Recently in just thinking Category

I've been blown away recently thinking about the Bible's teaching that Christians are able to please God through their lives and their actions. Allow me to try and explain.

A little group of us were studying Haggai chapter 1 the other day. The prophet Haggai was living in a time after the people of Israel had begun to return from exile to a Jerusalem that lay in ruins. They started to rebuild God's temple there, destroyed by the Babylonians seventy years earlier, but a combination of opposition and general selfishness meant that they gradually lost enthusiasm for the project and it more or less ground to a halt. Along comes Haggai and delivers this message from God:

"Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD." (Haggai 1:7-8)

"Get off your lazy backsides and get building!", says God. But in doing so, he says something which seems to me to be quite remarkable: "I want to be able to take pleasure in this temple you're going to build - this tangible symbol of your obedience and your love for me." God will look at the temple and heave a big sigh of contentment and delight, taking pleasure in his people who built it.

Amazing! I tend to think of God in a very "static" kind of way - he is who he is and that's just the way it is. But the Bible consistently teaches that the way we act matters to God - we can grieve him by our sin and we can delight him by our acts of faith. Now, of course, it's important to say that we can't "please God" in the sense of earning his love by trying really hard to be good. Hebrews 11:6 reminds us that "without faith it is impossible to please him". Or as Romans 8:8 puts it, "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God."

But we mustn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Through faith in Christ, united to Jesus, we can actually bring pleasure to God by living godly lives in line with his will. Ephesians 5:10 puts it like this:

"Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord."

That's a pretty good life motto. Try to figure out what's going to please the Lord. In whatever situation I'm in today, how can I please the Lord in this?

I think it gives real meaning to even the most mundane of moments. Struggling to find joy in your work? Well, try to discern how you can do your job in a way that is pleasing to the Lord. Finding relationships difficult? What's going to be pleasing to the Lord in this situation? Finding church a bit of a battle at the moment? What's going to bring pleasure to the Lord in the way you relate to your brothers and sisters there? Battling away with a particular sin that never seems to go away, and wondering why you're even bothering? Take heart - when you overcome by faith in the power of his Spirit, you can pleases God.

What are you living for at the moment? Who are you trying to please? I'm very challenged by all this to try day-by-day to fix my eyes on God and how I can live in a way that pleases him, and it really encourages me to keep on battling sin even when it seems like an utterly thankless task. What a thought, to know that God might actually take pleasure from those little acts of obedience prompted by my faith.

I've been revisiting recently the excellent essay by Jonathan Edwards, "The Sin and Folly of Depending on Future Time". In his characteristic style, Edwards diagnoses and dissects the problem of living in the future instead of being content to get on with making the most of the present moment that God has given us. This may sound over-the-top, but I'm gradually coming to realise that this is probably the biggest battle I struggle with in my life, the prior cause from which many of my other battles originate.

The Symptoms of Depending on Future Time

Let me illustrate with a couple of examples. God willing, I'm getting married in 172 days' time, and I find it all too easy to just wish away the days and resent the fact that it's so far away in the future. As at many other times in my life, I've fallen for that lie, that what I need is a change of circumstances - if only this were the case or if that were different, then I'd be able to get my life sorted out. Maybe it's a change of jobs, maybe it's living in a new place, maybe it's graduating from university. Whatever it is, you look at your present situation and see all of the difficulties and downsides, a kind of "informed pessimism", whereas you look at the grass on the other side and all you can see is potential and exciting opportunity - the optimism of ignorance. Instead of getting on with growing and serving in the situation God has currently put me in, I look to the future and imagine that I could serve him much more contentedly once I arrive at the next place. If prior experience is anything to go by, that's absolute nonsense! Why should the next situation be any different from the current one, or the one before that? What possible grounds do I have for imagining that I'll be any more content, until I learn to cease living in the future?

The other example I could give is in the daily battle to work productively, on whatever project it is that I'm currently struggling with. A piece of work that I need to tackle comes up, and instead of just getting on with it, I worry about how hard it might turn out to be. Or even sillier than that, I worry that I might actually finish it, and then what on earth would I do with myself? Anxiety about what the future might hold makes me shy away from fulfilling my responsibility in the present. It's similar to the battle for patience regarding my wedding day: the thought of continuing to fight for another 172 days just seems too overwhelming - how can I possibly stay now-focussed for such a length of time?? And so it seems hardly worth even trying to battle in the present, and I give in.

An Alternative Way of Living

Jesus' words in Matthew 6:25-34 seem very pertinent: "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on... which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? ... But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

Do not be anxious about tomorrow - sufficient for the day is its own trouble. In other words, leave the future for God to worry about. Your job is just to make the most of today, to fight sin today, to figure out how to love God and love your neighbour today. Now is the only moment of time God has actually entrusted to you to use - all the rest belongs to him.

A Personal Response

So what am I going to do in response to all these swirling thoughts?

Firstly, I'm going to try and take the issue more seriously and put some proper prayer into it each day.

Secondly, I think I'm going to try and start a journal. Try and write something each day, maybe one thing to be thankful for from the day that's just passed, something that's encouraged me from God's word, maybe jot down a few thoughts about what the day ahead will hold and how I hope to make the most of it. Something, anything, to try and keep me rooted in the moment and encourage me to enjoy it and make the most of it rather than wishing I was somewhere else.

Thirdly, and I don't really know how this one will work out, I'm going to try and slow down and enjoy life a little more, rather than always rushing from one thing to the next. Maybe make myself a cup of tea in the morning with my breakfast. Have a decent quiet time. Put a little music on when I get home from work. Enjoy doing my laundry and hanging out my socks to dry, rather than just resenting it. Hang out with Christian brothers and sisters after church chatting about the sermon. Basically, prayerfully seek to make the most of the situation God has put me in at that moment, rather than killing time until I'm somewhere else.

I came across something desperately sad this morning and felt compelled to write a response. It was David M's cynical (atheistic?) answer to the question "What is the best way to stop your child from becoming an atheist?" and assuming that it reflects the respondent's view of what Christianity is, it was truly tragic. Below is my own answer, adapted directly from the original.

Begin by educating them, expose them to critical thinking, logic and science. Teach them how to think and the history of thinking, to show its immense value and also its limitations. Talk to them about important contributors to science like James Maxwell, people whose Christian faith was the whole reason they believed science was worth studying in the first place - because they trusted in a God of order and a world of reproducible results. Make them read the great Christian thinkers of the past and the present, people like Jonathan Edwards, Jim Packer, Don Carson. Show them that Christianity can be intellectually credible and stands up to scrutiny.

Encourage curiosity about how the world works. Show them that the Bible has things to say about every aspect of life - use everyday experiences as an opportunity to encourage meditation about God and his word.

Make them hold their own natural bodies and functions in high esteem. Show them that they can admit that they are small and weak, but that despite all that, they are of supreme worth in the eyes of their Creator and He longs to redeem them from their failings - they don't need to fix themselves before He'll love them. Tell them everything enjoyable is given by God for their good, and that when it's used rightly and kept in its proper place it can be even more fun. God invented sex! God invented good wine! In fact, the Bible's description of heaven is a great banquet with the best food and drink, at a wedding.

Ensure that they respect everyone and anyone as individuals made in the image of their Creator, and therefore born to be in relationship with Him - it doesn't matter what their skin color, nationality, political opinion or even their creed, they are still precious to God and therefore worthy of your respect. Even when their differences might tempt you to be afraid of them and think them less than human - teach them that Jesus came to seek and save the lost, and it was for such as them that he died. Teach your child to love them enough to long for them to come to know their Creator and be the people they were made to be.

Teach them to laugh at themselves and not take themselves too seriously. Teach them to respect their church leaders, but also not to believe everything they're told. Encourage them to keep going back to the Bible for answers, but also to ask questions of the Bible - who wrote it? can I trust them? is it reliable? what is the manuscript evidence for it? These are all vitally important questions, and finding the answers can only strengthen their faith. From an early age, teach them to identify superstition - received wisdom that has no basis in fact. And teach them that there is such a thing as error - a false view of the world can be dangerous and crippling. Teach them the whole Bible, Old Testament and New Testament - show them that there is no contradiction between them, and that the God of grace and love who sent Jesus is the same God who will judge and punish sin. Teach them to weap over those who will be lost, just as God himself does not delight in the death of the wicked - but also to rejoice in God's justice, and that there will be an end to sin and wrongdoing. It will be a good lesson that sometimes the truth is hard to swallow, but it's far better than living a lie.

Instruct them and discipline them so that they know you care - but don't be too severe. Import to constantly question for themselves - to think for themselves - to live for themselves - to want to own this faith for themselves, and not just because their parents believed it - but knowing that the Christian faith is built on solid foundations: encourage them to keep coming back to the person of Jesus, his life, death and resurrection, whenever they get lost. Either he did rise from the dead or he didn't - and if he did then it's really worth trusting him.

And one more thing - though I wouldn't want to overemphasize this - try to make sure they can spell, use correct grammar, and understand basic English words. It is actually spelt "atheist" and not "athiest". God is a God who speaks, and language matters - though he won't love you any less if you struggle with it.

There are no tricks, but by God's grace, they'll come to know and love the Saviour you so cherish yourself.