doctrine

Where He Leads I’ll Go

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I went to a hymn sing tonight at my church. Before one of the hymns, they gave a backstory to how the hymn was penned. B. B. McKinney was talking with a missionary to Brazil who was home on furlough. The missionary, R. S. Jones, had recently been diagnosed with a health condition that would prevent him from returning to the mission field. He was devastated.

McKinney asked him what his plans were going forward. Jones replied, “I don’t know what I’ll do next, but wherever He leads, I’ll go.”

From there germinated a seed that turned into the classic hymn sung in churches through the decades up to the present that has ministered to hundreds and thousands of people.

So many right now are at a loss as to what comes next. So many are at a career crossroads or facing a difficult decision and can’t see a clear answer. The best answer anyone can give is “wherever He leads, I’ll go.”

God honors that kind of surrender and dependence. God blesses those who instead of relying on their own judgment or cleverness choose to fall on God’s mercy and cry out to Him, “Not my will but Yours, Lord. Have your own way in me.”

God is faithful. He will not lead you astray. Though the roads He leads you down may be difficult and at times overwhelming, He has promised to go with you the entire way. He will never leave you nor forsake you.

“Take up thy cross and follow me
I heard my Master say
“I gave my life to ransom thee
Surrender your all today”

Wherever He leads, I’ll go
Wherever He leads, I’ll go
I’ll follow my Christ who loves me so
Wherever He leads, I’ll go

He drew me closer to His side
I sought His will to know
And in that will, I now abide
Wherever He leads, I’ll go

Wherever He leads, I’ll go
Wherever He leads, I’ll go
I’ll follow my Christ who loves me so
Wherever He leads, I’ll go”

Unglamorous

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“There is nothing thrilling about a labouring man’s work, but it is the labouring man who makes the conceptions of the genius possible; and it is the labouring saint who makes the conceptions of his Master possible. You labour at prayer and results happen all the time from God’s standpoint. What an astonishment it will be to find, when the veil is lifted, the souls that have been reaped by you, simply because you had been in the habit of taking your orders from Jesus Christ” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

That’s the part about life that no one really tells you but you learn eventually. 99% of life is unexciting and unadventurous, despite what you may have seen in just about every single movie and television show ever made.

Most of living is showing up and being faithful in your job, at your church, and in your home. Very rarely will anything you do be worthy of a news story or a newspaper headline (or a news website headline to make it 21st century). Hardly anyone outside of your immediate circle will know about most of what you do.

But that’s where God does His best work. When you are committed to be faithful in the small and menial tasks God has placed in front of you, then God can multiply those offerings like the fish and the loaves. He can open up new avenues of service that would not have been available if you weren’t already doing God’s work.

Each person who belongs to Jesus can reach those no one else can reach. Not your pastor. Not your worship leader. Not anyone but you. And your witness is showing up every day and not giving up. That will open up opportunities for you to be able to give a reason for the hope you have in Jesus and lead to gospel conversations.

I truly believe that those who have done the most for the Kingdom of God are those you and I will never know about 99% of the time. They will be the behind the scenes folks who went to work every day, came home and loved their families, and showed up every Sunday to worship and serve.

If you’re not satisfied with where you are or what you’re doing, maybe reframe it as a way of serving Jesus Himself rather than working for an employer. See what you’re doing for your family as serving Jesus. Remember that as you minister to the least of these through your church you are ministering to Jesus Himself.

God honors the longsuffering effort of patient faithfulness. If you can serve not out of your own strength but out of the overflow of the joy of the Lord that comes from time with the Lord, God sees and rewards you and those you serve. You may not get rich or famous, but you will have God’s favor which is by far the best reward of all.

What We Think About God

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“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like” (A W Tozer).

Most people have the idea that God is like us — only bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, etc. He’s like the advanced, idealized version of us. But He’s not.

A lot of us have probably fallen into the trap of thinking that God would never do or say something because we would never do or say that. That’s a dangerous theology that puts me as the standard by which God must abide instead of the other way around.

God is not me on steroids. God is not like me. God is completely other. Apart from God’s divine initiative in revealing Himself to us, we could never ever in a million lifetimes know Him. But He revealed Himself generally through creation and specifically through Jesus. One famous author and theologian once said that Jesus was God spelling Himself out in a language humanity could understand.

All this talk about how religion is bad and we just need to follow Jesus is true to a degree. It depends on how you define the word religion. If it’s a set of rules that you need to follow to get to God, then it’s bad. But if it’s a way of understanding God, then it’s a good thing.

Believing in God is essential, but what you believe about God is vital. If you sincerely believe wrong things about God that don’t line up with the God of the Bible, then you’re sincerely wrong. You’ve chosen to follow a god of your own devising instead of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Who we are depends a lot on what we believe about God as much as if we believe in God. How we view God says a lot about how we view ourselves and others.

“I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery” (Brennan Manning).

Life Is a Fairy Tale

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I suppose whether you agree with this or not depends on your definition of what makes a fairy tale. Is it void of any true hardship or suffering? Then that’s not a true fairy tale. Does it need fantastical creatures? That’s debatable, but I think not.

What a fairy tale needs is a happy ending. You know going in that the main character is going to live happily ever after.

If you look at life strictly from this side of heaven, then it’s not a fairy tale. There’s so much suffering and evil that goes unresolved and unpunished. There are so many wrongs that never get put right.

But if you look through the lens of the resurrection, then you see the fairy tale. In fact, you could see the whole Bible story as a sort of true fairy tale where the King comes to rescue His beloved from imminent danger.

It all depends on perspective. If you see your life through the eyes of faith, you know that the happy ending is coming, even if you might not see it this side of eternity. But it is coming.

“It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name….That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still”(Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale).

In A Little While

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“We are living in this ‘little while.’ We can live in it creatively when we live it out of solitude, that is, detached from the results of our work. And when we live it with care, that is, crying with those who weep and wail. But it is the expectation of his return which molds our solitude and care into a preparation for the day of great joy.

This is what we express when we take bread and wine in thanksgiving. We do not eat bread to still our hunger or drink wine to quench our thirst. We just eat a little bit of bread and drink a little bit of wine, in the realization that God’s presence is the presence of the One who came, but is still to come; who touched our hearts, but has not yet taken all our sadness away.

And so when we share some bread and wine together, we do this not as people who have arrived, but as men and women who can support each other in patient expectation until we see him again. And then our hearts will be full of joy, a joy that no one can take away from us” (Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude).

“In a little while,
We’ll be with the father;
Cant you see him smile?
In a little while,
We’ll be home forever,
In a while
We’re just here to learn to love him
Well be home in just a little while” (Amy Grant / Brown Bannister / Gary Chapman / Shane Keister).

Yes, I’m thankful that in a little while all the hard and bad stuff will be over and only what’s good and true will remain. In a little while, our faith will be made sight and we’ll be reunited with all those we’ve loved and lost. In a little while, Jesus will come back and take us to our forever home.

Knowing God

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“We know God but as men born blind know the fire: they know that there is such as thing as fire, for they feel it warm them, but what it is they know not. So, that there is a God we know, but what He is we know little, and indeed we can never search Him out to perfection; a finite creature can never fully comprehend that which is infinite” (Thomas Manton).

As I grow older, I become increasingly thankful that God has made Himself known. I realize more and more that apart from that revelation, I could never hope to know about God, much less know Him.

Romans 1 says that there is enough evidence in nature to prove there is a God. Romans 1 also says that because of sin, our minds are corrupted to the point where we can’t seek after God unless He seeks after us first. Until God shines a light on our hearts, we remain in the dark.

I love the idea that in heaven, we will never fully exhaust all there is to know about God. That’s what will keep our worship from becoming dull (plus having the experience of being in the presence of the living God).

Every time we worship God in heaven, He reveals another aspect of His character. Because God is infinite, there is no end to the joy of learning new things about God. After each time, our worship grows deeper and fuller and richer.

Here on earth, we’re still learning as well. Often because of the old sin nature that’s still within us, we have to unlearn some bad thinking about God in order to be able to fully grasp who He is. But God never tires of us or grows impatient with us or decides that we aren’t worth the effort anymore.

That should make Sunday worship a little sweeter. That hopefully will help you to sing a little louder and live a little bolder as you and I draw closer and closer to our faith one day being made sight.

Wimpy Faith

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This is from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs:

“When sentence was read condemning [Mrs. Prest] to the flames, she lifted up her voice and praised God, adding, ‘This day have I found that which I have long sought.’ When they tempted her to recant, ‘That will I not (said she), God forbid that I should lose the life eternal, for this carnal and short life. I will never turn from my heavenly husband to my earthly husband; from the fellowship of angels to mortal children; and if my husband and children be faithful, then I am theirs. God is my father, God is my mother, God is my sister, my brother, my kinsman; God is my friend, most faithful.'”

I read something like that and my faith feels kinda wimpy. I don’t face anywhere near that kind of persecution. Compared to most believers around the world, my life is easy. Yet I can complain with the best of them.

I do believe there is a supernatural grace given to those undergoing extreme persecution. There’s an endowed strength given to those who are about to lay down their lives for the sake of the gospel. But I also believe one of the reasons the early church was so true and faithful was because they were the outsiders and the marginalized. They were the ones cast out and trodden down.

I definitely am not praying for persecution to come to America, but I think it’s inevitable. Persecution is the norm. America is the exception. Maybe that’s why we so often have such a watered-down gospel and diluted faith.

I recommend Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (preferably one with updated language). It’s hard to read sometimes, but also can be very encouraging to see those who endured torture and death because they like Jesus saw the joy that was laid out in front of them. May we be as faithful.

Known by the Scars

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I have a few scars. One is on my left hand, a reminder from when I was in a wreck back in the day. I pulled out in front of a full-sized truck, thinking it was a four-way stop. It was not.

Thankfully, I ended up being okay aside from a deep cut on my hand from the dashboard and being generally stiff and sore the next day from the impact. My scar is a reminder of how God saved me from my own foolishness that day.

I remember that Jesus also has scars. His resurrected and glorified body still had the nail piercings on His hands and feet, as well as the wound in His side. Those were the proofs that it was really and truly Jesus raised from the dead.

But also it’s a way of giving value to all those who have scars of their own. Some are more obvious than others. Some are hidden, but some are in places where we can’t hide them. Some of us are ashamed or embarrassed by our scars.

But scars tell a story where you survived. Scars are the reminder of something that could have killed you but didn’t. Scars are proof of a divine intervention. In a way, when you can wear your scars proudly, you identify with Jesus and His own scars.

Most of all, your scars should remind you that Jesus bore the wounds that gave Him the scars for you and for me. He was wounded for our transgressions, as it says in Isaiah 53. By His stripes, we are healed. He bore what we should have born because of our sins, and we get the rewards of a perfect life that should only belong to Jesus. That’s the great exchange. That’s the gospel.

Scars can be something to hide, like those humiliating moments or shameful parts of the past, or they can be part of your testimony. A pastor once said that true healing is evident when that part of your story that you swore you’d never tell anybody becomes the first line of your testimony.

“Do you know what St. Peter says to everyone who tries to get into heaven?” 
…
“Peter says, ‘Don’t you have any scars?’ And when most would respond proudly, ‘Well, no, no I don’t,’ Peter says, ‘Why not? Was there nothing worth fighting for?” (Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing).

The Great Paradox

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“The great paradox of life is that those who lose their lives will gain them. This paradox becomes visible in very ordinary situations. If we cling to our friends, we may lose them, but when we are nonpossessive in our relationships, we will make many friends. When fame is what we seek and desire, it often vanishes as soon as we acquire it, but when we have no need to be known, we might be remembered long after our deaths. When we want to be in the center, we easily end up on the margins, but when we are free enough to be wherever we must be, we find ourselves often in the center.

Giving away our lives for others is the greatest of all human arts. This will gain us our lives” (Henri Nouwen).

“If you refuse to take up your cross and follow Me on the narrow road, then you are not worthy of Me. To find your life, you must lose your life—and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 10:38-39, The Voice).

That’s the paradox. You find your life by losing it. You gain love by giving it away. People notice you when you deflect the praise to the King of the universe instead of yourself. You’re blessed when you’re poor in spirit, meek, mourning, and pure in heart.

Instead of following the world’s path to success, Jesus went down the road of downward mobility. He gave up clinging to His rights of equality with God. He took on human form. He took the form of a servant. He was obedient to the point of death. His death was that of a common criminal’s crucifixion. Then God gave Him a name that is above every other name.

That’s our goal. To be unknown on earth but famous in heaven. Heavenly fame looks like faithfulness. Heavenly fame looks like denying yourself, taking up your cross daily, and following Jesus, no matter the cost.

That’s where you find your life. That’s where you find life.

Tremble, Tremble and Repent

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This isn’t supposed to be a brimstone and hellfire type post (although sometimes I do think we need to bring back preaching that isn’t afraid to step on a few toes while proclaiming the whole gospel for the whole person).

I do think that American Christianity has progressed to the point where it barely resembles New Testament Christianity. People can come to most churches and feel comfortable living in sin and not once feel convicted about their lifestyle choices and behaviors. There is very little accountability and next to no discipline at any given local church.

Yes, Jesus did say to the woman caught in adultery that He didn’t condemn her, but He also added “Go and sin no more.”

I think the American church needs to champion social justice AND personal holiness. It’s not an either/or, but a both/and. Read Isaiah 58 if you want to know what biblical social justice looks like, but also read Romans 12:1-2 (and many other passages) that compel us to be holy and set apart.

There’s a lot of emphasis on getting people saved, but not much on discipling them afterward. The result is that many people sitting in any given church service on Sunday know very little about the Bible or the faith they’ve professed to believe. Very few actually know how to live out that faith and apply it to every day situations.

I do think that the American church needs revival. Not the kind where people get saved (although that would be awesome) as much as the kind where the people who are saved start acting and living like it. Including yours truly.

It starts and ends with the Bible. It’s about preaching the gospel to yourself all day every day. It’s about falling at the feet of Jesus and declaring your dependence on Him once again. It’s about living a Romans 12:1-2 life of sacrificial worship that is radically different than the world. It’s about loving God and loving others the way God in Jesus has loved us.