Why Do I Continue in Mourning?

“Why go I mourning?”—Psalm 42:9.

Can you answer this, believer? Can you find any reason why you are so often mourning instead of rejoicing? Why yield to gloomy anticipations? Who told you that the night would never end in day? Who told you that the sea of circumstances would ebb out till there should be nothing left but long leagues of the mud of horrible poverty? Who told you that the winter of your discontent would proceed from frost to frost, from snow, and ice, and hail, to deeper snow, and yet more heavy tempest of despair? Do you not know that day follows night, that flood comes after ebb, that spring and summer succeed winter? Have hope then! Ever have hope! For God fails you not. Do you not know that your God loves you in the midst of all this? Mountains, when in darkness hidden, are as real as in day, and God’s love is as true to you now as it was in your brightest moments.

No father chastens always: your Lord hates the rod as much as you do; He only cares to use it for that reason which should make you willing to receive it, namely, that it works for your lasting good. You shall yet climb Jacob’s ladder with the angels, and behold Him who sits at the top of it—your covenant God. You shall yet, amidst the splendors of eternity, forget the trials of time, or only remember them to bless the God who led you through them, and wrought your lasting good by them.

Come, sing in the midst of tribulation. Rejoice even while passing through the furnace. Make the wilderness to blossom like the rose! Cause the desert to ring with your exulting joys, for these light afflictions will soon be over, and then “for ever with the Lord,” your bliss shall never wane.

“Faint not nor fear, His arms are near,
He changeth not, and thou art dear;
Only believe and thou shalt see,
That Christ is all in all to thee.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon (from Morning and Evening, a daily devotional; words adapted for contemporary language)

Joy and Suffering in Psalm 30

Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
Psalm 30:4-5

The psalmist displays a posture of worship reflecting the full spectrum of human experience – he calls God’s people to praise Him for His faithfulness and grants the freedom to cry out when our suffering seems too great to bear. He proclaims that God knows our sorrows, hears our cries and is near (Ps. 34:18). His words speak comfort from the Lord, that in our pain we have hope, the promise of joy in the end.

To you, O LORD, I cry,
and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell your faithfulness?
Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me!
O LORD, be my helper!
Psalm30:8-10

Yet sometimes in suffering, our only response is, “Why, Lord?” Another friend, parent or sibling diagnosed with cancer. Another baby lost before his parents could know the joy of the first cry of life. Another marriage that ends with a spouse alone the first night after the funeral. It’s too much to bear. The pain is too great. So we cry out, “Where are you, Lord?”

And we wait. Sometimes for a night. Sometimes for weeks. Sometimes years. We wait with darkness laid heavy like the heat of a late summer’s night. Will it ever break?

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing:
you have loosed my sackcloth
and clothe me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!
Psalm 30:11-12

But then, when the weight is at its heaviest: relief. The light of the morning dries our tear-stained cheeks, and we can see, maybe for the first time, that there is joy. We come to know that our story, with all its hurt and brokenness and grief, is part of God’s grand redemptive story. It is the story of creation, fall, redemption, consummation. The story of a people ruined by sin, of a love so great that even death could not overcome it, of a Savior who lived, who died and was raised – Jesus, who will one day come again to set all that’s wrong to right. The tension may remain, the aching still present, but in the morning, there is hope. In the morning, there is joy.

Originally posted on The Village Church’s blog by Brady Goodwin here: http://ow.ly/cvABe

Darkness & Light (Spurgeon)

“And God divided the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 1:4)

A believer has two principles at work within him. In his natural estate he was subject to one principle only, which was darkness; now light has entered, and the two principles disagree. Mark the apostle Paul’s words in the seventh chapter of Romans: “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members.”

How is this state of things occasioned?

“The Lord divided the light from the darkness.” Darkness, by itself, is quiet and undisturbed, but when the Lord sends in light, there is a conflict for the one is in opposition to the other: a conflict which will never cease till the believe is altogether light in the Lord. If there be a division within the individual Christian, there is certain to be a division without. So soon as the Lord gives to any man light, he proceeds to separate himself from the darkness around; he secedes from a merely worldly religion of outward ceremonial, for nothing short of the gospel of Christ will now satisfy him, and he withdraws himself from worldly society and frivolous amusements, and seeks the company of the saints, for “We know we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.”

The light gathers to itself, and the darkness to itself. What God has divided, let us never try to unite, but as Christ went [outside/away from] the camp, bearing His reproach, so let us come out from the ungodly, and be a peculiar people. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners; and, as He was, so we are to be nonconformists to the world, dissenting from all sin, and distinguished from the rest of mankind by our likeness to our Master.

~ C.H. Spurgeon (from Morning and Evening, a daily devotional; paragraphing added)

The Message of the Bible in 221 Words

God is the sovereign, transcendent and personal God who has made the universe, including us, his image-bearers. Our misery lies in our rebellion, our alienation from God, which, despite his forbearance, attracts his implacable wrath.

But God, precisely because love is of the very essence of his character, takes the initiative and prepared for the coming of his own Son by raising up a people who, by covenantal stipulations, temple worship, systems of sacrifice and of priesthood, by kings and by prophets, are taught something of what God is planning and what he expects.

In the fullness of time his Son comes and takes on human nature. He comes not, in the first instance, to judge but to save: he dies the death of his people, rises from the grave and, in returning to his heavenly Father, bequeaths the Holy Spirit as the down payment and guarantee of the ultimate gift he has secured for them—an eternity of bliss in the presence of God himself, in a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

The only alternative is to be shut out from the presence of this God forever, in the torments of hell. What men and women must do, before it is too late, is repent and trust Christ; the alternative is to disobey the gospel (Romans 10:16; 2 Thessalonians 1:8; 1 Peter 4:17).

D.A. Carson [For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism, Past, Present and Future, p.80]

Experiential Discipleship

We’ve gotten discipleship backwards. Jesus put it like this: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32) In discipleship, we have reversed this. Instead, we start like this: Know the truth. Be set free. Follow Jesus.

Knowing facts about God is not enough
Many people have never actually seen what God is like. They only know facts about him. They can list off many things: He is loving, gracious, all knowing, all powerful, everywhere present, infinite, provider, caring, passionate, and more. But here is the issue: We never fall in love with someone by simply knowing a list of things about them.

I was speaking to a young woman who said she was struggling with her faith. She expressed deep confusion about what God was like, as this was the very One she was supposed to tell her friends, neighbors, and strangers about. She would describe for them God’s varied characteristics, but for some reason they were unaffected.

Then I pressed her. She has a boyfriend so I asked her: “What if I were trying to set you and your boyfriend up and I said: ‘He has two eyes, two legs, a face, hair, a mouth, he eats, he hugs people and he wears clothes.’ Would you be so caught up about him that you’d fall in love with him?” She laughed and said, “Of course not!.” I said, “How have you fallen in love with him?” She responded, “Our time in relationship with each other.” Exactly.

She spent time with him and walked with him to see what he was like. So much so, that if I told tell her, “Your boyfriend is a thief and a liar,” she wouldn’t believe me, because of her experiential understanding of who he is and what he is like. His being called a thief and a liar is a contradiction to his character that she knows intimately. This is how it is with God. He has always wanted a relationship with us, so we could show off what he is like to the entire world. We see this right away in the Garden of Eden, as God walks with Adam and Eve, God’s image bearers, in the cool of the day.

This is why discipleship starts with the first time we have contact with a person. Now, don’t read this and hear that facts about a person or facts about God aren’t important. Of course, it is important that her boyfriend has an actual heart that keeps him alive, just as it is important that God is, in fact, spirit. But, if you asked Adam and Eve why they believe God is their provider, they’d point to the variety and lushness of the garden, not because they found a tract behind the tree of life that told them so.

We show off what God is like as we walk in his ways
When we do not merely memorize facts about God, but actually experience those facts in relationship with him, we can show him clearly to others. So, instead of just saying, “God provides,” we see that he provides as we lean on his provision and wisdom. We don’t merely call him Comforter, but we have experienced his comfort in our lives. We can then authentically show off what God is like to others as we live in community with them. So, when they begin to trust in Jesus, they’ve already seen what a disciple does and experienced it. Because of this, they have an affectionate relationship with God and not merely an intellectual relationship with facts about God.

Isn’t this moralism? No. Instead, we are open with our sin, showing people how forgiving, loving and pursuant God is, even in our sin because of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We aren’t saying we are the gospel, but we are the image bearers of God, showing others the fullness of God in every way, in our righteousness and our sin. Of course, both of these are only possible because of the gospel (John 15:15; 1 John 1:5-10).

Where did we get so off track?
We’ve never had relationships like this. We’ve never merely known facts about someone and said we were in intimate relationship with them. Yet we can see many people living this way. They believe this list of facts, then they work the rest of their lives trying to do things to prove that God is real and true, the same way they know it with their minds. In reality, they’ve never been set free. They are still slaves. Jesus’ burden is heavy, not light. And, in the end, the gospel isn’t good news and definitely doesn’t bring great joy.

Maybe this is the reason why so many pastors and Christians are burnt out. They have a relationship with a spreadsheet of facts instead of walking in the ways of Jesus who sets them free, brings great joy, and whose burden is light. I wonder what would happen if our list of facts, or our systematic theology actually came from the truth of the Spirit working in our lives and seeking what the Word of God says about himself. If we allowed this sort of patience and long-suffering to happen, we’d truly experience God for he is and what he’s done in our world and in our lives. The Spirit would disciple us in the truth of who he is in both word and deed, showing us experientially who he is. The problem with our method of discipleship, is we often want people to cross this line of truth overnight, instead of resting in the sovereign work of God by trusting him to reveal himself to people as he sees fit, in his perfect timing.

If you fall in love with someone through experiencing who they are by seeing their beauty, both physical and spiritual, why wouldn’t you expect that shadow to point you to the reality of who God is, especially in light of his exponential depth of glory?

We need to go back to a discipleship that starts with walking with others as we walk with Jesus, so they’ll know the truth and that truth will set them free as it has set us free.

Originally posted by Seth McBee here: http://ow.ly/bzhiQ

What The Psalms Do

If you read the Psalms only for doctrine, you’re not reading them for what they are. They are psalms, songs, poetry. They’re musical, and the reason human beings express truth with music and poetry is to awaken and express emotions that fit the truth.

One of the reasons the Psalms are deeply loved by so many Christians is that they give expression to an amazing array of emotions. Listen to this list of emotions I pulled together:

1. Loneliness: “I am lonely and afflicted” (Psalms 25:16).
2. Love: “I love you, O Lord, my strength” (Psalms 18:1).
3. Awe: “Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him” (Psalms 33:8).
4. Sorrow: “My life is spent with sorrow” (Psalms 31:10).
5. Regret: “I am sorry for my sin” (Psalms 38:18).
6. Contrition: “A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalms 51:17).
7. Discouragement and turmoil: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me” (Psalms 42:5)?
8. Shame: “Shame has covered my face” (Psalms 44:15).
9. Exultation: “In your salvation how greatly he exults” (Psalms 21:1).
10. Marveling: “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalms 118:23).
11. Delight: “His delight is in the law of the Lord” (Psalms 1:2).
12. Joy: “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound” (Psalms 4:7).
13. Gladness: “I will be glad and exult in you” (Psalms 9:2).
14. Fear: “Serve the Lord with fear” (Psalms 2:11).
15. Anger: “Be angry, and do not sin” (Psalms 4:4).
16. Peace: “In peace I will both lie down and sleep” (Psalms 4:8).
17. Grief: “My eye wastes away because of grief” (Psalms 6:7).
18. Desire: “O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted” (Psalms 10:17).
19. Hope: “Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you” (Psalms 33:22).
20. Brokenheartedness: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalms 34:18).
21. Gratitude: “I will thank you in the great congregation” (Psalms 35:18).
22. Zeal: “Zeal for your house has consumed me” (Psalms 69:9).
23. Pain: “I am afflicted and in pain” (Psalms 69:29).
24. Confidence: “Though war arise against me, yet I will be confident” (Psalms 27:3).

More explicitly than all the other books in the Bible, the Psalms are designed to awaken and shape our emotions in line with the instruction they give. What happens when you read and sing the Psalms the way they are intended to be read and sung is that your emotions and your mind are shaped by these psalms.

From Pastor John’s sermon, “Songs that Shape the Heart and Mind” (May 25, 2008)

The Joy of Calvinism

However the terms are refined, the main tenets of Calvinism are structured around the five-petaled acronym TULIP. But too often missing in this structure is the “sap of delight,” as Pastor John calls it in his biography of Augustine.

In the following excerpt from that biography, Pastor John explains why we need a delight-drenched theology like that of Augustine.

R. C. Sproul says, “We need an Augustine or a Luther to speak to us anew lest the light of God’s grace be not only overshadowed but be obliterated in our time.”

Yes, we do. But we also need tens of thousands of ordinary pastors, who are ravished with the extraordinary sovereignty of joy that belongs to and comes from God alone. And we need to rediscover Augustine’s peculiar slant — a very biblical slant — on grace as the free gift of sovereign joy in God that frees us from the bondage of sin. We need to rethink our Reformed view of salvation so that every limb and every branch in the tree is coursing with the sap of Augustinian delight.

We need to make plain that [T] total depravity is not just badness, but blindness to beauty and deadness to joy; and [U] unconditional election means that the completeness of our joy in Jesus was planned for us before we ever existed; and that [L] limited atonement is the assurance that indestructible joy in God is infallibly secured for us by the blood of the covenant; and [I] irresistible grace is the commitment and power of God’s love to make sure we don’t hold on to suicidal pleasures, and to set us free by the sovereign power of superior delights; and that the [P] perseverance of the saints is the almighty work of God to keep us, through all affliction and suffering, for an inheritance of pleasures at God’s right hand forever.

This note of sovereign, triumphant joy is a missing element in too much Reformed theology and Reformed worship. And it may be that the question we should pose ourselves is whether this is so because we have not experienced the triumph of sovereign joy in our own lives.*

_________________

* Excerpt taken from John Piper’s 1998 biography of Augustine; also published in Piper’s, The Legacy of Sovereign Joy (Crossway, 2006), 73; and published in Piper’s, Taste and See (Multnomah, 2005), 73. See also Piper’s DVD series, TULIP: The Pursuit of God’s Glory in Salvation.

Misdirected Discontent

This race we’re running is tiring. In hunting our happiness and fulfillment, we’ve become the hunted. Our desire for approval and love – this disconnect in our souls – both promises and denies rest. We are trapped in a self-defeating cycle, trying to catch happiness at the expense of joy.

As believers, Jesus is our identity – our daily footing and acceptance before God. Our hope in life is His death and resurrection.

But there are moments I don’t believe this. There are moments that I say I trust in one thing but believe in another. I let my heart put hope in things other than Him – subtle things like power, respect and approval.

When I find my identity and fulfillment in things other than who He is – and who He says I am – disappointment and discontent bind me. It’s not disappointment with the object but with life at large. I blame Him for my inability to recognize my own deviation from the gospel and go right back to a pick-me-up, a novel distraction from the reality that life still isn’t what it should be.

So there I am again: frustrated that I don’t have more fruit of the Spirit in my life, annoyed at sin I still struggle with and disappointed with myself – certain that God is also. The promise of God’s love goes untried, while misdirected disappointment draws my eyes back to myself and away from Jesus. This cycle feeds a deadly misunderstanding of the gospel – that it cannot save or transform me.

The problem is that we’re moving so fast we can’t see this, and we’re lucky if we slow down enough to hear the never-ending whisper of our sinful hearts: that what we can make, who we are and what we do will satisfy us – if we just work harder. But this is not the gospel.

The gospel is hard for me and maybe for you, too. I fear, along with others, that His love is no better than mine – fickle and flimsy. Truth is, this love wants me to be full of joy to the depth of my being – and this joy is found in the depth of His.

Such elusive fulfillment is freedom to quit looking inward – and to look outward to Him. It’s like we get stuck on the first few steps onto the grass, and our feet are so tender that we can’t move forward. But His love makes our feet firm.

If you think He is too good to be true, that He might be for others but not you, then you believe a lie. God is a good and loving Father who gives good gifts to His children. He gives Himself, and that has all kinds of implications for daily life.

Dare to believe that He is good, and that His love towards you is particular, knowing and intentional. Don’t let momentary distractions steal your hope. Don’t blame disappointment on the One who came to rid you of it. Slow down and look at what and who you are trusting for your happiness, identity and worth. Your daily discontent might just be enough to expose it.

Originally posted on The Village Church blog by Mason King here: http://ow.ly/aIumi