Eating the Manna

Long time; no write! I could make plenty of excuses, but the fact of the matter is that I just haven’t written and created teaching lessons like I should have been doing. Though, sometimes, one of the best ways to learn from me might be learning how not to do things.

So, I have a short lesson before my actual lesson for this blog post: don’t fall into the trap of requiring motivation or a burst of God-given energy to do things you know are proper in your walk with God. Following Christ is not about motivation or feelings. It’s about self-denial and doing what is right in God’s sight. For more on that, check out this blog post: https://nathanielgevans.net/blog/when-motivations-gone

Our Humanity Desires Comfort Over Goodness

In our imperfection, we don’t always desire what is genuinely best for ourselves. We have issues with following Christ to what is actually good because the path to righteousness is difficult and sometimes painful. We are incredibly shortsighted, especially compared to the vision of God’s plans for our lives, and our ability to see goodness is determined not by what is actually good, but by the circumstances that surround us at the moment.

Our definition of “good” is circumstantial, subjective, even, whereas God’s definition of “good” is objective, and His is actually correct.

As a child growing up, I often hated going to bed. Not because I was energetic and hated sleep, although I did, but because the growing pains that afflicted me at night terrified me because they hurt so much. I thought they were the epitome of evil; at times, I thought I would’ve preferred to remain in a child’s body forever if it meant not going through those pains.

But in my shortsightedness, I wasn’t ready to consider that what I needed was growth. All I could see was the pain that accompanied it. Had I remained in my body as a child, I would be completely unable to do any of the things I do today. It would not be good for me now, and it wouldn’t even be as comfortable as it was when I was a kid. Now, being in the body I have is both more comfortable and better for me.

Growing Pains in The Christian Life

Things work the same way in our second lives as born-again believers. What was comfortable for us as nonbelievers is neither genuinely comfortable nor good for us. What was comfortable for our understanding as children in the faith is not comfortable as adults in the faith. There were things we couldn’t comprehend on our biblical milk diet that become difficult and possibly painful as we transition to bread and meat.

There are thousands upon thousands of metaphorical situations I could present to supplement this lesson, but the best one comes straight from our most accurate representation in the Bible: the Israelites.

The Israelites’ Desire for “Comfortable” Slavery

In Numbers 11, only a short time before the Israelites arrived outside the Promised Land, a number of people began to complain about their metaphorical growing pains.

Verses 1, 4-9 say, “Now the people began complaining openly before the Lord about hardship. When the Lord heard, His anger burned, and fire from the Lord blazed among them and consumed the outskirts of the camp. (4) Contemptible people among them had a strong craving for other food. The Israelites cried again and said, ‘Who will feed us meat? We remember the free fish we ate in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our appetite is gone; there’s nothing to look at but this manna!’ The manna resembled coriander seed, and its appearance was like that of bdellium. The people walked around and gathered it. They ground it on a pair of grinding stones or crushed it in a mortar, then boiled it in a cooking pot and shaped it into cakes. It tasted like a pastry cooked with the finest oil. When the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna would fall with it.”

Let’s put these verses in context. The Israelites had recently been rescued from slavery in Egypt where Pharaoh had issued a decree to kill all their male children right after birth. In Exodus 1, we’re told the Egyptians cruelly and ruthlessly worked the Israelites to the bone, hoping to make their lives as bitter as possible so they would become weak. Exodus 3:9 says their spirits were broken by the nature of the slavery forced upon them.

When the Israelites were brought out of their slavery, their trek to the Promised Land was through some of the harshest terrain found on Earth: the desert (The map below shows their path, but if you want to know how it really looks, check the satellite view on Google Maps. That should give you some real perspective). Numbers 1:46 says that the number of Israelites present in the wilderness just over a year after they left Egypt was over 600,000 (and that’s just those over 20 years old). If you know anything about the desert, you know that there is no way it could’ve supported that many people as they traveled through. Not without the divine intervention of God, anyway.

This map shows the area the Israelites traveled through from Egypt.

And divinely intervene, He did. God provided for every need the Israelites could’ve had as they wandered through the desert, even after they continuously rebelled against Him worshiping idols and intermarrying with other people groups. Even when they didn’t trust Him enough to take the Promised Land they were given, He provided for them in the wilderness for 40 years until they finally grew enough in their faith to enter a place overflowing with natural resources and the ability to easily sustain their numbers with excess.

The Difficulty of Current Trials Blinds Us

The Israelites had no right or reason to complain about their circumstances, but in their shortsightedness, they let the repetitive food cloud their understanding of what was good for them. Despite the fact that the food they had would’ve been some of the most delicious tasting stuff you could eat, they longed for what they thought was better in their past: the cuisine of Egypt. Their subjective understanding of “good” caused them to forget about or minimize the struggles they faced during their slavery in Egypt in favor of scratching an itch they had at that moment: the desire for different food.

In that moment of human imperfection and weakness, the desire for something as simple as different food clouded the vision of these people until they couldn’t see the goodness God had promised for their future and the atrocities He rescued them from in their past. Thankfully, God had a plan for that. Unfortunately, it hurt far more than just eating the manna and thanking God for their blessings would have.

God’s Answer to Our Misled Desires

Numbers 11:31-33 says, “A wind sent by the Lord came up and blew quail in from the sea; it dropped them at the camp all around, three feet off the ground, about a day’s journey in every direction. The people were up all that day and night and all the next day gathering the quail—the one who took the least gathered 50 bushels—and they spread them out all around the camp. While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the Lord’s anger burned against the people, and the Lord struck them with a very severe plague.

Regardless of the Israelites’ personal feelings on their diet, the fact of the matter is that they were incredibly ungrateful. They fought against God in their craving of what was not good, what was lesser, and were corrected in their beliefs.

Regardless of what the plague was that they were afflicted with, it was certainly deadly to a number of them, and it was meant to be, undoubtedly. But it served its purpose in teaching the Israelites a lesson: the things of the past, the things they enjoyed in Egypt might have seemed good at first, but they came with a painful consequence. That consequence far outweighed the good that they enjoyed. After all, is a good-tasting quail really worth death? No.

And a lesson the Israelites should have learned upon their arrival to the Promised Land, that we can learn from now, was that God’s goodness for us is undoubtedly worth the minuscule pain we perceive when we are being delivered to it; the goodness of the Promised Land and its bountiful abundance was most certainly worth the time spent eating manna.

A Life of Joy is Worth a Little Manna

So, apply this to your life. When things seem a little annoying or painful in your walk with God, when the path God is guiding you down leads you through a desert and provides you manna to sustain you, remember the lesson the Israelites should’ve learned: a life of bountiful joy is undoubtedly worth eating a little bit of manna.

Life Isn't Fair

I think it’s incredible how some people are capable of taking incredibly complex topics and thoughts—wanderings about life, eternity, God, and anything else—and turning them into a paragraph or less that conveys the entirety of the thought process in just a few words. Take a couple of the following quotes, for example:

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall”

            -Nelson Mandela

“If life were predictable, it would cease to be life and be without flavor.”

            -Eleanor Roosevelt

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.”

            -C.S. Lewis

I mean, I understand words pretty well, and I think I’m decent enough at using them, but some of these folks are able to grasp and synthesize information so well that they’re able to tell books worth of stories in a single sentence. But I came across a sentence today that tells billions of lives worth of stories. It’s found in Ecclesiastes chapter 9, verse 11.

“Again I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, or the bread to the wise, or riches to the discerning, or favor to the skillful; rather, time and chance happen to all of them.”

Man, is there a ton to unpack in that. Not only is Solomon explaining a universal truth that most people accept in each statement, like “the race is not to the swift,” but he’s counteracting them by pointing to the contradictions that come from the world we live in, which is both logically imperfect and divinely oriented.

This sentence briefs the hubris of man in every case, believing that we have guaranteed success when we have gathered sufficient skill, that our achievements come from the diligent work of our own hands and abilities. That’s a fact of our own human pride, and why many believe the way to Heaven is through works.

We believe if we are fast enough, we can outrun others to our goals; if we are strong enough, we can beat back the competition; if we are wise enough, we can make ourselves rich beyond imagination; if we are skilled enough, we can accomplish anything; if we are good enough, we can get to Heaven. In fact, this sentence reflects on similar events to the Tower of Babel, wherein people determined it among themselves that they could reach Heaven if only they could build a tower tall enough.

And if you know the story of the Tower of Babel, the Lord humbled those who attempted to reach Heaven in that way. He turned the hubris of the people into their humbling by acting in such a way to turn their beliefs on their heads. Because no matter how fast, wise, strong, or skilled we are, God is greater, and no amount of anything we possess is enough to displace God and His will.

But not only are we incapable of surpassing God’s will and feats, but we are also victim to sin, which has corrupted the world and turned the good processes God created here upside down in order to wreak havoc. Sometimes, we end up with people being in places they have no business being. Some businessmen have no understanding of running a business, but because of extenuating circumstances, they find themselves in control of a business. An unskilled worker may get a promotion over a skilled worker due to in-company politics. Because of the corruption of sin, things don’t always turn out like they logically should.

But more than that, things don’t always turn out like they morally should. Verses 13-16 say, “I have observed that this also is wisdom under the sun, and it is significant to me” There was a small city with few men in it. A great king came against it, surrounded it, and built large siege works against it. Now a poor wise man was found in the city, and he delivered the city by his wisdom. Yet no one remembered that poor man. And I said, ‘Wisdom is better than strength, but the wisdom of the poor man is despised, and his words are not heeded.’”

It’s not likely that this is the case, though I’m sure it’s possible Solomon could have had a vision about the future, but these verses remind me of Sennacherib’s invasion against Hezekiah. Compared to Sennacherib, Hezekiah had an incredibly small army, and he was expected to give in to Sennacherib’s strength. Instead, Hezekiah outwitted Sennacherib and forced his armies to retreat, delivering the city by his wisdom. Though his story is written in the Bible, he’s probably a less popular historical figure than Sennacherib.

But I know for sure that no one remembered Hezekiah’s wisdom, which came from the Lord. Not even Hezekiah himself. Shortly after, Judah returned to its old ways, abandoning God, and finding themselves in trouble once again. I think it fits pretty well, but what Solomon’s getting at more than a possible reference to events that happened a couple hundred years in the future, is that, sometimes we are outfitted with gifts and skills for a position we aren’t in.

It’s probably better explained in Ecclesiastes 10:7, “I have seen slaves on horses, but princes walking on the ground like slaves.”

This could be a literal reference to captured princes being forced to walk while servants of a conquering kingdom ride horses, but, as I wrote here: (https://nathanielgevans.net/blog/god-of-metaphors), God is a big fan of teaching us through metaphors, and I can think of no better figurative representation for Solomon’s statements in verses 11-16 than this.

Sometimes, you just happen to have skills for one thing but be in a place to do another. I’m sure there are many people out there who could be smart enough to cure cancer, fix many world issues, or unite people, but who will never see a science lab, a government seat, or a place of influence; it is simply a fact of this world.

Verses 17-18 say, “The calm words of the wise are heeded more than the shouts of a ruler over fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner can destroy much good.”

The good news is that, more often than not, people end up where they are supposed to be to do what they are called to do. Generally, you’ll find the science whizzes in the lab, the thinkers writing and speaking their thoughts into existence, the mathematicians with a calculator, the physicists discovering more of God’s design. But all it took was one to change this world from, “everyone will end up where they’re supposed to be,” to, “most will end up where they’re supposed to be.”

In the end, you can boil Solomon’s statements down even more—to just three words, in fact. Life isn’t fair. But I’ll qualify that statement. Keep this in mind the next time you see someone whose talents aren’t being employed properly, even more so when you become disgruntled with your position and believe it is your own talents that are being wasted. Life isn’t fair, but the God who holds it in His hands is just and good. He will not forsake you nor abandon you; He will use you as He needs you used and work things together for your good.

Where You Belong

Election day is tomorrow. I don’t really want to touch politics more than I have through mere references in other blog posts. This morning, I woke up not knowing what I was going to write about today, but I prayed and asked God to give me a message to deliver while I was listening to music, and the song that came up shortly thereafter immediately gave me something worth writing to Christians about.

I know I’ve touched on this before, but last time I meant it to teach a lesson. This time, I’m here to pass on some hope to you with a reminder that this is not where you belong. This life and the things that infect it are merely a temporary dwelling leading up to a fabulous eternal life.

Whenever I feel down thanks to the struggles of this life, the first thing I jump to is good, healthy, Christian music because it speaks to me, and one of the songs that hits me harder than most when I’m feeling depressed and anxious about where things in my life are going is “Where I Belong” by Building 429.

Sometimes it feels like I'm watching from the outside

Sometimes it feels like I'm breathing, but am I alive?

I will keep searching for answers that aren't here to find

I sometimes dwell too deeply on things that I can’t change, questions I can’t answer, experiences I go through yet feel no control over. I know that right now a lot of others are doing the same things. It’s easy to look at the state of the nation we live in—no matter where you are—and despair over the past, wonder about the future, and worry for the current situation, which seems so bleak.

In the United States, specifically, many Christian ideals, biblical ideals, and their implementation in our society, are being decided over and over again as elections come every four years, and as we so desperately cling to what we know is right by the Bible, it becomes so easy to feel like we’re losing the presence of God in our nation. We have questions for God about why he would allow leaders in charge who condone the ruthless murder of unborn children, about why he would allow His people to be persecuted when He could protect them.

So when the walls come falling down on me

And when I'm lost in the current of a raging sea

I have this blessed assurance holding me

And sometimes, we feel so hopeless, like the world our God set up is falling in on itself, preparing to crush us. We’re outnumbered and in over our heads. We’re not capable of doing what must be done on our own. But here’s the hope.

All I know is I'm not home yet

This is not where I belong

Take this world and give me Jesus

This is not where I belong

When it feels like it’s too much; when you think you have no hold, no influence, on the situation, remember these things. Here—this Earth—is not the end. There is more to come; there is better to come.

We sometimes try to grasp the world and hold on for dear life as we work to finagle and wrangle it around to God’s way of thinking. We try to take the whole world in our arms at one time and wrestle it into submission. But we don’t have to.

Sometimes—all the time—we need to step back and stop trying to take the world. We need to let God take it, the only one who can hold it all in a single hand. The third line of the chorus in this song is so simple, yet so profound. “Take this world and give me Jesus.” When you feel overwhelmed, keep that in mind, too. When you chose to follow Jesus and love the Lord your God, you made a trade.

We think of salvation as a gift, and it truly is, but it’s a trade just as much. You get to trade the weight of the world for the help of Jesus. You get to say to God, “take this burden from me,” and be carried by Jesus to the place you belong, because you don’t belong here. I don’t belong here. You and I belong with the Father.

So, no matter what happens tomorrow, no matter who becomes president or senator or representative or governor, remember that your time here is temporary. The lease on your home here is short; soon you won’t have to pay that rent anymore. When all’s said and done, you’ll have a wonderful, permanent home waiting for you. And there, you will be at home forevermore.

Listen to Where I Belong on Spotify. Building 429 · Song · 2011.

Approaching the Lord

The first seven verses of Ecclesiastes chapter five express the need to approach God and your relationship with Him with caution. As with any significant relationship, our relationship with God is one that must be intentional and guarded so that we do not cause any undue issues.

And, in fact, this must be stressed more so with God because He is perfect and just and has a standard higher than we can ever reach, unlike our earthly relationships. You can’t afford to be lackadaisical when it comes to being righteous. Even though God forgives when we ask, the damage that it can do to you on Earth is significant.

The first verse opens up with how our relationship with God should look; it should not be something that is done by obligation, but by obedience and desire. It describes a mindset with which we should chase after God. “Guard your step when you go to the house of God. Better to draw near in obedience than to offer the sacrifice as fools do, for they are ignorant and do wrong.”

I’d like to note that my Bible version translates the Hebrew word “shama” differently than most versions, which use “to hear” or “to listen” in place of “obedience” in mine. However, the meaning remains the same. The use of obedience in my translation likely serves to highlight the difference between the “this or that” proposition Solomon was making here.

The two options when you approach God as Solomon presents them are “to hear/listen/be obedient” or “to talk/do/sacrifice.” You can either come to God with a heart of obedience that desires to do what He would have you do, or you can come before Him with a heart that says, “Look, I recognize that you’re God and all, but I’m just going to do what I want.” This is a cautionary statement to not let your own desires be placed higher than God’s calling for your life.

This is quite similar to the introspective actions we should take before partaking in communion, as indicated in 1 Corinthians 11:27-32. We must examine ourselves as we come to God, humbling ourselves before Him and recognizing who He is and who we are in comparison.

Verse 2 and verses 4-6 say, “Do not be hasty to speak, and do not be impulsive to make a speech before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. When you make a vow to God, don’t delay fulfilling it, because He does not delight in fools. Fulfill what you vow. Better that you do not vow than that you vow and not fulfill it. Do not let your mouth bring guilt on you, and do not say in the presence of the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry with your words and destroy the work of your hands.”

There are plenty of reasons why it’s important to not make promises to God beyond, but the main reason is that we can’t keep them. If you say, “I will not sin,” you will sin. If you say, “I will pursue you wholeheartedly for my entire life,” you will fail to do so in a moment of weakness. We’re not good enough to live up to our promises like that.

James 5:12 says, “But most of all, my brothers and sisters, never take an oath, by heaven or earth or anything else. Just say a simple yes or no, so that you will not sin and be condemned.”

But another reason is that God knows so much more than we do that it’s not worth trying to claim we will adhere to whatever our fickle minds decide on in this moment. Where our God is unchanging, we are constantly in a state of flux, moving from one desire to the next as fast as a hummingbird’s wings flap.

“God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few,” is pretty clear in meaning: you don’t know enough to make promises about what you will do. Let your words to God be, “Yes, I will do as you say.” You don’t need more than that. He knows your heart, anyway.

One final reason, if the first two don’t satisfy your curiosity, stems from the fact that God is omniscient, all knowing, and sometimes the consequences of your vows to satisfy your own desires don’t turn out for your benefit. A great example comes from Jephthah in Judges 11.

Jephthah, following pagan customs, proposed a bargain with God in order to win a battle against the Ammonites. Why, exactly, he chose to make this bargain when the Spirit of the Lord was with him is unclear to me, but the results of the vow were very clear. The bargain was that the first thing that came out of Jephthah’s house when he returned home from his battle with the Ammonites would be sacrificed to God. Unfortunately for him, the first thing that came running out of his front door was his only child, his only daughter.

Had he remembered who God was and what strength was given to him by the Lord’s divine power, he would not have lost his only daughter because he was too quick to speak to the Lord. (Granted, I’m not saying every time you make a promise to God, something like this will happen, but you should know that our God is a just God, and your words have power, meaning. Failing to go through with a promise is a lie to God, and His punishment must be just. I think I speak for us all when I say that I’m thankful He is also a forgiving God and Jesus is the sacrifice for our sins.)

There are a ton of verses on guarding your mouth, guarding your speech, guarding your tongue, but the one I like most is certainly in verse 6: “Do not let your mouth bring guilt on you.” Don’t let what you say make you guilty before God.

My dad is rather fond of this saying, and we can, and should, all take this to heart a little more: “Better to keep your mouth closed and let everyone think you’re a fool than to open it and prove that you are.” The tongue is a betrayer, it’s lashing at the bit to make you mess up—it cannot be tamed and made to say only what is good. Sometimes, the best thing for us to do is shut up.

Finally, verses 3 and 7 say, “For dreams result from much work and a fool’s voice from many words. For many dreams bring futility, also many words. So, fear God.”

This is fairly simple, yet complicated at the same time, but the essence of the message is that rewards come from effort, not from words. It’s very much like our common phrase “If you’re going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk.” If you’re going to talk the talk of being obedient to Christ, you must then walk the walk He has set before you. The rewards come from actually doing what He says, not from saying you’re going to do it.

Verse 7 leans its meaning more towards the ideas expressed in verse 2 about God being in Heaven and us on Earth. Humans, especially compared to God, have an incredibly small attention span. It’s so small that I probably lost eighty percent of the people who clicked on this article by now. We are so easily distracted that when we try to decide what we’re going to do instead of listening to God’s plan, we change our minds 300 times in the span of our lives. Why? Because we don’t know what God knows.

We’re like a child who is presented with five of their favorite desserts but is told they can only choose one of them. That child is going to point at the first, then the second, then the third, and so on, over and over and over again without ever actually sticking to a choice. Then, that child will attempt to eat all of them instead of choosing.

We are too fickle to decide what we will do. That’s why, when we approach God, we should approach Him with obedience and our ears open to hear what He has to say to us, then we should endeavor to do as He asks with as much effort as we can give because that’s where the rewards come from.

The Appropriate Time

Ecclesiastes chapter three expands upon the latter statements in chapter two, wherein Solomon indicates that it is a gift of God to enjoy the things of this Earth. But, chapter three also provides some context in an important caveat to remind us that, even though many things are appropriate for enjoyment, they are only appropriate in the right time.

When we study the Bible, we know that context is absolutely key to understanding what is written and ensuring we don’t misunderstand what was being written for us. Of course, this is true for any teaching, as many sentences on any single subject can be misconstrued if removed from their appropriate setting. But context is especially important with Ecclesiastes—I’d even argue that it is the book of context in that each chapter builds off itself to show us a narrative of Christian behavior and thought processes we should adhere to.

That being said, on to the verses! The first eight verses talk about “an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven.” Notice a change in word choice here. When talking about activities we partake of in this life in the first two chapters, Solomon continuously referred to them as being “under the sun.” Now, however, we’re talking about activities “under heaven.” This distinction is important.

I don’t think there’s any clear, definitive separation between “under the sun” and “under heaven,” but contextually, there is a separation of drastic importance. Culturally, there are many parallels between the style of Egyptian literature and the style of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, both of which were written by Solomon, who would have had a view and understanding of Egyptian culture due to marrying Pharaoh’s daughter. Egyptians worshiped Ra, the sun god, as their most important, most powerful deity; therefore, “under the sun” could have referred to the pagan religion of the Egyptians. This would lead “under heaven” to mean “under God.”

But, even within the book of Ecclesiastes itself, there is a contextual difference between the two. “Under the sun” invokes things that are sinful in nature, while “under heaven” invokes things that are of God. You’ll likely notice that each time “under the sun” is mentioned, it is in a negative tone to refer to sinful actions that do not satisfy us. The first verse of chapter three is set in direct context to that as a tone shift.

So, with the background set, chapter three is meant to contextualize and clarify some of the final statements in chapter two, mainly the idea that it’s okay to enjoy some of the things we have to experience in this life. It does this by first separating things that are inherently under the sun—evil—and under heaven—good.

The things that are inherently evil are not listed in chapter three, but it’s pretty simple to determine what those things are. Merely take those things that God commands us not to do and understand those are evil and there is no time or place for them. The good, however, are those things which God has gifted to us: friendships, marriage, sex, money, knowledge, entertainment, food, happiness, etc.

All these things, which are not inherently sinful, have their place. Sure, overindulgence or an idolization of these things can lead to sin, but they are not sin in and of themselves. That’s what Ecclesiastes means by things being appropriate in their time. If you were to have sex outside of marriage, that is sin. If you have sex in its time in marriage, it’s not sin. See where I’m going with this?

There are also double and triple layers to the information provided here. There are three important separations within the listed activities: one group is a list of actions where one must happen before the other; the second is one that requires understanding of one to truly understand the other; and the third are antonyms—direct opposites.

An example of one leading into another is verse two, “A time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot.” You can’t die before you are born, and you can’t pull up a plant that hasn’t been planted. In other words, some things are only able and appropriate to occur after something else has, so trying to do them out of order makes them inappropriate, i.e., marriage and sex.

The second group involves things like in verse 4, “A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.” We’re doubling down on context here: you can’t fully understand the extent of happiness until you have experienced sadness. For you to know the full measure of one, you must know the other.

And the third is as in verse 8, “A time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.” Yes, there are appropriate times and things to hate and war against. Love and hate are complete polar opposites, but they each have their place. Even God loves and hates things. He loves us but hates our sin. These are to let us know that there are times even for actions that we don’t necessarily like.

The appropriate context of actions is stressed so heavily in Ecclesiastes to, once again, remind us of the limitations of our life here. As Solomon says in verse 11, “He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity into their hearts, but man cannot discover the work God has done from beginning to end.”

I’ll point your attention mostly to “He has also put eternity into their hearts, but man cannot discover the work God has done.” As I’ve said time and time again, our problem with these actions comes about when we try to use them to fill what only God can fill. We try to take these contextualized things and fit them into eternity because we know we need something for eternity, but we cannot understand the vastness of what God has done. So, in its time, the things we do are appropriate. Just don’t take them out of their place and put them in the place of God because there is no adding to or taking from God.

Each Day Anew

Insofar as sin, nobody’s keeping score of your wrongdoing. God doesn’t hold a record of your wrongs over your head when it comes to your salvation. In fact, the Bible says that once you repent of your sins and ask Him for forgiveness, He removes your sin as far as the east is from the west. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” That’s Psalm 103:12.

I don’t remember where I heard it, but I’m going to reiterate it because I hadn’t thought of it this way before someone else said it. That Psalm is really cool because east and west are the only directions that never touch, by definition. If you travel north, you can, and will, at some point reach a place where you will no longer be going north, but south. If you travel south, you will end up going north once you reach a certain spot in Antarctica. But east and west don’t work that way. If you flew across the Atlantic Ocean from the east coast of the U.S. all the way across Europe, Asia, and back to North America, you would always be traveling east. Even once you passed the spot you started, you’d still be going east.

The metaphysical points labeled “east” and “west” never touch. They actually become increasingly distant as time goes on. It’s kind of like the expansion of the universe. One edge of the universe continues expanding while the opposite does the same. Those two “edges” of the universe are constantly growing farther apart.

Mathematically, it’s like infinity and negative infinity. The points of these numbers aren’t fixed. They’re ever-increasing and constantly creating a wider gap between the two of them. It’s kind of abstract, but incredibly cool when you really think about it.

Last Monday, I wrote about shame along with Dan Bremmes’s “Get up Again.” Today, I’m talking about moving past the sin involved in shame with Matthew West’s “Day One.”

These two songs have similar themes, though I particularly love the idea behind the phrase “day one.” Day one is a moniker for a new beginning. A fresh start. A first step. It’s acting as if the things that came before no longer exist, and your journey of life only begins on that day.

So, let’s talk about it. The song opens with the sentiment of stepping out of the past:

Well, I wish I had a short term memory
Wish the only thing my eyes could see
Was the future burning bright right in front of me
But I can't stop looking back

Sometimes, it’s easier to remember particularly bad memories because of the emotions attached to them. Personally, I can remember almost every single time I embarrassed myself throughout my life because the memories are burning with the shame and embarrassment I felt at the time. Our brains store and recall information far more easily when that information is supercharged with emotion. That’s what the opening lines of the song mean. It’s hard to forget those things, even when there is so much good to look forward to.

Things would be far easier if we were perfect and never messed up, but we can’t hold on to that image, and we end up wishing and praying for God to just remove our imperfections, as the next stanza of the song says. But I’m here to tell you, in case you didn’t know, that such a thing will not happen in this life. God will not remove your imperfections while you’re still on Earth. And that’s where the lead into the chorus comes in:

I wish I wasn't wishing anymore
Wish I could remember that nobody's keeping score
I'm tired of throwing pennies in a well
I gotta do something
Here goes nothin’

It’s time to stop wishing and praying for things to change when you aren’t doing anything about it yourself. Like I said last week, we wallow in shame and avoid coming to God a lot out of that shame, and it stops us from doing what we need to do for the kingdom. You have to do something. You have to get up and change yourself.

See my hourglass is upside down
My someday soon is here and now
The clock is tickin'
And I'm so sick and tired of missing out

I love the imagery of these lines. There’s so much in these four lines that I won’t be able to talk deeply about all of it without making this about 4,000 words longer than it should be. This is a call to action. It’s saying not to let your sand sit at the bottom of the hourglass as if time isn’t ticking by. Turn the thing up and get your own timer going. See, you’ve only got so much time on Earth, whether you’re measuring it or not (as in the third line) so you’d better start measuring it.

The second line expresses the same sentiment as Matthew West’s “Do Something.” You keep saying you’re going to do it tomorrow? Soon? It won’t happen. Make your tomorrow a today. Make your soon a right now. Otherwise, it’ll never come. Don’t miss out on the things God has for you because you won’t make today Day One.

Every morning, mercy’s new, so start over and march on to the beat of a new drum. Today could be day one of the rest and best of your life if you’re willing to step out on the grace of the amazingly forgiving God we have who is so merciful He is willing to let you start each day anew. He is willing to essentially forget every wrong you have ever done so that, to Him, you committed no wrongs at all.

Don’t sit there wishing that you didn’t do those things you did. Get up and live like those things didn’t happen.

Get up Again

I’m choosing to talk about the themes in this song, “Up Again” by Dan Bremmes, now because of the subject covered in my Ecclesiastes study on Friday. Part of the song talks about living your life on this Earth well, but what’s more important is the acknowledgement that you are going to fail. You just need to get back up afterward and continue to chase Christ.

One of the things I haven’t really talked about in Ecclesiastes is that Solomon sinned, a lot, in his attempts to find joy in the things of Earth. His having 700 wives and 300 concubines was not a cool thing by God. His massive collection of gold and silver that he idolized at one point was not a cool thing. He even had too many horses according to one of the laws in Deuteronomy 17:16.

The point is, there was a lot that Solomon did wrong. He has a lot of people beat purely on the wives and concubines portion, if we were to compare sins—not that we should. But even though he sinned often, he was, and is, considered the wisest man to ever walk the Earth. 1 Kings 3:12 says, “I will therefore do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and understanding heart, so that there has never been anyone like you before and never will be again.”

So, how much more allowable, then, is it for us to fail if Solomon could fail? And look at David, too. He was called a man after God’s own heart, and even he sinned many times. That’s why the following is one of my favorite lines:

And I guess not every little thing

Works out just the way you dreamed

You can take a couple wrong turns

Still end up where you’re supposed to be.

Sometimes, I catch myself looking at my past for too long—all the horrible decisions I’ve made, friends lost and found, opportunities missed—and I worry and fear for my future. Did I mess it up? Have I lost my chance at God’s promises for my life? If you think about that, too, know that the answer to your questions is: no. You absolutely have not messed up God’s plan for your life. You’re not strong enough to do that.

You can mess up. You can step off the straight and narrow. You can turn around and walk away for a time and still go where God will have you go. Especially if you didn’t just look God in the face and say, “I’m not doing that, God.” Jonah basically told God no and still ended up doing exactly what God had planned for him to do. So will you. A few steps in the wrong direction because you couldn’t resist temptation briefly in your human imperfection cannot stop God from doing what He plans to do through you and for you.

But it’s hard for us to think about that because we have trouble stepping outside of our past. We remember our mistakes for so much longer than we remember the good we’ve done. That’s another reason I like this song. It confronts our shame and tells us to leave it behind, which is exactly how God would have us do it:

The other day, I was thinking to myself

Made a list of all my mitakes

Oh, I wish I could’ve run to you

And tell you all about my heartbreak

And I wondered to myself ‘wait a minute

Am I even on the right path now?’

Had a couple wins, but I got knocked down

But I know that if you were here right now, and you’d say

Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win

You gotta get up, up again

Keep holding on, it’s not the end.

Hear it from me: God doesn’t want you living in shame. He’s forgiven you of your sin. It’s time that you forgive yourself and let your heart move on to serving God fully. Trust me. Living in your own shame will only hold you back from doing what God asks you to do. You don’t want that, and God doesn’t want that.

Feel guilt, because you are guilty of sinning. But let that guilt drive you to Christ. Then give it all to Him and move on. Get back up from your fall and keep on fighting. As the song says, you’ve only got one life, so don’t let it get away by staying down when you’re knocked on your butt. Hike yourself up and get after it again.

Listen to Up Again on Spotify. Dan Bremnes · Song · 2019.

Bring Your Best

Many times, God calls us Christians to give Him our best in all that we do for Him because He doesn’t want anything less.

A couple examples: the difference between a good sacrifice and a bad sacrifice for Cain and Abel wasn’t meat versus plants, but it was the spirit in which it was given. Abel gave the best of his flock, whereas Cain gave only some of his produce.

The woman who gave two copper coins for her offering was considered as giving the better offering because she gave all that she had. It didn’t have anything to do with her offering being less valuable and the offerings of the wealthy being more valuable monetarily. It had everything to do with the position she was in.

I think we often get it in our head that what we give to God has to be equal to what other give, that our lives and abilities for the kingdom must be compared with others. I’ve already touched on this in another article, but it bears mentioning again. The life of a Christian is not meant to be one of synonymous walks with Christ. It’s meant to be one of uniqueness. Your walk, and your best, is different than every other person’s.

So, with that said, what does it mean to give your best? I have two parts of scripture to discuss to get at that answer. The first is Malachi 1:8. “‘When you present a blind animal for sacrifice, is it not wrong? And when you present a lame or sick animal, is it not wrong? Bring it to your governor! Would he be pleased with you or show you favor?’ asks the Lord of Hosts.”

The important thing to learn here is that your best requires a sacrifice on your part. Giving something to God doesn’t hold any meaning if it’s something you didn’t want in the first place. See, sacrifices must be something of value, and what value is an animal that is blind, lame, or sick? These animals were not valuable. They could not serve as good breeding stock, nor could they take care of themselves. They only used up resources the farmers could use for other purposes, so giving them up wasn’t a sacrifice at all.

Similarly, we must give our best to God. The best of our time; the best of our energy; the best of our skills. If you only give time to God when you have it spare, what good is it as a sacrifice to God? It isn’t any good because you didn’t have to give up anything. It was useless to you, and thus it is a useless sacrifice to God. This is part of the reason why we’re encouraged to give the first part of our morning to God because, for many people, it’s far more of a sacrifice to wake up 10 minutes early than to stay up 10 minutes later.

Your skills and energy are the same way, too. God doesn’t want you to say, “I’ll serve you in this way, but I’ll keep my career to myself.” Your career is part of your best, and thus, it’s part of giving yourself up to God.

But why should you give your best? Because you made a promise that you would when you accepted the gift of salvation and gave your life to Christ. Malachi 1:14 tells this to the priests who were accepting bad sacrifices, but this isn’t just an Old Testament thing. When you pronounced Jesus as Lord of your life, you gave a vow that He could use you as He wished to accomplish God’s will.

It says, “The deceiver is cursed who has an acceptable male in his flock and makes a vow but sacrifices a defective animal to the Lord.” Even now, you are hurting yourself by giving a valueless part of your life as a sacrifice to God. You’re holding yourself back from potential blessings, and you’re breaking the promise you made to God.

Here’s the final note about bringing your best and your relationship with Christ. For this, I’m taking you to Revelation 3: 15-16, “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of My mouth.” This actually says that you are better off being unsaved than being a “lukewarm Christian.” See, being a “lukewarm Christian” means that you’re deceiving yourself into believing you’re a follower of Christ and will be receiving the rewards that follow that when you’re actually not.

There is no such thing as a “lukewarm Christian.” You’re either with God or not with God. You’re either filled with God’s righteousness, with the Holy Spirit, or you’re stuck in your sin nature. You have the gift of salvation or you don’t. There’s no in-between. You can’t choose to accept salvation and then give up nothing.

So, you have to bring your best because doing anything less is indicative of a life lived as an unsaved individual. It sounds harsh, but there is always the reminder that bringing your best is not something you can succeed at all the time. God’s grace allows for us to fail at that. While there is no in-between saved and unsaved, there is an allowance for our imperfectness, thankfully. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be giving God your everything, though. That’s how you become a “lukewarm Christian.”

Understanding the Trinity

The Trinity is something that we disagree on more than we should. Some groups believe it’s a thing, and some don’t. This is another one of those big God things that we humans with our infinitesimally small brain power struggle to comprehend because it is, in and of itself, a paradox on the same level as “Can God make a rock so large he can’t lift it?”

But I think if we frame the Trinity in a way to make it not a paradox, it becomes easier to understand. So, I’m going to do it with a metaphor representing God as light. When my old youth pastor explained how Jesus could be God and man at the same time, he used paint, and that works, too, but I am irrationally delighted by the idea that I’m using God to represent God—since God is light, and I’m using light as the comparison in the metaphor (Okay, I’m probably the only one who cares about that, but anyway…).

To start, let’s get a light breakdown. First of all, light is the only reason we can see color. Without the radiation bouncing off of objects and into our eyes, we would be blind. Second, there are 7 main wavelengths of light that make up the visible spectrum. You may recognize them: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet—rainbow colors! Third, any wavelength of light can be seen separately from the others. And fourth, they can all be seen together.

Now, I’m no color scientist, so that’s as deep as I’m going to go on this, but just keep the last two statements in mind as we move on to the real metaphor. I’m simplifying the light spectrum down to something that we humans have developed and use pretty much every day: The RGB color model. This model is used to display images on pretty much all of your electronic devices. It’s made up of three basic wavelengths of light: Red, Green, and Blue. These three wavelengths of light work together to display pretty much any color you could ever want, up to 16,777,216 colors, which is awesome!

But the amount of colors it can display isn’t what I want to talk about. The great thing about color, and the great thing about light, is that while white light is light, the parts that make white light: red, green, and blue, are still light as well. The wavelength of light that makes the color red is still red when it’s with green and blue to make white. They don’t form together to create a super wavelength. It’s like doing a math equation where you add 100 + 100 + 100, but you get 100.

Let’s really get into this metaphor, then. Let’s say that God the Father is Red light, God the Son is Green light, and God the Holy Spirit is Blue light. If you take Red light away from Blue and Green light, that Red light is still light, right? As in, you wouldn’t see red light and say “well, that isn’t light because it’s not white,” right? Or, you don’t say, “Well, that’s less light because it’s blue light,” right? Of course not. A red spotlight is just as much light as a white spotlight. The same for Blue and Green. Separately from each other, they’re still light.

When you put them together, though, they don’t become more light, right? Nope! Red, Green, and Blue light together are just light. It’s not mega-light. It’s not super-light. It’s still just light.

And another thing about that, too, those colors of light still exist separately to the light you’re seeing when they’re together. That’s how seeing color works with natural light. When you see a red object, what’s really happening is that the object you’re seeing has absorbed all the other individual wavelengths of light and has reflected the red wavelength back to your eyes. If the red wavelength disappeared to make light happen, then no objects would be red. Things could literally only be white—lit up—or black—not lit up.

So, taking this back to God. God the Father exists separately from the Son and the Holy Spirit, but He is still God. Just like Red light is still Red light when not with Blue and Green. God the Son is still God when He is separate from the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit is still God when He is separate from the other two persons of the Trinity. Yet, when you put them together, their definition doesn’t change. They’re still God just like light is still light when you put it together or take it apart.

God is still God whether He’s with the other persons of Himself or not. He’s not a fraction where 1/3 + 1/3 +1/3 = 1 God. He’s light, so He’s light when He’s only a certain wavelength of light, and He’s light when He’s all of light. He doesn’t become less light, and He can’t become more light. He’s just light.

Our Free Will

Have you heard the song “Already There” by Casting Crowns? If not, there’s a link to it at the bottom of this article, so go give it a listen.

This song tackles the omniscience of God and how He sees His plans for us compared to how we do, but I think many of us Christians understand this well enough to use it as a skipping point to a much more complicated subject that’s hinted at in this song, too, and that’s God’s presence existing outside of time and how we are to rationalize that with the concept of our ability to decide what we do.

We know God existed before time, in the beginning of time, in the past, the present, the future, and He also exists currently outside of time. It’s hard to wrap our heads around a God who can play with time like we do Play-doh, stretching it out and squishing it together. I know I struggle with it a lot, but I had to at least come up with some way to think about it because I had to tackle the topic of free will to answer a query presented to me by someone struggling with the concept.

Take the lyrics for the chorus of “Already There”: “To You my future is a memory / Cause You're already there.” It’s a little weird to think about God knowing what we’ll do before we do it. I think to some it sounds like He knows what we’re going to do because he’s destined us to do it, and there are a few Bible verses taken out of context that can make it sound like we’re destined to believe or not believe in God, to be saved or not be saved.

Of the verses I’ve seen taken out of context in this manner, here are just a few: Jeremiah 1:5, Ephesians 1:5, and Colossians 3:12. But those verses don’t necessarily mean that God made all humans, picked, for example, 50% of them and said, “these people will be the ones I choose to be saved.” To believe in such an idea changes the very character and nature of God. But what those verses do mean is that God knows something we don’t.

The simplest way I used to rationalize God’s omniscience with my little-iscience, my limited, fallible brain power, was that whether God knows you’re going to say yes to His gift of salvation, He still chooses to offer it to you.

And that’s an important conclusion, but it only addresses a small part of the question: how does free will work? So, let’s apply this to a much larger scale—the scale of one lifetime. You see, the thing that was bothering the girl who got me to consider this in a deeper way was concerned with how to live her life and fulfill her desires when she knew that God wants us to fulfill His desires over our own.

And we could get into the whole discussion about how our desires work in relation to God’s desires for us, but that’s a topic for another day and another article. So, the way to really think about this is to take a look at how God’s omniscience works and then try to compare it to something a little easier to think about.

See, if we’re doing this relationship with God right, then part of what we have is the deepest friendship we could ever have with someone. It’s one where our friend knows us so well He can tell what we’re thinking. That friends knows us so well that He could see us presented with any situation and know exactly what we’d do every single time.

For example, you’re presented with a choice of three flavors of ice cream: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Your friend is with you as you’re given the chance to choose which one you want, and right before you reach out and take your preferred flavor, chocolate, your friend leans over and says “I bet you’re going to pick chocolate.” So, you reach out and grab the chocolate ice cream and eat to your heart’s content.

Does the fact that your friend told you that you would pick chocolate change that you would have picked chocolate anyway? Did it suddenly eliminate the other two options? Did it change how much you enjoyed the ice cream? Of course not. You picked chocolate because you like chocolate more than vanilla and strawberry, and you enjoyed it because you like it. It’s actually pretty simple, all things considered.

Someone else knowing that you’re going to choose a certain way doesn’t automatically make the other options disappear, and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to like the option you chose any less than if they didn’t know.

It’s the same thing with God. Just because He knows you’re going to choose career Y over career Z doesn’t mean you didn’t get to choose career Y. Just because He knows you’re going to choose to serve in a certain way doesn’t mean the option wasn’t there for you to serve in another way. Don’t let your fallible mind’s inhibitions keep you from doing what God wants you to do. You might end up pulling a Jonah and Nineveh situation, and that’s just not as pleasant as doing what you would find the most joy in anyway.

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Faith Needs Works

Now, before you assume anything, make sure to stick around, because I promise that I’m not writing things that are unbiblical when I say this, even though it sounds controversial.

We all know that we are saved by grace through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who was fully God and fully man, lived a perfect life on Earth, and sacrificed himself on the cross so that we could be free of sin. The Bible is pretty clear on that. And let me be clear: works cannot save you. But what I’m getting at is how our faith should manifest itself in the everyday lives we have.

We often talk about Christians showing good fruit, and how Christians who aren’t showing the good fruit of the Spirit need to check their lives and relationship with Christ because something’s gone wrong in their faith, and that’s very much the truth, but having good works is just as important as being patient, kind, gentle, having self control, etc. See, after we’ve accepted the gift of salvation given to us, we don’t get to just relax in our little bubble of Christians where we practice patience and goodness and peace. We have an obligation to God to do as He calls us to do.

James challenges his readers to change the way they thought about their faith. James 2: 14-17 says, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way faith, if it doesn’t have works, is dead by itself.”

Based on verses 15-16, I presume that the people James wrote to had the same problem a lot of us have today: they liked to pray about everything, but never do anything about it. Think about it. How many of us pray about the homeless person we see walking down the street every day, but never stop to give him food? How many of us hear from a neighbor who’s struggling to pay their bills but don’t think about loaning or giving him some of our spare cash until he can find a new job?

I think some of this faulty faith we have stems from our belief that God will step in and take care of things deus ex machina style. We tend to run straight toward asking God to provide via a miraculous divine intervention, but we often forget that we are God’s representatives on Earth. We are His deus ex machina. We are called to be an unexpected power to save others from a potentially hopeless situation. Think about this: if God just did everything by His divine intervention, what reason would we have to be on Earth?

That’s why we are called to have faith with works. It’s really easy to say you believe in God and you believe that he will take care of you, but I think we can all agree it’s a lot harder to act that out. It’s difficult when you see someone unable to afford the groceries they need, and you feel God telling you to step in and pay for them, but you know that you don’t have any money to spare for the month. That’s why we have phrases like “put your money where your mouth is,” and “actions speak louder than words.”

The good news is twofold. The first part is that God comes through when we exercise our faith. Remember Abraham? I hope so because James certainly did in James 2: 20-23, “Foolish man! Are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless? Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works, faith was perfected. So the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness, and he was called God’s friend.”

In Genesis 22, after Abraham proves he is willing to sacrifice his only son for God, God promises that the descendants of Abraham will be numerous and a blessing to the world, and man oh man did he come through with that promise. And, in fact, one of Abraham’s descendants became the greatest blessing the world has ever seen: Jesus.

The second part of the good news about faith is that it works like a muscle: the more we exercise it, the stronger it gets. Exercising your faith is like the trust we have in all things, but I’ll adapt the age-old chair example. You can’t know a chair will hold you up until you sit on it, but once you do, you’re quicker to believe it will hold you each subsequent time you sit down.

When we give away our last bit of money to help someone in need and see that God takes care of our needs afterwards, we become quicker to do something similar the next time, and quicker again the next because we have experienced God following through on His promises.

That’s what works is, and that’s why it’s important. Since we’re called to be God’s representatives on Earth, it’s so very important that we exercise our faith via works because that’s how the faithless see God. It helps set us apart so that we can show who God is, how He works, and that He truly does take care of those who believe in Him. When we don’t exercise our faith through works, all we’re doing is spouting hot air.

Finally, just to get you thinking a little bit, let’s go back to the chair. See, a lot of us are really quick to say we believe the chair will hold us. And we’re free to do that as much as we want. But the fact of the matter is, you don’t really believe the chair will hold you up if you refuse to sit on it. In the same way, we must question our faith: If you say that you have faith in God until you’re blue in the face but refuse to step out and exercise your faith, do you really have faith in God? And since we are saved by grace through faith in Christ, the question then becomes: are you truly saved?

Finally, if you want a song reference for what I’m getting at, check out these two down below! These guys are great artists and they tell a wonderful message.

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Unique Positioning

It’s likely that you are very aware that you are a unique human being, an individual. We’re all members of the human race, but for each person, there is something that sets you apart from the other 9 billion members. Even identical twins have differences that serve to identify them as unique.

Similarly, though all Christians are part of the body of Christ, and we are all called to fulfill the great commission to make disciples of all nations, we’re not all called to do that in the same way. Even those who are called to the same positions within the church (pastors, worship leaders, teachers) there are differences that make you unique in your fulfillment of Matthew 28:19.

God did this on purpose. 1 Corinthians 12:14-20 says, “So the body is not one part but many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,’ in spite of this it still belongs to the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,’ in spite of this it still belongs to the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But now God has placed each one of the parts in one body just as He wanted. And if they were all the same part, where would the body be? Now there are many parts, yet one body.”

Cleverly, God designed the human body very specifically. Every part of it is unique. Every part is necessary. And every part has to do its job to keep the body functioning at 100 percent. Even though you have two eyes, the inch or two that separates one from the other is enough that they each see the world from a slightly different perspective, even to the point that your right eye can see things your left can’t, and vice versa.

Here’s where I get to the point. There are two parts of being unique in your function as a Christian: your function, which is your job as a pastor, worship leader, teacher, etc., and your positioning, which is where you are at any given moment. Together, these two parts serve to identify your unique fulfillment of the calling to make disciples.

So, let’s break it down. The first step is to determine your function, or your spiritual gift, as it were. Each Christian has one or more spiritual gifts they are given by God through the Spirit to advance the kingdom, and they often point to how you serve in the church. Some are gifted knowledge and wisdom, so they teach; some are gifted the ability to manage, so they lead; some are gifted especially strong empathy, so they encourage. 1 Peter 4:10 says, “Based on the gift one has received, use it to serve others, as good managers of the varied grace of God.”

The second part is, arguably, the hardest part to live out because I think we often get the calling to serve wrong. I think we’ve come to this belief that only pastors or teachers can spread the gospel, that only missionaries can go out to the mission field and show Christ to others, that you have to be one or the other to evangelize.

But I think what we fail to realize sometimes is that you are where you are because that’s where God wants you. He doesn’t want an engineer to go to seminary school and learn to be a pastor so he can make disciples. He doesn’t want a scientist to leave her research field and run off to a foreign country to spread the Gospel. He wants you to show Christ to others right where you are.

Joel 3:10 says, “Beat your plows into swords and your pruning knives into spears. Let even the weakling say, ‘I am a warrior.’” See, in this verse, God doesn’t tell the gardener to go join the military. He doesn’t say to the shepherd, “Learn to shoot a bow and throw a spear.” He tells each one, “I have given you what you need for where you are. Shape it into a weapon to fight the good fight.”

In other words, you are uniquely positioned right where you are to advance the kingdom of God, so stay there, because that’s your mission field. You are necessary to the body of Christ right where you are in your everyday life. That’s why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:21-22, “So the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ Or again, the head can’t say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’" But even more, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are necessary.”

Sure, maybe a pastor can preach to 300 or more people a week in his church, and maybe TobyMac can reach 80,000 people at each of his concerts, but you are just as important. Taking it back to our body metaphor, in a pinch, the right arm can do the work of both arms if it has to, though it will never be able to reach across the body to the same distance the left arm could. (Try it. Reach your right arm across your chest. It just can’t get to where your left arm could.) But it wasn’t designed to. The left arm was designed to do the work of the left arm because only it can reach far enough away from the body. In the same way, a pastor could step out and do what an encourager/helper was designed to do, but he wasn’t designed to.

When one part of the body of Christ has to do the job of two parts, it makes the whole body less effective. That means we’re reaching fewer people when parts of the body aren’t evangelizing in their mission field. So step up. Pick up your briefcase, or grab your screwdriver and go to work, using what you have in your unique position to adhere to the calling of Christ. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 28:19.

Love is Sacrifice

For King and Country’s “The Proof of Your Love” is a quintessential contemporary Christian song detailing Christ’s love and how we’re supposed to follow up on that in a world that desperately needs to experience it because we’ve all been thinking of love all wrong.

Take your favorite RomCom or other romance and picture the relationship between the two lovers. What brought them together? What binds them together? Would their relationship last outside the confines of the screen or book?

Now, my experience with romances is fairly limited, but from what I’ve read and watched, I’d say the chances are pretty slim. We have this misconstrued vision of love. This vision has come about through a combination of faulty views on what love is and how relationships work. We’ve been influenced by fiction stories and movies, and also, I think, by our society’s lack of openness about love in our relationships.

Let’s take a look at your classic movie relationship: the lovers often come together via a hardship experienced by one of the two. The other attempts to help them through it, to fix them, and they eventually catch feelings for each other and get together.

When people talk to others about how they “fell in love” with their significant other, the phrase “we just had a connection” is used fairly frequently. And maybe they did, but that’s not how love works. But that somewhat harmless phrase has been perpetuated and misunderstood as it has been conveyed through our societies, and now we have a bunch of people searching for a connection that, frankly, they’re never going to find.

We’ve got this definition of love as a feeling, an emotion, a connection, a noun. It’s the butterflies in your stomach when you see someone attractive or connect with someone on a deeper level, but that’s just not it. Those feelings are nice, valuable, wonderful, but they’re just that: feelings. Love? Well, love is a verb.

So, if love is a verb, an action, and not a noun, a feeling, then how does it work? Well, let’s go to the best example of love there ever was: Christ. He died. He sacrificed his life for us. It wasn’t selfish. It wasn’t for him to boast about his actions. It wasn’t prideful. It was done with a heart that desired the best for us.

It’s oft used, but John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” God the Son sacrificed Himself for us. That’s what love is. It’s sacrifice.

You see, the thing we call love now can’t be love because it’s selfish. It’s “loving” someone because you get nice feelings from them. That’s about what you want. But love is about what others need, desire, want. Love is laying down your life, and I don’t mean dying, for someone else. I mean choosing to serve and take care of the person you love before you take care of yourself. It’s setting aside yourself for the sake of another. John 15:13 says “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

Love doesn’t rely on feelings, either. It’s a choice. Why? Because if we are to love like Christ loved us (John 15:12), our love must be unconditional because Christ’s love is unconditional. He does not love us more or less when we make mistakes. So, too, when those we love make mistakes, we should not love them more or less.

I’ll leave y’all with this pure definition of love from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 “Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not conceited, does not act improperly, is not selfish, is not provoked, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Don’t feel love. Do love.