rightly wanted) to please. The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, “I have pleased him; all is well,” to thinking, “What a fine person I must be to have done it.”

That was immensely helpful to me. I don’t know if anyone else experiences this, but sometimes when you receive a compliment, then you feel a rush of pleasure, that feel guilty for that pleasure and feel you need to redirect the attention to the Lord, and in trying to do so sound awkward and overly pious. For that reason, when someone, say, sings a solo in church that I enjoyed, I try to tell them it blessed my heart rather than just “I enjoyed your song this morning.” Though I mean the same thing by both sentences, the second one makes people feel awkward and self-conscious. This thought did help me to understand it’s not wrong to feel pleasure in pleasing someone else or accepting a compliment.

From the same chapter:

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is a nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who tool a real interest in what you said to him….He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

From the chapter “Charity”:

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act to-day is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or, anger to-day is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.

From the same chapter:

Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.’ He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.

From the chapter “Hope”:

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.

From the chapter “Faith”:

But supposing a man’s reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for [Christianity]. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair: some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments when a mere mood rises up against it.

Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off,’ you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

From a second chapter titles “Faith”:

And, in yet another sense, handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you (emphasis mine).

From the chapter “Nice People or New Men”:

But we must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world – and might even be more difficult to save.

For mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man…

If what you want is an argument against Christianity (and I well remember how eagerly I looked for such arguments when I began to be afraid it was true) you can easily find some stupid and unsatisfactory Christian and say, ‘So there’s your boasted new man I Give me the old kind.’ But if once you have begun to see that Christianity is on other grounds probable, you will know in your heart that this is only evading the issue. What can you ever really know of other people’s souls-of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call ‘nature’ or `the real world’ fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?

There were a very few places I disagreed with him. In “The Perfect Penitent” he thinks the theory “about our being let off because Christ had volunteered to bear a punishment instead of us” is a silly one and says he doesn’t understand the point of punishing an innocent person for a guilty one, though he says he can understand it better in terms of paying a debt. I’m not sure how he could have missed the teaching that God’s just letting us off the hook would be a violation of His justice and righteousness, and Christ’s innocent death satisfied that justice (Romans 3:24-26). In “The Practical Conclusion” he says “a Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it,” which I would disagree with very much. When we’re saved we are born again: we don’t get unborn. Our spiritual life may get weak and sickly with neglect, and we do need to nurture that life and mature in it, but we don’t lose it. Then in “Counting the Cost” he says that God said in the Bible that we are “gods” and “He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creature…which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness)”. I’m not quite sure how to take him there. Both Psalm 82:6-7 and John 10:34-36 have the term “You are gods,” and, frankly, I am not quite sure what is meant in those cases, either. The Bible talks about us becoming one with the Father and Son and becoming partakers of the divine nature, but we don’t become Deity like Christ is. I don’t think Lewis is saying that we do – I am just not sure what he is saying. If you’ve read his Space Trilogy, you know he portrays the mythical gods and goddesses as some kind of created being more powerful than humans but not like angels, either. Perhaps all he is talking about it what we’ll be like in glory: perfected yet still less than God the Father and Jesus Christ. And in “The Practical Conclusion,” he says that three things that spread the “Christ-life” to us are baptism, belief, and communion (the Lord’s Supper). I would say only faith does: the others are matters of obedience and blessing, but they are symbolic and not life-giving in themselves (see the outline for “Why We Know Baptism Does Not Save.”)

Much more could be discussed, on these points or others in the book. Despite those few caveats mentioned, I feel this is a valuable book and one of those Christian classics that everyone should read at least once, probably several times over.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: Crowded to Christ

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Crowded to ChristThe first I remembering hearing of Crowded to Christ was in an online sermon from a former pastor that I think I listened to while home sick one Sunday. He must have mentioned it before, but this time he recommended finding a copy and reading it. It was first published in 1950 and is apparently out of print now, but I found an inexpensive used copy online.

Its author, L. E. Maxwell, was a co-founder, principal, and eventually president of Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada, which I don’t know much about except that Elisabeth Elliot attended there for a time and Don Richardson (author of Peace Child and other books) graduated from there.

Maxwell’s main theme is that God uses a variety of measures – the law of God as well as pain, pressure, and other means – to draw or to “crowd” people to Christ in the sense of realizing He is the only answer.

For instance, “In his determination to be humble, to love His enemies,… to be more than conqueror – in other words, to be like Christ –  the Christian may come sooner or later to a sense of crushing failure and defeat.” He realizes he can’t possibly do this on his own. Some go on half-heartedly, thinking full victory will just never be possible, while others, “not having made Paul’s deep discovery, ‘I know in me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing,’ they redouble their efforts…They think that if they are only more watchful, more prayerful, more diligent, they will yet be able to attain. They strive and struggle; they fight and fast; they yearn and pray.” He quotes Hudson Taylor as saying, “I felt I was a child of God: His Spirit in my heart would cry: ‘Abba, Father’; but to rise to my privileges as a child I was utterly powerless.” Maxwell continues, “Not until they had come to an end of all self-righteousness and satisfaction in themselves, not until all their peace and joy and strength of will and resolution and purpose had been ‘slain by the law,’ could faith stretch forth her hands for victory. Only when they sensed the tragedy, the futility, the folly and failure of every human attempt to overcome the law of sin and death, were they shut up to Him who not only ‘justifies the ungodly’ but also ‘quickens the dead'” (pp 17-18).

He describes how God sometimes puts us in extenuating circumstances that result in a crisis of faith that drive us to Him as our only way through, like Jacob on his way home finding out Esau was coming to meet him, or Israel’s being caught between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea, or Israel when called to enter into Canaan but looked at the obstacles instead of God and failed.

I have far too many quotes marked to share, but here are a few that stood out to me:

“Have you ever had God lay hold of you in the wee hours and reduce you until you had ‘Nothing left to do but fling/Care aside and simply cling?'” (p. 29).

“God must secure our confidence, and…He tries us in order to make us trust where we cannot trace. Without faith it is impossible to please Him. ‘Thy way is in the sea.’ While, therefore, He has no pleasure in our agony and perplexity, He knows that it is in the trackless and traceless sea of trouble that we come to trust” (p. 38).

“To be self-centered is to be self-destroyed…The preservation of self is the surest path to self-destruction” (p. 128).

“When the Lord Jesus dealt with souls, His method was adapted to the need of the individual. However, it is remarkable that almost invariably He brought souls face to face with some one thing which in their own strength they could not do, and there demanded an act of obedience…In order to create a sense of sin and a need of divine strength Jesus gave command just where men were inclined to wander or argue or excuse themselves” (p. 150).

“If only the Saviour had asked me to do something else! But that something else would not have reached your heart. You could have done that other thing without faith and without grace; yes, without even being right with God. So, in asking you to do the one impossible thing, Christ crosses your will through your withered limb” (p. 178).

“Grace is no mere favour conferred upon the ungodly, but it is to be experienced as a ruling force and sufficiency, reigning in our hearts as the new, living ‘law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,’ and enabling us to prove the no-more dominion of sin. Grace abounding is to lead at once to grace reigning” (p. 219).

In ways simple and inscrutable and fiery God must drain away the dregs of self-confidence. He must let the flesh fail…when all those remaining are convinced that God alone is their rescue and remedy…” (p. 256).

The New Testament is enfolded in the Old, and the Old Testament is unfolded in the New” (p. 272).

“Love and righteousness are not contrary principles” (p. 299).

He spends a good deal of space in the book talking about the law of God. Though Christ has fulfilled the law and we never could, and in this day of grace are not required to, still, God has uses for the law, which the Bible describes as “good” and “spiritual.” “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” His appendices on “The Old and New Testaments Compared” and “The Purpose of the Law” are some of the best parts of the book, especially on this point.

Overall I enjoyed, benefited from, and saw myself in the pages of this book. I wasn’t quite so interested in arguments about dispensationalism and ultra-dispensationalism or Calvinism vs. Armenianism: those seemed to make the book drag a bit, but I understand their necessity, especially with Maxwell coming from an academic background where students have debated these things back and forth for ages.

I think the only places where I disagreed with him were some such as when he described a man who did not want to go into a grove and pray as the folks in that place and time did when they wanted to meet with God after a service. He acknowledged that there is nothing in the Bible about doing such a thing and that one can get right with God without that action, but this man had no peace until he finally did so. I guess perhaps I could see that if it was just a matter of pride or something, but I’d still have trouble saying he should have done that when it is not a Biblical issue.

This book often brought to mind a quote from Hudson Taylor, though the quote itself is not in the book: “It doesn’t really matter how great the pressure is. What matters is where the pressure lies, whether it comes between me and God or whether it presses me nearer His heart.” As Maxwell says in the second quote listed above, God takes “no pleasure in our agony and perplexity.” He is not dreaming up ways to torture us, but He knows best what we most need in our inmost hearts to grow in our faith and relationship with Him.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)