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

Keeping Us Right

Calvin chose two metaphors to describe our need for God’s Word: Scripture functions as a pair of eyeglasses to correct our blurred vision, and as a strong thread to guide us through life’s confusing labyrinth.

“Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision can scarcely construe two words [from a beautiful volume] . . . so Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, clearly shows us the true God,” Calvin writes. “If we turn aside from the Word we shall never reach the goal. [Returning to God] is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted by the thread of the Word” (I.vi.1-3).


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Becoming A Pure Vessel

Have you ever prayed and asked the Lord to purify your heart--to purify your motives and your secret thoughts and desires? You should! We all should do this, because this is why he chose us... to "purify for himself a people for his own possession"(Titus 2:14). He does this purifying by exposing the secret thoughts and intentions of our hearts by the use of His word--through the Bible! Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

Let the word of God do its discerning work, rooting out the impurities and exposing them to yourself; for this to happen you must read it, seeking diligently to learn what is right and true before God, asking him by his Spirit to make you willing to take action on what he shows you (James 1:22, 23). Only in this way can you become one who is zealous for good works, a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

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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How Did Jesus See the Old Testament?

Are we as Christians missing out on much of the meaning of the New Testament because we don't understand the Old? Alec Motyer speaks on Jesus' and his disciples' view of the OT Scriptures:

"It would not have surprised his disciples that our Lord affirmed the enduring validity of the Old Testament (Matthew 5:18). They would have taken it for granted that God's word is imperishable. It is we who must candidly face the Lord's estimate of the Bible as he knew it and, out of reverence for him, adjust our misunderstandings until we see the beautiful wholeness of the word of God, the Old and New Testaments as divine revelation" (The Story of the Old Testament, p. 10).

Feelings Follow Behavior

Wow. Here's a truth that needs to be promoted with all seriousness in our churches. Psychology has introduced us to a failed model of therapeutic "truth" that has even permeated the church. But David M. Tyler in his book God's Funeral argues that ungodliness (idolatry) leads to unrighteousness (wrong behavior) and thus is the cause of much of our mental sufferings:

"'Feelings follow behavior' is a principle found first in Genesis 3 and throughout the whole Bible.

"The Bible teaches that there is a relationship between behavior and feelings. Ungodliness leads to unrighteousness which leads to guilt, depression, anxiety, fear, shame, etc. After they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve fled from the presence of God because they were "afraid" (Genesis 3:10). When God rejected Cain's offering he became angry and depressed. God asked Cain, 'Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?' God said to Cain, 'If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?' (Genesis 4:6-7). If Cain would change his behavior his feelings would change. God's rhetorical question to Cain sets forth the important principle that behavior determines feelings."

I'm convinced that this principle holds true for kiddies as well as their mommas and daddies.

The Cost of Discipleship

"And they said to him, 'The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink.' And Jesus said to them, 'Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days'" (Luke 5:33-35).

"When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed" (Acts 14:21-23).

"Jesus takes it for granted that his disciples will observe the pious custom of fasting. Strict exercise of self-control is an essential feature of the Christian's life. Such customs have only one purpose--to make the disciples more ready and cheerful to accomplish those things which God would have done" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, quoted by John Piper in A Hunger for God).

Fasting is a lost discipline of Christ's church. May we recover it for his glory.