Home » Meditations » Page 3

Category: Meditations

Why I Don’t Say ‘I’m Bored’

Chesterton, in Orthodoxy, wrote something to the effect that suicide is a great act of cosmic hatred. His contention, in my own words, was that suicide is a desperate middle finger directed at all the world around you. By killing myself, I am, in my depression and desperation, flipping the bird at the trees, the birds, the stars, food, drink, and men and women, boys and girls, etc. I am saying, forget all of you, you’re not good enough for me, I’m outta here.

I do not agree with Chesterton. I think it is usually the opposite that is the case. A man doesn’t kill himself because he thinks he is too good for the world, but because he thinks the world is too good for him. Or perhaps he thinks the world is too much to bear on his shoulders and in his heart.

However, if Chesterton would have been describing boredom rather than suicide, he would have been right on. The declaration, ‘I’m bored,’ is a direct affront to everything around you, and to God himself. How can we be bored if God is God? How can we be bored in this glorious world with so many glorious gadgets?

In a way it is good that people so often declare themselves to be bored. It demonstrates that they were not made for this world. It shows that the human soul needs something more than gadgets. But, if you, as a Christian, having found that something more, infinitely more, continue to pronounce boredom – you my friend, need to do some examining. Examine God, examine the world around you, and examine yourself.

When someone says, in my presence, that they are bored, my standard response is to say – ‘Actually, you’re just boring.’This world is not boring – you are. Your life is not boring – you are. Your declaration of boredom is a big, Johnny Cash-style middle finger directed at all the world. Hebrews tells us about men of whom the world was not worthy. In your boredom, you declare yourself to be among those men. But you are not among those men. Those men knew nothing of boredom. They were too busy communing with their God and serving him. They were too busy offering sacrifices, becoming sacrifices, and turning the world upside down. They were too busy praying and crying, and laughing and mourning, feasting and fasting.

Have you ever rummaged through a Goodwill or an old antique store? I’ve literally been kicked out of one at closing time. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we are told of ‘the love of Christ, which is beyond knowledge’ and the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ.’ They ought to have to kick you out of your meditation and prayer. Boredom doesn’t mean that the riches aren’t there, it only means you are too lazy to search them and stuff your pockets.

God has given us families and friends. They ought to have to kick you out: ‘Hey, quit playing with your kids. It can’t be that fun.’ ‘Hey, quit talking to your wife, how many times do you have to tell her you love her? Get a room.’ ‘Hey, why are you always laughing and joking with your friends, doesn’t that get old?’

I have sometimes been tempted to call my 20 minute drive home from work boring, especially after the time change, since its always dark. Then a few weeks ago I realized that Venus is staring me in the face for the whole drive. How boring, a giant planet, disguised as a star, is leading me to my home on a similar giant planet. And we both happen to be suspended in mid-air as we race around a gigantic flaming ball called the sun. Maybe my drive isn’t so boring.

When I feel bored, I remind myself that it is not the world’s fault. It’s mine. I’m the boring one. And so I must take my eyes off my boring self and put it on the wonders around me – the glory of Christ, the beauties of his creation, and the joys of fellowship. That’s why I don’t say I’m bored.

People our outlandish enough to imagine that heaven itself  is boring. No, but perhaps heaven is bored with you. It would seem justified to think so. But, in fact, heaven is not bored with us at all. Jesus Christ, on the cross, is the only proof we need of that fact. And if God can get excited, if he can care so greatly, for your boring little existence, how excited should you be? Heaven came down to raise you up. Will you hem and haw and sigh along as if there were nothing outside yourself.

Thirteen Years

By the grace of God I was brought to faith in Jesus Christ in October of 2000. Each October I make it a point to spend time reflecting on my conversion, taking inventory on the progress of my sanctification, and thanking God for his steadfast love in Christ.

It has become sort of a tradition that each year I think back on the earliest days of my Christian life through the lens, if you will, of the songs I learned during that time. These past couple of weeks, I have kept going back to a song called ‘There must be more.’

The words are short and simple:

Lord I’m tired, Lord I’m weak.
I need your power to work in me.
But I can’t let go, I keep holding on,
Because there must be more.

The song ends with a cry for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

In the days leading to my conversion I found myself expressing that same idea – there must be more. Of course I didn’t know then the famous quote from Augustine, ‘Our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.’ I had been not been raised in a Christian home, and was basically a heathen, which suits my name. And I was restless to say the least. I was directionless. My only direction was toward hell, and I had a sense of it in my heart – not a sense of flames, but a sense that I was beating eaten up inside by my own wandering and emptiness.

In Jesus, first, I found a friend. I didn’t understand sin. I didn’t understand the nature of free grace and forgiveness. But I did understand that a great man, who claimed to have risen from the dead, invited me to be his friend. I liked that.

I later learned of the holiness of God, of the cost Jesus paid to call me his friend in light of that holiness. His friendship drew me. The cost of that friendship has sustained me. The older I get the more I appreciate his work on the cross. The more I am resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

In my early days I was hesitant to confess the Apostle’s Creed because it claimed that he ‘descended into hell.’ What exactly that means is up for interpretation, but I no longer hesitate to confess it, because I now see that regardless of the creed, Jesus had to walk through hell to reach out his hand to me. I was a brand plucked from the fire.

In recent years my favorite hymn has become O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing by Charles Wesley. It has become somewhat politically incorrect because of one allegedly insensitive stanza, but it is that stanza that I relate to so well:

Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Savior come,
And leap, ye lame, for joy.

That was me, it is still me, apart from him. And now I leap for joy by his strength.

I encourage Christians to thank God every day that they are a Christian. We take it for granted. We don’t realize that it’s a miracle. His mercies are new every morning. Sometimes I wake up and wonder if it has all be a dream. I think of the words of George MacDonald:

Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee (Diary of an Old Soul, 1.3).

But I always find that he is still there, and that the dream is not a dream. And I thank him.

He gave the Israelites new manna each morning that they might trust in him to sustain them. And so he gives us new mercies with the dawn of each day that we might trust in his persevering grace. Part of Jesus being a friend that sticks closer than a brother is that he is always close. Thank God.

Here’s to another year.

God’s Law is True: The Beauty and Superiority of the Law as a Way of Life in Modern Culture

C.S. Lewis on Psalm 119:

On three occasions the poet asserts that the Law is ‘true’ or ‘the truth’ (vv. 86, 138, 142). We find the same in Psalm 111:7, ‘all his commandments are true.’ (The word, I understand, could also be translated ‘faithful’, or ‘sound’; what is, in the Hebrew sense, ‘true’ is what ‘holds water’, what doesn’t ‘give way’ or collapse.) A modern logician would say that the Law is a command and that to call a command ‘true’ makes no sense; “The door is shut” may be true or false but “Shut the door” can’t. But I think we all see pretty well what the Psalmists mean. They mean that in the Law you find the ‘real’ or ‘correct’ or stable, well-grounded, directions for living. The Law answers the question “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?” (119:9). It is like a lamp, a guide (v. 105). There are many rival directions for living, as the Pagan cultures all round us show.

-C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, Sweeter than Honey

Lewis is getting at the idea that the ‘truth’ of the Law of God is not only in its concreteness and congruence to reality, but also in its superiority as a way of life. Loving God and loving neighbor is just plain better than any other system of morality.

As I was digging for a specific quote last night from this section of Reflections on the Psalms, I found myself stopping at the above quote. One thought gripped me, and I share it with you. If we are going to show the beauty and supremacy of Christianity, specifically of what the Book of Acts calls ‘the Way,’ the issue will not simply be that we obey the 10 Commandments. The difference is going to be not only our keeping of the Law, but how our keeping of the Law forms a way of life that is contrary to the way of the world around us.

Our culture, here in modern America at least, and I am sure in much of Europe, is steeped in Darwinism. It sounds like a cliche, but ‘survival of the fittest’ is the way. You are taught from the cradle that you are special, that you are fit, and encouraged to increase though it may cause others to decrease. Sure, you will perform charity. But you will do it that you might increase all the more – padding your own self-esteem and notoriety at the expense of a few dollars dropped in someone’s guitar case.

If our Way is to stand out, it will be because of the ‘truth’ of the Law in the sense that the psalmist used it and Lewis understood it. It will not only be that we do not kill, but that we do not kill when we ourselves are threatened (think how this stands against the Hunger Games mentality). It will not only be that we do not commit adultery, but that we genuinely love our spouses and have mortified the desires of hearts to lust for others at all, we desire no spousal upgrades. It will not only be that we do not steal, but that we do not covet what is not ours, have no desire to climb ladders, and instead are willing to humble ourselves and give sacrificially. It will not only be that we do not lie, but that we are known as those who stand on concrete principles and do not sway, we let our yes be yes and our no be no and refuse to play games with words for the sake of political correctness or faux-offense.

We will testify to the truth of the Law by going against the grain of Darwinism, but also by going against the grain of Pop-Culture. Not only will we not kill, but we will not kill even for the sake of attention, mass attention. Not only will we not commit adultery, we could not care less if anyone is lusting after us beside our spouse, we won’t twerk for attention. Not only will we not steal, we will not covet riches, porsches and mansions and spots on MTV’s Cribs. Not only will we not lie, we will not lie to make ourselves look better, or more glamorous, than we actually are, we will detest self-aggrandizement.

Law-keeping, for the modern Christian, must have a conscious counter-cultural beauty about it. And when it does, we will illustrate what the psalmist says about the law – that the Law is truth.

How are we going to get there? Only by seeing how Christ kept the Law (for us) and abiding in him. For he says, ‘Apart from me, you can do nothing.’ This is no cookie cutter do this, don’t do that type of law-keeping. This is living with wisdom as we discern the signs of the times. This is Jesus Christ, the great counter-culture in one person, living out his life in us by the Spirit. Living out the truth – that if one seeks to gain his life he will lose it, that if one desires to be great he must be a servant of all. This is loving God and loving neighbor by living for them, dying for them, and serving them. And this way is greater.

On Devotions

A commenter asked me to say a word about Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ advice in Preaching and Preachers that Christians should make use of devotional books in order to ‘warm their hearts’ for prayer. So, here goes.

The Doctor’s remarks are from chapter 9, The Preparation of the Preacher. This may very well be the best chapter of the book, at least from my perspective, though chapters 4 (The Form of the Sermon) and 15 (The Pitfalls and the Romance) are right up there with it. What am I saying?, the whole book is very, very good. But I digress.

MLJ was keenly aware of what it felt like to be ‘cold at heart.’ He therefore encouraged folks to do things that would liven their affections with the intent of praying. There is a place for disciplined prayer to be sure, but if prayer is mainly cold and dry in your life, something is amiss. Perhaps your emotions have become dull. And so he pointed to regular, systematic Bible reading, the reading of devotional books, and music as the three primary means of thawing out a cold heart.

The frequent, systematic reading of Scripture is absolutely essential here. If you are cyclically reading the Bible, you will constantly be finding new things that move you. Just tonight this happened to me as I was reading 2 Kings 7 with my family. It tells the story of four lepers who trek into the camp of the Syrians in the midst of a famine only to find that the Syrian forces had fled and left all their goods. The lepers alerted officials to their findings and Israel found a new supply of cheap food, and gold and silver.

The premise, though not made up, is not unlike Goldilocks and the Three Bears. She found the house empty, and she enjoys the porridge. That’s what Israel did, on a much larger scale. As I thought about this passage, my mind was drawn to Christ, and particularly to the words of the Apostle Paul, that ‘he who was rich, for your sake became poor, that you might become rich in him.’ Which led me to the words of Charles Wesley, ‘He left his Father’s throne above, so free so infinite his grace. Emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race.’ Christ is ransacked for our sake. He gives up his goods, his wares, so that they can become ours, and he does so voluntarily.

My point is simply that reading the Bible systematically, as MLJ contended, is a, make that the, major source of the fire that warms the heart toward God.

Next, he encouraged the reading of devotional books. He does not name them in Preaching and Preachers, but I have read enough of him to know what he considered to be gold. He loved the Puritans, as do I. When I find myself down or cold, I inevitably turn to the Puritans for warmth. Thomas Watson, Richard Sibbes, Thomas Brooks, and John Owen are my go to devotional writers. But notice I call them devotional. Today the word devotional usually equals short and fluffy, like Our Daily Bread. But this is not what devotional should mean. The Doctor used the term to denote something ‘with a note of worship in it.’ Devotional then, for him and for me, means something that exalts God and his grace and his glory. Something that draws you up into something of his glory. The Puritans do this.

The Doctor also liked Whitefield and Wesley and Jonathan Edwards. He read Charles Hodge often. He read Charles Spurgeon. These are names that he mentions repeatedly. He read their sermons. If you want your soul warmed, read the good preachers. A couple of months ago when I was reading The Pilgrim’s Progress, I happened to turn one night to a sermon by Spurgeon called Enchanted Ground. I was looking through a table of contents in a collection of his sermons and said to myself, ‘That sounds like it came straight out of Bunyan.’ So it did. But I found in the sermon a call to wake up from slumber, to not let the devil woo you to sleep with his devices and distractions. I needed that, it warmed my heart. Lately I have been reading a collection of sermons by Francis Shaeffer and it has had much the same impact. It has provoked me to praise God in prayer.

Lastly, MLJ mentions music. The devotional power of good music is fairly evident and doesn’t need explanation. Get to know the great old hymns. Learn the psalms. Sing the psalms. On days when I find myself cold, stressed, and melancholy, you will likely find me at some point singing the words of Psalm 43, ‘Send out thy light, send out thy truth, let them lead me…O my soul, why art thou cast down, why so discouraged be? Hope thou in God! I’ll praise him still. My help, my God, is he!’

And in addition, let me encourage here the practice of Christian meditation. Think about what you read and sing. Think deeply about it. Don’t read simply in order to get information. Don’t sing just to work up raw emotions. Read and sing to get fuel. Raw reading and raw singing are cheap fuel that don’t go very far. Reading and singing with an eye toward thinking – deep thinking – however, will provide lasting fuel. I am still living off the fuel I gained from reading Preaching and Preachers years ago – because I have kept thinking about what I read, internalizing it, applying it. The same, of course, is the case with the Bible. Think about what you read. Don’t be content to simply let your eyes pass over words. Embed those words in your soul, apply them to your soul, let them lead you to Jesus every day of your life. The Bible is like a fire, and meditation blows on that fire and makes it come to life and bring heat in your soul.

All of this will lead to more fervent prayer. And it cannot simply be a thing you do in the morning when you wake up. It has to be a part of your lifestyle, it needs to be engrained into who you are every waking moment. Every star in the sky should be fuel for devotion. Every rose in the flowerbed. Every hurricane or tornado. Every book, even the bad ones, even the godless ones. It’s all fuel if you will use it to point your heart back to Jesus Christ and his glory. Ask the Holy Spirit for help.

For more on meditation, see HERE and HERE.

You are the Man, You will be a Substitute: The Gospel in 1 Kings 20

In 1 Kings 20, Ahab, having just defeated the Syrians, makes a peace-treaty with King Ben-hadad of Syria. God didn’t like this treaty. He had devoted Ben-hadad to destruction – he was placed ‘under the ban.’ He was, in other words, sentenced to death. He was a reprobate, headed for hell, and Ahab’s armies would be God’s agent to bring him there. But Ahab had other plans.

This sets up a moment in some ways similar to David’s encounter with the prophet Nathan. This time, an unnamed prophet bruises himself and covers his face in order to appear as a soldier. He confesses that he was given the charge of guarding a prisoner of war, and that the prisoner of war has escaped. He asks Ahab what punishment he would receive:

  • 1 Kings 20:39 And as the king passed, he cried to the king and said, “Your servant went out into the midst of the battle, and behold, a soldier turned and brought a man to me and said, ‘Guard this man; if by any means he is missing, your life shall be for his life, or else you shall pay a talent of silver.’ And as your servant was busy here and there, he was gone.”

Ahab responds in v. 40:

  • The king of Israel said to him, “So shall your judgment be; you yourself have decided it.”

The prophet was only retelling the story of Ahab, who had let King Ben-hadad go, despite the fact that he was to be devoted to destruction. He is in effect saying, ‘Ahab, you are the man!’:

  • 1 Kings 20:42 And he said to him, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Because you have let go out of your hand the man whom I had devoted to destruction, therefore your life shall be for his life, and your people for his people.'”

This is quite the compelling narrative as it is, but it actually serves to set up Ahab, in a sense, as a type of Christ. Ahab essentially is declared by God to be a substitute for the cursed Ben-hadad. Ahab’s life will be taken in the place of Ben-hadad’s. The King of Israel becomes the substitute for a cursed Gentile. He takes destruction in his place.

Ahab was a wicked king, a sinner to be sure. He deserved death in his own right. His death would in no way atone for the sins of Ben-hadad. But we have a righteous King, the King of Israel, he is without sin and willingly makes himself a substitute for cursed Gentiles.

Ben-hadad is named the ‘Son of Hadad.’ Hadad was a false god. So, in 1 Kings 20, the King of Israel is to die for the ‘son of god’ (Ben-hadad). In the gospel the King, the true Son of God, dies for those who have followed after idols.

Ahab was killed by the very Syrians for whom he was dying as a substitute:

  • 1 Kings 22:35 And the battle continued that day, and the king was propped up in his chariot facing the Syrians, until at evening he died. And the blood of the wound flowed into the bottom of the chariot.

Yet there was no atonement for them. There is for us, because Jesus has taken the curse due to sin upon himself.

Meeting God in the Dirt: Toward a Biblical Theology of Jesus and Dirt

Genesis 32:24 And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.

The Hebrew word אָבָק (abaq), translated ‘wrestled,’ literally means to ‘get dusty.’ When you wrestle you roll around in the dirt. In order for the sun to rise on Jacob (Gen. 32:31) he had to have a true, heart-changing meeting with the living God. Such meetings with God only occur if God chooses to condescend to man – God must get dirty.

Man is made of dirt:

  • Genesis 3:19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

God became a man, and therefore took on a body made of dirt:

  • John 1:14 ¶ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

He was born in a dirty place (caves/barns are dirty):

  • Luke 2:7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

He did the dirty work of a carpenter:

  • Mark 6:3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

As he writes the law in the human soul, he wrote in the dirt with his finger:

  • John 8:6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

He spit on the ground and made a mud pie to heal a blind man:

  • John 9:6 Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud…

His feet needed washing:

  • John 12:3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

He washed the feet of others:

  • John 13:14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.

He embraces you, as dirt, by taking your literal dirt (flesh) upon himself and by taking your spiritual dirt (sin) upon himself on the cross:

  • 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.

When he rejects your dirt, he is rejecting your form of sinful humanity:

  • Luke 10:11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’

He gets dirty so that you, as dirt, can be clean dirt. He loves our dirt, that is our humanity, but rejects our spiritual filth that ruins our humanity.

C.S. Lewis said that Aslan was not a tame lion. We might say that Jesus is no clean God. He is clean in the sense that he is pure, and perfect, and holy to be sure. But he’s not afraid to roll around in the dirt. He touches the dirt and he sanctifies it. Rather than it polluting him, he purifies it. That’s why you’re a Christian.