What God Wants

If anyone else is like me, you’ll have struggled with God in an attempt to rationalize doing what you want rather than what He wants, or at least trying to figure out every last move He has set up for you. Personally, I hate not knowing what’s going to happen to me on any given day. I prefer a structured environment with no surprises so I can mentally prepare for what’s ahead.

Well, this mindset is what the song “What You Want” by Tenth Avenue North tackles. Let’s just jump into this with the opening lyrics.

Everyday I've been feeling the pressure
I always gotta know the plan
It's been a weight that I've tried to shoulder
I thought I could, but I can’t

Seriously think hard about how annoying and stressful it is to plan even the smallest things. Take a party, for instance. You have to find a place, get the food, arrange for drinks, invite all the people, make sure everyone knows where it’s at, arrange entertainment, arrange a cleanup, and deal with what’s leftover. There are hundreds of contingencies you have to be ready for, and that’s a lot of pressure for a party.

How much more do you have to think of when you try to plan out your life? There are things you’re going to have to react to that you would never even be able to consider at the start. Where there are hundreds of contingencies you might need to plan for something small, there are hundreds of thousands, or even millions, you have to look out for when you’re planning something big. And before you even start thinking you can, let me tell you that you aren’t capable of thinking of everything. None of us are.

When you think about it, and the next set of lyrics convey this, we’re wired for someone else to take control of all that, someone with an infinitely powerful mind who can see everything we’ll ever have to face.

And I'm so tired
Of chasing dreams
When I am wired to let you lead

About those first two lines, I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with chasing your dreams. Many desires are placed on our hearts by God to be fulfilled, but I qualify it with this: don’t let your dreams be set completely in stone. Be ready, if God wants you to do something different, to follow after His plan instead.

You're changing my heart
To want what you want
To love how you love
And that is enough
There's no greater plan that I need to know
You only ask me to follow

When we choose to follow God, there is a renewal by the Holy Spirit, and it should change our hearts to want what God wants and to love like God loves so that we become more like Him. And really, is there anything we need to do that is more than to love how He loves? I don’t think so. I say if you truly exemplify God’s love, you’ll never go wrong. Other people might do wrong to you, but you can never do any wrong by just loving people the way God loves us.

I’ve seen so many examples of those last two lines in the Bible, wherein people called by God didn’t know the outcome of their actions but did as God asked anyway, and they were rewarded greatly because of it. One of the best examples I know of is with Abraham and Isaac. Abraham had no idea what would happen when he went up to sacrifice his son, but because he did what the Lord asked him to, not only did he strengthen his faith in God, but he also was blessed beyond measure and from him came millions of descendants. What was a heavy burden in sacrificing his son became a very light one by the end of it.

Oh, there's freedom in this surrender
I feel myself come alive
And the burden feels like a feather
When I let my agenda die

it’s incredibly freeing when you just listen to God. It takes all of your energy to try and fight against him, as Jonah found out, and it inevitably fails. But when you just follow God’s will, as Abraham did, the burden you’re granted is like a feather. At the end of the day, Abraham’s burden was to, basically, do nothing. His only job was having descendants, and he’d already started that.

Basically, what this all boils down to is that it’s so much easier to just let go and follow the plan God has already written than it is to try to throw away his plan and make your own. When you want what God wants, everything becomes so much easier.

Listen to What You Want on Spotify. Tenth Avenue North · Song · 2016.

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.

Healing is Uncomfortable

On Sunday, my pastor preached about healing with the main focus being what Jesus asked a sick man at the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem (John 5:6) “Do you want to get well?” And the sermon hit home with me, so I wanted to share it in my own words here.

Sometimes, we become far too comfortable in our character flaws. It’s a lot easier to tell people “Oh, I get angry pretty often,” or “My eye wanders too often to places it shouldn’t go,” or “Well, I just don’t mince words. I call it as I see it” than it is to fix the underlying issues: that you are an angry person, easily set off, that you lust after every attractive person you see, or that you are rude to people.

For me, it was always more comfortable to be angry at, and rude to, people who upset me or I didn’t feel comfortable around. I was standoffish and unwilling to become close to anyone because I was anxious. For a large part of my life, I didn’t handle people well, and I convinced myself it was just part of my character. It was easier to get angry at people than it was to confront other thoughts and emotions when they asked for forgiveness. It was easier for me to get upset than it was to think about what happened in their life recently to cause them to act that way.

But after confronting those things and working to change how I react to people, I’ve found myself settling into my new behaviors and living far more at ease with those around me than I ever did before. It sucked at first; things were always awkward, and I probably made myself look silly a few times, but I got past the embarrassment and discomfort and became more like Christ.

We act like our sins are part of who we are as if nothing’s wrong because we’ve lived with them so long we don’t know who we’d be without it. But, specifically when it comes to sinful behavior, God calls us to rid ourselves of that, even though it’s uncomfortable, but you have to want it.

As with all facets of our faith in Christ, changing who you are to become who God wants you to be is a choice. There’s no magical change that’s going to happen in your life when you’re saved or when you ask God to confront your sinful behavior that will immediately stop you from sinning. You have to actively choose every moment to not partake in that behavior anymore until the new action becomes more ingrained and natural than the old.

And that’s why Jesus asked the man if he wanted to get well. The man in John 5 had been sick with his malady for 38 years. That’s 16 years longer than I’ve been alive. He had all that time to grow comfortable and live with whatever it was that kept him from walking, working, and doing daily activities that most people did. He likely had few to no responsibilities. He probably never did anything on his own.

So, it was probably more of a dilemma that we all thought when Jesus asked him, “Do you want to get well?” He had to confront within himself whether he’d rather finish out his life living as he did where he had others to take care of him and nothing to do but live and relax or deal with the pain and discomfort that would likely come from learning how to walk again, dealing with moving muscles and joints that hadn’t been exercised in 38 years, getting a job, providing for himself, paying taxes and tithes, etc.

Now, the Bible doesn’t tell us what happened with this guy after he was healed, but I can at least tell you what would’ve happened physically. Given time, the man would beat the pain and awkwardness of learning to walk after 38 years of not being able to. His legs would’ve become comfortable with the movements, and not only would his quality of life have been greatly improved thanks to his walking, he would find so much more enjoyment in living. He would’ve been able to go out with his friends, take a walk at sunset and see God’s beautiful creation, or pick up a hobby.

What we’re dealing with in behavior change looks like this: a false comfort in sin, discomfort through change, and then perfect comfort in Christ. As I’ve said frequently in other articles, sin is not fulfilling, but Christ is, and in fact, He overflows you with fulfillment. While change invites discomfort, once you reach the top of the hill, things become so much better.

I know when I first read this chapter, I thought the question was kind of silly. Of course he’d want to be well, I’d thought. But when I considered it this way, I realized how important of a question it was. To become more like Christ, you have to want it, and you have to choose it all the time, even, and especially, when it’s uncomfortable.

It will be uncomfortable for awhile. Healing usually is: as cuts heal and scar, they itch; as your body fights off disease, you get a fever; and as your heart and mind change, you deal with discomfort as well. But once it’s all said and done, you’ll find you’re much better off having gone through the healing than you were living in the sickness.

Where Healing Begins

The song “Healing Begins” by Tenth Avenue North has one of my favorite lyrics in all of Contemporary Christian music because it holds so much wisdom within it, and I need to share it.

In fact, this whole song is full of amazing wisdom, and I’m going to use it to lend a helping hand to an argument I’ve wanted to make for a couple of days now, which regards how to speak to those who are not saved and living in sin.

We often say, “Love the sinner. Hate the sin.” And I think we’re all on board with that. But I want to take that a step farther: you don’t express your hate of the sin to people who don’t care about your opinions on what is sin and what isn’t.

Why? Because as far as they’re concerned, their beliefs say they’re doing nothing wrong. At that point, your job is only to love them, not point out how much you hate what they do. You have to love them to the gospel so they can see Jesus’s love from the cross, and from there, they can work on changing themselves if they choose to accept Jesus’s sacrifice and worship Him as Lord.

This is a big topic, and I’m not going to do the whole thing justice, but this is a short example of what I mean and how it works. Foul language is wrong. The Bible says, “No foul language is to come from your mouth,” in Ephesians 4:29. But that’s a belief that Christians hold, not a belief that the rest of the world holds. Therefore, it’s not something that can or should be fixed until after someone becomes a believer.

See, our job is to get nonbelievers to the cross so they can accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Then the Lord works on their hearts to change their behavior. It’s something that must happen within them first before you or anyone else can help them.

But back to my favorite lyrics ever, which are these:

So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do
So we think that you're good
And you can't believe it's not enough
All the walls you built up
Are just glass on the outside

These six lines can encompass so many different things. Whether you’re talking about faith through works or working and living like a super Christian on the outside when you know your heart isn’t in it, these lyrics are so broad, yet so specific, they can be applied to any situation. But the key point is the separation between you and others.

The last two lines of the first stanza are flawless, in my opinion, and this comes from someone who used to put up his own walls like these. See, while we think the walls we’re building up keep people from getting too close and seeing the darkness in our hearts, it actually just keeps us locked in. Others can see right through the glass separating us to see us suffering in our own hurt.

The walls don’t keep others or God out. They just keep you in; they keep you from experiencing the freedom that comes with letting go of yourself. They keep you from receiving help from others because though people can see through the glass to your suffering, they can’t get through it to help ease your pain and share your burdens, as Christians are called to do.

But, as the next stanza describes, when you let your walls fall down, people will be there to help you, and you’ll experience freedom.

The chorus is pretty great, too.

This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you're broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark

Healing begins when you let your walls fall down so the light can come to the dark and clear it out. This is quite literally one of the best metaphors for salvation I have ever seen. Sin is darkness and in us. Jesus is light and outside of us. We block him out by thinking we’re good enough on our own and building up walls with our own works. But when we break those walls down, the light is able to reach us and begin clearing out the sin, the darkness, within us. The only thing stopping Jesus from reaching us is us letting Him in.

And all that happens inside of you. It’s a change of heart and mind, not just actions. Because when you just try to change your actions instead of your heart and mind, you get the next few lines.

Afraid to let your secrets out
Everything that you hide
Can come crashing through the door now
But too scared to face all your fear
So you hide but you find
That the shame won't disappear

We’re often afraid to confront that which we know is wrong. We want to keep it a secret from God, so we hide it, but that leads to shame, which further leads us to separation from God. And, this leads you right back to building up walls to keeping God out. You have to literally come to where you’re broken with God and let Him cover the sin.

Sparks will fly as grace collides
With the dark inside of us
So please don't fight
This coming light
Let this blood come cover us
His blood can cover us

His blood is capable of covering the wrongs inside of you. His light is capable of rooting out the darkness. His grace easily defeats your sins and mistakes. So let your walls down, reach inside yourself, and let God confront your problems with you so healing can begin.

Listen to Healing Begins on Spotify. Tenth Avenue North · Song · 2010.

Value of Wisdom

A lot of people, even a number of Christians, try to find satisfaction in life through the things they do or own: work, partying, sex, money, houses, cars, pets, a spouse, kids, etc. Last week, I wrote about Solomon’s experience trying all of these things to achieve that satisfaction and realizing exactly how unfulfilling they are.

The way Solomon makes it sound in Ecclesiastes is as if living life and achieving things here have no meaning, then, but that’s not the case either. At the end of my last article on Ecclesiastes, I left you with this:

See, as Christians, we can have happiness in the things we do here because we have the joy of Christ in knowing that, once we’re done here, there is everlasting joy to look forward to. We can enjoy the things of this world because we are already satisfied by Christ. We will never be satisfied by the things of this world, but we can have a little fun doing the things that are not sinful. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing some of these empty things if you’re already full.

Solomon tackled the why behind this in verses 13-17, but specifically, I want to point your attention to verse 14. “The wise man has eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.”

See, we’re all, prior to Christ, walking around on the road of life. None of us know where we’re going or how to get there. It’s like we’re stumbling around, trying to feel the road with our feet, or grasping for a guardrail that lays alongside it. That’s the fool walking in darkness. The worst part: the fool even has the ability to see. The fool has eyes, but either does not know how to open them or willfully refuses to do so.

The wise, on the other hand, have had our eyes opened by God. We see clearly the road that lies ahead of us and know exactly where to put our feet. We have no need to feel the road with our feet or grab onto the guide rope or a guardrail to go in the right direction. God is above us shining brightly on the entire road so that we can always see to follow it.

But the rest of verse 14 says that the same thing happens to us all: “Yet I also knew that one fate comes to them both.” But at the end of it all, whether you can see the road you travel or not, every person will eventually come to the end of their life on this Earth and find an eternal existence. There is an end to the road of life.

Think of it this way: the road of life isn’t a very nice road. There are portions of the path that are overgrown with vines and trees and thorned plants. Some parts have giant holes with a thin beam of wood stretching across it. Some portions of the road are guarded by wild animals. But just as much as it has bad parts, the road has good parts, too.

At one section of the road, there’s a quaint restaurant giving away refreshing drinks and food. At another, the road changes from hard asphalt to a nice, soft grass so you can take your shoes off and walk barefooted. At one point, you even get to take a ride in an air conditioned limousine. And if you make it to the end? You walk off the edge and fall to your death. But afterwards, you are resurrected to live eternally with God.

But some people walk along this road and, because they cannot see, they stumble into the nasty traps laid out on it. Some may get past a few obstacles, but if their eyes remain closed, they will eventually succumb to one of the traps and die. Instead of finding eternal life in Heaven, they are condemned to an eternal existence of suffering in Hell.

But all of that isn’t the real point of this section of Ecclesiastes. The real point is made to those of us who had our eyes opened to see the road. Some of us who are blessed with wisdom take it far too seriously.

When we come to the restaurant handing out drinks and food, we walk by it without partaking because we’re suspicious it’s poisoned. When we reach the soft, grassy section, we keep our shoes on and step gingerly, afraid of potential spikes hiding in the soft grass that could pierce our feet. When we get to the limousine, we ignore the chauffeur telling us to get in out of fear that it would turn off the road into disaster.

When I say we take it too seriously, I mean it. There are some believers out there who don’t allow themselves to have fun with anything, and that’s just not it. Yes, our absolute, primary goal is to turn people to Christ, but what good is it to walk this life on Earth just to die without enjoying some of the pleasures that God has put here for us to experience?

Solomon realized that, as he says in verses 15-16. “So I said to myself, ‘What happens to the fool will also happen to me. Why then have I been overly wise?’ And I said to myself that this is also futile. For, just like the fool, there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man, since in the days to come both will be forgotten. How is it that the wise man dies just like the fool?”

See, there’s no special reward for ignoring the restaurant, the grass, and the limousine. You don’t get an extra commendation from God because you forsake the pleasures He provided for us on the path we walk. Not everything that exists on this Earth is a lie from the pit of Hell meant to distract you from Christ. You can build up some things on this Earth without it being sinful.

The important thing about each of these enjoyable parts of the road of life is the perspective of the one experiencing them. For the believer, we know that it is just a blessing on the road to our final destination: Heaven. We know that there’s no point in putting our stock in those enjoyable activities. We partake and continue on, preparing for our eternal life.

Wisdom, sight, is valuable not because it is the be all end all but because it can give you perspective for each situation. It allows you to determine that the pits and thorns are surpassable. It shows you that the restaurant, soft grass, and the limousine are not the end of the line.

Foolishness, blindness, however, blocks the perspective of those who come across the obstacles and pleasant experiences on the road. While a believer might eat a meal at the restaurant and move on, the nonbeliever will sit at the restaurant for days, stuffing himself with food believing that the death that comes from overeating is the fulfillment of the road.

Whereas she with sight might see the grass and feel the softness of it on her feet until she crosses to the next section of the road, she who is blind might frolic in the grass until she dies of starvation thinking that the ultimate joy of life is to experience the softness of it on her feet.

While the wise man might ride in the limousine to the stop, exit, and thank the driver for the ride, he who is foolish might ride in the air-conditioned limousine long after he was supposed to get out, reveling in the coolness of the air and the comfort of the leather seat until it careens off the edge and takes him to his death.

And that’s what Solomon is saying in verse 13, “And I realized that there is an advantage to wisdom over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness.”

See, on the road of life, we all get to experience some hardship and some happiness. The advantage believers have is that we know that neither the hardships nor the happiness are the end of the line, but that the end of the road is us being smothered in absolute, never-ending joy as we experience an eternity of worshiping Christ.

Wisdom and Commission

Wisdom, and the knowledge of faith, are somewhat undervalued in today’s Christianity. With that, I also believe that we undervalue living life separate from the world and how that impacts the people in our lives, and even those who are not part of our lives.

Many Christians today live far too much like the culture we find ourselves in. With the exception of some standouts, so many of us live as a part of the world five or six days a week and only turn to God on Sundays and Wednesdays. But people talk about that all the time. I’m just going to give you an example of what happens when you don’t.

If you’ve ever read 1 or 2 Kings, you’d know the current king of Israel had a huge impact on whether or not his people followed God or turned to idolatry. Solomon was no different. In 1 Kings 10, a foreign queen appeared in Solomon’s court after hearing about his fame and wisdom in connection with God. When she arrived, she tested him with numerous, difficult questions about his faith, and she found answers to all the questions she had. It was so different and amazing that the Bible says it took her breath away.

In our faith, we do not get to specialize. We cannot allow ourselves to only be consistent and good at one part of our walk with Christ. You have to be able to walk separate from the world just as well as you can speak about the gospel. You have to be able to defend against questions just as easily as you can recite John 3:16 from memory. Why? For situations such as the one Solomon found himself in. It’s an integral part of the Great Commission.

1 Kings 10:1 says, “The queen of Sheba heard about Solomon’s fame connected with the name of the Lord and came to test him with difficult questions.”

Here’s the first part of the equation to having a well-rounded walk with Christ. Solomon was doing something so different that a queen who lived roughly 3,000 KM away from him heard about his wisdom and kingdom and its connection to God and traveled the entire distance with a massive retinue just to speak with him. Even by camel, it would’ve taken her roughly 75 days just to travel that distance as the crow flies—it might have been longer depending on travel routes.

Verse 2 says, “So Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too difficult for the king to explain to her.”

This is pretty impressive. The last part of verse 2 says that the queen asked Solomon about everything that was on her mind. Solomon could’ve been answering questions as complicated as space travel, how God exists outside of time and the connection of that to free will, quantum physics, or more. Okay, some of those could be a little exaggerated, but the point is that no matter what she asked about, Solomon had a satisfactory answer.

Now, you’re not expected to know everything about every subject; none of us come close to the wisdom of Solomon. But you are expected to know as much as possible about the Bible. We are supposed to read, understand, know, and use the knowledge and Wisdom God gives to us. Not just the NT or the OT. Not just the gospels or Paul’s letters. ALL of it.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

It even says why: so you may be equipped for every good work. So you can be prepared for any situation God presents you with. If you follow step 1 and live your life separate from the world, at some point, you will have to defend your faith, so make sure you’re prepared to do so.

Step 3 is to provide for those whom you lead. Our faith is not one that can be lived and practiced in isolation. Where it exists in you, it must also flow out to others.

Verses 8-9 say, “How happy are your men. How happy are these servants of yours, who always stand in your presence hearing your wisdom. May the Lord your God be praised! He delighted in you and put you on the throne of Israel, because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel. He has made you king to carry out justice and righteousness.” Verses and 4 and 5 also touch on Solomon’s care for the kingdom of Israel.

See, by virtue of Solomon’s faith and life lived for God extending beyond himself, it became evident that this wasn’t something that only Solomon could have. Solomon had the wisdom, but he was not the only one who had the love and providence of God. And because all the people of Israel had the love, joy, and providence of God, the queen of Sheba recognized this was something she could have as well.

Now whether the queen converted or not, the Bible is not fully clear. The verses seem to indicate that she could have, but we know for sure that she recognized God as a divine power because of Solomon’s life, wisdom, and actions towards the people of Israel.

The Great Commission says to go and make disciples, so go and make disciples. But how much more effective could you be in spreading the kingdom if, in addition to going to make disciples, you lived a life so clearly for God that you made people come to you just to see how you do it?

Israel is located near the town Gaza, while the queen of Sheba’s country is labeled “Saba.”)

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.

Life is Empty

Ecclesiastes chapter 2 expands upon the pointlessness of earthly pleasures, going so far as to call everything achieved in this life emptiness. My personal Bible has subheadings for parts of the chapters, and three of them in this chapter are titled “The Emptiness of Pleasure,” “The Emptiness of Possessions,” and “The Emptiness of Work.”

It’s really interesting how Solomon hits on the three main things that we consider the largest vices in today’s times: pleasure: sex, partying, and the like; possessions: money, a house, nice cars, etc.; and work: a solid career, things built by your own two hands, and more. These three things are the trifecta of unfulfilling tragedy.

Let’s start examining the emptiness of these with pleasure. Verses 1-3 say, “I said to myself, ‘Go ahead, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy what is good.’ But it turned out to be futile. I said about laughter, ‘It is madness,’ and about pleasure, ‘What does this accomplish?” I explored with my mind how to let my body enjoy life with wine and how to grasp folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom—until I could see what is good for people to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.”

Sounds dreary, doesn’t it? It might even sound untrue to many. Because, surely, laughter can’t be madness! It’s happiness in a sound. It’s contentment. It’s joy. And pleasure absolutely accomplishes something! It gives happiness, comfort, and contentment. But do these things really do that? I say no, and here’s why.

Look at laughing from an outside perspective: how long does it last? When you laugh, you may go on for as many as few minutes, but when you’re done laughing, the effect is gone. Your eyes uncrinkle, your lips settle back into a relaxed position, and the sound of merriment is snuffed out. As soon as the moment has passed, so too has laughter. So too, has any benefit. It’s fleeting.

And what about pleasure? Parties, alcohol, foolishness. It all feels great temporarily, but what happens when you leave the party? When you sober up? When you face the consequences of your foolishness? All of what you experienced in the midst of these actions is gone. You break free of the monotony for a few moments, and then it comes right back.

Next is possessions. Verses 3-10 described all that Solomon gained in his life. He had houses, vineyards, gardens, parks, every kind of fruit tree, a whole irrigation system to water his trees, tons of servants, more cattle and sheep than he knew what to do with, silver, gold, and all kinds of treasures, his own private musicians, more than 700 wives and 300 concubines. As he says in verse 10, “All that my eyes desired, I did not deny them. I did not refuse myself any pleasure, for I took pleasure in all my struggles. This was my reward for all my struggles.”

So, if there was any person to ever exist who could have found joy in things he owned, it was Solomon. Yet, he didn’t. Verse 11 says, “When I considered all that I had accomplished and what I had labored to achieve, I found everything to be futile and a pursuit of the wind. There was nothing to be gained under the sun.”

Even though he worked hard to get all those things, they weren’t worth it. I find that this part of Ecclesiastes fits really well with Mark 8:46, “For what does it benefit a man to gain the whole world yet lose his life?” Clearly, it benefited Solomon in no way. As we know from the book of 1 Kings, he had the kingdom he presided over taken away from him and given to David for the things he owned and did.

And finally, we get to the emptiness of work. In verses 18-19, 23, it says, “I hated all my work that I labored at under the sun because I must leave it to the man who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will take over all my work that I labored at skillfully under the sun. (23) For all his days are filled with grief, and his occupation is sorrowful; even at night, his mind does not rest. This too is futile.”

Man, talk about dreary, yet again, with Ecclesiastes. But really, take some time to think about this. Personally, I’ve had those moments where I’ve thought deeply about my life on this Earth, having to wake up early in the morning, drive to work, work all day, drive home, work at home, and then sleep, just to do it again the next day. If I think too hard about it, I nearly have an existential crisis worrying about how meaningless those actions are. Just thinking about the monotony of it could drive me insane, and I doubt I’m the only one who has considered this.

Don’t you spend some nights wherein you consider just giving up going to work because you’re not accomplishing anything, anyway? That’s what Solomon’s talking about here. Solomon was wise and skilled at many things, and he dreaded the idea of passing on the achievements of his work to someone who would not do it as well as him. He dreaded it to the point that he dreaded doing the work, and he realized that there’s no point to it all.

Here’s the conclusion: Everything about this Earth and life on it is empty. Your happiness is empty because it cannot hold you up. Your possessions are empty because they are worth nothing in the grand scheme of things. Your work is worth nothing because after you’re gone, someone else will come along and ruin it. Not to mention that there’s nothing satisfying about the monotony of 50 years of a career.

As I’ve mentioned before about Ecclesiastes, its whole job is to drill it deep into your heart and mind that the things on this Earth cannot and will not satisfy you or bring you joy because its goal is to point you to the only one who can: God.

Let me tell you that I did not write all this down and post it online to disenfranchise you about life to the point you decide to do nothing with yours, and neither did Solomon write Ecclesiastes for this reason. In fact, now that I’ve made the point that you can’t find joy and satisfaction in these things, I’m going to tell you to go out and do those things anyway. Because while you can’t find joy and satisfaction in them, you can find happiness.

This is about perspective. In the long term, yes, this life means very little. But in the here and now, God has given us time here to do these things. I think Solomon says it best in verses 24-26:

“There is nothing better for man than to eat, drink, and enjoy his work. I have seen that even this is from God’s hand, because who can eat and who can enjoy life apart from Him? For to the man who is pleasing in His sight, He gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy, but to the sinner He gives the task of gathering and accumulating in order to give to the one who is pleasing in God’s sight. This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind.”

See, as Christians, we can have happiness in the things we do here because we have the joy of Christ in knowing that, once we’re done here, there is everlasting joy to look forward to. We can enjoy the things of this world because we are already satisfied by Christ. We will never be satisfied by the things of this world, but we can have a little fun doing the things that are not sinful. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing some of these empty things if you’re already full.

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.”

Building Godly Character

We have an extremely clear process we are to follow to grow in our faith and build Godly character. Peter was kind enough to write it down in the first chapter of his second letter in a step-by-step list of character traits you should have. This list provides us with the process to grow closer to God and the necessary characteristics we need to be encouraging in other believers.

Firstly, Peter affirms that we have been given everything we need. It’s the spiritual equivalent of the promise God made to satisfy our physical needs. He has done this by granting us His own righteousness and nature so that we can escape the grasp of sin.

2 Peter 1: 3-5 says, “His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. By these He had given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires.”

Notice that verse three says God has provided us everything that is required for two things: life and godliness. Not only has He given us the key to escaping sin and pursuing Him and His character, He has also granted us all we will need to get through this life on Earth.

2 Peter 1: 5-7 says, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”

That’s the process. It all begins with faith in Jesus Christ’s death, resurrection, and the salvation of sinners who accept the free gift. But, we must build on our faith, first with goodness. Let the faith that you have in Christ manifest itself in your actions so that you do genuinely good things. The first step is to be good like God is good.

The second step is to supplement that goodness with knowledge. You must know why you are to be good. To know why you are to be good, you must know why God is good. And to know why God is good, you must understand God’s character. This knowledge, then, should spur you on to greater acts of good for the kingdom of God. Those greater acts of good will add to your faith in Christ as you see what good He does in you and through you.

The third step is self-control. This is both control of your own actions and words, and the control needed to hand over control to God to handle our lives. It’s a step that goes against our very nature, which is one wherein we desire to choose for ourselves what we do. So, let your self-control supplement your knowledge of God by choosing to hand over control to Him because you know you can’t do it on your own.

The fourth step is endurance. The race we run is one of endurance, not of speed. Especially when it comes to self-control, it’s not a one and done thing. You must consistently hand over control of your life to God. To do this requires the will and the strength to continually make decisions that are against the sin nature that is prevalent all around us.

The fifth step is godliness. Endurance is useless if you put your will towards the wrong beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors. You must endure consistently against trials that seek to turn you away from God. The only way you can do that is to be filled with godliness through the character and righteousness of Christ.

The sixth step is brotherly affection, and this is less of a build-up on the first five steps and more of a manifestation of the character that should be filling you at this point in the process, though it does still supplement godliness. Brotherly affection is the love you have for your family in Christ. It builds upon godliness as a manifestation of Christ’s character. To exemplify godliness, you must love your brothers and sisters in Christ, and to love your brothers and sisters in Christ as God loves us, you must have His character.

The seventh step is the culmination of all the steps. It is the most important of all. Out of faith, hope, and love, the greatest is love. The greatest commandment is to love. We are only capable of love because Christ first loved us. So, we must have the first six qualities to love fully as we should. And in addition, we are better able to love others through our faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, and brotherly affection as we love like Christ. Love is the last step because God is love.

The most important thing, though, Peter emphasizes after listing these qualities in verse 8. “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Note that Peter doesn’t say that moving from step one to step two means you no longer have to work on step 1. In fact, once you have these qualities, you must ensure they are always increasing. To do otherwise would be to fall away from God.

In verse 9, Peter says, “The person who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins.”

The best way to explain this verse is to compare it to the parable of the sower. Those who lack these qualities are like the seed on rocky soil. It bursts up quickly but dies out just as quickly because it doesn’t have the right nutrients to grow.

Verse 10 says, “Therefore, brothers, make every effort to confirm your calling and election, because if you do these things you will never stumble.” I feel it’s prudent to mention here that no one will ever achieve the perfection of Godly character required to not stumble in your walk with Christ. Though, if you could avoid stumbling perfectly, this would be the process by which to reach that point in your relationship with God.

In verse 11, which says, “For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to you,” Peter confirms that this is a checking process for salvation. We know that we can only be gifted salvation through the grace of God, so verse 11 isn’t saying that you’ll get into Heaven by loving others or following this guide. It’s saying that this is a way we Christians can check ourselves for our own salvation, to make sure our hearts are in the right place.

I’m sure a number of us have worried about whether our salvation is real, and this checklist can answer that question for you by presenting you with, and then answering, this question: Have you chosen to follow God and give up your life to Him by chasing after His character?

So, if you’re chasing after God because you want a relationship with the one who saved you, then you’re on the right track. This list just shows you where the track is.

Winning isn't Necessary

Getting the last word in all the time isn’t just unnecessary, it’s downright wrong and completely uncalled for as far as us Christians are concerned. We’ve probably all had those arguments where we just go round and round for ages because we refuse to concede defeat.

But I have to challenge you, and myself: what are you conceding defeat for? What will you lose if you don’t browbeat the other person into submission? Does your point suddenly become meaningless because the other person had the last word? Do you die because you lost the argument? No. You have only your own pride to lose and only yourself to disgrace. And is that really what you’re fighting for? Useless, sinful feelings?

The Bible, specifically Proverbs, has a lot to say about the subject of speaking, arguing, and pride. Sometimes, it’s better not to say anything. Sometimes, it’s fine to say your piece and move on. But, it’s always important to keep a guard on your emotions and the words that come out of your mouth.

Let’s go in chronological order for an argument, shall we?

Proverbs 21:23 says, “The one who guards his mouth and tongue keeps himself out of trouble.”

And Proverbs 13:3 says, “The one who guards his mouth protects his life; the one who opens his lips invites his own ruin.”

It’s a lot easier to avoid sin if we don’t entertain the actions that lead up to sinful behavior. That’s running away from temptation. And, a lot of times, you’re better off just not saying anything at all. Some people are out there just trying to start trouble—you know the people I’m talking about. They aren’t in the conversation to learn and listen; they just want to make you angry. So, as my dad says, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and let them think you’re a fool than to open it and prove them right.”

Next up is Proverbs 10:19, which says, “When there are many words, sin is unavoidable, but the one who controls his lips is wise.”

This one’s pretty clear. The more you speak, the more likely you are to sin. Particularly in an argument, the more you say, the longer you argue, the more incensed you get, the more likely you are to say something out of anger or hate and sin against God and the person you’re arguing with.

So, say your piece and move on. Let me let y’all in on a little secret: you’re never going to convince someone they’re wrong in the middle of an argument. Emotions run too hot for that, and a lot of the time, people don’t even bother to listen to the other side any more than it takes to refute their point. Winning an argument comes after it’s all said and done, when you have the time to sit back and think about all that was said. You don’t win the argument. The other person loses the argument against themselves.

But, if you do get in an argument and you have something you feel led to say, there’s a way to say it that is in line with how God would like us to act.

Proverbs 17:27 says, “The intelligent person restrains his words, and one who keeps a cool head is a man of understanding.”

And Proverbs 15:1 says, “A gentle answer turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath.”

Two key points come from these verses: keep calm and speak softly. Don’t attack someone’s character. Don’t raise your voice and yell. Speak in a kind, yet not condescending manner, as if you’re having a conversation with a friend, and nicely refute the points they make with your own points backed by facts.

I’ve learned more and more that it’s impossible to hate someone who’s nice to you all the time. In the same way, it’s impossible to keep up the energy to yell, scream and say mean things when the other party is calm as can be.

And finally, sometimes, you just need to let it go. Let the argument go. Let your pride go. Losing an argument is not the be all end all. Getting the last word in for the sake of your pride is losing far more than letting the other person think they’ve won.

Proverbs 11:12 says, “When pride comes, disgrace follows, but with humility comes wisdom.”

And Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride comes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall.”

If, in your arrogance and pride, you go until you get the last word in, the only one to suffer and lose is you. Not only has your character, as seen by other people, been disgraced because of your actions, but you’ve sinned against God in your prideful behavior.

And in terms of sharing the Gospel, there has never been a single person who was converted by a Christian getting the last word in during a heated theological argument. Defend the faith, yes, but tell them the Gospel, tell them the facts, and then let them stew on that. It’s not always your job to grow the seed you planted.

Seriously, take it from someone who was as habitual about getting the last word in as most people are about their morning coffee. It doesn’t matter. Let them have the last word. Move on. You won’t even notice you “lost the argument.” Your character won’t disappear. In fact, you’ll likely feel better than if you had said the last word.

I’m going to adapt the phrase I quoted from my dad earlier: It’s better to let them believe they won than to say the last word and hand them the victory.

We are Nobody

This is an important truth we as Christians must realize that is spoken of in the rather popular song called “Nobody” by Casting Crowns, featuring Matthew West. It’s interesting that this issue, in my opinion, happens to be the biggest holdup most Christians have when it comes to living their lives as God has called. We don’t like being nobody because it means we have to give up ourselves, and that’s hard.

But we’re called to do it. Philippians 1:21 says, “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Notice that this verse doesn’t say, “To live is Nathaniel, or Jacob, or Elizabeth,” or any other name. It says to live is Christ. While you live, you are to be Christ, not yourself.

And in case that one isn’t enough, here’s another one straight from the mouth of Jesus in Luke 14:25-27, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” The Greek word for “hate” there, miseo, means hate, detest, love less, denounce. If you can’t denounce your own life, then you can’t live as Christ because you’re living for yourself.

This doesn’t mean you can’t value a wife, children, your parents, or your own passions because those are gifts given to you by God, but if you value them more than God, then you’re not doing it right.

That’s why I think the message of “Nobody” is so important. Specifically, I think of these lines:

So let me go down, down, down in history

As another blood-bought faithful member of the family

And if they all forget my name, well, that’s fine with me

I’m living for the world to see

Nobody but Jesus.

Your name, your legacy, it’s just not important. It’s not anywhere near as important as the legacy of Christ. Sure, you can leave your name and family legacy to your children, but if you don’t leave them the legacy of Jesus, what does it matter? If they don’t have Jesus, they’re going to Hell. Carrying on whatever human legacy you want to leave behind isn’t even close to the significance of leaving an inheritance that could show them to their eternal salvation.

To become nobody, to give up yourself to follow Christ is the ultimate goal. You want to go down in history as a member of Jesus’s family above all else. And being nobody comes with some really good news.

Have you ever felt called by God to speak to someone or do something? Have you ever been directed down a certain path, but you’ve chickened out because you’re scared, or run away because you didn’t want to do it?

Really think about this. How many times have you allowed your reputation, friendships, or job to keep you from sharing the Gospel? How often do you let your inhibitions stop you from going where God has called you?

The good news about making yourself nobody is that you give plenty of room for God to step in and take care of your fears. You give God room to do great things through you that He won’t do if you’re trying to stop Him every stop of the way because of your fears. Take these next lines:

Moses had stage fright

And David brought a rock to a sword fight

You picked 12 outsiders nobody would’ve chosen

And You changed the world

Moses was afraid of speaking to Pharaoh, but instead of giving into his own fear, he made his own fear nothingness and let God speak through him. Moses was unable, but God was able.

David was a shepherd with no skills but those meant to protect a flock of sheep. He was a boy, not a warrior. But he gave up who he was and God used him to defeat the mightiest Philistine warrior. David the shepherd never could’ve performed such a feat, but David, the nobody directed by God, did this amazing thing.

The 12 disciples were already nobodies, and Jesus picked them up and turned them into somebodies, using them to create a kingdom of nobodies who are somebodies in Jesus. See, our persons get in the way of God because they can fail, they have insecurities. But if we push those aside and keep ourselves from getting in the way of God, He can accomplish wonderful things through us.

So, go to the end of the line with the not-quites, the never-get-it-rights, the nobodies, and let God use you to do amazing things for the kingdom because that’s worth so much more than anything we could ever do alone.

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Wisdom is Sorrow

This is part two of the study I’m writing for Ecclesiastes. It is the remainder of chapter 1—verses 13-18—so if you haven’t read that one yet, please check it out under the article titled “Earth is Pointless.”

I like to group people into three standard categories of understanding when it comes to Ecclesiastes chapter 1. There are the ignorant, the knowledgeable, and the wise. This grouping comes from Ecclesiastes 1:15, “What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted,” and verse 18, “For with much wisdom is sorrow; as knowledge increases, grief increases.”

In the first part of my study of Ecclesiastes, I talked about how we’re all searching for a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment for our lives. But, while you and I and many other Christians can put a finger on exactly what it is we’re searching for, a number of people can’t. Verse 15 refers to this. Every fully cognizant human knows we’re missing something. There’s a hole in our lives that we just can’t understand or fill no matter how hard we try.

The first grouping is the ignorant. These people are blissful because they don’t know about the hole they’re trying to fill yet. Most of the people in this group are children because their brains simply aren’t developed enough to understand, and better yet for those who already have faith in Jesus because their ignorance is blessed on top of being blissful.

The second grouping is the knowledgeable. They are those who know there is a hole, there is something missing, and they know they can find things that will temporarily cover the bottom of that hole, but have yet to find a solution to the feeling of missing something. Generally speaking, these are the nonbelievers. They’re the ones doing the pointless, useless, futile things like hoarding money, having sex, or any other number of things while looking for a solution.

And finally, the third grouping is the wise. These are the people who have come to the realization that Earth’s “satisfaction” is pointless and have found the one and only thing that can fill the hole in their lives. Generally speaking, these are the believers who know that Jesus is the only one who can satisfy and fulfill us and provide us with joy. They have seen past the knowledge of the world and have applied wisdom, which can only be found through God.

Let’s make this a metaphor, shall we. Picture a painting inside a frame hanging on a wall that is just ever-so-slightly tilted off level. Not a huge amount, but just enough that, were you to look at it, you’d raise one eyebrow and say, “that looks a little off,” to yourself.

In this metaphor, the ignorant group looks at the painting and just sees the pretty colors held within the frame. They don’t notice or care that the frame is slightly crooked. The picture looks nice, and that’s all that concerns them.

The knowledgeable group sees the frame and immediately makes that quizzical face, saying, “That’s a bit off.” Then, they reach up, grab the frame, and tilt it back towards level. However, they tilt it just a little too far, and now it’s off-kilter the other way. They step back, notice it’s crooked again, and reach up to tilt it once more. And they continue to do so in an infinite loop because they never get it quite right.

The wise group sees the frame and has the same initial reaction as the knowledgeable group. But instead of reaching up and trying to fix the frame, they go find a level, set it on top of the frame, and tilt it until it’s perfectly level. Then, they admire the painting for a few moments and move on.

Ecclesiastes describes the second group perfectly in verses 13-14, “I applied my mind to seek and explore through wisdom all that is done under heaven. God has given people this miserable task to keep them occupied. I have seen all the things that are done under the sun and have found everything to be futile, a pursuit of the wind.” Attempting to level that frame by hand is a miserable task. You’ll only get more frustrated the longer you try and fail to fix it.

Solomon says it’s like pursuing the wind. Have you ever tried to chase the wind? First of all, it’s ridiculously fast, but that doesn’t even matter. Why? Because even if you could run faster than the wind, you can’t even capture it! It’ll slip right through your fingers every time you grab at it.

Now, this is all great, but why, then, is wisdom sorrow, as Ecclesiastes 1:18 says: “For with much wisdom is sorrow; as knowledge increases, grief increases.” That’s actually pretty simple, in essence, because the sorrow doesn’t refer to yourself. Sorrow is something that can be felt for others just as much as yourself.

Remember the wise group in the metaphor that admired their paintings for a few moments and moved on? Well, that group now has the distinct displeasure of walking by every person in the knowledgeable group and watching them fiddle and fidget with their frames. That’s where the sorrow is. It’s sorrow for those who know they have a problem but can’t fix it. It’s sorrow for the grief those people experience as they tilt that frame back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

Strong’s Concordance has the word for grief in verse 18 as “makob” meaning “pain” or “suffering.” In other words, as the group with knowledge becomes more knowledgeable, tilting that frame back and forth, filling that hole, becomes more and more painful with each repetition. Each failure increases their suffering.

And this leads me to a point not detailed in chapter 1, but that I feel led to write down anyway. This is exactly why we are called to go out and make disciples of all nations, to show them to Christ. You, as someone with wisdom, are supposed to stop by each knowledgeable person you pass as they tilt their frame and introduce them to the level, to wisdom, to Christ. You should feel so much sorrow for them that you can’t help but stand by and show them how to end their suffering and find the satisfaction of fixing that frame and admiring that painting. Don’t let people suffer.

Stop the Christianese

I’ve heard this term, Christianese, a lot more as I spend an increasing amount of time in the greater church community by listening to podcasts and sermons from some of the bigger, younger names out there. It’s a term more often used by the millennials than Gen X or Baby Boomers, but it’s relevant all the same.

Christianese is our own, believer-based language that we use frequently to communicate aspects of our belief and portions of God’s character because we’ve developed a vocabulary specific to these things. If you don’t really know what I mean by Christianese, think of it as our dialect, our jargon, our vernacular.

The thing about Christianese, and indeed, every other dialect of any language, is that only those who have the necessary living experience with the language can understand it. And that leads to my grievance against Christianese. In the church, it might be fine, but we cannot go about using it when we speak to nonbelievers.

The story behind this is more personal than my other articles, but I’m not writing this just because I don’t like it. I’m writing it because I think changing our language when we speak to nonbelievers will help us show Christ to that many more people.

I grew up in the church. I was there pretty much every Sunday, Wednesday, and any other day there happened to be something going on. I did all the activities: every Vacation Bible School, every youth event. I sang in the choir as a child, and I picked up jobs in the other churches I attended, too. But I went because that’s what my family did. I went because I thought that’s what I did. But my heart wasn’t in it.

I knew all the answers. I had all the lines down. The head knowledge was absolutely there. And I was a pretty dang good actor, too, if I do say so myself. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think too many people questioned me. But while I knew God, I didn’t know God. I didn’t have a relationship with Him. But I was always in the church, so I had a pretty good view and understanding of the church and how we did things.

I remember sitting in Sunday School and listening to my teachers. I would cringe when I heard them use certain words to describe the actions of God towards us, not because of the actions, but the way they were described. I thought they were childish, silly, and entirely nonsensical.

One of the phrases that always sets me off is, “You have to fear God.” Not because it’s not true. It is true. But the words don’t compute when you hear, “God loves you. Love God.” That’s because nobody really bothers to explain it. We all just assume everyone understands that when we say, “Fear God,” what we really mean is respect God. Respect His power, His ability, and His grace and mercy, knowing that it could be turned against you should you not accept Him into your heart. Although, what does that even mean to a nonbeliever? It doesn’t make sense unless you already know the Bible.

And listen, if I didn’t understand that as a teenager growing up in the church, nonbelievers and new converts have no chance of getting it. The knowledge and experience just isn’t there for them.

I was always confused by these lines, too, “I just had a feeling,” and, “I just heard God speaking to me so clearly.” I never understood those because I never audibly heard God speak to me, and I couldn’t separate my own feelings from whatever feelings these people were experiencing. These are phrases that create undue confusion for a lot of people.

So, we need to knock that off when we’re talking to nonbelievers and new believers alike. We’re feeding them phrases based on the meat of the Bible when they’re still struggling with the milk. It’s like trying to go to Russia and preach the Gospel in Portuguese. It just won’t work. If you want to speak to Russians about Christ, you have to speak Russian.

Similarly, if you want to talk to nonbelievers about Christ, you have to speak their language. We have to find a way to put our experiences with Christ into a tangible, understandable format for those who have no experience with Him. Otherwise, you’re going to get a lot of “Christians” who aren’t actually saved and don’t know how to pursue a relationship with Christ. And even worse, you’re going to create a lot of people who avoid Christianity because we sound like a bunch of loons.

Hey, in your midweek Bible study with your small group, or among friends you know have developed a deep relationship with Christ, use the Christianese. It works there. But keep it away when you’re talking to those who don’t know our language. It’s hard enough to show them who Christ is without adding a language barrier to the difficulty.

Log vs. Speck

One of the great things about studying the Bible is that we get a chance to see the same verses from different perspectives as we grow in our faith and our lives progress into different times and situations. Some verses that I’ve been seeing a little different lately are Matthew 7:3-5.

“Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a log in your eye? 5 Hypocrite! First take the log out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Every time I’ve heard someone mention this verse, they use it to tell people to stop judging others. And that is 100% the way it was intended. The context says it’s so. But, I want to take this slightly out of context to talk about it not as judging, but as helping out a brother or sister in Christ.

Think about how weird it is to not notice a giant log in your eye, obscuring your vision, and yet, despite that log, you can somehow see a tiny speck of dirt in someone else’s eyes. How do you see that speck? Well, first of all, you have to be close to that person to see something so small in their eye. And second, you can’t be looking through the eye that has a log in it. You have to be looking from a different perspective.

Different perspectives are important because they allow us to see different things. Especially in humans, it allows us to cover blind spots in our vision. Did you know that you actually have blind spots in your eyes? They’re infinitesimally small at a close distance, but the farther away you look, the larger that spot gets. The cool thing about how God made us is that the right eye is just far enough away from the left eye to cover the left eye’s blind spot. And the perspective of the left eye is just different enough to cover the right eye’s blind spot.

Now Matthew 7:3 talks about our enormous spiritual blind spot: our own sins. Our perspective of ourselves prevents us from easily seeing the things we do wrong. Our behavior is so close to us that we find it difficult to point out those things we do that are unbiblical behavior.

Think about it. How many times has someone mentioned how easily you get angry or jealous or do any other sinful behavior? And how often do you say, “I don’t do that,” right afterward? Yet, if you took the time to really analyze your own behavior from the perspective of someone else, you’d find that you do actually do those things.

That’s because, for them, it’s easy to see. They’re not blinded by the fact it’s their own behavior. And now we get to my alternate view of this verse. While we are not supposed to judge others for their sinful behavior, what we are supposed to do is spot it and point it out to our brothers and sisters. There are a ton of verses about helping other believers be accountable to Christ, including: Matthew 18:15-18, James 5:19-20, 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15, and Hebrews 3:13.

In these ways, when we see other believers acting in persistent sin, we are called to let them know and help them correct their behavior. That’s one of the reasons we have fellowship with one another. That’s why many Christians urge you to have one, or more, accountability partner(s). Someone you trust who will be the one to point out the speck in your eye you can’t see.

Now, I want to talk briefly about verse 6: “Don’t give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them with their feet, turn, and tear you to pieces.” This verse is incredibly important to the context I’m looking at here because it’s a warning to be careful with how you handle accountability.

Accountability is incredibly important, but just as important as the act is the person you choose to help you stay accountable to Christ. Accountability is a good, God-given thing for believers to stay strong in the faith. It’s like an incredibly valuable string of pearls. But it only works if you give that string of pearls to someone who is capable of appraising it properly.

If you allow a nonbeliever or someone who isn’t yet strong enough in the faith to hold your faith accountable, it will turn into judgment and tear down your walk with Christ. It’s like, as verse 6 says, handing pearls to pigs. They won’t know what to do with it.

But if you find someone who is close enough to you to see the speck in your eye, the flaws in your walk with Christ, and strong enough in the faith to know how to handle correction with love and care, then you become like iron sharpening iron. Together, you will only grow stronger in your walk with Christ. There won’t be judgment involved, just believers working together to raise their value.

So, find someone who can see your speck and speaks in love and correction, and you will find a good thing. Your walk with Christ will be better than before because of it.

Good is Intentional

You can’t make things good by accident. It’s not possible. No good thing that occurs happened by mere association with goodness. Goodness is not contagious. It is a choice, and it is a process. On the flip-side of that coin, bad is contagious. It occurs by accident. It occurs when one is not careful. It is the natural order of this fallen world. Bad things can and do occur from mere association with badness.

I’ll start you off with a common example and then we’ll move onto the Bible verses that prompted this article. Let’s talk about bread. Bread starts out as a bunch of inedible pieces that are put through a process to become edible. You take your yeast, flour, sugar, and salt, mix them together, cook them, and then you’ve turned a bunch of parts into something good. The baker has to do this intentionally. He can’t just put the ingredients next to each other, walk away, and come back to a good loaf of bread.

Now let’s talk about the enemy of bread—no, not carbs—mold. It’s the killer of all nice bread products left to sit for too long. I guarantee you: let that bread sit around long enough and mold will start growing on it making it bad to ingest. Making it useless for its intended purpose. It’s the inevitable result of something good being left to rot. And mold starts small, too, just a few spots here and there that got the worst exposure to air and moisture. But it spreads like a disease, and soon enough, it has taken over all the good, delectable bread, turning it bad.

That’s how good and bad works. You have to work to be good, while badness is innate in us all. By mere tangential association, you can be changed from good to bad if you don’t work quickly to catch it and remove it.

So, on to the Bible verses. Haggai 2: 12-13 says:

“‘If a man is carrying consecrated meat in the fold of his garment, and with his fold touches bread, stew, wine, oil, or any other food, does it become holy?’

The priests answered, ‘No.’

Then Haggai asked, ‘If someone defiled by contact with a corpse touches any of these, does it become defiled?’

The priests answered, ‘It becomes defiled.’”

I don’t know all the technicalities about purifying objects to make them holy, but I can assure you of this: there was certainly a process that each thing must go through to be made holy. Just like the bread before, there is a process to take something that is not good and make it good. You can’t sit touch something bad with something good and make it good, too. Just like you can’t place a loaf of bread next to flour and expect a second loaf of bread.

But as with mold, no such process exists to make something bad. You only need to touch something bad to defile yourself and anything you touch afterwards. You don’t have to do a ritual or intend to defile something. It just happens.

That’s how doing good and bad things work. Bad things happen by the laws of a sinful world. It is innate, born into our character as sinful human beings. You don’t have to try hard to do something bad to someone. You don’t have to scheme. Sometimes, you just do things that are bad because it’s all around us.

Have you ever heard the saying, “Garbage in, garbage out?” It means that whatever you intake in your life, you will output into your own life and the lives of others. In our case, the garbage is all around us. It’s like the oxygen we breathe to live in that we don’t consciously choose to breathe or to touch evil. It’s just there.

But good is intentional. It’s a process. It is, literally, sanctification, which is the process of being made holy. You can’t do good by accident; you most certainly can’t do good when you’re only associating with the bad. You have to be cleansed, purged of the mold that is suffocating you all the time, and purposefully go through the process God has lined out in the Bible to strive for righteousness.

You have to choose good all day, every day, in order to do good. You have to choose to cut away the mold and be what you were intended to be: good. You have to step out and make the good things happen for others and point them to the process of sanctification, of belief in Christ, so that they, too, can become good. Merely associating with them is not enough. It will only infect you with the mold once more. You have to choose to be good.

Stay on Guard

Here’s a fact that a lot of Christians have likely lived through: You are attacked most often by the enemy when you are at a high or low point in your walk with Christ. And I would argue that you’re attacked more often at the mountain tops than the valleys. Here’s why and how to combat these attacks.

We’re going back to the tried and true teaching method: the metaphor. We’re soldiers fighting in a war against sin. However you feel about that, that’s how it is. We are constantly waging war and fighting battles against an enemy that attacks us in numerous ways. Sometimes he’s sneaky; sometimes he overwhelms us with brute force. But he never attacks us with what we’re prepared to handle and alert to guarding.

It’s a war, and you never directly attack a position with alert soldiers with more strength than you. And let me be fully clear here: with God on our side, we have far more strength than Satan could ever muster. So, Satan does not attack us head on when we’re prepared because he knows that assault will fail to breach our defenses.

So, I’ve pointed out two main ways the enemy attacks us: with brute force and with stealth. The first occurs when we’re at the lowest point of the valleys. You’re worn out and weary. You feel all alone. You feel separate from God. So Satan attempts to overrun you with numbers. That saying, “Don’t kick a man when he’s down?” The enemy loves kicking us when we’re down, and then he’s going to try and beat us like a dead horse. It’s those times in your life when horrible thing after horrible thing comes at you.

I don’t want to get too specific because I risk ruining the comparison for some, but it’s like you get sick, and then you maybe lose your job, and then someone close to you passes away, and it just feels like you’ll never get up. (There’s actually a song that pretty much nails the description of this feeling that I’ve linked below this article. It’s not a strictly Christian song, but it pretty effectively nails the principle.)

How do you beat this? Well, as the song describes: you just keep moving. That’s a tough thing to do. You’re not going to have the strength to do it on your own, which is precisely why you’re being attacked in that manner. Satan knows that if you try and fight alone, you’ll be overwhelmed. That’s why we’re given two basic directives when being overrun in a battle:

The first is to lean on the strength of God. I like Psalm 18:39 for this, though there are many verses that share the same sentiment. “You have clothed me with strength for battle; you subdue my adversaries beneath me.” (Matthew West’s “Strong Enough” is a wonderful song about this subject.) The second is to lean on your Christian brothers and sisters, and share each other’s burdens, as Paul wrote in Galatians 6:2a “Carry one another’s burdens.” (Tenth Avenue North’s “No Man is an Island” is a good expression of the need to lean on others.)

On the other end of the spectrum is when we’re at the highest mountains in our walk with Christ. This is when the enemy employs sneak attacks to catch us off guard. Taking it back to our war metaphor, this is just after you’ve won a great victory and you’re celebrating. You take your gear off and lay down your weapon. Then, boom! Out of nowhere, a sniper takes you out, or a knife gets you in the back.

It’s here when you’re more vulnerable than even the lowest valleys. At least in the valleys you’re mentally prepared, even if you’re exhausted. But when you are without the armor of God, and the enemy comes around, you are woefully unready to defend yourself. At the mountaintops, we experience this intense euphoria that comes from growing closer to God, from achieving a victory over sin, and in that euphoria, we relax our minds and take off our armor. We stop thinking; we stop being ready.

In the climb to the top of that mountain, we’re in peak condition as we strive for the Lord. Our focus and awareness is so strong that no one could catch us off guard, but when we reach that peak, we drop that focus thinking we’ve won. Well, guess what? This isn’t a battle you win.

In the overall, yes, Christ has already won this war we fight against sin, but while we’re on this Earth as imperfect human beings, we’re just surviving. We don’t win until we go to be with Christ.

So when you reach that mountaintop, don’t lose your mental alertness. Don’t take off the armor of God. As 1 Corinthians 16:13 says, “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith, be courageous; be strong.” Don’t ever give up. When you’ve reached the top of the mountain you’re climbing right now, get right up and head up the next one. Until the day you go home to be with the Lord, keep fighting the good fight.

And here’s a last little bit of hope for you that also goes along with one of the songs I’ve added below: The devil, unlike our God, is not omniscient, omnipresent, or omnipotent. He doesn’t know everything, he’s not everywhere, and he’s not invincibly powerful. He’s noticeable and beatable. If you’re on your guard and finding your joy and satisfaction in Christ, there is absolutely nothing he can do to defeat you and the God who stands beside you.

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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.

Earth is Pointless

Ecclesiastes is my favorite book of the Bible because it has an absurd amount of experiential wisdom. It’s the troubleshooting guide for life, at its essence, because it cuts past all the clutter of living and gets straight to the point. It’s the book wherein Solomon says, “Look, I’ve tried to find satisfaction in literally every way you could possibly attempt. There is not a single thing on this planet that can satisfy you.”

Consider the things we believe will satisfy us: money, relationships, a career, aggrandizement, knowledge, pleasure, happiness, etc. Solomon tried all of that, and best of all, he wrote about how pointless it was so we wouldn’t waste our lives trying them, too.

Verse 2 says, “‘Absolute futility,’ says the Teacher. ‘Absolute futility. Everything is futile.’”

The ESV and KJV have “vanity” in place of futility here, but Strong’s Hebrew Concordance says that the word can be translated as emptiness, vanity, transitory, or unsatisfactory, and futility fits that definition just as clearly as vanity can. Futility means useless, pointless, and ineffective.

So, Solomon says that everything is pointless, and then he asks a question. Verse 3, “What does a man gain for all his efforts that he labors at under the sun?”

Take a moment to think about that, and don’t try to be optimistic about it. Solomon wasn’t being optimistic here. What do you really get for waking up early in the morning and working hard all day? You get some money, but what’s that worth? You’re just going to spend it. No, you don’t get money. You get to wake up and do it again the next day just to survive. It’s pointless. Even if your goal is to set up your children for their own life, it’s pointless. Why?

Verse 4, “A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.” Even if you set up your children for a little better life on Earth, they’re going to do the same thing you did: wake up every morning and work all day, then go to sleep and do it again the next day. And their children will do it, and their children’s children will do it.

This is the bleak reality of this world. What you’re doing is going to repeat ceaselessly because what is here is the same forever. It’s an unbreakable cycle because there is nothing to add and nothing to take away. You can apply that to almost everything you do: help someone? Sure, you’ll feel good about it, but there are always more people to help, and that good feeling goes away, soon. It’s depressing, it really is, but that’s the point!

Solomon breaks this down with a few metaphors in verses 5-7, “The sun rises and the sun sets; panting, it returns to its place where it rises. Gusting to the south, turning to the north, turning, turning, goes the wind, and the wind returns in its cycles. All the streams flow to the sea, yet the sea is never full. The streams are flowing to the place, and they flow there again.”

Verse 5 refers back to verse 3. You work hard, like the sun, to do your daily routine, then you return home to rise and do it again.

Verse 6 is another reference to the repetition and pointlessness of everything. If you know anything about weather patterns, you’ll know that wind has its cycles and seasons. There are occasional variations, just like our lives occasionally have some energy injected into them via unscripted, irregular events, but in the end, they always go straight back to where they came from. That’s the thing about spheres: no matter which way you go around it, you’ll always end up right back where you started.

The point that Solomon makes with verse 7 is simple, in essence, and it’s that nothing that you do in this life will fill you up. If you’re the ocean in this metaphor, then the things you pour out into—the money, the friends, the career—are pouring back into you. But, as with the oceans and rivers of Earth, you don’t become more full as those things you’ve emptied yourself into pour back into you because you empty into them at the same rate they give their return. It’s a net gain of zero.

It’s a wearisome prospect, as Solomon says in verse 8. “The eye is not satisfied by seeing or the ear filled with hearing.” Think about that for a second. Your eyes and ears were literally designed to see and hear, and yet they’re not satisfied by doing their job. Neither are you. But as 8a describes, “All things are wearisome; man is unable to speak.” This problem we have can’t even be put into words. I think the closest we get is when we get fed up with it all and say “I’m tired.”

Verses 9-11 are Solomon affirming what I mentioned at the beginning of this article. “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. Can one say about anything, ‘Look, this is new,’ It has already existed in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of those who came before; and of those who will come after there will also be no remembrance by those who follow them.”

Take a moment to think about a circle: it’s one continuous line bent around to meet itself. It has no definable starting or ending point. In fact, it’s pointless. Now think of a sphere: what is a sphere except an innumerable amount of circles put together to create a 3-D object? That’s us and Earth. We’re in a cycle on this sphere where everything on it and in it has been tried before, but just as we finish going around in our lives, another generation will follow and do the same thing.

Every generation of the human race has tried and tries the same things available to us on Earth to achieve satisfaction, not knowing that it’s all been done before, and it has never worked and never will. The sins and behaviors that plague us today are the same ones that plagued the people in Biblical times because we’re all walking in circles looking for pointless things because we’re missing the point.

I said earlier that Ecclesiastes is the troubleshooting guide for us because it has all the attempted fixes in it. But the final step of the guide is a finger pointing to the rest of the Bible, to Christ, because He is the only one who can satisfy us. So skip to the back page of the guide, don’t try all the things of this Earth. You won’t find satisfaction here. Skip straight to Christ.