Everything That Happens is for Your Benefit (Conclusion)

We’ve been talking about Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not with Him freely give us all things?”  and John Piper’s statement, “Nothing will ever enter your experience as God’s child that, by God’s sovereign grace, will not run out to be a benefit to you.”

The basis for this statement is Piper calls this, the “solid logic of heaven”. 

What does Paul mean by all things?  There may be many things that we think that a gracious and wise God would give us – health, safety, more success, a spouse, believing children, a long life.  But God may not give us these things.  What does he mean by all things?

There’s a sense that the verse is more understandable from a human standpoint if we read it, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will he not with him freely make everything a gift.”   He has demonstrated the unfathomable love that he has for us, why would he withhold any blessing or benefit from us, why wouldn’t he take everything that happens in our lives and make it a loving gift?    

So now with this in our thinking we read on…

"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors (Greek – “hyper-conquerers”) through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom 8:31-39, ESV)

So, as Piper states, “we overwhelmingly conquer not by escaping these terrible things, but by watching God turn these enemies of our joy into servants of our good.”

He continues, “The great promise of this verse, guaranteed in the logic of Romans 8:32, is that nothing will ever enter your experience as God’s child that, by God’s sovereign grace, will not turn out to be a benefit to you.  This is what it means for God to be God, and for God to be for you, and for God to freely give you all things with Christ.”

“You must believe this or you will not thrive, or perhaps even survive as a Christian, in the pressures and temptations of modern life.  There is so much pain, so many setback and discouragements, so many controversies and pressures.  This means we can know and believe that God is taking every setback and every pressure and every pain, and stripping it of its destructive power and make it work for the enlargement of my joy in God.”

God makes tribulation into a gift.  Problems a gift.  Difficult relationships, a gift.  Enemies a gift.  Others sins against you, a gift.  Car breaks down, a gift.  Difficult parents, children, or spouse – a gift.  No job – a gift.  Stretch on this one – your own sin and failure – God is big enough to make that into a gift for you; he is enormous – he is that powerful; that awesome.

“God reigns so supremely on behalf of his elect that everything which faces us in a lifetime of obedience and ministry will be subdued by the mighty hand of God and made the servant of our holiness and our everlasting joy in God.  If God is for us, and if God is God, then it is true that nothing can succeed against us.  He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, will infallibly and with him give us all things.”  He will make everything a gift – everything: problems, failure, sin, setbacks, loss, even death – all things.

Everything That Happens is for Your Benefit (Part 2)

We quoted John Piper yesterday, “Nothing will ever enter your experience as God’s child that, by God’s sovereign grace, will not run out to be a benefit to you.”

The basis for this statement is Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not with Him freely give us all things?”  Piper calls this, the “solid logic of heaven”. 

Note that the verse has a foundation and a promise. 

The foundation of the verse is “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.”   It is important to see here that God did not spare His own Son.  So when we think about who killed Jesus, was it the soldiers?  The Jews?  Pilate?  Not really.  God did.  “This man was delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.” Acts 2:23. 

Isaiah 53 echoes this thought:  “But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief” (vs. 10).

So ultimately we see that the soldiers, the Jews and Pilate were merely the divine instruments for the execution of God’s fore-ordained will.

But why would God kill Jesus?  “He delivered Him up for us all.” 

Back to Isaiah 53:

5 But he was pierced for our rebellion,

crushed for our sins.

He was beaten so we could be whole.

He was whipped so we could be healed.

6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.

We have left God’s paths to follow our own.

Yet the LORD laid on him

the sins of us all.

Piper sums it up this way: “The Son of God bore in his body all my punishment and all my guilt and all my condemnation and all my blame and all my fault and all my corruptions, so that I might stand before a great and holy God, forgiven, reconciled, justified, accepted and the beneficiary of unspeakable promises of pleasure forever and ever at his right hand.”

So that’s not all.  That’s what we can say based on the first, the foundational part of the verse.  But look at the logic of the verse.  Since God did not spare His own son, then surely he must and will freely give us all things with Him.  Paul is arguing “from the greater to the lesser”.  It’s the thought that if the big thing is true then the little thing is true.  If I can lift 100 lbs, then I can lift 10.  If your dad bought you a house for a wedding present, he would surely come to the wedding.  If someone just paid a million dollars for a Picasso painting, surely they’d pay $25,000 for the Mona Lisa.

So the thought here is that God has given us by far his greatest and most precious prize, that which he loves and values most – His Son.  If he has not withheld that, why would He withhold anything else?  He has demonstrated the unfathomable love that he has for us, why would he withhold any blessing or benefit from us?     

He has done what is hard – giving us His Son.  Why would he not now do what is easy?

Think on this the next time you think you are being denied something that you think would be good for you.  You think it is a hard thing.  You see many obstacles.  It looks impossible.  At that discouraging moment think about this heavenly logic.  Giving you what need is the easy part.  And the hard part is already done. Creating the world and running it for the good of his people is a relatively easy thing for God to do compared to handing over his Son to ridicule and torture.  But he did it.  And now all future grace and blessing is not only sure; it is easy.

To be continued…

Everything That Happens is for Your Benefit (Part 1)

These are thoughts that I took from John Piper's book Future Grace...

Imagine that there’s a evil person stalking you and really trying to ruin your life, but everything they do in an attempt to damage you turns into a blessing and a benefit.

They throw bags of garbage in your yard.  You go out to clean it up and discover five $100 bills in it.

They set your house on fire.  An executive sees the TV news interview with you, discovers that you work in marketing, calls you up and gives you a much better job than the one you have that has a furnished residence in a much nicer house as part of the deal.

They steal your car.  You go down to the station to fill our reports and meet another crime victim that is the person of your dreams and you get married six months later.

They shoot you in the arm so that your arm has to be amputated.  You are hired by a bio-medical company to work as an engineer to develop prostheses for people who have lost arms.  You get twelve patents and a Nobel prize for your research.

They run over and kill three of your children playing in front of your house.  Your book about grief and dealing with the loss becomes a national best seller and you and your wife discover that you are gifted at counseling and devote your lives to working with grieving families.

What if you were this person and knew that no matter what happened to you, it would turn into a blessing and a benefit?  So if you got mistreated or are in a difficult relationship you knew it would ultimately turn into a blessing and a benefit.  You are slandered and you know it will become a blessing.  You are unappreciated or dishonored and you know it will become a blessing.  You have unreasonable authorities (boss, parents, government officials) and you know it will become a benefit to you.  You have health problems and you know it will become a blessing.  Your children ruin your computer and you know it will become a blessing.

How would you live?  In your circumstances, every time something “bad” happened to you, you would respond with an expectation and anticipation of the good that would come out of it.  In your relationships, you could forgive easily and quickly because you know that every time someone fails you or sins against you, it only propels your life forward.  And you could live with child-like joy knowing that even in your own mistakes, failure and bad decisions, they will turn out only for the greater good.

As it turns out, if you haven’t seen it coming, this is not a hypothetical situation for the follower of Christ, this is reality.  As John Piper puts it, “Nothing will ever enter your experience as God’s child that, by God’s sovereign grace, will not run out to be a benefit to you.”

Our basis for this statement is Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not with Him freely give us all things?”  Piper calls this, the “solid logic of heaven”. 

To be continued…

Having the Courage to Slide

Endurance is the thrilling account of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackelton’s odyssey in which his ship is crushed in the ice and he spends the next 16 or more months traveling across ice floes in an effort to save his 28 man crew.  In order to bring them to safety, he must get them to the point of Antarctica that is closest to South America, in the hopes that some of them can sail across to a whaling village that is located there.  When they finally reach this point, three of them, including Shackleton himself, rig their tiny boat and sail across the treacherous seas to the island where the village is.  They reach the island safely, but this is not the end of their dangers.  They must cross a mountain range in order to get to the other side of the island where the village is.  They reach the top of the mountains and are slowly picking and cutting steps in the ice to descend to the other side.  The sun is setting and their old and rotted sleeping bags offer no hope of getting them through the night on the mountain alive.  Looking down into the fog below them, Shackleton announces, “We have to slide.” 

The others counter.  “But we can’t see where we’re going, we could slide off the side of a crevasse and die!”

Shackleton replies that this may be true; if they slide, they may die, but if they do not slide, they certainly will die.  This they do, hooking themselves together bobsled style, without the bobsled.  They slide for more than a mile and crash into a soft snow bank below.

I was thinking about this some this morning in regard to my relationships with others.  I frequently am afraid to take action, to push the relationship, to “slide” because I am afraid of the consequences of doing that.  I might be rejected or offend someone.  As a result, I think I rob people of getting off the mountain where they may be dying and freezing in the cold, because I just move to slow.

God help me have the discernment and courage to know when to slide.

Who Can Describe Lord Yahweh? - From Ps 145 by David

Lord Yahweh, my God and King!

I’m going to use every word I know to lift You up, to celebrate You and to honor You,

And I will not stop talking about how awesome You are.

My thesaurus will run out of words before we start to describe a hint of who You are,

And ten thousand days of praise will not begin an illustration of Your being.

I will continually look for ways to bless and adore Your Name.

Every day I will pour out acclamations and tell of Your astonishing wonders,

Your amazing creations, the wisdom of Your word, how You justify the ungodly.

And I will utter non-stop worship of Your holy and majestic Name forever and ever.

You are boundless and infinite, immense and indescribable.

Your thoughts are beyond understanding.

Nothing is too difficult or impossible for You.

You deserve our unceasing and immeasurable praise.   

But how can I produce praise worthy of You? 

How can I describe the indescribable?

And Your glory and honor and prominence and renown are unfathomable.

The ends of Your being are unsearchable;

You are limitless and eternal.  

The older generation will praise Your awe-inspiring works to the next,

And the younger generation shall announce Your grandeur and eminence to the older.

And they all will declare the amazing and mighty things that You have done.

I constantly ponder and meditate on the glorious and dazzling splendor of Your breathtaking majesty,

And on Your wonderful and incredible creations, I will unceasingly meditate.

Everybody will continually speak of the power of Your awesome and magnificent acts,

And I myself will testify of Your greatness.

They shall eagerly share the memories of Your abundant goodness,

And will hoot and shout joyfully when they hear the stories of Your righteousness.

You are a flood of graciousness and an ocean of mercy;

Amazingly slow to anger and immense in lovingkindness.

You are abundantly good and kind to all, even Your enemies,

And Your unceasing mercies are over everything You have made.   

All Your creation shall give thanks to You, O Lord Yahweh,

Every sparrow, every porpoise, every earthworm.

And Your godly ones shall bless You,

Every person that loves You.

They shall pronounce the unparalleled grandeur of Your eternal kingdom,

And declare Your unequalled power; 

To broadcast to people everywhere the mighty things that You have done. 

And the glory of the majesty of Your realm.

Your kingdom is an everlasting dynasty,

And Your dominion endures throughout all generations.

You rescue and sustain all who fall

And lift up all who are bent over and stumbling under their heavy burdens.

The eyes of all Your creation look to You,

And You give each creature its food at the right time. 

You freely open Your hand

And satisfy the desire of every living thing.

You are always right in everything You do,

And immensely kind in every action.

You are personal and near to all who cry out to You,

To all who call upon You in truth.

You will pour out pleasures and delights on Your children,

And fulfill the desires of those who fear You;

You will also hear their cry and will save them out of their troubles.

You watch over, keep and protect every person that loves You,

But all the independent, wicked people You will absolutely obliterate.

I might run out of new words,

And my most profound prose may fail to adequately portray Your person,

But My mouth will not stop speaking of Your glorious attributes,

And every living thing will bless Your holy name forever and ever.

Spirituality - Learning to See God in My Life

These quotes are from The Contemplative Pastor - Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction.  I found it in a Goodwill store and bought the amazing little volume.  These are from the introduction - haven't even started the book yet!

Christian spirituality means living in the mature wholeness of the gospel.  It means taking all the elements of your life – children, spouse, job, weather, possessions, relationships – and experiencing them as an act of faith.  God wants all the material of our lives. 

The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it.  So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it. 

…my job is not to solve people’s problems or make them happy, but to help them see the grace operating in their lives.  It’s hard to do, because our whole culture is going in the other direction, saying that if you’re smart enough and get the right kind of help, you can solve all your problems.  The truth is, there aren’t very many happy people in the Bible, but here are people who are experiencing joy, peace and the meaning of Christ’s suffering in their lives.

The work of spirituality is to recognize where we are – the particular circumstances of our lives – to recognize grace and say, “Do you suppose God wants to be with me in a way that does not involve changing my spouse or getting rid of my spouse or kids, but in changing me, and doing something in my life that maybe I could never experience without this pain and suffering?”

Sometimes I think all I do as pastor is speak the word “God” in a situation in which it hasn’t been said before, where people haven’t recognized his presence.  Joy is the capacity to hear the name and to recognize that God is here.  There’s a kind of exhilaration because God is doing something and, even in a little way, it’s enough at the moment.   

Marriage: Always Winter, Never Christmas?

Many couples married over any length of time live in a marital Alaska, struggling to survive long periods of emotional darkness in a harsh, dangerously cold environment where relational temperatures seldom, if ever, rise above freezing.   The average husband and wife cannot imagine nuptial Hawaii, thriving in a warm, inviting climate with lush fruit and ubiquitous flowers, flourishing in a conjugal sanctuary where they can joyfully run together naked on the beach.

We’ve been having some discussions at our house recently about marriage.  I’m going to do some thinking and writing about this, and invite you to join…

The discovery of a couple who has been married a long time and is excited about their marriage is like noticing a blue parakeet eating from your outdoor bird feeder – you wouldn’t think it is impossible, but it’s rare enough that you’d stop and stare awhile and probably mention it to your friends.  Most people in marriages have lost hope of the emotional and relational intimacy for which they entered into the sacred covenant.  Many former “love birds” cannot remember whatever compelled them to get married.

What happens in a marriage that causes, over time, this relational chill?  What forces are at work that reduce a warm, loving couple to an alienated pair who merely exist in a place “where it is always winter, but never Christmas”?

This relational and emotional ice age is the natural result of the reality that most couples do not resolve their sins against each other in their marriages.  The failure to do this may be because they don’t know how, they don’t want to, or are not capable of it.  But in any case, the effects are equally deadly: the wages of sins are always death and the chill of rigor mortis sets into the relationship.

Jesus explains the impact of sin in a relationship in his famous but rarely studied manifesto on life, the Sermon on the Mount.

Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.  Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.  Mat 5:25, 26.

What He is saying here is that if we do not address our relational “crimes” against our spouse, they will ultimately become a plaintiff, judge, jury and jailer, and put us in an emotional prison cell from which we cannot escape until their justice system has been satisfied – to the last penny.  And each successive offense results in another wall and locked door built around the former ones.  Considering that both partners fail daily, the cumulative effect of sin and damage in a marriage is that, over time, there are layers and layers of walls and locked doors between the hearts of the spouses, so that neither can any longer give or receive love from the other. 

Be clear that when I’m talking about “crimes” and sin, I’m not merely talking about the obvious “biggies” such as pornography and adultery, I’m really thinking more in terms of the little things every day that add up and, over time, make a “cardio-callous”.  Think in terms of the hundreds of ways we fail to honor, appreciate, love, respect, cherish, value, nourish, build, help, support, encourage or protect to our spouses – every day.  These can manifest themselves as a critical word, socks left on the floor, a failure to warmly greet them, a facial expression of disdain, or a note of sarcasm in a comment.   

We must, in any relationship, plan for sin and failure.  In the Old Testament law, God didn’t pretend to think we’d never fail in our relationship with Him, so He made provision for how to address sins against Him through a system of sacrifices laid out in Leviticus.  However, most couples enter marriage without considering that they will have to address sin and failure and also have no idea how to resolve these issues when they arrive.  They simply have no mechanism built into their relationship to address it.  Can you imagine what would happen to the human body if it had no systems for dealing with toxins, wastes, and invading pathogens?  We wouldn’t last more than a few days at best.  Imagine a marriage with decades of accumulated pain, hurts and offenses.  It is no wonder marriages fail; it is a miracle that any survive.

What can be done?

To be continued…

Emotional Development Hours

In order to maintain my Professional Engineering license, the State requires me each year to complete fifteen (15) EDHs (Emotional Development Hours)[i]:

The purpose of the requirement is to ensure that engineers maintain some degree of emotional competency in order to overcome the stereotype that Professional Engineers are emotionally and socially inept. 

According to the regulations, EDH units may be earned as follows:

 (1)  Successful completion of emotional experiences such as depression, weeping, or intense sadness.

 (2)  Attending sessions lead by a licensed professional counselor.

 (3)  Successful completion of qualifying emotional movies, videos, or musical performances, with documentation of appropriate emotional responses by independent third party evaluators.  

 (4)  Attending qualifying seminars, in-house courses, workshops, or emotional presentations made at meetings, conventions, or conferences.

 (5)  Teaching or instructing in (1) through (4) above.

In order to get an early start on the year, I decided to jump in and was able to complete six (6) qualifying hours yesterday!

I had been thinking about our tendency to be overwhelmed by our inadequacies and to feel like a failure when we compare ourselves to others.  Thinking this to be a common issue with many of us, I had prepared some remarks at church to address this kind of thinking.  During the time of singing we had, my mind was racing and I was looking at verses and my eye caught this:

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.  2 Cor 4:7.

The desire for self-adequacy is something that I struggle with, and I did not see this left hook coming from God, which laid me out on the canvas:  It is part of God’s wisdom and design that we are inadequate for what He gives us to do, so that the power and glory are His and not ours!  How much we want to have our act together, to be self-competent, to be changed and perfect so that God can be proud of us!  And all the time He wants us to inadequate in ourselves and adequate in Him.  It’s really all about Him showing off His mercy and grace and not about us accomplishing our self-sufficiency. 

I was overwhelmed by this amazing thought, and wept through most of our worship, discussion time, and afterwards, for a total of three qualifying EDHs.

Afterwards, we went to a local farm so that the children could ride a horse and then we went hiking.  The way my brain is wired, I can only process one information stream at a time.  Really.  One thing.  Usually when faced with being aware of my surroundings and be maintaining coherent thought and social responses, I choose the latter.  I can seriously drive for miles and not see a thing along the road.  Yesterday, I excused myself from the group surrounding the horse ride and walked through a small portion of woods on the edge of the field.  I decided that I would actually look at the natural surroundings and closely examine the things God had made.  I also continued this on the hike.  I walked around like a newly-seeing Bartamaeus, and with childlike wonder, I…

·         focused and scrutinized the exposed wood and pealing bark of a dead oak,

·         enjoyed an ant crawling along a twig on the ground,

·         experienced the amazing creative composition of the varied brown leaves on the forest floor

·         felt the rough bark of a pine and examined a pine needle stuck in the layers of bark

·         observed the artistic patterns of rock and mica in the bare hillside

·         drank in the intricacy of the tiny blue berries on a green cedar tree

·         discovered three tiny God-crafted purple wildflowers who had survived the earlier cold weather

·         considered the beauty of death and decay and the cycle of life in a crumbling, spent pinecone and in the tired, rotting farm structures.

Beauty and God were everywhere and I was overwhelmed by His presence, and this world that I, for the most part, mostly miss because I am elsewhere focused.  I walked silently in awe, in tears or on the verge, in the presence of God in his outdoor gallery.

For this I was able to document another three EDHs. 

Though they are a pain (no pun intended) to get, emotional development hours are a good, healthy requirement.  Fifteen hours a year of having emotions is really not too much after all.  

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[i] Just kidding!