Reform & Revive

10.17.2007; 14th and E. Carson, Pgh, Pa (if i wasn’t a calvinist, i’d hate women)

even among your heart’s great durress, you want to scream, shout and dance (huh?!) in your joy. this all-consuming joy that only shows its face in those dark hours. it’s those days when you are brought so low that there is only one to be reached out to, and in that great distress, that horrible despair, even, is the one who ordained that misery - those weaknesses - to fight for perfect glory. and in that is the great comfort.

five months ago in this very coffee shop, you scribbled down those words about all things being made new - from Death comes Life, right? right. and in these tragedies (or so we see them) lie our daily-mini-deaths. and borne out of those deaths are new mini-lives. and in the redemption from that death, to this life - what joy!

in deepest despair one cries out - and in that cry, there is sustinance - that greatest joy.

what foolishness: to look to the grandest times of sorrow + suffering with the strongest sentiment of nostalgia + yearning. don’t you taste redemption? it is near. and in fact, it is here. suffer again; there is no fear.

death begets life. sorrow begets only the purest of all joys.

and here you are, young + naieve. what grand tragedy have you endured? you are a fool to write such ugly words. you cannot fathom the heart-break of the most awful tragedies. how can you so boldly proclaim that you yearn for them? in those most tragic of kingdoms that you have found yourself (though they know nothing of the depths of some - or most, for that matter!) always sustained by the power borne of such weaknesses.

if you must boast and delight in anything, delight in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties. when you are weak, then you are strong.

For those who might have been wondering: yes, I am still alive.  I started the below article back in April, maybe even March… and then life happened. =)  But here I am.

I love that the necessity of humility was brought forth so early here at Reform and Revive.  If the gospel is to intersect with our lives and our culture, humility is a necessary ingredient in that process.  Why?  Because God’s ways are not our ways and to walk in His ways requires that we surrender our drive to live “reasonable” lives.  (Perhaps Paul B’s comments on our “subnatural” state will help us with this…)

The first step toward walking in God’s ways is acknowledging Him as the eternal Sovereign Lord, which requires more humility than most of us possess (as was pointed out by Whit via Tozer in a previous post).  It requires that we admit to being creatures—and subservient creatures at that.  As Michael Casey puts it in his book on humility, you will often notice those of our race having trouble forgiving ourselves for any slowness of mind or ineffectiveness of will—essentially, for being human.  We refuse to see ourselves as the created subjects we are; we forget that we are not gods. We need to accept the fact that we are humus; our origins are in the earth and not the heavens.

But when we do come to terms with our creaturehood, we find ourselves in a stance to accept God as He is.   A wholly Other, uncreated, divine, eternal being … And to recognize our position relative to Him.  Mainly, as our Creator, He is the best authority on how we are meant to live.

There are many aspects to the life God calls us to, but in this article I choose to highlight what our Lord described as “the one thing that is needed” in Luke 10:38-42.  In this passage, Jesus tells Martha that her sister, Mary, has chosen the one thing that is needed, the thing that will not be taken away from her.  What is that One Thing?  Mary “sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.”

So how do we choose the one thing that is needed?

As always, I think it is a matter of faith—believing that God is right when He tells us that the most important thing we can do in this life is to sit in His presence, to listen to His words, to gaze on Him, to know Him.  This is the one thing that will bring the freedom, acceptance, and significance we are all seeking.  This is the One Thing that will fulfill the deepest desires of our hearts and transform us into the image of our Savior and King.  I don’t know about you, but too often, I just have a hard time really believing this.  My faith is weak.  I think, surely I must need to be productive and successful in some things and have the love and approval of some men and have my own way in a few matters at least to experience all that I desire of life.  But no, we cannot believe it, beloved.  Only when the Perfect, Holy, True God is our heart’s pursuit and desire are we free.

Can you believe this?  Will you choose to believe?  If so, I’d like you to consider all the different ways your life could look when only this One Thing really matters—sitting at the feet of Jesus, meditating on His word, seeking His presence, beholding His beauty and wisdom, listening for His voice, obeying His loving direction.  If you choose to believe the words of your Lord, what would this mean for your life?  Where could you live?  What job would you need?  What people would you need around you?  What would demand your time?

When considering the possibilities, on the one hand, having only one need is incredibly freeing, but on the other, it wounds our pride and offends our reason.  But this is the price we pay, this is the cost we count when we choose to follow God’s ways and not our own, when we submit our lives to the lordship of Another.  But be assured, child of God, that He rewards those who diligently search for Him (Hebrews 11:6) and that He is greatly pleased and honored by your faith in His wisdom in spite of how strange it may sound to your creature ears.

I know that I have listened so long to the ways of the world that I have failed to recognize that things such as professional success or personal dreams or the respect of men are expendable in God’s Kingdom. These are the lessons I have been learning lately, and so I ask you what the Spirit has been asking me:

What reasonable things in your life are keeping you from knowing intimacy with God as the one thing that is needed?

And will you humble yourself enough to let Him show you?

It’s worth it, my friends.  How do I know?  In part because I have tasted the sweet fruits of forgoing what I thought was reasonable, right, and good for more of Him, but more so, I know simply because He says it is so.

Will you believe Him?

The Nature of God is the defining Nature against which all things are measured.  Let me unpack that a bit.  What God loves above all things is Himself.  His Glory, His Presence, His Work, and His Son are the things which bring Him the most delight, hence why those who are saved are being conformed to the image of His Son - they must be or wouldn’t be accepted by him.  So, at the end of time, everything and everyone will be compared to the Nature of God and He’ll keep that which stands up, and cast away what doesn’t.  Believers will be found in Christ (God-incarnate) so they will find themselves with Him forever.

So, it is that which does not exist in accordance to God’s Nature (the defining, upholding, creating, outside of creation thing it is) that is considered sin.  That’s why all sin is described by the Bible in “realtive” terms that all imply missing, falling short, or perverting a pre-existent standard.  Words like “perverse”, “de-praved”, “fallen”, and “sin” (an archery term meaning to miss the bulls-eye) all show this.

This means that what exists in line with His Nature is the truly natural.  This makes the present fallen reality of the world - all things not in line with His Nature - not what’s “natural” but indeed “subnatural,” making the things of God not “supernatural” but the truly “natural.”  Everything God does then to break into this world is a matter of justice, restoration, and redemption - a matter of purchasing from darkness to bring to where all was meant to live.

What does this have to do with life as we know and experience it?  Simply put, it means freedom.  The idea of “supernaturality” creates this sense in us of impossibility, and we proceed to live life out of that notion that God is so “unattainable” for our little wills to obtain.  But the truth is more wonderful and terrifying all at once.  It’s not that he’s so far above, but it’s the fact that we’ve sunk so low that causes this gap.  But though we are trapped in this valley, Christ still descended and did the work required to make us truly natural humans again.  This means that in Christ we are more ourselves than we ever were apart from him.  We don’t lose our humanity, we gain it.  So the fight of this life is to live as you were naturally meant to live.

We must fight the subnaturality of this world to attain that which is truly natural, and in that find the rhythm of life that resonates in the most ancient and basest part of our souls that hearkens to a time in a garden long ago, and in a city that is yet to come.

I am currently working on a longer post to contribute here but I wanted to make one last shorter post in the meantime. As I was reading J.I. Packer’s Knowing God (do yourself a favor and go buy this book), I read this exhortation regarding how we should study theology. It was particularly convicting for me:

“We need to ask ourselves: What is my ultimate aim and object in occupying my mind with these things? What do I intend to do with my knowledge about God, once I have it?…If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it is bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited. The very greatness of the subject matter will intoxicate us, and we shall come to think of ourselves as a cut above other Christians because of our interest in it and grasp of it; and we shall look down on those whose theological ideas seem to us crude and inadequate…To be preoccupied with getting theological knowledge as an end in itself, to approach Bible study with no higher motive than a desire to know all the answers, is the direct route to a state of self-satisfied self-deception. We need to guard our hearts against such an attitude, and pray to be kept from it.” - Page 21-22

Packer then acknowledges a common question he has come across in discussing the study of theology:

“Do not all children of God long, with the psalmist, to know just as much about our heavenly Father as we can learn?…Yes, of course…But if you look back to Psalm 119 again, you will see that the psalmist’s concern to get knowledge about God was not a theoretical but a practical concern. His supreme desire was to know and enjoy God Himself, and he valued knowledge about God simply as a means to this end.” - Page 22

     I don’t want to get into the habit of short posts like this one, but I simply couldn’t resist posting a quote from Charles Spurgeon that C.J. Mahaney used this past weekend at the New Attitude conference:

“I once knew a good woman who was the subject of many doubts, and when I got to the bottom of her doubt, it was this: she knew she loved Christ, but she was afraid he did not love her. ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘that is a doubt that will never trouble me; never, by any possibility, because I am sure of this, that the heart is so corrupt, naturally, that love to God never did get there without God putting it there.’ You may rest quite certain, that if you love God, it is a fruit, and not a root. It is the fruit of God’s love to you, and did not get there by the force of any goodness in you. You may conclude, with absolute certainty, that God loves you if you love God.” - Charles Spurgeon