The Way of Worship

Article by Kevin DeYoung

There’s a story in the New Testament where Paul visits the great city of Athens. Like Oxford or Cambridge or Boston, Athens was a famous intellectual city, renowned for its history, its learning, and its contribution to culture. Athens was said to be the glory of Greece.

And yet have you ever noticed Paul’s reaction when residing in this world-class city? Was Paul impressed with its intellect? Did he fall in love with its architecture? Was he amazed by their food?

Acts records that “his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols” (17:16). Later he says to Athenians, in effect, “Look, I can see you are very religious. You have temples and rituals and statues all over the place. You are really into worship. But I’m telling you: you’re going about it in the wrong way” (see Acts 17:22–23). That’s why Paul was provoked in his spirit. He could see that no matter how spiritual or how smart or how sincere they may have been, they were worshiping God in a way that did not please him.

If the first of the ten commandments is against worshiping the wrong God, the second commandment is against worshiping God in the wrong way. The people in Athens were guilty of both. They were ignorant of the God who raised Jesus from the dead, and their approach to religion was not what the true God had prescribed.

SELF-WILLED WORSHIP

Most generally, the second commandment forbids self-willed worship—worshiping God as we choose rather than as he demands. In particular, the second commandment makes two prohibitions: 1) We are not to make images to represent God in any form, and 2) We are not to worship images of any kind.

The second commandment does not intend to outlaw art or painting or aesthetic considerations. The tabernacle displayed angels and palm trees, the ark will have cherubim, and God himself gave the Spirit to Bezalel and Oholiab that they might be skilled artists and craftsmen. God is not against beauty. What he prohibits is infusing any object with spiritual efficacy, as if man-made artifacts can bring us closer to God, represent God, or establish communion with God.

The Old Testament is full of examples of God’s people using man-made artifacts for self-willed worship. The golden calf is the most famous example. Remember, Aaron proclaimed a feast to Yahweh, and the people declared that these were the gods who brought them up out of Egypt (Ex. 32:4–5). The Israelites weren’t worshiping Baal. They were trying to worship the Lord their God, but they were doing it in the wrong way. They were violating the second commandment.

At other times, the Israelites treated their religious symbols as though they had real religious powers. This too was a violation of the second commandment, turning the ark into some kind of talisman (1 Sam. 4:1–11) or treating the temple like a good luck charm (Jer. 7:1–15). We can do the same with church buildings or pulpits or the cross around our neck.

Like most of the Decalogue, the second commandment is not hard to understand. The what is fairly straightforward. The why and how take some more explanation. To that end, I want to give five reasons for the prohibitions in the second commandment.

NO ONE LIKE HIM

First, God is free. Once you have something to represent God or worship as if it were God, you undermine God’s freedom. We start to think we can bring God with us by carrying around a statue. Or we think we can manage God with the right rituals. Or we think he’ll be our benefactor if we simply pray in a certain direction or make an offering before a graven image. Anytime we make something in order to see God, or see something that stands in for God, we are undermining his freedom. God is Spirit, and he doesn’t have a body (John 4:24). It is not for us to make the invisible God visible.

Second, God is jealous. No image will capture God’s glory. Every man-made representation of the Divine will be so far less than God as to incite his jealousy. Think about it: the more chaste and pure a husband, the more his jealousy is aroused by an adulterous wife. God is supremely pure, and he cannot bear to share his glory with another, even if the other is a sincere attempt to represent (and not replace) the one true God. God is a being unto himself. In fact, he is being. His glory cannot be captured in a picture or an image or a form. That’s why even in Revelation when we have a vision of the One on the throne, he is “shown” to us in visual metaphors: lightning, rainbow, colors, sea, re, lamps, thrones, etc.

The world of the ancient Near East divinized everything. The Israelites divinized nothing—not Father Time or Mother Earth or the sun or the moon or the stars. The separation between God and his creation is one of the defining characteristics of biblical Christianity. Any human attempt to bridge that chasm is not only an attempt at the impossible but an affront to the unparalleled majesty of God.

Third, believing sight comes by sound. In the Bible, especially on this side of heaven, we see by hearing. As Deuteronomy later made clear, the Sinai experience was a paradigm for God’s self-revelation. When the Lord appeared to the people on the mountain out of the midst of re, Moses reminded them, “You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Deut. 4:12). And because they saw no form, the Israelites were commanded not to corrupt themselves by making visible images (4:15ff.).

We make no apology for being Word-centered and words-centered. Faith comes by hearing (Rom. 10:17). That’s how God designed it because that’s how he has chosen to reveal himself. Christian worship is meant to be wordy and not a breathtaking visual display. If God wanted us to see him in worship, he would have presented himself differently in the Sinai theophany. The way God “showed up” to give the Ten Commandments says something about how we are to keep the Ten Commandments.

Fourth, God provides his own mediators. At their best, God’s people have employed images and icons not because they thought God could be housed in a marble bust, but in order to provide more intimate access to God. If God is in heaven, it makes sense that we would want a little portal for him here on earth.

But God’s people should know better. The saints in the Old Testament did not need to fashion an intermediary for themselves; God had already promised mediators through the prophets, priests, and kings. God had his own way to draw near to his people, culminating in a final Mediator who would embrace all three offices at once and pitch his tent among us (John 1:14).

Fifth, we don’t need to create images of God because he has already created them. The implications of Genesis 1:26–27 are staggering. We are the divinely chosen statues meant to show what God is like, created in his image and after his likeness. Idolatry diminishes God and diminishes us.

In Ezekiel 18:11–13, right in the middle of a host of horizontal, neighborly sins, is the mention of idolatry. Why? Because mistreating other people and worshiping idols have the same root: a violation of the divine image. In one case, we are looking for God’s image where it doesn’t exist (idolatry), and in the other case we are ignoring God’s image where it does exist (sins against our neighbors).

We are God’s statues in the world, marking out the planet as his and his alone. He does not need our help in making more images; he asks for our witness.

Content taken from The 10 Commandments: What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them by Kevin DeYoung, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

About the Author: Kevin DeYoung (MDiv, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina. He serves as board chairman of the Gospel Coalition and blogs at DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed. He is assistant professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte) and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Leicester. He is the author of several books, including Just Do Something; Crazy Busy; and The Biggest Story. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have seven children.

Posted at: http://gcdiscipleship.com/2018/11/29/the-way-of-worship/

God in Our Waiting

Article by Zach Barnhardt

Paul once said he had learned the secret of contentment, but he never had to shop at a grocery store.

Everyone has their hang-ups, and this is one of my many. Every time I walk through those automatic doors and grab a shopping cart (or “buggy” where I’m from), I know I’m entering a minefield of frustration and impatience.

It’s like the engineers who designed the shopping carts didn’t consult with the engineers who designed the width of the aisles to allow two shoppers to pass with ease. Some shoppers seem to think their carts are holograms and can be walked through as if they were immaterial. As I shop, thoughts run wild in my head:

Why do five people need to be looking for spices the moment I need to be?
Who had the bright idea of putting water pitcher filters in the hardware section?
Who goes through self-checkout with 35 items at DMV-level speed?

My shopping experiences sometimes morph into moments of inner rage. I don’t want to be this way.

I want to be grateful I get to shop for food at all, with little concern about having enough to pay for what I need.

I want to see people as God sees them, but then someone forgets how to use their credit card in front of me. It’s a trivial example of a deeper reality of my humanity.

Waiting is not easy.

ALREADY, NOT YET

Paul wrote, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Rom 7:18). Many theologians have ascribed Paul’s reflections here to the Christian experience. Regardless of what Paul specifically meant in this instance, the sentiment itself could describe how Christians often feel.

We are thankful for the gospel’s promise of adoption and grace extended toward sinners like us (Eph 1:5-6), but we are discouraged when our flesh continually presumes on the riches of his kindness (Rom 2:4). We love the thought of receiving “new wine,” but this old wineskin of a body seems to be the wrong place for it (Mk 2:21-22). We live as a “new creation” right here and now (2 Cor 5:17), but a day will come when we are made new, indeed, sinless (Rev 21:5).

Here lies the already-but-not-yet reality of the Christian life, and the answer is not very satisfying: wait.

Why does God make us wait, specifically as it relates to the presence of sin in our lives? Isn’t he aware of how much we hate waiting? Hasn’t he seen us on the interstate or getting off a plane? We’re living in a push-notification, fast-food, tweet-able, convenience-store world; isn’t it about time he catches up with the rest of us and stops the waiting already? Hasn’t it gone on long enough?

Our microwaves and two-day shipping services have conditioned us to believe that waiting is wasting. But God never wastes our waiting.

LEARNING THROUGH WAITING

In fact, it’s only through our waiting that God can teach us certain aspects of himself. There is a reason God has not eradicated the reality of sin yet in us. To make us wait is not to punish, so much as it is to demonstrate and instruct. There must be something redemptive about waiting, as difficult as the tension might be, for God to deem it necessary for each of us.

Psalm 130 is a window through which we see the goodness of waiting and the “okay-ness” of the already-but-not-yet tension that marks Christian living. This psalm is recognized by Bible scholars as one of the seven Penitential Psalms. It’s found right in the heart of the Songs of Ascent, a collection of laments, praises, and prayers that frame a sort of “pilgrim’s progress” toward right worship of God.

There’s an emphasis on both the individual and communal aspects of sin and penitence. Therefore, this psalm has something pointed to say both to the Church at large as well as to the individual Christian when it comes to sin and hardship and how they relate to our waiting. In particular, it offers four reminders for the person facing sin and hardship.

1. GOD MEETS OUR MISERY WITH MERCY (PS. 130:1-2)

Our Father loves us too much to shield us from being brought to the depths. He is not like the over-protective parent who works tirelessly to keep his children free from struggle. We cannot know we are empty until we truly feel it. He will never coerce us into the wrong decision; rather he knows that it is in the depths that his children abandon all attempts at quick fixes and self-help, and turn their gaze upward.

This first stanza is the first of three instances where the Psalmist uses both “LORD” (Yahweh) and “Lord” (Adonai) to describe God. “Yahweh” was considered too holy of a name to speak when referring to God, and “Adonai” was often used in its place.

But the two names have specific and differing points of emphasis regarding the character of God. “Yahweh” is often used in Scripture to point to the covenant faithfulness of God toward his people, while “Adonai” is often used when describing the power and sovereignty of God.

In verses 1-2, God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) remind us that God is both faithful and sovereign in hearing our prayers. Our prayers do not fall on apathetic ears or into incapable hands. He is attentive to our cries for help from the depths of our sin. He mercifully ordains our misery, that he might display his power and faithfulness to us.

2. GOD MEETS OUR CONFESSION WITH FORGIVENESS (PS. 130:3-4)

One of the main reasons many Christians struggle with confessing wrongdoing is that it is simply humiliating. We feel more exposed than the Emperor with his new clothes, like a tabloid will be telling the world in bright and bold letters what we have done.

But as the psalmist recognizes, we are all exposed in the end. Why should we fear confession when we have all fallen short of God’s glory (Rom 3:23)? In verses 3-4, God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) remind us that God is both faithful and sovereign in spite of our personal sins.

When we confess our sins, God clothes us with the garments of salvation (Isa 61:10). It is only through the way of confession that we come to understand being forgiven. And even more so, God allows us to go through the difficulty of confession “that [he] may be feared.” When we confess our sins, God will manifest his forgiving power in our lives, which will spark worship in our hearts.

3. GOD MEETS OUR HOPE WITH PROMISES (PS. 130:5-6)

Our only hope of being rid of the battle with sin once and for all is if God makes it so. It is hopeless for us to attempt in our own selves to finally eliminate sin. God must intervene, and therefore we must wait.

The psalmist says in our waiting for the Lord, we must hope. The way Scripture talks about hope is not the same way the world talks about hope. The world’s hope is frail. It’s quasi-confidence, with little to bank on other than chance. I hope the Bears win tonight. I hope I have studied enough. I hope life slows down soon.

But the Christian hope is not a shot in the dark. It is grounded not in sheer luck, but in a person. And not just any person, but Yahweh and Adonai Himself. God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) remind us that our hopes aren’t hanging in the air. God not only hears us and forgives us but he has also given us his Word to form our hope.

He is worthy of being trusted with our hopes because he will do what he says he will do. His Word itself is power (Rom. 116), and therefore guarantees it.

4. GOD MEETS OUR WORLD WITH REDEMPTION (PS. 130:7-8)

The hope we’re guaranteed is redemption. God’s faithfulness (Yahweh) and God’s power (Adonai) are not only applied to us in an individual sense but in a communal sense as well. Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior, but he’s more than that. He is also our shared Lord and Savior.

Sin has affected us not only as individuals but also as a community. The Fall ushered in a host of fault lines and distortions in our hearts and in our world. But through the cross, redemption is available to those who trust in him.

And, get this: it’s coming for the world God’s people live in, too. There is “plentiful redemption” available to the community and the nation of Israel, an inside-out “making all things new” that we await (Rev. 21:5).

AND NOW WE WAIT

Waiting isn’t easy. No one said it would be, not even Jesus. “I do not ask that you take them out of the world” (Jn 17:15).

Jesus’s plan for our growth is not escaping or fleeing—it’s going through the refining fire. It’s being exposed of our inabilities, confessing our need for God, trusting that his Word is worthy of our hope, and anticipating the work he intends to do in us and around us. It’s all bound up in the psalmist’s words: “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits.”

Perhaps our best shot at living a life of gospel witness is to choose the way of waiting. To slow down and ignore the shortcuts, to stay the course and fight our sin, to hold fast to his Word, and to endure in the world he is making new. Like watchmen in the black of night, we know our task during the dark is hard, but the dawn of morning is on the way.

The waiting will be worth it.

About the Author: Zach Barnhart currently serves as Student Pastor of Northlake Church in Lago Vista, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University and is currently studying at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeking a Master of Theological Studies degree. He is married to his wife, Hannah. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zachbarnhart or check out his personal blog, Cultivated.

How to Evangelize Friends Identifying as LGBTQ+

Article by Rosaria Butterfield

What if your daughter, raised in a Christian home, returns from college radicalized by the LGBTQ community? What if she comes out as pansexual and tells you in no uncertain terms that it is her way or the highway? What if you discover that your most obedient and faithful daughter, the one you never had to worry about with boys or drugs or reckless bad-choice making, has been struggling with same-sex attraction since she was 12?

It is deeply frightening when a child you have loved and raised and prayed for daily leaves the faith, and with it, God’s protection. It can feel shameful to admit to others in your church that you are torn between your faith and your child—that you fear losing one for the other.

It may feel unsafe to ask for help from your elders and pastors with matters that isolate you and set you apart from others in painful ways. You may feel jealous or angry or deeply depressed that while your peers in the church are planning biblical weddings for believing children, you are wrestling with whether to attend the gay wedding of your prodigal.

If these are your feelings and concerns, take heart. The Lord is near.

Or perhaps you feel the weight of others in your church who struggle with same-sex attraction and are faithful members of your church, forsaking sin and living in chastity, but still feeling torn between the culture of the church and the culture of the world.

If you are struggling with same-sex attraction in God’s way—forsaking sin, drinking deeply of the means of grace—then you are a hero of the faith. Nothing less.

You may feel as if all your Christian friends do is make straw arguments against homosexuality—declaring it a choice and a bad choice, and demanding that real believers won’t struggle with that struggle. You may be sick and tired of hearing “arguments against” something and are hungering for the Jesus who argues for people, and who beckons and promises comfort for bruised reeds.

Or perhaps you are someone who also struggles with same-sex attraction. You are silent, though, and the hateful things people in your church say make you more silent every day. Your shame may be increasing as you are saying to yourself: If they only knew how I feel and how I struggle, they would kick me out for good. You may wonder if you will ever hear these words of Jesus in real time: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30).

This is a painful reality for so many sisters in the church. If you are someone struggling with same-sex attraction in God’s way—forsaking sin, drinking deeply of the means of grace—then you are a hero of the faith. Nothing less.

If this is your burden, then the Bible has the answer for it: the practice of daily, ordinary, radical hospitality.

Daily Hospitality for Sexual Strugglers

Where should you start? As a church community, designate a house where members live and where people can gather daily. Yes, I said daily. And then start gathering daily. And not by invitation only.

Make it a place where the day closes with a meal for all, and with Bible reading and prayer, and where unbelievers are invited to hear the words of grace and salvation, where children of all ages are welcome, and where unbelievers and believers break bread and ideas shoulder to shoulder.

This is the best way that I know of to evangelize your LGBTQ neighbors—and everyone else. To live communally as Bible-believing Christians who care for each other in body and soul. To live openly, such that you know each other well enough to know each other’s sin patterns and temptations. To be a community where everyone is repenting of something all the time. To be a community where Christ could come, eat, wash his feet, and lay down his head. To be a community where hard conversations are had over warm soup and fresh bread.

You see, two hours on a Sunday morning and two hours at a small group on Tuesday night is not enough. God so loves you that he wants you to live 24/7 as a Christ follower, doing the will of God from the heart and the home.

Maybe this seems pie-in-the-sky crazy. Maybe it is.

But this is the kind of house in which I first saw the gospel lived and loved.

And, by God’s grace, this is the kind of house in which I now live.

The best way to evangelize your LGBTQ neighbors is to get upstream of the culture war—and to stay there. And practicing daily, ordinary, radical hospitality is the way to do that.

Real Friendships for Real Needs

In a culture of biblical hospitality, we develop real friendships.

We talk about our differences as grown-ups who can understand each other’s point of view even if we don’t share it. We understand why people who cannot have eternal peace are driven to accumulate rights and privileges to compensate. We know that the accumulation of rights and privileges causes great anxiety within the LGBTQ community, especially when you are winning.

The potential blow of losing that which you have is far greater than never having something. Without the gospel’s checks and balances on the things of this world, you are awash in anxiety in a nanosecond.

When we meet a neighbor who identifies within the spectrum of LGBTQ life and identity, we do not presume she is sexually active. She may be, but celibacy is high in the lesbian community. So we commit ourselves to listening, and to treating each person we meet as an individual.

We understand that sins of identity run deep and hard.

Christ Loves Best

How do we evangelize our LGBTQ neighbors? We remind our neighbors that only the love of Christ is seamless. Not so for our spouses or partners. Only Christ loves us best: he took on all our sin, died in our place bearing God’s wrath, and rose victorious from the dead.

And yes, Christ calls us to be citizens of a new world, under his lordship, under his protection, under his law. Original sin explains why some struggle with same-sex attraction and have from the day they remember being attracted to anything. We know that we were all born in original sin and that this imprints our deepest desires. As we grow in Christ, we gain victory over acting on our sin, but our sinful desires do not go away until glory.

And we stand in the risen Christ alone, in his righteousness, not in our own. But we are called—by the God who loves us enough to die for us and live for us—to carry a cross, repent of sin, and follow him. Christians know that crosses are not curses, not for the believer.

Crosses are not curses, not for the believer.

And Christ puts the lonely in families (Ps. 68:6)—and he calls us to live in a new family of choice: God’s family.

So we evangelize the LGBTQ family by living differently than others, by living without selfishness or guile. We tell each other the promise found in Mark 10:28–30—the hundredfold promise—and we bear out its truth in our homes:

Peter began to say to Jesus, “See, we have left everything and followed you.”

Jesus replied, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”

Receive a hundredfold.

About the Author: Rosaria Butterfield is a former tenured professor of English at Syracuse University and author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown & Covenant, 2012) and Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ (Crown & Covenant, 2015). Her new book is The Gospel Comes with a House Key (Crossway, 2018).

Loving Our Neighbors with Dementia

Article by Kathryn Butler

A loved one drifting through the shadows of dementia clutches your wrist and implores you to find her husband. She no longer recognizes you, or remembers the laughter and tenderness you’ve shared. She can’t comprehend the steady erosion of her memories, the parts of herself that have crumbled away.

And she doesn’t remember that the husband she adores died decades ago.

What should you say? The last time she heard the truth, she howled and cried, reliving her grief as if for the first time. Then, after an hour of sobbing, she forgot the entire conversation and asked for her husband again.

As she searches your face now, should you tell her the truth and watch the agony wash over her? Or should you spare her the pain and fib that he’s gone out to the store?

Dignity or Happiness?

Such heartbreaking dilemmas inspired a recent article in The New Yorker by award-winning writer Larissa MacFarquar. In her challenging piece, MacFarquar explores the practice of “therapeutic lying,” a controversial approach in dementia care that favors deception over dragging people discombobulated and frightened into a reality they can’t understand.

MacFarquar guides us through memory care centers that feature 1930s décor, fake bus stops, and artificial simulations of the beach, all intended to mirror the realities of people locked within their distant memories. Proponents of such simulated environments argue that familiar details, even if fabricated, comfort dementia sufferers, and soothe the confusion and agitation that arise when their sharpest memories don’t align with their surroundings. Critics question the impact of systematic deception on the hearts and minds of caregivers and dementia sufferers alike.

Throughout her sensitive investigation, MacFarquar posits a quandary: Should we be blisteringly honest with dementia sufferers in the name of dignity and truth, even if the facts devastate them? Or should we lie and collude with their delusions, diminishing their personhood, but keeping them blissfully unaware? “What is more important,” she asks, “dignity or happiness?”

MacFarquar’s question reflects deep empathy for people with dementia and captures the agitation, fear, and confusion that so often afflict them. But it also presupposes stark dichotomies between dignity and happiness, truth and compassion. The question strands caregivers between two unnerving and opposed choices, neither of which seems to wholly manifest love for our neighbor (Matt. 22:39).

The gospel offers an alternative approach.

Loving a Person

Personhood doesn’t decay with our cognitive abilities, but resides in our immutable worth as image bearers of God (Gen. 1:26), a value no disease or calamity can degrade. And the central tenet in care for anyone, stricken with dementia or not, should be love, as God loves us in Christ (Mark 12:30–31; John 3:16; 13:34–35). In Christ, dignity and compassion unfurl as branches of the same vine, each a vital offshoot.

Christian love doesn’t subscribe to blanket policies of harsh fact or rampant falsehood, but rather seeks to build “others up according to their needs” (Eph. 4:29). It views each person as Christ sees him: cherished, unique in the world, worthy of time and sacrifice, with a specific role in God’s story.

Artificial environments with fake bus stops hardly embody this love. Such prescribed, imposed realities ignore the unique stories, memories, and experiences that enrich a life and the varied needs each person harbors in a given moment. Systematic deception discounts the fluctuating course of dementia, when moments of lucidity break through the fog, and when tactics that soothe in one moment can agitate in the next.

According to the U.K.’s Mental Health Foundation, this neglect for individual experience can actually worsen distress and confusion among dementia sufferers. Fabricated environments, the Foundation argues, thrust people into out-of-context scenarios that don’t always align with their own memories and realities.

The resulting disconnect can deepen anxiety among dementia sufferers, and even more concerning, erode crucial relationships. As the foundation reports, “A person living with dementia may start to feel suspicious and lose trust in one or more of their carers if the responses/interactions are inconsistent from one carer to the next, or the body language of the carer suggests something is ‘not quite right.’”

Those with dementia themselves echo these concerns. In one study, people with mild dementia described lying, even if well-intended, as “patronizing” or “demeaning,” and predicted that knowing they were lied to would upset them.

They described their distress as especially profound if the lying occurred within a close, trusting relationship. Such comments warn us that if we routinely lie to those with dementia, even out of compassion, we risk fracturing the fragile bonds tying them to others.

Speaking Truth in Love

None of these dangers should surprise us, given the high standard of truth the Bible upholds (Lev. 19:11; Mark 12:14). But when a woman with severe dementia, for whom the last shreds of working memory have vanished, weeps for her lost husband, should we bluntly retort that her beloved has died?

When we force her into a painful reality she can no longer decipher, do we really embrace her as a unique child of God? Are we speaking the truth in love in such moments, and building her up according to her needs? (Eph. 4:15).

As Sinclair Ferguson so eloquently states, “Truth is always set in the context of love because it is never only a matter of speech and words, but of spirit and motive.” Guiding our loved ones according a Christian ethic requires that we look beyond the words, sift past the factual inaccuracies, and discern the emotions and deep needs driving them.

We must empathize with sufferers, enter their perspective, and walk with them—either toward clarity, or toward calm and comfort.

For those with mild dementia, who understand their cognitive decline and whose false realities upset them, gentle reorientation may usher them back to awareness. Such redirection need not unfold in cold, callous terms, but can take the form of coming alongside him or her: holding a hand, referring back to points in time, or reviewing a photo album until the dwindling memories sharpen into focus. In remembering together, the encounter evolves into a partnership, rather than a corrective measure.

In advanced dementia, however, people can no longer comprehend reality, and demanding they do so risks crushing them with anguish. To respond compassionately, and to acknowledge their dignity in Christ, requires us to enter their world, and to see what they see. Their attempts to comprehend and to communicate must be taken seriously, and respected, just as for anyone else.

Discerning Needs

“Understanding the world they are experiencing does not mean we have to lie about it,” says Dr. John Dunlop, longtime geriatrician and author of the poignant and informative book Finding Grace in the Face of Dementia. “When a patient is asking for and grieving a dead parent, we need to ask ourselves, ‘What is it they are looking for?’ It may well be love and security. We can respond by hugging them and saying, ‘I love you and will take care of you, and I know you love your mom and dad.’”

Kathy Lind, a nurse practitioner with 25 years of experience in geriatrics, agrees that the chief concern in dementia care is neither fact nor fiction, but viewing each person individually, beloved by God, with unique needs in the moment.

“God is present all the time,” she says. “He is present to the patient with dementia who thinks in the past, and to me who is in the present, both on different timelines. . . . Usually, meeting [people with dementia] where they are and responding to the emotion of their distress, is enough to diffuse the anxiety, and I believe we have really communicated.”

Dunlop lived out this principle when his mother, her mind clouded with dementia, repeatedly mistook him for his father. Rather than reply with, “I’m not Dad,” or pretend to be his father, Dunlop learned to respond with, “Lois, I love you.”

His answer emphasized neither truth, nor fiction, but rather acknowledged his mother’s deepest need in that moment—to receive warmth and affection from someone she loved.

Although the ravages of dementia may chisel away memories, stories of who we are remain. Emotions remain. And these lingering joys can anchor those lost in the past. “Despite their confusion about the present,” geriatric psychologist Benjamin Mast writes,  “people can continue to find themselves and reconnect to their faith by rehearsing their story with people who love and care for them. . . . We should try to interact in a way that draws upon their life story, their well-worn behavioral patterns, and those aspects of life that are flavored with emotion.”

Dignity and Compassion

We know that when Christ returns, the synapses of the dementia-stricken mind will be repaired. The brain will heal, the present will snap into relief, and the memories will take their proper place. In the interim, those struggling with dementia need us to reflect their personhood as eternal, not dependent on remembering or forgetting, fact or deception.

They need our respect and love, through care that presumes no dichotomies between dignity and compassion, but rather views each individual as worthy of both.

When we embrace others in such love, we point to the greatest truth of all, to the one whose power and mercy far surpass the jumbled workings of our feeble minds. We point to the one who gave his life for us and who makes all things new: the broken bodies, the sinful hearts, but also the forgotten names and distorted memories, the glimmers of the past tangled with the present.

About the Author: Kathryn Butler (MD, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons) is a trauma and critical care surgeon who recently left clinical practice to homeschool her children. She has written for Desiring God and Christianity Today, and her book on end-of-life care through a Christian lens, Between Life and Death, releases in 2019 (Crossway). She blogs at Oceans Rise.

Your Sin Will Find You Out (But So Will His Righteousness)

Article by Jared C. Wilson

… be sure your sin will find you out.
– Numbers 32:23

In the news a couple of years ago I read a report from Kennebunkport, Maine that a fitness trainer had turned her business into an underground prostitution ring. I am not clear on whether there were multiple prostitutes available or just her, but the primary focus was on the “johns,” a variety of local men, some of them quite prominent figures, whose names were listed in the newspapers. The ensuing debate is over whether such a practice is appropriate. Won’t it ruin these men’s lives and devastate their families? The public shaming is part of the attempt to crack down on prostitution in the area.

I confess I’m not sure how I feel about the publishing of the names. I feel similar in my reaction to those who hang out in the parking lots of adult bookstores and strip clubs, snapping photos of the patrons as they come and go, to print their pics in the local paper, “outing” them. It’s an effort to “take back” neighborhoods, which I certainly sympathize with. In the latter example, nothing illegal (theoretically) is taking place, while of course in the former case, it is. And I guess I can also see the logic in publicizing the names of those soliciting prostitution as a way of creating parity with other crimes, whose suspects are regularly named in the media.

And I suppose this is essentially a modern fulfillment of the biblical principle: “your sins will find you out.”

Your sins will find you out. You won’t get away with it. There will be justice. In this life or the next. Or both.

I think many of us who have tasted of the Lord’s holiness have a degree, some more than others, of the shame of sin. We envision the day when we will stand before the Lord to give an account of everything we’ve done. I recall preachers past suggesting a giant movie screen will play before God and everybody of all our sins, the ones external and internal, the ones we remember and the ones we don’t. Every single drop of bitterness, unkind word, every single second of lust, every hateful thought, every self-indulgent theft of the glory belonging only to God in stunning color and panoramic vision. Like a list of names in the newspaper or only infinitely worse. “This man! This man is a pervert” the broadcast will reveal.

But then there is the promise of my holy God himself—that his Son is not ashamed to call me his brother (Hebrews 2:11). He oughta be! But he’s not. He has satisfied justice by taking the endless list of my sins upon himself, bearing my shame on a public cross beneath a paper vindictively, sarcastically publishing his name. I stake everything on that promise and the promises from which it is derived. There is the promise that he will present me blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy (Jude 24). Oh, he will read a list, all right. He calls it the Lamb’s Book of Life. And because this ferociously holy and glory-jealous God has foreknown me, elected me, justified me, sanctified me, is sanctifying me, and will glorify me, my name will be found in it.

“This man! This man is a good and faithful servant” the broadcast will reveal. For I have been covered in the righteousness of my precious Redeemer. He has cast my sins in to the depths of the sea to remember them no more. (Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!)

Christian, be sure his righteousness will find you out.

About the Author: Jared C. Wilson is the Director of Content Strategy for Midwestern Seminary, managing editor of For The Church, Director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church, and author of numerous books, including Gospel Wakefulness, The Pastor’s Justification, The Prodigal Church, The Imperfect Disciple, and Supernatural Power for Everyday People. A frequent preacher and speaker at churches and conferences, you can visit him online at jaredcwilson.com 

Posted at: https://ftc.co/resource-library/blog-entries/your-sin-will-find-you-out-but-so-will-his-righteousness

Raising Future Husbands and Wives

Article by Matthew Miller

In 1997, Earl Woods coauthored a book with his son, Tiger, titled Training a Tiger: A Father’s Guide to Raising a Winner in Both Golf and Life. Avid readers wanted to know the secret of how to turn their little ones into sports champions, just as Tiger Woods’ father had done.

We have since learned that Tiger Woods grew up to be a winner in golf, but his life is a different story. He failed miserably in an area where, as the statistics show and pastors know, most Americans now struggle greatly—marriage. But Earl Woods’ book is right in its basic premise—we should raise children with an eye toward what we hope they will grow up to be.

We can’t help but dream of seeing our children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews grow up to become outstanding athletes, artists, or achievers of various kinds. We see their gifts surface at a young age and wonder to what heights those gifts might carry them. Perhaps to the big stage or to the Olympic Games or at least to a college scholarship? These prospects lure many parents into making endless sacrifices in the pursuit of the child’s “full potential.”

But when is the last time you looked at a little face and thought, “I would love to see him grow up to be a great husband or to see her grow up to be a great wife”?

THERE IS NO MAGIC MARRIAGE DUST

There’s a myth out there that is ruining marriages and probably reducing the number of marriages as well. It’s the myth that we can spend our childhood and adolescence putting our personal success before our need of personal character development and the needs of our future families. A selfless habit of mind will not suddenly appear in marriage. There’s a myth that if we meet Mr. Right or Ms. Perfect and exchange vows at the altar, magic marriage dust will fall upon us both, and we will walk out of that service transformed into selfless people, ready for the real-life demands of marriage.

There is no magic marriage dust. We walk out of the service with the same deeply entrenched habits and dispositions that were rooted in our heart when we walked in. Only now, we have so much more responsibility.

As parents of future husbands and future wives, perhaps we should think less about training up gifted standouts and focus more on training up men and women who will be prepared to succeed where Tiger Woods fell short.

GETTING PRACTICAL: DINNERTIME AND WORSHIP TIME

So, how might we train up future husbands and wives? Perhaps with dinnertime. Too often, parents make enormous sacrifices for their children without asking the children to make any sacrifices for the family. Dinnertime calls the individual members to seek—as well as enjoy—the good of the whole family.

That future daughter-in-law or son-in-law of yours would much rather you focus now on raising up a future husband or wife than raising up a future sports champ.  

In foregoing legitimate pursuits in order to be with the family at the dinner table, family members learn through hundreds of repetitions that the well-being of the family requires sacrifices. (The child also learns an important theological truth about human beings made in God’s image—that communion matters as much as function.) On the other hand, when the family table makes no claims on the child’s schedule, the child secretly learns that individual dreams and pursuits take priority over the well-being of the family.

As with dinnertime, so with church. Years ago, recreational sports teams did not think to schedule games on Sundays. Now parents face a choice: When the team’s call to play bumps up against God’s call to worship, who wins?

Our culture has so trained our hearts to prize sports that it’s hard for us to imagine that we could hold our child out of a game and still be a “good parent” (especially if pleas and tears are involved). But underneath that soccer uniform is the heart of a future husband or wife that is being trained in one of two ways. That heart is either developing the habit of putting God, family, and church before personal pursuits, or it is developing the reflex of putting personal pursuits before God, family, and church.

EARLY TRAINING FOR THE RACE OF REPENTANCE

Paul tells fathers to “bring [your children] up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). Just four verses earlier, Paul was writing of the high calling of marriage, in which the wife images the church and the husband images Christ Himself (5:22–33). Not every child will get married, but preparing every child for marriage will prepare them for real life in service to Christ, with its ten thousand acts of self-denial. Of believers, Calvin writes that “God assigns them the race of repentance to run during their whole lives” (Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.3.9). In Christian marriage, a man and woman are called to run that race of repentance together. Preparation for that race must begin in childhood, or it will be hard learned—if learned at all—in later years.

How children see themselves in relation to the family when they are young will carry over into how they see themselves in relation to their marriage—and in relation to their Lord—when they are grown. When we insist that some legitimate activities cannot be pursued because they will reduce the home to an overnight parking lot for busy, self-seeking individuals, we are not ruining our child’s future—we are investing in it. When we hold the line on the Lord’s Day and exalt public worship as more significant than the league office’s schedule, we are not ruining our child’s future—we are investing in it. We are training up a future husband or wife.

SOMEONE WILL BE TRUSTING YOUR CHILD’S “I DO”

As you ponder your child’s future and the possibility of their marriage, remember that more than your own child’s future is at stake. For somewhere across town, across the country, or on the other side of the globe is a little boy or girl who may one day stand across from your child and trust their lives to your child’s “I do.” And when they do, how prepared will your child be to steward that trust in this epic commitment of ten thousand acts of self-denial?

That future daughter-in-law or son-in-law of yours would much rather you focus now on raising up a future husband or wife than raising up a future sports champ.

About the author: Rev. Matthew S. Miller is executive director and adjunct professor of divinity at Erskine Theological Seminary’s campus in Greenville, S.C., and city director of the C.S. Lewis Institute in Greenville, S.C. He is translator of A New Day of Small Beginnings by Pierre Courthial. 

Posted at: https://tabletalkmagazine.com/posts/2018/11/raising-future-husbands-and-wives/

The Lord's Prayer is a Gospel Prayer

Article by Al Mohler

The Gospel Foundation of the Lord’s Prayer 

We are a nation of debtors. Millions of young people are on the verge of bankruptcy with unpayable credit card debt that compounds yet more interest every month. The problem of school debt, often running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, has now become a national crisis. Even the federal government is in debt–debt that has soared into untold trillions of dollars.

Yet while many Americans view debt as an annoyance, in the ancient world debt was punishable by prison sentence. In the Roman Empire, prisons were not generally filled with criminals; they were populated with debtors. Most convicted criminals were executed or were forced to serve some other form of punishment for their crimes, but those who could not make good on their payments were incarcerated until they could pay what they owed. This system was meant to put pressure on the families of the incarcerated debtor to find the necessary money to pay their debts to free their loved one from prison.

In the Roman Empire, then, debt typically meant severe pain and tragedy for an individual and a family. In our day we experience frustration and anxiety with debt, but in the days of Jesus, debt was a matter of life and death. This is the context in which Jesus teaches us to pray “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus’ use of the word debts is meant to evoke in our mind both a serious offense and a corresponding serious punishment. To be forgiven a debt was no mere trifle, but an act of extravagant mercy.

If the petition “give us this day our daily bread” emphasizes our most urgent physical needs, the petition “forgive us our debts” emphasizes our most urgent spiritual need. Saying we owe a debt to God means that we have failed to pay up. Thus, as sinners, we stand before God condemned, rightly deserving his just wrath. Only God’s forgiveness can clear our guilt and establish a meaningful relationship between God and us.

This petition reminds us that the Lord’s Prayer is not a casual prayer for the generically religious. This prayer is a gospel prayer. We can only say these words and ask these things of God when we stand on the finished, atoning work of Jesus Christ. Indeed, this petition demonstrates that the theological bedrock of the Lord’s Prayer is nothing less than the gospel. We can only rightly pray the Lord’s Prayer when we recognize that we are deeply sinful and only God’s grace in Christ can remedy our souls.

Getting the Gospel Right 

The logic of this particular petition in the Lord’s Prayer has been misconstrued so often that we would do well to remind ourselves of what Scripture teaches about the gospel. Nothing is more central to the message of Scripture than the gospel. If we err on this point, we err on all others. Many interpreters believe that Jesus is saying that God only forgives us when we earn his forgiveness through forgiving others. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, this petition does not say “forgive us our debts because we forgive our debtors,” but “forgive us our debts aswe have forgiven our debtors.” The difference between those two phrases, as we shall see, is the difference between the gospel of Jesus Christ and no gospel at all.

The sum and substance of the gospel is that a holy and righteous God who must claim a full penalty for our sin both demands that penalty and provides it. His self-substitution is Jesus Christ the Son, whose perfect obedience and perfectly accomplished atonement on the cross purchased all that is necessary for our salvation. Jesus Christ met the full demands of the righteousness and justice of God against our sin.

Paul summarized the work of Christ in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Christ is our substitute and his life is sacrificed for our sin so that God’s wrath against us is removed.

How then do we benefit from the sacrifice of Christ for us? Paul answered that we do not earn the righteousness of God in Christ; instead it is given to us freely when we believe the gospel: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23-24). Indeed, nothing in us or achieved by us is the grounds of our acceptance with God. Instead, as Paul made clear, “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justified the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5)…

The apostle was very clear. We are saved by faith alone in the work of Christ. All this comes from the grace of God. But we are not freed just from the penalty of sin; we are also freed from the power of sin. While our salvation is not a “result of works,” Paul noted that it does result in works, ones that God himself prepared for us to do. The portrait of the gospel is indeed astounding. We are saved by grace along through faith alone in Christ alone, which then results in our being transformed into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). Indeed the whole of our salvation proclaims the glory of God…

If you have ever been tempted to think that the gospel is nowhere present in the Lord’s Prayer, think again! This petition only makes sense in the context of Christ’s provision for us. By agreeing with God that we are sinners and repenting of that sin by asking for forgiveness, God clears our debts on account of Christ’s work for us.

If this does not shock us, then we have grown fare too familiar with the gospel and the glory of God’s grace. The extravagant mercy of God shown in this petition should be on our lips and in our hearts daily. When we recognize we are debtors, then we see ourselves as we truly are, beggars at the throne of grace. Martin Luther, the great Reformer of the sixteenth century, certainly understood and reveled in this truth. When Luther came to die, his last moments were characterized by delirium and moving in and out of consciousness. Yet in one last moment of clarity Luther said (mixing German with Latin), “Wir sind bettler. Hoc est verum“–We are beggars, this is true.

To read more, purchase your copy of The Prayer that Turns the World Upside Down at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or ChristianBook.com.

Posted at: https://albertmohler.com/2018/11/29/forgive-us-debts-lords-prayer-gospel-prayer/

Sleep With Your Boots On

Article by Jared Wilson

Do you know that the devil is fully aware of your weaknesses? He knows your particular blind spots, your vulnerabilities. He knows which sins you struggle with the most. He knows what things irritate you, frustrate you, and distract you. He knows exactly what desire or longing is specific to your personality and wiring. And he is every day working the angles to exploit them and bring you down. Satan has a file on you, and he is working it every minute of every day to make sure you fall.

Do you ever think about it that way? The enemy is often more conscious of our weaknesses than we are. And he will do whatever it takes to get us to neglect our faith and forget the grace of God. If he can get us to stumble or use us to get others to stumble, he will not let up until he’s done it. All because he hates Jesus and wants to see Jesus’ glory obscured or diminished in the world.

It is for this reason that Paul’s words are so strong on the subject of the spiritual war. This is not something we can afford to be nonchalant about. The apostle Peter warns us: “Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). This is how Paul informs our preparation:

Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the Devil. For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens. (Ephesians 6:10-12)

The first rule of warfare is practical awareness of the enemy. You can’t fight well if 1) you don’t know who you’re fighting, and 2) you don’t know where they are. Knowing your enemy’s character (what they’re willing to do) and their position (where they may be attacking you from) is a key component to successful warfare. Paul is telling us two things here that are of utmost importance. He’s telling us that our enemy is the Devil, not our fellow man. This is important because we often mistake the unbelieving world as our battle targets. But Paul says we don’t war against “flesh and blood.” Because sin is in all of us, even those justified by the blood of Christ cannot justly carry out the fight against other sinners. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. Unbelievers, by definition, are unenlightened to the things of the Spirit. They are not the enemy.

But we also need to remember the enemy’s position. He attacks us from the spiritual realm. Very often, Christians try fighting the devil’s wiles in the devil’s ways. We assume legalistic behavior will solve our sin problems, for instance. But the devil is totally fine with all of us becoming more religious, so long as we don’t actually love Jesus. No, we cannot wage a spiritual war with human strength. We have to be “strengthened by the Lord,” operating under “His vast strength.” We can’t do it in our own power.

When the enemy attacks our hearts, we don’t want our self-righteousness standing guard, but the breastplate of actual righteousness, Christ’s righteousness. When the enemy whispers his accusations into our ears with his forked tongue, we don’t want some trite, social media-quality daily affirmations sitting there; those would protect us about as much as cotton-ball earmuffs. But the helmet of salvation is another story. If my mind is ready with the great salvation of the gospel encasing it like a force-field of grace, I am really prepared.

Which is why we must wear this armor constantly. We should never take it off. We should wear it to bed as pajamas. We should make sure we’ve got it on first thing in the morning by turning to the gospel as immediately as possible. This is wartime. Don’t take the armor off. You don’t try putting on your seatbelt when you see the Mack truck bearing down on you at 60 mph; you put it on before you pull out of the garage. Likewise, don’t wait for the enemy to show himself before you start suiting up. You don’t know when the attacks will come; best to sleep with your boots on and your sword by your hand.

Posted at: https://ftc.co/resource-library/blog-entries/sleep-with-your-boots-on

Make The Choice to Be Thankful for Jesus

Article by Colin Smith

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. (Colossians 3:15)

In the verses leading up to verse 15, the Apostle Paul is in many ways like a coach telling his team how the game should be played. He says if you are going to make it in the Christian life, you need to clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, and gentleness (v. 12). You need to forgive people who have hurt you (v. 13). Then in the middle of all your relentless activity, you need to know the stillness of the peace of Christ ruling in your heart.   

While there is much to say about this verse, I would like to draw your attention to just two words that are found in the passage above: Be thankful.

Thanksgiving Is a Choice

The first thing that I want us to notice is that Thanksgiving is a choice. There is an interesting transition from the passive to the active in this verse. First, there is the passive: Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart. He does not say ‘be peaceful’. The source of peace is not us, but we must let it work on us.     

The peace that we need is found in Christ, and Paul says you need to allow that peace to fill your own soul.

One of the most beautiful features of the vision of heaven given to John was that the sea was like glass (Revelation 4:6). Have you seen the sea looking like glass? Sea is normally a picture of turmoil, upheaval, and collision between tides and waves. But God is not in turmoil. No forces compete with God in heaven.

So when the Son of God comes from heaven, he confronts the violence of a great storm on earth. And he is able to say, “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39), and there is a great calm. Let this true peace rule in your hearts. And this is passive—something that Christ must do for you. All you can do is open your hand to receive it.

But then notice the change to something active: “And be thankful!” The gift of peace is something that can only be given by Christ, but the response of thankfulness is something can only come from you.

So, be thankful! It’s a choice! There’s something intentional about it, and this choice involves three things. With this choice, we:

1. Recognize the role others have played in our lives.

The thankful person remembers the people who contributed to his or her life. The ungrateful person forgets these contributions and takes all the credit.

Think of all the people who have contributed to the course of your life. Parents and Sunday school teachers, people who have given to you, those who love you. People who have worked with you to achieve things that were important. Friends who were thoughtful. That person who said something at just the right time when you needed a word of encouragement.

Make a conscious choice to recognize and remember the people who have touched your life.

It is very interesting that in Romans 1, Paul gives a description of what he calls a godless and wicked person. He tells us that this person makes three very clear choices

1. They suppress the truth about God, although the evidence of God is all round about them in creation.

2. They refuse to worship God.

3. And, they do not give thanks. 

These are the marks of a wicked godless person! The result is that their thinking becomes futile. They live in a make-believe world in which they enjoy the gifts without any acknowledgment of the giver.

In contrast, the choice to give thanks to God is at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian:

1. We choose to embrace the truth.

2. We choose to worship God

3. And, we choose to be thankful.

So when Paul writes to Christians and says “Be thankful,” he is saying something that goes to the very heart of what it means to be a Christian: We recognize that all we are and all we have comes from the hand of God.

2.  Affirm the value of something done for us.

Our gratitude should always reflect the value of what is done. Gratitude should be in proportion.

If you hold the door open for someone, they will say thank you. But it would be inappropriate to say, “Oh thank you so much, I really cannot tell you how grateful I am.” If next week they came up to you and said, “You know all week I have been reflecting on what you did for me,” you would fairly quickly be heading for the door yourself.

The value of the gift determines the appropriate level of gratitude.

Suppose God were to send his son into the world and stand in your place experiencing the hell that you would otherwise certainly endure. Suppose he were to rise and then make you a member of his own family. What would be the appropriate level of gratitude then?

Of course, sometimes our problem is that we find it difficult to know what is of true value. If you give two gifts to a young child,  and one is a check for 10,000 dollars and the other is a shiny red car, he will show no interest at all in the check, unless it is to put it in his mouth and eat it.

Have you understood the value of what Jesus did for you on the cross? 

It is a choice in which we recognize the role other people have played in our lives. It is a choice in which we affirm the value of something that is done. So choose to affirm the value of what Christ has done for you.

3. Express our pleasure at something received.

You cannot separate gratitude from pleasure. Where there is pleasure gratitude is easy, without pleasure gratitude is difficult, and often false.

Reflecting on this my mind went back to childhood. The day after Christmas was always writing thank you letters. It was always more fun to open the parcels than to write the letters.

Have you written your thank you letters yet?

Think of the gifts you really value, and then Thanksgiving is the most natural thing in the world. The expression of pleasure is at the very heart of thanksgiving.

If you give a gift to someone else, the reason you do it is to give them pleasure. That’s what you want to happen. If it brings pleasure to them then your goal in giving is fulfilled.

Parents know all about this. You give a gift and as the kids open it, their pleasure is your pleasure. In that experience, we have some insight into the heart of God.

Be Thankful

As you celebrate Thanksgiving this year, I want to ask you three questions:  

• Do you recognize the blessing of God in your life, or are you among those who choose not to give thanks?

• As you think about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, what value do you place on what he has done?

• As God looks at your life, would he see that you take great pleasure in the gift of his Son, or would the truth be, that the Son of God is something of an unwanted gift?

Posted at: https://unlockingthebible.org/2018/11/make-choice-be-thankful-jesus/

Are We Really in Danger of Making an Idol of the Family?

Article by Kevin DeYoung

“One of the acceptable idolatries among evangelical Christians is the idolatry of the family.”

That’s what I tweeted last week. To be honest, I didn’t think much about it. I’ve said similar things in sermons for the past decade, and I’ve tweeted similar things before. But this time—I was later told by friends who track with Twitter more closely than I do—the statement took on a life of its own as this one sentence was liked 1,600 times and bandied about on social media for the next few days. Unknown to me, I was (depending on who you ask) suddenly saying something wonderfully courageous or terribly misguided.

So let me clarify.

As far as I can tell, I first uttered this statement (or something close to it) in a 2010 sermon on Mark 3:31-35 entitled Jesus’s Real Family. The tweet itself comes from a more recent sermon on the miracle at Cana in Galilee. My point in both cases was that a commitment to family must not come before a commitment to God.

I began the Mark 3 sermon by noting two competing notions of the family in our culture: family as straight jacket (as in the 1998 film Pleasantville) or family as center (as in the 2000 film The Family Man). In one view, the family keeps you from everything you really want. In the other view, the family promises to give you everything you really want. Jesus promoted neither of these views. There’s no doubt the second view is much more common among Christians, and it does overlap with some Christian virtues. But it too gets some crucial things wrong when it comes to the family. I argued back in 2010 (and would argue the same today) that, according to the Bible, the family is good, necessary, and foundational, but not ultimate.

The Mark 3 sermon focused on those two words—“not ultimate”—because that was Jesus’s emphasis in verses 31-35. In Jesus’s view of the family: family ties don’t get you in, family doesn’t come first, and God’s family is open to all (that is, open to everyone who does the will of God and takes Jesus on his own terms).

There are certainly ways in which speaking of “the idolatry of the family” would be a step in the wrong direction. I’m happily married with (soon) eight children. I am most definitely a family man (and have a 15-passenger van to prove it). I would never suggest that the real problem in the world today is that parents love their kids too much or that churches are doing too much to support the family or that what really ails our culture are too many high-functioning families. In a world hellbent on redefining marriage and undermining the fundamental importance of the family, Christians would do well to honor and support all those trying to nurture healthy families.

And yet, virtually every pastor in America can tell you stories of churchgoers who have functionally displaced God in favor of the family.

• Parents who go missing from church for entire seasons because of Billy’s youth soccer league or Sally’s burgeoning volleyball career.

• Committed Christians who would never dare invite a college student or international over for Thanksgiving or Christmas because “the holidays are for family.”

• Longtime members who can’t be bothered to serve on Sundays or reach out to visitors because the whole family always gathers at grandma’s for lunch.

• Kids and grandkids who think they should be accepted into membership or be in line for baptism because their parents and grandparents have been pillars of the church.

• Churches that implicitly (or explicitly) communicate that marriage is a necessary step of spiritual maturity.

• Christians of all kinds who will jettison their theology of marriage or their convictions about church discipline once their children come out of the closet or embrace other kinds of (unrepentant) sin.

The idolatry of the family can be a real problem, either from the church that ignores singles and gears everything toward married couples with children, or from the individual whose practical commitments underscore the unfortunate reality that blood is usually thicker than theology.

God has given us many gifts in this life. Money is a gift. Sex is a gift. Work is a gift. Athletic ability and musical skill are gifts; so are intelligence and beauty. No one doubts that all of these good things can be idols. Just like the family. The conjugal family—one man and one woman whose covenant union produces offspring—is profoundly good, a necessary and foundational element of God’s creational design. But it is not ultimate. At least not if we are defining family as the natural relationships we have by marriage and blood, rather than the supernatural relationships we have by the blood of Christ.

Posted at: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/really-danger-making-idol-family/