Raised From the Dead

A microcosmic analogy (one of many in the Bible) of God's electing call:

"And He went up on the mountain, and called to Him those whom He desired, and they came to Him" (Mark 3:13).

No one can resist that call. God is mighty to save.

The Difference Between "If You Will" and "If You Can"

There is a big difference in the Bible between those two things. One is pleasing to God; the other is not. In the last 50 or so years, it's become popular to say that including in our requests to God "If it is your will" somehow conveys a lack of faith. But nothing could be further from the truth. Two stories in the Bible--one about a leper, and the other about a boy's father--serve to illustrate this.

In Mark 1:40-45, a leper came to Jesus, imploring him and kneeling before him to say, "If you will, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Mark says, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I will; be clean." And at once the man was clean of leprosy.

In Mark 9:22-24, the disciples had not been able to help a boy tormented by spirits. Jesus saw the crowd gathered and took things in hand. The boy's father told Jesus that for a long time, since the boy's childhood, this spirit had been trying to destroy him. "But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us," finished the poor father. "'If you can!'," returned our Lord. "All things are possible for one who believes." Immediately, Mark says, the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief!"

The leper believed that Jesus could. This was pleasing to the Lord, and earned the leper no rebuke. But the father of the boy did not know if Jesus could. This is what earned him Jesus' rebuke in the form of repeating his faithless words back to him.

There are some things we ask God for that we know are his will to do. We know it's His will for His name to be hallowed, for His kingdom to come, for His church to forgive. We know it's His will for us to be sanctified in His word of truth and for believers to have love for one another. Those things are prayed "in accordance with His will," that is, in accord with what He has definitely declared, in his word, that He is going to cause to happen. We can pray in faith that those things will happen.

For other requests, such as for healing, for a specific new job, for a husband or wife, we cannot know His will. We make our requests for those specific things we want, because that's what he wants us to do; the faith that pleases him is our knowing that He can do whatever is his will to do. And it pleases Him when we express it in just that way, trusting him for how he will, in His compassion, answer.

Beware Lest You Defend God!

You would think I'd have titled this, "Beware Lest You OFFEND God." But we need to be just as wary of defending him, lest we end up, in doing so, after all offending him. That's what Job's friends did. Here's the story.

In the book of Job, Job's "comforters," his friends who came to visit after all the disasters described in Chapter 1 had come upon him, didn't like the way Job was talking about God. They felt as if Job was accusing God of sending suffering his way without due cause, so they leapt to God's defense.

"God," they said, "always rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked in just the ways we describe. Therefore your suffering, Job, has come upon you due to wickedness in your life."

But Job refuses this view, instead pointing out what we might call the difficult providences of God. He speaks directly to God about it like this:

"What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him, visit him every morning and test him every moment? How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit? If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your mark?" (7:17-20)

Now, these words of Job's must have sounded blasphemous to Job's friends, and they likely would to us, too. So they set about vigorously "defending" God (as we might). But the truth was, Job was on to something that his friends had missed. Job knew that God does not stand in need of misguided defense, as Job's friends tried to provide. Job was seeing and commenting on the whole thing in a more truthful way (although with limited understanding) than his three comforters. His view of God as the sovereign "instigator" of his suffering was spot on:

"But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind" (12: 17).

Even the dumb beasts, even the bushes, could have told Job's friends that God, the sovereign ruler of all things, had brought "all this" about! Duh!

What did God want to teach Job, and all Job's friends, about himself? He wanted to teach them that he is Ruler, and that he is good. That he is sovereign, and that he is merciful. That his ways are higher than ours and past finding out, yet that he is willing to draw near to us. Job wishes for an "arbiter," or umpire (Job 9:32-33) to "lay his hand on us both" (that is, on both him and God, should Job be allowed to bring his unhappy case before God for trial). The New Testament tells us that God did indeed send just such a Mediator (1 Timothy 2:5, Hebrews 9:15, 12:24) to do what we weak and unrighteous people could never do: make us righteous by his own blood, and forever successfully plead our case before God the Judge! So we see that the God who sometimes sends affliction is the same God who sends mercy. And he does it all for his own purposes, for his own glory, and for those who are his, their good.

Puny man cannot accuse or defend God. Here is how Job rightly puts it to his friends who are so eager to "get God off the hook" :

"With God are wisdom and might; he has counsel and understanding. If he tears down, none can rebuild; if he shuts a man in, none can open. If he withholds the waters, they dry up; if he sends them out, they overwhelm the land... he makes nations great, and he destroys them; he enlarges nations, and leads them away...

"Will you speak falsely for God and speak deceitfully for him? Will you show partiality toward him? Will you plead the case for God? Will it be well with you when he searches you out?... He will surely rebuke you, if in secret you show partiality!" (Job 13:1-12).

And here is how God finally speaks to the issue, putting it this way to Job's friends:

"My anger burns against you [Eliphaz] and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has... my servant Job will pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has" (42:7-8).

Beware of "defending" God! :)

His Yoke is Easy, His Burden is Light (Even When We Are Distressed)!

Not long ago, it came up in a conversation with a loved one that all this difficulty in relationships and difficult church situations can't be right. All the arrogance we see around us, born of a false view of God and his ways, plus the struggle with our own sinful hearts, causes forlornness. All this just can't be right, was the conversation, because of this: Jesus said, "Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest; take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).

But here's why these words of Jesus don't make it wrong that we are, both of us, distressed and struggling so often. The first reason why is this one: Jesus was talking about the salvation from sin he offers.

He had, in Matthew 11:1-24, just pronounced a ringing indictment on the unbelief and hardheartedness of the Jews in failing to recognize both the forerunner (John the Baptist) and their Messiah. The cities in which he had done most of his miracles were included, because they did not repent (v. 20); if the miracles these cities had witnessed had been seen in Sodom, said the Lord, Sodom would have repented and would still be here today. How favored these cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum had been, yet by their lack of repentance, their damnation was sealed.

The the Lord in vs. 25 begins to speak of God's goodness in revealing himself, not to these lofty cities, but to "infants." "Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does any one know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him."

Having made this great statement of praise dor the Father's freedom and pleasure in sovereignly revealing himself to those whom he would, Jesus then extends his invitation-- not to be refused--to those infants, those little ones, those weary ones (us!): "Come unto me."

The weariness and the heavy burden is the guilt of sin; the rest he offers is the forgiveness and the removal of it. His easy yoke is his commands, which are our delight (Psalm 40:8) and not burdensome; his "burden" for us is joy, the joy of our salvation!

This is not a one-time benefit, but is meant to sustain us throughout all our journey in this pilgrim passage. Who can ever "get over" the wonder of a Savior who has canceled the debt of sin?

The other reason why these words of Jesus don't make it wrong that we are distressed and that we struggle so often is this: it was the way of our Master himself, of his apostles, and of all the faithful and suffering church since then. I'll just close with these words from Scripture:

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence" (Hebrews 5:7).

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies" (2 Corinthians 4:7-10).

"It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?" (Hebrews 12:7).

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal" ( 2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

Chasing the Wind and the Words of the Preacher

I needed Ecclesiastes this week. Life is real and life can be painful, and God was good to let me hear Alistair Begg on the radio teaching a little from that book the other day. So I decided to turn to its pages once again and am so glad I did.

The message of Ecclesiastes is a confirmation that no, you're not crazy, and yes, the creation is in trouble and all our lives reflect that. It is because of the fall of Adam in the garden, because of the disastrous effects of sin. We're all now subject to the vanity of all worldly pursuits. They are all "fleeting, ephemeral, and elusive," as the ESV Study Bible introduction to the book puts it; the word translated "vanity" (over 38 times) in Ecclesiastes is literally "vapor." It is the same word and idea Paul uses in Romans 8 as he explains that in the Fall, the "creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it" (Romans 8:20).

We all know this, deep down. We may forget it for periods at a time, we may push it to the backs of our minds, but it only takes the right difficult circumstance to remind us vividly that the world is broken, and so to a great extent are our lives. It is a fact too painful to be acknowledged apart from hope. Some of the philosophers acknowledged it and came up with observations and solutions that lead nowhere but to a stoic bearing up under it all until death comes in relief. Some of the philosophers ended in despair. But that's not where Ecclesiastes goes. Thank God!

The message of Ecclesiastes is the greatest of news for the weary, the hopeless, the one who has "eyes wide open" and does not want to sugar-coat this life. The good news is this: God has told us all that he expects of his people (Micah 6:8). It is not too hard for us! (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, Romans 10:6-8, Matthew 11:28-30). That is because of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh who "came near" to make a way for us to heaven and to the resurrection (John 14:6). (Yes, I know Ecclesiastes doesn't know all this yet, but this is the way the Bible interprets itself.) More good news, straight from the pages of Ecclesiastes:

"He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I [the Preacher] perceived that there is nothing better for them [the children of men, that's us] than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--this is God's gift to man" (Ecclesiastes 3:11-13). Isn't that such kindness from God?

God is sovereign over all our affairs, whether we have abundance (materially) or little: "In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him" (Ecclesiastes 7:14). Quit trying to play God, and relax! Trust him who holds all these things in his sovereign hands.

Don't labor and toil for vain things, but do toil: "Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot [there's God's sovereignty again!]. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil--this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart" (Ecclesiastes 5:18-20).

The message of Ecclesiastes is that there is so much about God's ways and his decretive (secret) purposes we don't know, that therefore we should live the short life we have on this earth humbly, in recognition of that, but in gratitude for the blessings of work, and family and God's provision for us (Ecclesiastes 9:7-9), whether little or a lot (it's always enough!). We should not be puffed up and "think more highly of ourselves than we ought to" (Romans 12:3). All mankind is in the same boat--the end of us all is the grave (Ecclesiastes 9:1-2). All this wisdom and truth of Ecclesiastes is to be understood in the New Testament revelation of Christ and what God did through him to win our salvation. For those who have received the truth of the gospel there is Heaven to look forward to.

Ecclesiastes ends with this: "The end of the matter: all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). This is the key to living. Life is complicated and fraught with difficulty, even evil, but God has given us a compass that points true North as we journey through: "Fear God and keep his commandments." He gave us the best motivation to do so, as well: "For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." In between those two things lies our life, to be lived in simple, glad obedience, trust and gratitude.

I'm so thankful for Ecclesiastes. It's words are like "goads" (Ecclesiastes 12:11), the sharp, pointed sticks that keep the flock to the right path, and they are like "nails firmly fixed" (12:11), providing "moral and intellectual stability" (from the ESV Study Bible explanatory notes). It has been that for me over the past few days. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity apart from Christ. All flesh is as grass; the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord, it lasts forever (1 Peter 1:22-25).

All I Have is Christ

Growing older stinks sometimes. I often am aware that I've brought a lot of the difficulty of this time of life on myself. It is all too true. But yet...

There's grace. My Lord loves me; he thought of me before the foundation of the world was even laid and determined to have me for his own child. He purchased me out of the world with blood-soaked mercy. I am forever his.

I am a mess-up in many ways, but Jesus Christ redeems mess-ups just like me, swoops them up out of the pit of despair they've dug for themselves and makes them part of his story, to the praise of his glorious grace, as it says in Ephesians 1:3-10. He is sure-handed and able to do everything I cannot. All I can do is fall on him for mercy and grace for help in time of need.

Growing older is another way God is using to make me see that it's in Christ alone my hope is found. Some young people out there are sure able to put that into words very well! Here's one example. When I'm young and when I'm old... all I have is Christ.




Sovereign Grace's Devon Kauflin

God's Use of Means

It's been asked more than once: "If God has ordained everything that comes to pass, and nothing can thwart his will, then why do we still need to pray? What real difference do our prayers make?" This is a great question. If we believe that God simply reacts, waiting for our prayers to guide him in his responses, this won't present a puzzle. If we believe that God is dependent on us--on our weak and faltering efforts--to accomplish his will, then we probably won't even have considered this question. But if, through our reading of the Scriptures and our own suffering we've gained a higher view of God and of his word, then this at some point becomes of great interest. Why does a sovereign, all-powerful God ordain that his people should pray for what he's already determined will come to pass?

The reason is that God, for his own glory and purposes, chooses to use means to accomplish his will. ("Means" are not ill-tempered, cranky people!) Means, rather, are the ordained ways by which God fulfills his preordained purposes.

For example, we know that Christ has purposed to return some day. He will return no matter what. All that he has ordained to come to pass between now and then (missions, the preaching of the gospel, the perseverance of the church, the "fullness of the Gentiles" being brought in, etc.) will also come to pass, no matter what. Yet he has told us to pray for his return ("pray like this... 'Let your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.'") He told us to pray for all that comes in between. We are to beseech the Father to send laborers into the harvest (missionaries, church planters, teachers and preachers) and to pray for the church, for her success in proclaiming and living out the gospel in the world, and to pray and work for our own sanctification, even though "it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13).

In his wonderful little book The Bruised Reed, Richard Sibbes offers this helpful illustration, showing that the use of means is a principle taken for granted even in civic matters: "For who, if he knew before that it would be a fruitful year, would therefore hang up his plough and neglect tillage?" In other words, if a framer could somehow see ahead and know that harvest time will bring a rich crop, he would still get his plow out in the spring to till up the ground and plant the seed. His plow and his effort and the seed are the ordained means to the certain, coming bounty.

So God, in the unsearchable riches of his wisdom and ways, has ordained that all his sovereign purposes will surely come to pass, and that they will not come to pass apart from the prayers and labors of the saints. Again in the words of Richard Sibbes, "The means that God has set apart for the effecting of any thing are included in the purpose that he has to bring that thing to pass." We can be sure that in whatever he has decreed, he will also provide the means--whether prayer, or the preaching of the gospel, or any other ordained means--to accomplish those purposes.

photos here and here

A Straight Line with a Crooked Stick

In talking about the difficult doctrine of God's ordaining and ruling over evil without being sinful himself (as in the preordained murder of his Son) John Piper offers this illustration from the life of Joni Eareckson Tada:

Perhaps some may think that this heady theology... is too high to be practically helpful. Joni Eareckson Tada and her coauthor Steve Estes have found it otherwise.

Joni has been almost completely paralyzed from the neck down from a diving accident when she was 17 years old. During a bleak period of doubt and anger, a friend introduced her to Steve Estes. They began to study the Bible together. 'She came to the classically Reformed belief that her injury was an expression of God's love. To put it simply, Scripture taught Tada that her soul was infinitely more important than her body.'

She explains, 'I was heading down a path of self-destruction [before my accident]... I was checking out a birth-control clinic to get some pills, because I knew I'd be sleeping with my boyfriend in college. Somewhere in that mess of emotions and regrets and falterings and failings, while making a sham of my Christian faith, somewhere in that desperation I said, "God, rescue me." And he did. I believe my accident was a direct answer.

Some people might want to say indirect, but I lean toward the old adage that God draws straight lines with crooked sticks.'

As Piper says, "The life of the godly is not a straight line to glory, but they do get there--God sees to it."



Taken from A Sweet and Bitter Providence by John Piper

Angling Our Lives Toward God

Alec Motyer comments on James 5:13:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise.
"Our whole life, we might say, should be so angled towards God that whatever strikes upon us, whether sorrow or joy, should be deflected upwards at once into his presence. In particular, this is an exercise in glad acceptance of the will of God. This is the common denominator of prayer and praise. In praise, we say to him, 'Your will is good, perfect and acceptable; this is what you have done for me and I rejoice.' And as for prayer in times of trouble, it attempts--however poorly we may succeed--to copy the Gethsemane prayer of Jesus in saying, 'Not my will but yours.' R.V.G. Tasker notes helpfully that when Jesus was in agony, 'wrestling with the forces of evil at the moment of their strongest attack, he "prayed more earnestly" (Luke 22:44). Prayer may not remove the affliction but it most certainly can transform it.'

"This, then, is the individual at prayer. He is reflecting all his life upward, acknowledging the sufficiency and sovereignty of God, practicing the grace of acceptance and rejecting the disgrace of stubbornness. In this the voice of prayer and the voice of praise are at one, for alike they say that the will of God is good."

(I've been reading Motyer's wonderful commentary on James in the past weeks. Read a bit about his love for the Bible here.)

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He Himself Will Wipe Every Tear

Isaiah 25:8a--"He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away every tear from all faces."

"The exalted title of Sovereign Lord calls attention to the fact that in all the dignity of his divine Sovereignty, it is the Lord himself who will attend to our tears, moving from person to person until each eye has been dried." (Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah)

Whatever My God Ordains is Right

Whatever my God ordains is right: His holy will abides;
I will be still whatever He does, and follow where He guides.

He is my God; though dark my road,
He holds me that I shall not fall;
Wherefore to Him I leave it all.

Whatever my God ordains is right: He never will deceive me.
He leads me by the proper path; I know He will not leave me.

I take, content, what He has sent;
His hand can turn my griefs away,
And patiently I wait His day.

Whatever my God ordains is right: His loving thought attends me;
No poison can be in the cup that my Physician sends me.

My God is true; each morning new
I’ll trust His grace unending,
My life to Him commending.

Whatever my God ordains is right: He is my Friend and Father;
He suffers naught to do me harm, though many storms may gather.

Now I may know both joy and woe,
Some day I shall see clearly
That He has loved me dearly.

Whatever my God ordains is right: though now this cup, in drinking,
May bitter seem to my faint heart, I take it, all unshrinking.

My God is true; each morning new
Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart,
And pain and sorrow shall depart.

Whatever my God ordains is right: here shall my stand be taken;
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine, yet I am not forsaken.

My Father’s care is round me there;
He holds me that I shall not fall:
And so to Him I leave it all.

Augustine and Pelagius For Us Ladies

"O God, command what You will, and give what You command," prayed Augustine, the 5th century bishop of Hippo, Africa, and so answered the growing heresy of the day taught by, among others, a British monk named Pelagius. Pelagius answered Augustine's thought with his own: God would never command something that is not in the ability of man to do.

This was not the first serious doctrinal conflict that had arisen in the church, but it is one of the first that provided theological labels still in use. Although Pelagius' views were condemned as unbiblical at the Council of Carthage in 418, they remained popular with many and have persisted in one form or another to this very day. Most of us in the church are unaware of these historical events and unfamiliar with the terms Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism, yet the views of Pelagius and others like him still deeply affect our understanding.

This conflict of understanding is one reason we have trouble growing and changing into the image of Christ, which is God's will for us. The New Testament words of Jesus and the apostles concerning how we are to live, and what sort of people we are to be, can seem so hopelessly beyond us that our eyes (and hearts) glaze over. We just can't apply such high standards to our own lives! Or, we determine to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get with the program of obeying God's commands. We make resolutions and "decisions" for Christ that harden eventually into a rigid lifestyle of rules. We really want to be holy, but feel it must come by our own efforts.

Either way we fall short of God's requirements. He does demand that His people be holy, set apart and conformed to the image of His Son, but He is not glorified by our own attempts at righteous living resulting in rigidity and self-righteousness. They are doomed to fail.

This is the dilemma that has led multitudes from Isaiah, to Paul, to Augustine and Luther to fall on their faces before the righteous demands of God and cry out, "God, you are holy and I am not! Command what you will--I have no say-so or argument anymore with Your holy and just law. Only, give what I need to obey Your commands!"

This is the prayer from the heart that God is waiting to hear. We have to come to the end of ourselves, and see very plainly that we will never fulfill God's righteousness by our own efforts.

This stuff really matters (thus a world-wide council convened in 418 A.D. in order to get it settled, or so they'd hoped.) And to bring it all down to our world, it matters greatly to us women; the stakes are so high that Paul says if we let the ball drop, and don't become doers of the word and not just hearers, we will actually aid the enemies of God and bring reproach to His gospel (Titus 2:5). What will we do about commands like this, which we cannot obey in our own strength and we dare not simply glaze over?

"Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening" (1 Peter 3:1-6).

We'll fly to Jesus for help.

Lord, command what You will, and give what You command.



(learn more about Augustine and Pelagius here)

Photo by janusz l

When God Says "I'm Going To Do It"...We Pray For Him To Do It

God told Elijah that He was going to send rain and so...Elijah prayed for rain.

"This is the wonder of prayer...that instead of God's saying "I'm going to do it" making prayer redundant, actually, God's saying "I'm going to do it" is meant to inspire us to pray, and direct our praying that so that our praying is in line with what God has said.

"Prayer is built on what God has promised He will do. Prayer starts in God, prayer starts with God initiating, telling us what He's after. It's not us thinking, "What shall I pray for?" No, it's much more responding to His initiatives--what He wants to do--and we come and ask Him in the light of that."

From a talk by Terry Virgo; all commas, quotes, dashes and such made up by me as I listened. You can listen to the whole thing here.

Book Review--Just Do Something

Just Do Something, a new book by Kevin DeYoung, is subtitled "A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will OR How to Make a Decision without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Impressions, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, Etc." As you might guess, the author makes use of an enjoyable sense of humor in writing this book! That does not at all take away from the seriousness of the subject matter or the care and skill with which he treats it.

My interest in the topic of how Christians are to go about discovering God's will for the decisions they must make has been growing as of late. I came up as a believer taught that we were to seek God's mind on all decisions, big and small, and that we could and should expect to receive clear guidance from Him. If we didn't, it was our fault; we just weren't spiritual enough to hear Him! Discovering a different, biblical and therefore infinitely better way of understanding these things has indeed been liberating to me (how true our Lord's words, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free") and this view is more glorifying to God, for it employs a much higher understanding of His sovereignty! I so long to see other friends set free from the often agonizing process by which we often feel we must pray through decisions. You can check here for my review of another resource I recently turned to on this topic. The dvd reviewed there is a good one, but this book treats the subject with more depth, and therefore more helpfully.

Just Do Something begins with this from Josh Harris' foreword: "It is God's will for you to read this book. Yes, I'm talking to you. What are the odds that you would "just happen" to pick up this book and flip open to this page and start reading? Obviously it's a sign. Of all the millions of books in the world, you found this one. Wow. I have chills. Do not pass up this divinely orchestrated moment. If you miss this moment there's a good chance you will completely miss God's will for the rest of your life and spend your days in misery and regret."

If you caught on pretty quickly that Josh is gently spoofing many of our attitudes in discerning God's guidance and direction, you get a cookie. It almost seems mean (as well as humorous), but the tone of this book is anything but mean-spirited. Rather, DeYoung leads an informative and highly engaging tour of how we in the church in America have have come to think about "finding" God's will (i.e. His guidance in our everyday affairs) for our lives. Just the names of the short and very readable chapters are intriguing. "The Will of God in Christianese," "Our Magic 8-Ball God" ("God is not a magic eight ball we shake up and peer into whenever we have a decision to make. He is a good God who gives us brains, shows us the way of obedience, and invites us to take risks for him"), "A Better Way," and "Work, Wedlock and God's Will" walk us through insightful and entirely biblical teaching to a better understanding of what the Scriptures teach about God's will. Much of this will be new and surprising to many believers, but truth is, it's our present-day thinking on this topic that's new. This is beautifully illustrated in sections from interviews the author did with his two grandfathers, and especially in the last chapter, "The End of the Matter." I was moved to tears and worship for the greatness of God in His purposes as I read the moving story of DeYoung's aged grandfather, and was also made greatly nostalgic for a time I've really never known, when faith in God's providential guidance was more widely understood and valued.

In contrast, the first chapter of the book, "The Long Road to Nowhere," paints an accurate and devastating portrait of the current generation of young American evangelicals as "tinkerers" (as opposed to the "builders" and "boomers" that came before), paralyzed by passivity and empty on follow-through. "Our search for the will of God has become an accomplice in the postponement of growing up, a convenient out for the young (or old) Christian floating through life without direction or purpose. Too many of us have passed off our instability, inconsistency and endless self-exploration as "looking for God's will," as if not making up our minds and meandering through life were marks of spiritual sensitivity." I confess to being just as guilty of this as people younger than me, for poor theology affects those of any and every age group!

There is so much in this book to recommend, though it's not without a couple of minor weaknesses. DeYoung's section dealing with godly counsel in Chapter 8 could have been stronger, and I actually woke up in the wee hours of the morning after I'd read the book realizing that questions may arise about God's providential guidance in cases of sinful failures, either morally or doctrinally, that bring about disastrous or tragic consequences. That there is biblical truth dealing with that very issue, doctrine which gives deeply satisfying, though not necessarily easy, answers should be comforting. Perhaps that's fodder for a later book review!

I highly recommend this book...it's timeliness and importance can't be overstressed, for it's not just the pragmatic need we have of knowing how to make good decisions that is addressed, but our whole view of God. When we retain well-intentioned but erroneous views of how God works in the life of the believer, how He guides, how He speaks to us... well, we are retaining erroneous views of God Himself. He is not glorified when His people are bound by unbiblical constraints, and the church is held back from the joyous effectiveness she could and should have to the world around us. So order it, read it and pass it around--you'll be doing yourself and perhaps some friends a great favor by doing so.

Order it here.

February 28

Joseph Emmanuel Pollard
February 28, 1981-October 2, 2004
"Upside Down!"

He Heals the Brokenhearted

"Time heals all wounds," so the old saying goes, but it's not exactly true...only God heals! He created time and uses it for good, but he alone is the One who "heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" (Psalm 147:3.) So how does God work to heal our broken hearts?

He does it by words of comfort that show us there is still hope, and that one day he will make all things right. He does this through his Holy Spirit, the promised Comforter, who takes his words found in the pages of Scripture and presses them close to our hearts. If we are looking for healing and binding up of wounds apart from his words of grace and hope we will not find it! There is no true hope of healing and restoration apart from him.

If his promises of heaven to come, of his sustaining strength and power for the trials we face now, and his unfailing love for us are of no comfort to us in our sorrow and loss, then we will look in vain for true healing for our broken hearts. The comforts and consolations of this world are empty and will not satisfy. Only the truth will do--the truth found in the promises of Christ.

"But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall" (Malachi 4:2.) The comforting, healing, life-giving promises of God are for those who love him, who "fear his name" and who look to him with patient trust. One day, all those who do will find themselves healed, whole and full of joy unspeakable... as little calves set free go leaping, out into the bright sunshine.

(Photo by Niebrugge Images)