Stop Fighting and Start Fighting

I saw that I wrote most of this over this past Christmas vacation. With some edits and the last few paragraphs added more recently, here it is:

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30 ESV)

Everything we do is for our own happiness, pleasure, and joy. There is no motivation that affects us greater than the motivation for the maximizing of our own comfort and happiness. Think about where you are sitting right now. I'm in my bed. I am sitting here because it is one of the quietest places and most comfortable seats in the house, and my room affords me the ability to spend time reflecting and gaining a clarity of thought that is no other place can. Why do I value all these things to thereby choose my bed as my writing spot? In the end, I aim to have more peace, more lucidity in my own thinking, and really, I hope to mitigate my discomfort as much as I can.

This same principle applies to every area of life. The pursuit of my own joy, happiness, and fulfillment realizes itself in the most mundane tasks of daily living: eating, sleeping, playing music, doing dishes, even blogging. These are all avenues through which every living person pursues his or her own sense of meaning and fulfillment, even at the minuscule level.

This is a fact of life.

But here's the problem:

We fight for fulfillment, meaning, and joy in all the wrong places.

I'm not saying that there's a problem with doing mundane things throughout the day to make us feel better. I am firmly convinced that my sense of fulfillment as I clean the toilet in my house is a well-justified one. What I'm saying is that our pursuit of learning, our pursuit of skills and abilities, and especially our pursuit of different inter-personal relationships are all ways in which we chase our hunger for fulfillment. I drove home today after spending some time with friends, and I came across a song that referenced the verse with which I introduced this post. I started to choking up as I realized how much harder my life is than it has to be. Jesus said that His yoke is easy and his burden is light. What a contrast to the burden that I feel right now. Life as a believer shouldn't be so, for lack of a better word, burdensome. It's a really crummy feeling when we try so hard to be happy and fulfilled through so many things and end grasping at the wind and punching the air. I'm becoming increasingly aware that the solution is to stop trying so hard to be so happy. It never works. This kind of fight for our own joy is miserable and it is a battle that we will lose 100 percent of the time.

While we need to stop striving for peace outside of the rest that Jesus brings, we need to strive for the peace inside of the rest that Jesus brings. Paul says in Philippians 1:27:

"Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel"

Striving for faith does not mean forcing yourself to pray harder, read the Word more, and talk about theology more profoundly. It means that we strive for faith in the Gospel by preaching it to ourselves again and again. We must look to more accurately see our sin in light of our salvation and praise God for His salvation. You might say, "But David, I'm saved. I already believe the Gospel." To which I would respond that if we really believed all of the Gospel all of the time, we would never sin, because belief in the Gospel affirms that Jesus, the only perfectly beautiful being in existence, died to ransom His people from the eternal destruction that we all deserve. In the end, Gospel-belief should affirm that Jesus is better every single time. If we believe that this is true, we should never look to anything else to give us the rest that our spirits need.

Paul also gives us this command in Philippians 2:12-13:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

This may seem like we do need to fight for our own peace. Not only does it seem like we need to fight for our own peace, but it seems like we should do so out of fear. The problem with this reading of that passage is that it is the conclusion of one of the most glorious explanations of the Gospel in verses 1-11! Paul expounds on how humble Jesus was to lower himself to our level and die at the hands of his own creation so that we might be saved! Paul then concludes that because those things are true and because it is God Himself who is actually working, we should respond! We should not respond out of mere obligation, but we should respond because of the great love with which he loved us!

This whole subject of "working out our own salvation" can be tricky and confusing. While I by no means understand all the ins and outs of it, what I will say is that the times I have been in love with Jesus the most is when I ask God to show me my own sick and depraved heart and then minister the good news of the Gospel to me, yet again.

Rest in God's love. He LOVES you. He loves you more than you love the thing you love the most. He loves you more than you love you. Rest in that, and seek His face all the more often, asking that He will enable you to have faith in the Gospel more deeply and fully.

God is our hope.

.DSN.

The Two Greatest Words: "...But God"

I'm going to cut to the chase. John Calvin says that the fallen human heart is an “idol-making factory,” always producing new idols for worship and veneration. When God awakens the eyes of our souls to new depths of self-centeredness and the other-godness to which we look for peace, happiness, joy, and life-fulfillment, we find ourselves in a quite pitiable state. 


As the Lord was appointing this self-awareness on my spirit yesterday, I did a quick search for the two words "but God". I began to tear up as I saw this form of "but God" movement being reiterated again and again through the progression of Biblical history. 


Here are a few of those gems. 


Before you read this short list, please take a moment (I strongly suggest that you quickly pray right now!) to ask the Holy Spirit to stir your affections and warm your heart to see the greatness and the insurmountable amount of love that God has for His children. 

(All passages are quoted from the English Standard Version)

He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.

(Genesis 7:23-8:2)

You know that I have served your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me.

(Genesis 31:6-7)

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

(Genesis 50:20)

And David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him into his hand.

(1 Samuel 23:14)

We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast.

(2 Samuel 14:14)

Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; death shall be their shepherd, and the upright shall rule over them in the morning. Their form shall be consumed in Sheol, with no place to dwell. But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me.

(Psalm 49:14-15)

“And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him and rescued him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and over all his household.

(Acts 7:9-10)

And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

(Acts 10:39-41)

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

(Romans 5:6-8)

For [Epaphroditus] has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.

(Philippians 2:26-27)

And finally, perhaps one of the most glorious passages on Scripture, Ephesians 2:1-10:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

           

God is our hope.

.DSN.

Forgiveness: Literally Impossible.

In today's Christianity, poems, songs, sermons, and all kinds of books are written on the subject of forgiveness. For most, Christian or non-Christian, forgiveness sounds great; it's for those whose lives are easy, but unless you're the one who feels the pain, you realize that it's impossible to forgive (Pastor Tullian).

While my situation is incomparable to the suffering that many have had to endure through the years, God used this sequence of events to open my eyes to the literal impossibility of human to human forgiveness without having been gripped by the reality of forgiveness in the Gospel..

I was leaving for my first semester of college in August of 2010 in a mere two days. I had one more carpet cleaning appointment in Acmeville, NH, in 90 degree weather, and I was ready to call it quits. As usual, I got lost. I needed to turn around and reorient myself towards the proper direction of my appointment. The only place to initiate my three-point turn happened to be in the parking-lot of the Acmeville Fire Department. I pulled up along the right side of the road and began backing up into the FD's small parking lot. Unbeknownst to me, there were two men in one of the fire trucks that started to pull forwards out of the garage at the same moment that I was backing up. Not having expected such a monstrous vehicle to be in the act of moving towards me, I continued backing up as any reasonable person would. In a split second, I was alarmed by the sirens, and immediately slammed on the brakes. It was too late. I had just caused over $1,500 worth of damage to my vehicle and the fire truck. I heard nothing about this situation until January of 2012, when I found out that the incident was going to be put in the books and affect my insurance record for the next three years- not three years from when the incident occurred, but three years from when claim was finally processed... two weeks ago.

In all honesty, I cannot see why I should get pinned with three years of increased insurance premiums and a blemish on a previously unstained motor vehicle record; if anything, it should have been a no-fault situation. When I listened on the phone as my mom relayed the details of this transaction, I began to get very angry. This is not the kind of angry that I get when my brother leaves the door open to my room. This is an abiding, resentful, and bitter cloud of anger that settled on me in a very peculiar way that afternoon. In my recollection, I had never been unjustly treated in this magnitude. I knew that it was highly unlikely for anyone to enter a skirmish with a branch of public service and win. But such a thing had never happened to me.

After these swirling emotions had their full effect on my spirit, transforming me into a brooding and unpleasant soul, I was startlingly made aware of the concept of forgiveness. It was a strange thought, that in my heart I was actually withholding forgiveness from those who had (in my mind) acted unjustly to the detriment of my record. I've heard it said that the only true antidote to the bitterness and the anger we experience because we've suffered injustice is forgiveness.

This is great. Not only have I identified the problem (anger because of injustice) and also identified the solution (forgiveness), all I need to do is to actually forgive these people I have never met. The only problem is that forgiving does not mitigate in any way the injustice that has been thrust upon me. I will still have a soiled driving record and raised insurance premiums for the next three years. Steve Brown said it best:

Forgiveness always costs someone something. We have this spurious idea that forgiveness is simply saying, "I forgive you" and then going on with out lives. It doesn't work that way. For instance, if I steal form you and you forgive me, it will cost you whatever I stole. If you hit me and I forgive you, it's going to cost me the pain of your blow. If I gossip about you and hurt your reputation and you forgive me, it may still cost you your reputation. If you have been abused and you forgive your abuser, it will still cost you the emotional damage that abuse brings.

Forgiveness is not just hard, it's impossible. Completely letting go of anger, bitterness, and resentment is certainly an emotional yet truly spiritual impossibility. "Why is forgiveness utterly impossible?" one might ask. Here's why: apart from the life-raising, soul-cleansing, and completely-undeserved mercy and grace administered to all who put their faith in Jesus as their only hope for salvation, there is no other standard or reality of forgiveness to which one can appeal to fully satisfy the need for justice in an unjust situation.

If I had not been and am not being forgiven by the wrath-satisfying death of Jesus as an act of mediation between my despicable state and the perfection of the Almighty God (1 Corinthians 15:1-2), I would, in my own mind, still have grounds on which I could still hold grudges and not completely let go of such small afflictions, viz. an unmerited parking citation. Like I said, I understand that the experience that I have described is nothing compared to the difficulty and travail of many more that have been mocked, cursed, abused, molested, even tortured, but the fact remains: if your soul has been saved from the pit of hell, everlasting torment, and separation from He who holds all things together, and the One God and Creator deals with you as a Father deals with His child, there is no more heinous wrong that has been righted excepting the infinite gap between you and The Holy God that has been reduced to nothing so that you might enter into eternal life and relationship with Him. I am now free to forgive anyone anything, because I realize that there is no greater act of forgiveness than that which has been and is being ministered to me be my Savior through His work on my behalf.

Keeping in mind that amazing love with which He loves us, it is now possible to forgive those who has abused, misused, and mistreated us. We've been forgiven an infinite debt- what else is there to forgive? All that we need we have in the obedience of Christ in my stead. Forgiveness, previously impossible because of our hard and vindictive hearts, is now made possible because we have access to infinite forgiveness; this is something into which the angels long to look.

He Alone Is Our Hope.

.DSN.

Cleaning Shadows

I've been an IICRC certified carpet cleaning technician for seven years. I make my living by looking at rugs and carpets from houses and businesses and doing my best to present them as new and as fresh as possible.

This process of cleansing may seem straight forward: 1) Inspect affected area, 2) Pre-treat affected area, 3) Steam-rinse affected area, and 4) Leave affected area as dry as possible. However, there are a few complications that may hinder the smoothness and efficiency of this process. Of the most aggravating, the issue of shadows leads to some of the most frustration for any carpet cleaning professional on the job.

I was recently cleaning a showroom for bathroom and kitchen sets with my brother by the light of a select few lamps and recessed lights. Because of the set up, displays were artistically situated all over this floorspace; it was my responsibility to weave in, through, and around said displays and clean the carpet on which they all stood.

This job took far longer than I thought it should. Why? Because the presence of so many chairs, counters, and cabinets provided a plethora of obstacles in the path of my limited light sources. As I did my best to move uniformly over the carpet, I found myself spending inordinate amounts of time on obscure parts that don't get that much traffic wear at all. I even re-pretreated a few of those spots in an attempt to extricate that obstinate dirt from the carpet to which it so tightly held. But alas, it was an effort of no avail.

So here, Matt Chandler's yapping away at me through my iPod and my self-confidence in my skill as a carpet cleaning professional are dwindling away to oblivion. I really was having a hard time with how my attempts ended so horribly and utterly unsuccessful.

Then it hit me. This wasn't dirt I was trying to clean.

The spots I was so desperately trying to clean were mere shadows.

It all made so much sense.

When I finally realized how much time I had wasted, God flipped a switch in my mind to a transcending spiritual reality of which my situation so clearly pictured: when we try to clean up our lives or other people's lives by addressing a lack of some arbitrary spiritual fruit, all we are doing is wasting time cleaning shadows.

Take for example teenager "x"; in this case, we'll call teenager "x" "Pat". Pat exhibits patterns of disrespect, irritability, and unhealthy self-consciousness. Pat may feel the need to gain approval from other guys or girls to affirm in Pat's mind that Pat is valuable. One could observe Pat's life and say something similar to this, "We must diagnose Pat's problems. Pat listens to ungodly secular music, so we must remove that influence from Pat's life. Pat watches ungodly secular movies and TV shows, so we must remove those influences from Pat's life. Pat wears clothes that are immodest and spends time with ungodly friends, so we must replace Pat's clothes with more Christian ones and expose Pat to good Christian friends. Once we have accomplished those things, Pat's life problems will inevitably change, and we will have served Pat by allowing Pat to move on with Pat's life."

I have heard many of these same things from the mouths of "strong Christians" that supposedly understand the Gospel and the things with which God is most concerned.

What is so funny to me is that the solution above that I have laid out seems to be doing exactly what I was doing in the showroom- it is an approach that merely cleans the shadows. In this and every situation in which sin is present (always, maybe?), the question must be asked, "Why is it that Pat wants to do all these sinful things?" EVERY SINGLE TIME the answer will be some variation of a misunderstanding or disbelief in who God is, how He works, or the implications of what He did on the cross.

A heart that is disrespectful or easily angered or insecure is a heart that does not love and treasure Jesus above all things (belief in the Gospel). Will removing some sort of external trapping to which a sinful heart is inclined make any difference in addressing the problem of a lack of total love for Jesus? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! All this kind of whack-a-mole approach does is attempt to clean shadows when the real issue is that there are tables, chairs, and countertops in the way of the light. THOSE are the things that must be moved before any kind of real, lasting progress can be made.

Here's one last story:
One beautiful summer evening at an ice cream stand with some friends, one particular individual was brought up in conversation as this individual was a mutual acquaintance of me and someone also at the ice cream stand. The conversation didn't last long, but I vividly remember my conversation-buddy saying the words with a clear tone of disgust, "[Person 'x'] is a bad kid."

I am confident that those five words will never leave my mind; it was the first time that God opened my eyes to make me aware of the false dichotomy between "good kids" and "bad kids." It may seem clear that some kids are just better than others, right?

Jesus seemed to disagree- read the parable of the prodigal son and his legalistic brother... To say that any one person is somehow "better" or "worse" than another is to be operating from the attitude that once we work hard at cleaning the shadows, we will effectively stand more uprightly.

My heart was and is truly saddened to think that my friend believes that external behaviors determine the goodness of a person, when it is the reality of whether or not someone embraces for dear life the cleansing presence of our God that is most important. There is no such thing as a "good kid" or a "bad kid". There are only such things as "bad kids"- the question is whether or not God has placed the righteousness of Jesus on them for all eternity (Romans 5:18-19).

Trying to make someone (or yourself) commit fewer bad things will have the same ultimate effect as me trying to clean shadows in a hole-in-the-wall showroom in some town in New Hampshire. Will it work at all? Nuh-uh. Not one bit.

.DSN.