You Have Been To Me Grace Upon Grace
The following quote from the preface to John Piper’s Desiring God (25th Anniversary Ed.) describes the way I so intensely want to be for my family, friends and church. I want to be a man who brings grace upon grace to those around me.
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Per the dedication of the book to his father:
When grace abounds, the yoke of the law is easy and the commandment is light. You have been to me grace upon grace these 41 years, and therefore I find nothing easier or lighter than to obey the holy statute: Honor thy father.
Respectfully with all my heart,
Johnny
(continued…)
I look back to my childhood and see mother laughing so hard at the dinner table that the tears ran down her face. She was a very happy woman. But especially when my father came home on Monday. He had been gone two weeks in the work of evangelism. Or sometimes three of four. She would glow on Monday mornings when he was coming home.
At the dinner table that night (these were the happiest of times in my memory) we would hear about the victories of the gospel. Surely it is more exciting to be the son of an evangelist than to sit with knights and warriors. As I grew older I saw more of the wounds. But he spared me most of that until I was mature enough to “count it all joy.” Holy and happy were those Monday meals. Oh, how good it was to have Daddy home!
You Are Not My God
The following post comes from Meghan, my beautiful wife. God has given her eyes that see and ears that hear. I hope that you will see more clearly as a result of this post.
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I recently woke up to the disturbing reality of my heart. My “waking up” has come about in a few different ways, but one of them was startlingly clear. I was sitting with Isaac (3) and Lily (2), reading stories to them, the way that we do every night. Around christmas this last year, we found a book called, Winter on the Farm. It’s a cozy little story about a family that lives on a farm in the New York countryside circa 1800. Even though it’s not winter anymore, I still always love reading that little book. I think that there is something about the simplicity of life in that era that draws me in. So, whenever I get to choose the book for the night, I often choose Winter on the Farm.
This is the story that I was reading to the kids the other night. The story centers on the youngest child in the family named Almanzo. We watch as Almanzo goes out to the barn with his father and older brother to milk the cows and clean up the barn. When he comes inside, he is the last to wash his face in the wash basin. When it is time for dinner, he is the last to be served. When it is time to sit around the fire at night, he follows and does what the rest of the family wants to do. Sounds like a nice simple story. And for the first 20 times that I read it, nothing stood out to me. But then the other night, this story spoke to me. It spoke to the unbalance that has started to exist in our home and in my heart.
I have heard the sentiment that you should never worship your children or make them your God. I guess that I just thought I was immune. It is something that I have prayed since I was pregnant, “God, please help me never to love these children more than I love you.” And, because “super-mom” isn’t really part of my identity, I just didn’t think that worshipping or fearing my kids was “my” struggle. But, I was wrong. As I sat there a few weeks ago reading the story of Almanzo, something became immediately clear to me: my heart, my daily rhythm, my marriage, my peace, my worth, my identity, my home, my emotions, were all essentially bowing down before my 2 and 3 year old children. And in that moment of clarity I felt both release/freedom, and confusion of how it ever could have gotten this way.
Let me shed some light on what I am trying to explain here. It wasn’t that I was knowingly worshipping my children. It wasn’t that I didn’t try to discipline them. It wasn’t that just gave them everything that they wanted. It was something much deeper than that, much harder to identify, and much more secretly destructive. Somewhere along the way I had started believing that I was OK if I knew that my children were OK. When they were upset, disobedient, disrespectful, chaotic, needy, whiny, rude, etc, then I could not be OK. I could not be at peace. I could not be free. I could not rejoice. And so without realizing it, I was doing absolutely everything in my power to avoid a situation where they would be upset, disobedient, disrespectful, chaotic, needy, whiny, rude, etc.
Of course it is impossible to live with two small children for any length of time without them being at least one or more of those things. And so it felt that I was at war with my own life. The more that I tried to avoid those emotionally draining encounters with my children, the more I was giving into them, and then the more they were acting out. It was a vicious cycle and we were all losing. I was spending way too much time feeling angry, confused, and crying out to God, WHERE ARE YOU??? I knew that something was wrong, I just didn’t know what it was, or how to fix it.
As I have been thinking through this for the last few weeks a few things have become clear to me.
- We live in a culture that condones, promotes, and inundates us with the idea that it is right, good, and appropriate to worship our children. We are so indoctrinated by our culture that it is often hard to see how out of balance our child rearing can be. It literally took me reading a book about a farm family in the 1800s to see that something was wrong in our house. The world around me says, sacrifice anything and everything for your children. They should always come first. They should be the first to get their food at the table. What they have to say or what game they want to play should dictate what happens around the table. If they have a need, no matter how trial, it should be met, not matter the cost. Often times that cost can be as great as the marriage. In our country it is not uncommon for both husband and wife to turn so intently toward their children that by the time the children move out of the house there is no relationship left between husband and wife. It is not easy, or comfortable, to move against the grain of our culture in childrearing, but it is necessary and crucial for healthy functioning marriages, families, and children.
- It is ultimately to the demise of my children that I allow my worshipping of them to continue. For my children to grow up in an environment where they always come first, where their opinion matters the most, where every need is met, and where their successes and failures are the source of my emotional stability, is to severely handicap them for the rest of their lives. I think that we are starting to see some of the results of this cultural model play out in today’s youth. They are the most discontent, bored, self-focused, entitled, and isolated generation we have ever seen.
- It makes sense to me why this happens. As I think about what my life looks like day to day, hour to hour, I understand how it got this way. When I started having kids, I no longer went outside the house to work, my time with other adults was intensely diminished, my time for pretty much anything other than child-care was intensely diminished. If you functionally look at what my life is focused on, it is clearly my children. Not to mention the feeling that goes through my body every time I look at their precious faces or each time that I hear them speak to a new thought or emotion or when I hear their infections laughter coming from the next room. They are extremely lovely little beings, and I spend just about all my time caring for them. It is a natural conclusion that I would end up wrapping my heart, my life, and identity around them.
- In order to be freed, it is not enough just to know that there is a problem. I can look at this issue in my life, and I admit that it is wrong, and I can even really really want to change, but that is not enough to move me out of the pattern of child worshipping that I have created. The only way that I can be freed is to be freed to a greater love, a greater worth, a greater identity. The only way that I can live in balance and in harmony worshipping only what deserves to be worshipped, is for my eyes to be opened to the beauty that is so much more beautiful than my children. It is for my senses to be awakened to the only real, true, lasting, living, dynamic, creative, and holy God. This is the beauty of the gospel.
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1
“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?” Galatians 4:8-9
“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 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 4:6-10
“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the river, they shall no overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Hold One of Israel, your Savior…’I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior. I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I am God.’” Isaiah 43:1-3, 10-12
Justification Vs. Self-Justification
Ray Ortlund did a phenomenal job in his breakout session on justification vs. self-justification at The Gospel Coalition Conference last week in Chicago. The following quote is an excerpt from what he shared. I highly recommend that you read the manuscript from this talk. It can be accessed here.
Self-justification is the deepest impulse in the fallen human heart. We might sincerely agree with the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone. But deep in our hearts, it isn’t that simple, is it? Gerhard Forde helps us see ourselves:
The problem lies in the fact that the Old Being will not and cannot hear gospel no matter what one says. The Old Being will only use whatever is said as part of the protection, solidification in the causa sui project [the self-justifications we build], and translate it into or see it as a ratification of the legal system. That is, the Old Being will turn whatever one says into law.
We deeply desire to save ourselves. At the same time, our sin includes a hidden filter blocking out clarity about our sin. Martyn Lloyd-Jones describes our lack of self- awareness:
You will never make yourself feel that you are a sinner, because there is a mechanism in you as a result of sin that will always be defending you against every accusation. We are all on very good terms with ourselves, and we can always put up a good case for ourselves. Even if we try to make ourselves feel that we are sinners, we will never do it. There is only one way to know that we are sinners, and that is to have some dim, glimmering conception of God.
Our mentality of blind self-justification makes Paul’s letter to the Galatians endlessly relevant to us believers. We don’t get rid of Galatianism by embracing grace-justification. But, by embracing grace-justification, we do gain a remedy for our compulsive self-justifications. The Puritan William Fenner taught us to see justification by faith alone as a constant resource:
As we sin daily, so he justifies daily, and we must daily go to him for it. Justification is an ever-running fountain, and therefore we cannot look to have all the water at once.
Intervention
Per Redeemer Presbyterian’s Bible Study on Romans:
Remember that God can use suffering to ‘awaken’ a person to some sin – as a kind of ‘intervention.’ But interventions are only done by people out of love. God can and will treat you roughly if you need it, like a loving parent will do with a wayward child – but all out of deep concern. If you are a Christian, God has sent all your punishment on to Christ. All his wrath for you fell into the heart of Jesus and was swallowed up and absorbed there – it disappeared forever. He has no wrath left for you.
The Pivotal Factor
The following quote comes from Dynamics of Spiritual Life by Richard Lovelace (p. 13):
Agape is not a mere emotional by-product of action but a supernatural outpouring of the grace of God infusing all our behavior with the life of Christ. It is the love of God which “has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5 NASB). This kind of love, as Augustine never tired of insisting, is the pivotal factor in the church’s life.”
Not Hopeless Enough
HT: Justin Taylor
From a 2008 interview with Bob Kauflin, published in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God (pp. 149-151):
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I helped plant a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1991. I began to feel increasing anxiety at different times when we first planted the church. Then in January of 1994 my wife and I were at a couple’s house for dinner, and I cracked. My life fell apart. Mentally I had no connection with what I was doing, no connection with the past, no connection with the future. I didn’t know why I existed. These were the thoughts that went through my brain. That began a period of maybe three years where I battled constant hopelessness. I would wake up each morning with this thought: “Your life is completely hopeless,” and then I would go from there. It was a struggle just to make it through to each step of the day. The way I made it through was just to think, What am I going to do next? What will I do? I can make it to there.
It was characterized by panic attacks. For the first six months I battled thoughts of death. I’d think about an event that was three months away: Why am I thinking about that? I’m going to be dead by then. I had feelings of tightness in my chest, buzzing and itching on my arms, buzzing on my face. It was a horrible time. And in the midst of that I cried out to God, and I certainly talked to the pastor that I served with and other pastors that I knew—good friends—trying to figure out what in the world was going on with my life.
Five or six children at that time, a fruitful life, a fruitful ministry. And this is what I discovered: although I’d been a Christian for twenty-two years (since 1972) I was driven by a desire to be praised by men. And I wasn’t succeeding. When you plant a church, you find out that there are a lot of people who don’t agree with you. People who came to plant the church left. All of that assaulted my craving to be admired and praised and loved and worshiped and adored and applauded. God, I believe, just took his hand from me and said, “Okay, you handle this your way.” I knew the gospel, but what I didn’t know was how great a sinner I was. I thought the gospel I needed was for pretty good people, and that wasn’t sufficient to spare me from the utter hopelessness I felt during that time.
I would read Scripture. It didn’t make sense to me. It didn’t affect me. I remember lying at bed at times just reciting the Lord’s Prayer to myself over and over and over, hoping that would help. I couldn’t sleep; then at times all I wanted to do was sleep. I remember saying this early on: “God, if you keep me like this for the rest of my life but it means that I will know you better, then keep me like this.” That was the hardest prayer I’ve ever prayed.
During that time I read an abridged version of John Owen’s Sin and Temptation and Jerry Bridges’s The Discipline of Grace.
About a year into the process I talked to a good friend, Gary Ricucci, whom I am now in a small group with at Covenant Life Church. I said, “Gary, I feel hopeless all the time.”
He said, “You know, Bob? I think your problem is that you don’t feel hopeless enough.”
I don’t know what I looked like on the outside, but on the inside I was saying, “You are crazy. You are crazy. I feel hopeless.”
He said, “No, if you were hopeless, you would stop trusting in yourself and rely completely on what Jesus Christ accomplished for you.”
That was the beginning of the way out. And I remember saying to myself literally hundreds of times—every time these feelings of hopelessness and panic and a desire to ball up in a fetal position would come on me—“I feel completely hopeless because I am hopeless, but Jesus Christ died for hopeless people, and I’m one of them.”
Over time I began to believe that. And today when I tell people that Jesus is a great Savior, I believe it, because I know that he saved me. That’s where my joy comes from. My joy comes from knowing that at the very bottom, at the very pit of who I am, it is blackness and sin, but the love and grace of Jesus goes deeper.
No Fear
HT: Justin Taylor
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Tim Keller, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, pp. 57-58:
We have a resource that can enable us to stay calm inside no matter how the storms rage outside.
Here’s a clue: Mark has deliberately laid out this account using language that is parallel, almost identical, to the language of the famous Old Testament account of Jonah.
Both Jesus and Jonah were in a boat, and both boats were overtaken by a storm—the descriptions of the storm are almost identical.
Both Jesus and Jonah were asleep.
In both stories the sailors woke up the sleeper and said, “We’re going to die.”
And in both cases there was a miraculous divine intervention and the sea was calmed.
Further, in both stories the sailors then become even more terrified than they were before the storm was calmed.
Two almost identical stories—with just one difference.
In the midst of the storm, Jonah said to the sailors, in effect: “There’s only only thing to do. If I perish, you survive. If I die, you will live” (Jonah 1:12). And they threw him into the sea.
Which doesn’t happen in Mark’s story.
Or does it?
I think Mark is showing that the stories aren’t actually different when you stand back a bit and look at it with the rest of the story of Jesus in view.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “One greater than Jonah is here,” and he’s referring to himself: I’m the true Jonah. He meant this:
Someday I’m going to calm all storms, still all waves.
I’m going to destroy destruction, break brokenness, kill death.
How can he do that?
He can only do it because when he was on the cross he was thrown—willingly, like Jonah—into the ultimate storm, under the ultimate waves, the waves of sin and death.
Jesus was thrown into the only storm that can actually sink us—the storm of eternal justice, of what we owe for our wrongdoing. That storm wasn’t calmed—not until it swept him away.
If the sight of Jesus bowing his head into that ultimate storm is burned into the core of your being, you will never say, “God, don’t you care?”
And if you know that he did not abandon you in that ultimate storm, what make you think he would abandon you in much smaller storms you’re experiencing right now?
And, someday, of course, he will return and still all storms for eternity.
If you let that penetrate to the very center of your being, you will know he loves you. You will know he cares. And then you will have the power to handle anything in life with poise:
When through the deep waters I call you to go,
The rivers of woe shall not overflow;
For I will be with you, your troubles to bless,
And sanctify to you your deepest distress.The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.
Jesus in Every Book of the Bible
When we see and understand that the Bible is primarily about Jesus and not primarily about us, awe settles in. We are united with Christ. Thank you Jesus!
Put on your seatbelt for the following video because the awe-train is leaving the station…
We Don’t Need an Additional Insurance Policy
The following comes from Samuel Meier’s book, Themes and Transformations in Old Testament Prophecy (p. 148):
In the literary prophets, the message is unanimous, widespread and unequivocal. For the literary prophets, it is a certain sign of infidelity to God to militarize with chariots and horses. It was God who had promised to protect Israel and Judah, and they did not need an additional insurance policy.
I found this quote to very helpful AND challenging. In what ways do I have ‘additional insurance policies’? In what ways do you have ‘additional insurance policies’? I find that the aforementioned quote relates perfectly with the woman who gave all she had in Mark 12:41-44…
[41] And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. [42] And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. [43] And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. [44] For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
I’ll put it on the record that I do have a policy with Northwestern Mutual. I gave in after the 5th cold-call I received from people I kind of knew in college 
I’m not sure how all this should play out in real life, but I’m thinking through it and would love your input.
