Be Who You Are in Christ

by Collin Smith

Timothy was a young man, probably in his thirties, and he had been given the task of leading the church in Ephesus. This is a massive responsibility.

And, we know that by temperament Timothy was timid and shy (2 Timothy 1:7). He was not a forceful person. He was not confident by nature.

I think Timothy must often have felt that he was in over his head, out of his depth, and sometimes at the end of his rope. Maybe you know what that feels like too. 

When You’re in over Your Head 

How do you sustain what God has called you to do year after year? Where do you find the energy to live a godly life when everything is pressing in on you?  

Paul ends this letter with some much-needed encouragement for Timothy. And remember, Paul was writing under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God. God knew what Timothy needed back then and he knows what you need right now. 

So, I think Paul’s encouragement to Timothy is something all of us can use today. My prayer is that you will be refreshed and renewed in the hope of the Gospel today. 

Man of God 

“But you, man of God, flee from all this and pursue…” (v11) 

Paul has been describing the way of false teachers and of people who set their hearts on money, and then he encourages Timothy to pursue a different path.  

You would expect him to say “But you, Timothy, flee from all this and pursue…” He speaks to Timothy by name in verse 20, but he doesn’t do that here. Instead, he says “man of God.” That would have gotten Timothy’s attention.

The phrase “man of God” was used in the Old Testament to describe some of the great heroes of the faith: 

• Moses (Deuteronomy 33:1)

• Samuel (1 Samuel 9:6) 

• David (Nehemiah 12:24) 

• Elijah (1 Kings 17:18) 

• Elisha (2 Kings 4:7) 

Do you think Timothy felt he belonged in that company? Paul says “Timothy, I want you to remember who you are. You are God’s man. I want you to think and speak and act and live as God’s man because that is who you are!” 

Do you think you belong in this company? 

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17) 

The Scriptures are not only given to some Christians, but to all Christians.  This is telling us something wonderful. In Old Testament times God called only a few to be his prophets, his priests and his kings.

But now every man who is in Christ is God’s man, and every woman who is in Christ is God’s woman.  

If you are in Christ, you are God’s man as much as Moses, Samuel, David and Elijah. If you are in Christ you are God’s woman as much as Sarah, Deborah, Ruth or Esther.  

Know who you are in Jesus Christ. You are God’s man, God’s woman. You are not your own, but you have been bought with a price. God created you. Christ purchased you. The angels in heaven confess “with your blood you purchased men for God” (Revelation 5:9).

How God Speaks to Believers

When God speaks to believers, He speaks to us, not as we are by nature, but as we are in Christ. William Barclay comments: 

When the charge is given to Timothy, he is not reminded of his own weakness and his own helplessness and his own inadequacy and his own sin… He is rather challenged by the honor which is his, the honor of being God’s man. [i] 

When you read through the New Testament epistles, you don’t find God saying to believers: “You really are a miserable, pathetic failure. You are so weak and helpless and hopeless. When are you going to realize what a miserable failure you are?” 

How could that be true of people who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God? God does not tread us down by branding us according to our nature. He lifts us up by calling us to be who we are in Christ. 

God speaks to us like this: 

Put on the whole armor of God so that when the evil day comes you may be able to stand your ground… (Ephesians 6:13) 

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature… (Colossians 3:5) 

Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage… (1 Corinthians 16:13) 

Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness… (1 Timothy 6:11) 

Without Christ you were a lost and helpless and hopeless sinner. But now in Christ you are a new creation. God’s Spirit lives in you!  

You are God’s man, God’s woman. Be who you are.  

[i] William Barclay, Letters to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, p.155 

Colin Smith is the senior pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. He has authored a number of books, including Heaven, How I Got Here and Heaven, So Near - So Far. Colin is the president and teacher for Unlocking the Bible.

Engaging Emotions Means Engaging God

J. Alasdair Groves & Winston T. Smith 

Engaging emotions without engaging God is a recipe for disaster.

Our emotions are fundamentally designed to force us to engage him, and the great lie—which, ironically, both stoicism and hyper-emotionalism buy into—is that we can and should deal with our emotions apart from bringing them to the Lord.

If we don’t engage God but simply use a “Bible-based system” or “method” of handling our emotions, we lose the core hope we have as Christians.

That hope is not in a system of strategies we can enact (though we are grateful for an action plan!) but in a Savior and Shepherd and ever-present help in time of need who sees us, knows us, loves us, and actually has the power, right here and right now, to help us with the turmoil of our hearts.

ENGAGING GOD MEANS POURING OUT YOUR HEART

Engaging God in our emotions is quite simple (even if it can be exceedingly difficult to bring ourselves to actually do it). Psalm 62:8 captures it with profound simplicity:

Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us.

If you trust God, David tells us, then pour out your heart to him. Or, put another way, trusting God necessarily includes pouring your heart out to him.

What does it mean to “pour out your heart”? Pouring out your heart simply means naming the colors you feel most strongly. It means bringing the sloshing mixture of churning paints to God and upending it into his hands one sentence at a time.

This is really quite a shocking thing for God to invite and even command us to do. Why would God be willing, much less eager, to hear the inner distresses and delights of people who from birth have rebelled against him? Why would God want hearts poured out into his hands when those hearts are divided, full of treasures that compete with single-minded devotion to him? Why would God choose to care about or listen to the weeping or pleading or crowing of a sinful creature who caused his beloved Son to go through physical and emotional anguish we could never fathom? Would you offer your shoulder to cry on to someone who killed your child?

We need to press this point. All of us are easily presumptuous, blind to the privilege offered us in God’s call to pour out our hearts. Imagine, the Father himself cares what you think, invites you to earnest conversation with him at any time, for as long as you need. A stunning honor—and yet we mostly see prayer as a tiresome duty. (Even the familiarity of the term prayer can work against us.) It doesn’t occur to us most of the time that prayer can and should include simply talking to God about what is on our hearts.

Yet this is exactly what we observe over and over in the Psalms.

Too often, even taking the time to ask in prayer for God to help us or do things for us feels inconvenient and impractical. How much more inefficient, we think to ourselves, to do nothing but blabber on in prayer about one’s feelings! Yet, in his mercy, God chooses to offer his listening ear to us, drawing out the depths of our soul in the safety of relationship with him.

We need to be brought up short by the shocking gift of pouring out our hearts to God.

THE GIFT OF POURING OUT OUR HEARTS

The importance of emotions in our relationship with God shouldn’t really surprise us. Relationships need emotions like fires need oxygen. It stands to reason, then, that if our emotions are the way our hearts were made to align with God’s, our relationship with him actually ought to be the most emotional relationship we have.

“Trying to develop a heart whose emotions overflow from loving what God loves without bringing your feelings to him is like trying to fly by flapping your arms instead of boarding an airplane.

Fundamentally, God gave you emotions to connect you, bind you, and draw you to himself. To engage your emotions in any other way than by bringing them to him goes against the very grain of your human, image-bearing nature. Is it possible for human beings to make significant changes to their motives and feelings through willpower, creativity, sheer grit, dumb luck, or self-effort, without any reference to the God who made us?

Yes. Because God made us with the power to have real impact on our world and ourselves, and because of God’s mercy on us, even people who don’t believe he exists can do things that cause their emotions to run in paths they prefer.

But for your feelings to reflect God’s feelings about this world and all that happens in it, you must bring your feelings to him. Trying to develop a heart whose emotions overflow from loving what God loves without bringing your feelings to him is like trying to fly by flapping your arms instead of boarding an airplane.

WHY YOUR ENGAGING MATTERS

Psalm 62 says one more very important thing we haven’t mentioned yet. It doesn’t end with the command to trust God by pouring out your heart. It ends by telling you why you can pour out your heart and why you can trust him.

God is your refuge.

It is hard to overstate the emphasis Scripture places on this point. Countless verses echo the words of Psalm 71:3,

Be to me a rock of refuge,
to which I may continually come.

Unless you know God is trustworthy, you won’t entrust yourself to him, especially not the precious treasures of your inmost heart. Only a God who promises to hear you and who really will handle the fragile affections of your soul with tenderness inspires the necessary confidence in us to lay our loves into his hands. It is because David knows how deeply we all struggle to trust God with the things we really care about that he emphasizes that God is a refuge when he calls us to bare our hearts.

WE CAN TRUST GOD

Scripture is full of similar promises. Why does Peter speak of “casting all your anxieties on him” (1 Pet. 5:7)? Because, Peter tells us in the simplest of words, “he cares for you.”

“The Bible will not compromise on this point: we really can trust God.

Do you realize what it means to care for someone? To devote time and energy and thought and effort to what will be good for another person and then act on that because you feel deep concern and affection for him or her.

Or, when the author of Hebrews encourages us to come confidently to God’s throne with our needs for sustenance and mercy, notice that he begins by reassuring us that Jesus can sympathize with us in our weakness and frailty (Heb. 4:15–16). God, the author of Hebrews wants us to know, is both strong enough and close enough to handle our most fragile treasures.

The Bible will not compromise on this point: we really can trust God. We have every reason to believe he is utterly committed to doing good to us and that he is more trustworthy in caring for us than we are in caring for ourselves. And we need every bit of it if we are going to pour out our hearts to him.

It’s all too instinctive for us to remain distant, disappointed, or demanding and, as a result, to pull back and keep our hearts to ourselves.

Content taken from Untangling Emotions by J. Alasdair Groves and Winston T. Smith, ©2019. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

J. Alasdair Groves (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary) serves as the executive director for the New England branch of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF). He is also the director of CCEF's School of Biblical Counseling.

Winston T. Smith (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary) is the rector at Saint Anne's Church in Abington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Marriage Matters.

What It Means That We "Died in Christ"

One of the most remarkable assertions of the apostle Paul is that Christians actually die with Christ.

What does this mean?

Paul explains in a letter to the church of Colossae.

“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’ (referring to things that all perish as they are used)? . . . they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:20-23).

This is a typical Pauline sentence, over-packed with words and jumbled syntax. The apostle is trying to compress a multitude of thoughts into a single breath.

AS THOUGH WE DIED      

He begins with the affirmation: “If with Christ you died . . . ”

At first blush, it is a puzzling affirmation. Surely only one person died on the cross and it was not us. It was Jesus.

How can Paul write, “if with Christ you died”?

There can be only one answer: what happened to Jesus on the first Good Friday happened, in some sense, to us as well. It is as though we died with Jesus.

Paul’s explains the mutual death in the following way: “we know that our old self was crucified with [Christ] in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin . . . for sin will have no dominion over [us]” (Rom. 6:6, 14).

It was "our old self” that died with Christ, specifically the old self in its attachment to sin. Because we have been crucified with Christ, we are “no longer . . . enslaved to sin.” For the first time in our lives, we are no longer dominated by sin. We are able not to sin.

DEAD TO ELEMENTAL FORCES

In Colossians, Paul identifies the sin to which we are no longer bound. We have died “to the elemental spirits of the world” (Col. 2:20).

Scholars have puzzled over the identity of the “elemental spirits of the world.” To what do they refer? Most likely they refer to the selfish desires which prompt us to make a life for ourselves apart from God. It is certainly true that such desires pervade humanity—indeed, nothing in our “world” is more “elemental” than “spirits” of selfishness.

To such “spirits” we have died.

Selfish impulses have not themselves died. They are still very much alive. Rather, it is we who have died to them.

Liberated from the selfish gene, we are no longer enslaved to self.

SET FREE FROM OURSELVES

Too few of us are aware of this liberation. Even many Christians struggle to come to grips with the meaning of co-crucifixion with Christ.

That is why Paul delivers a rebuke to his Colossian converts. “Why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch?’”

“The dogmas of the world won’t take you very far.

That is to say, why do you let yourself be dogmatized by the world? Why do you allow your peers to determine what you handle, taste, and touch? Why do you yield to the social dogmas of the day regarding self-image, personal ambitions, and financial security?

The dogmas of the world won’t take you very far. Indeed as Paul says, they will “perish as they are used.” In other words, they will die in your hands.

SET FREE FROM THE FLESH

My first exposure to death was an encounter with a rotten duck. I stumbled onto its dead body when I was four years old, walking alongside a lake in Los Angeles. Before my mother could whisk me away from the putrid sight, I managed to steal a glimpse at its maggot-infested gut. Instantly, I withdrew, taking two steps backwards. Even though just a young child, I knew instinctively not to touch the gruesome remains. I knew they would contaminate me.

As adults, we should be so discerning. Consider the things we touch every day: money, sex, and power. How we love to fasten our grip on these things. None of them is bad in itself— handled well, money, sex, and power can bring many blessings. But when we look to them for fullness of life, we are invariably disappointed. As inanimate objects, they are powerless to create life. To think otherwise is to watch them rot in our hands.

Hence Paul ventures a bold assertion. Money, sex, and power, and other earthly things like them, “are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” Here the word flesh is a synonym for selfish desires. Pursuing money, sex, and power will not assuage selfish desires. It will not stop the indulgence of the flesh. On the contrary, it will excite the flesh. It will exacerbate selfish desires still more.

Evidence for this abounds.

“When we pursue material things as though our lives depended on them, none truly satisfies.

Alexander the Great had immense power, conquering most of the civilized world, but when his troops were too exhausted to push into India, he broke down and wept. Much power was not enough power. He wanted more.

Robert Louis Stevenson won fame as one of history’s most beloved storytellers, writing such classics as Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But his last words, the self-composed epitaph of his tombstone, were doleful. “Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, and failed much.” Much fame was not enough fame. He wanted more.

Claude Monet, impressionist painter par excellence, was downcast at the end. “I always wanted to believe that I would make headway and finally do something worthwhile. But, alas, I must now bury that hope.” Much success was not enough success. He wanted more.

Most of us can identify with these disappointments. When we pursue material things as though our lives depended on them, none truly satisfies. Worse, each perishes in our hands, contaminates our lives, and excites the flesh still more.

LIBERATION IN CHRIST

Happily, there is a better way. It is the liberation offered by Jesus. Through his death, he loosens the shackles of the flesh. He sets us free from selfishness and the self-serving dogmas of the world. He liberates us from the contaminating spirits of our day.

It is imperative to grasp the full significance of this liberation.

On the final night of July in 1834, eight hundred thousand slaves of the British Empire rose to celebrate their liberation. By a decree of Parliament, the night of their cruel bondage was coming to an end. In the words of famed historian George Trevelyan, at the strike of midnight an entire race of people climbed “onto the hilltops to watch the sun rise, bringing them freedom as its first rays struck the waters.”

For emancipated slaves, it was history’s finest hour. To this day we celebrate the victory. Yet abolition did not put an end to the evils associated with slavery. The scourge of racism and social injustice remain with us today.

While the victory was won, it was not fully implemented.

It is the same with our liberation from sin. What was accomplished on the cross of Christ was a full and final victory. Vanquished once and for all was the dominion of sin.

Dying with Christ, we are no longer bound to sin. But the victory has not been fully implemented. Christians—even Christians—still sin.

LINGERING SIN

The apostle John cautions us against thinking otherwise. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

Instead, we must acknowledge lingering sin, indeed, confront lingering sin. Doing so, John invites us to a tree outside Jerusalem, the cross of Jesus Christ, where, in repentance, we receive forgiveness of sins.

“Cleansed and forgiven, we are able not to sin.

“If we confess our sins, [Jesus] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Lapsing into selfish thoughts and self-serving behavior is something we all do. But we are not bound to continue. We are free from the domination of sin. Cleansed and forgiven, we are able not to sin.

Seldom a day passes that I don’t succumb to self-seeking desires. The allure of the elemental spirits is strong. I still pursue the imagined rewards of power, fame, pleasure, influence, and success as though they were the ultimate building blocks of my life.

JOINED TO CHRIST

Yet I am no longer enslaved to that pursuit. I am no longer dogmatized by it. Because of my co-crucifixion with Christ, I have come out from under its grip.

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1).

Joined to Christ, I am no longer yoked to sin.

Praise God—we have died with Christ!

Content taken from Discovering the Good Life by Timothy B. Savage, ©2019. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Tim Savage (PhD, University of Cambridge; ThM, Dallas Theological Seminary) is a pastor, author, international conference speaker, and founding council member of the Gospel Coalition. He has served in churches in Arizona, Great Britain, and Texas. He is married to Lesli and they have two adult sons, Matthew and Jonathan. Tim is the author of No Ordinary Marriage.

Posted at: https://gcdiscipleship.com/article-feed/2019/5/10/what-it-means-that-we-have-died-with-christ

Hope for the Unhappy Christian

Article by Phillip Holmes

Guest Contributor

On the outside, Chloe appears to have it all together. She is single, has a career, and is fairly active in her local church. But she’s lonely, disenchanted by her career, and feels detached from her church. The shell that her peers admire conceals her discontentment and joyless Christianity.

Chloe had envisioned a different life for herself. By now, she thought she’d be in her prime, but she’s found herself in a pit of misery. She thought she’d be married, still connected to her college friends, raising a family, and mentoring younger Christian women. But her present reality disappointed her expectations. Her discontentment has led her down a dark path of sin, searching for relief, but only finding death.

Chloe’s only hope of curing her discontentment and unhappiness is learning the art of contentment and embracing a biblical view of God. Those two things are essential for her joy.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

“The human heart is impossible to satisfy with temporal conditions or earthly goods. We always want more.”

Chloe represents many Christians struggling to cope with the hand they’ve been dealt. Her heart condition not only applies to singles, but the married as well. Every morning, Christians across the country wake up discontent with life — singleness, marriage, career, church, or community — and wish they could trade it for a different one.

Our discontentment leads to wishful but hopeless (and sometimes suicidal) thinking. We attempt to replace and eliminate anything that we perceive is linked to our discontentment:

• “I hate being single, so I should settle.”

• “My spouse doesn’t satisfy me, so I should get a new one.”

• “My job isn’t fulfilling, so I should quit.”

• “My church isn’t exciting, so I should leave.”

• “Life is full of misery, so I should end it.”

• “God doesn’t make me happy, so I should reject him.”

However, the problem is not with singleness, marriage, job, church, or God. The answer to our problem isn’t always linked to changing our circumstance. The Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs wrote,

It is a common saying that there are many people who are neither well when they are full nor when they are fasting. . . . There are some people who are of such irritable and unpleasant dispositions that no matter what condition they are put in, they are obnoxious. There are some who have unpleasant hearts, and they are unpleasant in every circumstance they encounter. (Contentment, Prosperity, and God’s Glory, 1)

Sick or healthy, single or married, rich or poor, fruitful or barren, hungry or stuffed — regardless of the circumstance — we can find a way to be discontent regardless of our plight in life. The human heart is impossible to satisfy with temporal conditions or earthly goods. We always want more. Life could always be better. As Charles Haddon Spurgeon rightly pointed out, “Remember that a man’s contentment is in his mind, not in the extent of his 
possessions. Alexander, with all the world at his feet, cries for another world to conquer.” However, there is a better way — a path that leads to sweet contentment and true happiness.

Sweet Contentment

The Christian’s unhappiness, discontentment, and view of God are directly linked. Discontentment screams, “You deserve better!” and whispers, “God is not giving you what you deserve.” The former screams are blatantly false, but the latter whispers are profoundly true. Satan is the master of mixing lies with truths.

It’s a lie that you deserve better. The statement also assumes that you know what’s best and that God’s gifts aren’t best for you. The lie leads you to believe that you’re wiser than God and interprets his direction for your life as an attack rather than a mercy and gift.

“Even when we’re feeling our worst, God is showing us more mercy than we deserve.”

It’s true that God is not giving you what you deserve. We deserve God’s wrath, yet daily we receive new mercies. How can sickness, suffering, and other tragedies be considered mercy? By realizing that every morning we don’t wake up in hell is an example of God’s mercy toward us. Even when we’re feeling our worst, God is showing us more mercy than we deserve. There is no calamity or tragedy that we can face that is worse than the holy wrath of God. At the same time, there is no earthly pleasure that can compare to the glory that is to be revealed. This is how the apostle Paul faced suffering: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).

With this in mind, on our worst day, he’s worthy of thanksgiving and praise for all he’s done. Or, as we used to say in church growing up, “If God never does another thing for us, he’s already done enough.” This view of God’s goodness reflects a humble heart before a holy and good God. This perspective enables us to suffer well, knowing that the best is yet to come.

But we can go even further. As we fight daily against discontentment, we must interpret everything that comes our way as a reason to rejoice. Again, Burroughs writes,

Have good thoughts of God and make good interpretations of his dealings toward you. It is very hard to live comfortably and cheerfully among friends when one makes harsh interpretations of the words and actions of another. The only way to keep sweet contentment and comfort in Christian societies is to make the best interpretations of things we can. Likewise, a primary way to help keep comfort and contentment in our hearts is to make good interpretations of God’s dealings with us. (Contentment, Prosperity, and God’s Glory, 7)

Imagine if we truly believed what the Bible says about how God sees us. It would transform the way we interpret all his actions as mercies. I know that in the midst of my battles with discontentment and besetting sins, it’s hard to view what is happening in my life as anything but a condemnation and punishment.

God’s Mercies, Our Joy

“Our ability to interpret God’s actions towards us as good is inevitably tied to our contentment and joy.”

Like Chloe, our dissatisfaction with life will inevitably lead us into a cycle of discontentment, sin, guilt, and depression if left unchecked. Discontentment will eventually lead to sin, sin to guilt, guilt to depression, and depression back to discontentment. This cycle slowly destroys everything we encounter and touch, leaving us joyless and empty. In order to break this deadly cycle, the pursuit of joy is essential. James 1:2–4 complements the words of Burroughs:

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

If we joyfully interpret everything that happens — sickness, death, loss, poverty — as actions of mercy rather than judgement, it will transform the way we live as Christians. We must look to God’s inerrant word to find comfort that he indeed loves us and does good toward us. Scripture says,

• God is the one who helps; therefore, we have nothing to fear. (Isaiah 41:13)

• God’s love is displayed and proven when he sent his Son to die for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

• Nothing can separate us from God’s love — absolutely nothing. (Romans 8:35–39)

• God loves us with an everlasting love. (Jeremiah 31:3)

• Jesus loves us with the same love that the Father loves him. (John 15:9)

Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, was a man of sorrows (Isaiah 53:3). He was despised and rejected by men, suffered and died for crimes he was innocent of, and soaked up the wrath of God for sins he never committed. God ordained all this. Why? Because God loves us (John 3:16). And since he loves us, we should expect to suffer in this life just as Christ suffered, because “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3–5).

But thank God that, even “as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too” (2 Corinthians 1:5). Our ability to interpret God’s actions towards us as good is inevitably tied to our contentment and joy. If we’re unable to see his providence as good, we will never be content, and without contentment, we will never fully know the joy he has for us.

Phillip Holmes (@PhillipMHolmes) served as a content strategist at desiringGod.org. He is the Director of Communications at Reformed Theological Seminary and a finance coach and blogger through his site Money Untangled​. He and his wife, Jasmine, have a son, and they are members of Redeemer Church in Jackson, Mississippi.

Do Everything Without Complaining

Article by Scott Hubbard

Editor, desiringGod.org

“Do all things without grumbling” (Philippians 2:14). It’s remarkably easy to breeze by this command without really hearing those two intrusive words: all things.

Do all things without grumbling? Yes, all things: Wake up with a sore throat, receive criticism, pay a parking ticket, shovel spring snow, host houseguests, discipline your children, change a flat tire, answer emails, and do everything else without one murmuring word. “This is a hard saying,” we might be tempted to say. “Who can listen to it?” (John 6:60).

Many of us wake up set to “grumble,” and move through our days murmuring at a great variety of objects that get in our way. We may dress it up in nicer words: “venting,” “being honest,” “getting something off my chest,” or even “sharing a prayer request.” But God knows what we’re doing — and if we really think about it, we often do too. Grumbling is the hum of the fallen human heart, and often a hallmark of Christians’ indwelling sin.

And that makes non-grumblers a peculiar people in this world. As Paul goes on to tell us, those who “do all things without grumbling” burn like great suns in a world of darkness (Philippians 2:14–15).

The Voice of Discontentment

Paul’s use of the word grumbling (and his reference to Deuteronomy 32:5 in the next verse) takes us back to the desert between Egypt and Canaan, where we meet that group of experienced grumblers. What do their forty years in the wilderness teach us about grumbling?

They teach us that grumbling is discontentment made audible — the heart’s contempt escaped through the mouth. It is the sound we make when we have “a strong craving” for something we do not have, and we begin to grow restless (Numbers 11:4; Psalm 106:14).

The object of our craving need not be evil; often it isn’t. The Israelites, for example, reached for pleasures quite harmless in themselves: food and water (Exodus 15:24; 16:2–3; 17:3), a safe passage to the Promised Land (Numbers 14:2–4), comfort (Numbers 16:41). But their desires for these good things somehow turned bad: they wanted them sooner than God chose to give them; they wanted them more than God himself.

So too with us. We want a relaxing evening at home, but we get a call from a friend who needs help moving. We want a job that feels meaningful, but we get stuck among spreadsheets. Or, more significantly, we want the future we planned for, but we get one we never wanted.

“Unfair,” says some voice within us. “That’s not right,” says another. Desires become expectations; expectations become rights. And instead of bringing our disappointment to God, and allowing his words to steady us, we let unmet desire fester into discontentment. We grumble.

Murmuring Against Our Good

Grumbling is more than the voice of discontentment, however. It is also the voice of unbelief. We grumble when our faith in God’s good purposes falters. Unwilling to trust that God is crafting this disappointment for our good, we have eyes only for the painful now.

When the Israelites finished burying the last of the wilderness generation, Moses revealed God’s purpose in all their desert trials: “[God] led you through the great and terrifying wilderness . . . that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end” (Deuteronomy 8:15–16). What a tragic commentary on those graves in the desert. On every tombstone in that wilderness were carved the words, “We grumbled against our own good.”

God had already told them as much after their first episode of grumbling. He presented them with a choice: They could either “diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God” (Exodus 15:26), or they could follow the raging mob within themselves. Well, we know the story. They followed the mob.

Our own grumbling, likewise, relies on an interpretation of God, ourselves, and this world that is utterly out of step with reality. (Of course, it feels like reality; the serpent’s voice always does.) We grumble because we have diligently listened to a voice other than the Lord our God’s, and have begun to repeat the words. Instead of crying out to God, “Help me trust you are good!” we mutter and spill and vent — the equivalent of saying, “God, your ways are not good.”

Let Go of Grumbling

Like all temptations common to man, the temptation to grumble always comes with “the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). But how? How can we confront our own tendencies to murmur and, amazingly, begin to “do all things without grumbling” (Philippians 2:14)?

1. Repent of wayward desires.

When you do recognize some grumbling words, stop and ask yourself,

What am I wanting right now more than I want God’s will?
What craving has become more important than God’s commandments?
What desire has grown sweeter than knowing Christ Jesus my Lord?

Grumbling does not spout forth from us because of a problem out there, but because of a problem in here. No outward circumstance compels us to grumble. The same apostle who said, “Do all things without grumbling,” was wearing chains for the gospel as he wrote. Yet Philippians is drenched in gratitude, not grumbling (Philippians 1:3; 4:14). More than that, at the center of Paul’s letter is a Savior who humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, without one murmur (Philippians 2:5–8).

God has given us everything we need to let go of grumbling — even in prison, even on the road to our own execution. In addition to recognizing our grumbling, then, we need to repent of those wayward desires that would keep us from saying with Paul, “It is my eager expectation and hope that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death,” whether by comfort or disappointment, whether by hope fulfilled or hope deferred (Philippians 1:20).

2. Remember God’s word of life.

Because our grumbling relies on a false interpretation of reality, we need God to reinterpret our circumstances for us. Therefore, as Paul tells us, we put away grumbling by “holding fast to the word of life” (Philippians 2:16).

Hold fast implies effort and attention. Grumbling will rarely flee if we merely wave around vague thoughts of God’s goodness. We need to take specific words from God and, with ruthless intensity, hold on to them tighter than we hold on to our words of discontentment.

What words from God should we hold fast to in these moments? Any that confront our inner clamor of voices with the truth of God’s abundant goodness (Psalm 31:19), our benefits in Christ (Psalm 103:1–5), the brightness of our future (1 Peter 1:3–9), God’s sovereignty over trials (James 1:2–4), and the pleasures of obedience (Psalm 19:10–11), for example.

Or, to stick near the context of Paul’s command, consider holding on to this gem of a promise: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). Glorious riches for every need are ours in Christ. Hold fast to that word.

3. Respond to God in faith.

Finally, take these words and turn them back to the God who is our very present help (Psalm 46:1). In other words, replace grumbling with its righteous opposite: prayer. Every decision to grumble is a decision not to pray, not to pour out our hearts before God, not to draw near to his powerful throne of grace. Likewise, every decision to pray is a decision not to grumble.

Of course, even in prayer the fight continues. Our minds will often wander back to whatever person or circumstance has agitated us. But keep bringing your mind back around. Keep wrangling your focus back to the God who made you, knows you, loves you, bought you, and will bring your holiness to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).

Grumbling cannot abide in the presence of this Jesus. Over time, it must make way for gratitude. It must bow the knee to faith. It must give way to praise.

Scott Hubbard is a graduate of Bethlehem College & Seminary and an editor for desiringGod.org. He and his wife, Bethany, live in Minneapolis.

Posted at: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/do-everything-without-grumbling

Knowing God Makes All the Difference

By David Mathis

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are simply natural and those who have supernatural life in them. Some were born only once; others have been born again. Many do not trust and treasure Jesus as Lord and Savior. A precious few do.

For now, it can be difficult to distinguish these two types of people. Though false professions abound and unbelievers demonstrate remarkable virtue in society, at the bottom of our shared humanity lies one great difference: whether we truly know God himself, through Jesus, or not. Given enough time, the tree will bear fruit, or not. The truth will become plain as to whether we truly have supernatural life in our soul, or not.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus points to “the Gentiles” as those who do not know God. Four separate times they are negative examples of what Christians are not to be. But against our natural instincts, and through the grace of God’s word and Spirit, Jesus calls us not to Gentile love (Matthew 5:47), not to Gentile prayer (6:7), not to Gentile fears (6:32), and not to Gentile leadership (20:25; also Mark 10:42; Luke 22:25). In short, he calls us to live like we know God.

Not Like the Gentiles

Until the coming of Christ, Gentiles (non-Jews) were, by and large, merely natural, worldly persons, born under sin and still under sin, “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). God chose Abraham, birthing a special ethnic people to whom he revealed himself. God spoke specially to his chosen people, the Jews. Meanwhile, the Gentiles, with rare exceptions, did not hear from or know the true God.

Even in the ministry of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles (Romans 11:13; 1 Timothy 2:7), the stigma held. Paul wrote that Christ crucified was “folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23) and charged his converts to “no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds” (Ephesians 4:17). Peter also warned Christians of Gentiles who “speak against you as evildoers” (1 Peter 2:12); he drew a clear line between Christian conduct and “doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry” (1 Peter 4:3).

Maybe most revealing of all, Paul writes to believers “that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:4–5). At bottom, the issue is not ethnicity, but knowing God. Christianity makes the radical claim, and represents the remarkable reality, that through Jesus Christ, and by his Spirit, we know and enjoy the true God. Two kinds of people populate our world: those who know God in Christ, and those who do not.

Knowing God

Given the first-century expectations that Jews would know him, having been trusted with God’s oracles (Romans 3:2), and that Gentiles would not, we shouldn’t be surprised to find Jesus working with these categories in the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus calls his people, those who know the true God as Father, to kinds of love, prayer, life, and leadership that are distinct from “the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2) and “the passions of your former ignorance” (1 Peter 1:14). He calls us to love and pray and live and lead not according to our natural instincts but according to supernatural power and perspective and practice.

How will our love, our prayers, our anxieties, and our leadership be different from the course of this world when we know Jesus?

How Not to Love

One of Jesus’s most famous teachings is his startling call to enemy love. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Even Gentiles love their friends.

If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? (Matthew 5:46–47)

So, we have Gentile love. Which is the same as tax-collector love. Even tax collectors love those who love them. Even Gentiles greet those who greet them. It’s only natural.

But Jesus calls his people to love and greet others beyond what is natural. He calls us to supernatural love that goes beyond the pattern and norms of this world. Love that doesn’t have its immediate reward in this life, but waits patiently for the heavenly reward. Love that transcends the expectations of this world, defying natural explanation, so that it eventually will be said of us that something is different about us.

Enemy love is what our Father has shown to us (Romans 5:8, 10), and it is what will show the world that we are “sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:45). Loving our enemies doesn’t earn our heavenly sonship but evidences it. We display the supernatural love of our heavenly Father when we love those who do not (yet) love us.

How Not to Pray

Just sentences later, Jesus casts a radical new vision for prayer, unlike the way a natural person prays. “When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7).

Apart from special revelation from God himself, in his word, and in his Son, natural people assume we need to secure or earn God’s attention with “many words” — by heaping up pious sounding phrases. Jesus paints a vastly different picture of his Father, who “knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). In Christ, we come to know God as he truly is, as a loving and intimate Father who sees and knows our every need. Which means we don’t have to flag him down with many words and empty phrases.

Jesus then models prayer that is astonishingly direct and simple: a mere fifty words (Matthew 6:9–13). Christians will pray differently than those who can only speculate what God is really like. The difference comes down to knowing the true God, not a figment of human imagination and conjecture. “Do not be like [the Gentiles], for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8).

How Not to Fear

Jesus then turns to address the everyday fears and anxieties of life in this world. “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on” (Matthew 6:25). He points his followers beyond the basics of human existence that can consume the natural mind, especially when food and drink and clothing become scarce. However, if we know God as Father, we know how he cares for his creatures and, all the more, his image-bearers.

Look at the birds, how he feeds them. Look at the lilies, how he clothes them. Are you not of more value to your Father than many birds and countless lilies? “Therefore,” Jesus says, “do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all” (Matthew 6:31–32).

Gentiles seek the things of earth without an eye to heaven. Jesus calls his people, who know his Father, to rise above the base concerns of natural people to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33), banking on their Father’s help and concern.

How Not to Lead

Finally, we move to Matthew 20, where James’s and John’s mother asks Jesus if her sons can sit at his right and left in the kingdom. This is an audacious request, more so than she even knows. Jesus says such is not his to decide (Matthew 20:23), but then says more, pointing out the unsound foundation beneath her question.

Such a petition is founded on Gentile (or natural) assumptions about leadership as personal privilege. Jesus calls his men to another vision, the very vision of supernatural leadership he is living out as he walks toward the cross.

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:25–28)

Natural leadership lords it over those in our charge. Gentile leadership exercises authority without self-giving service. But Jesus says, “It shall not be so among you.” He himself is cutting a new path, and summons his followers to join him. He does not use his followers for personal privilege and private benefit. He does not empty them to fill himself. Rather, in his fullness, he empties himself, without abdicating his lordship, for the good of his followers. He does not surrender his authority but wields it for the good of those in his charge, not for selfish ends.

Hope for the Gentiles

Jesus calls his people to be distinct from the world, its patterns, and what’s natural. He calls us, guided by his gospel and supplied by his Spirit, to be like our supernatural Father in heaven, who loved us when we were yet enemies, hears our simple childlike prayers, knows and cares for our every need, and exercise authority with grace and self-sacrifice, not dominance or heavy-handedness.

God’s transforming grace means there is great hope for Gentiles. The negative references to Gentiles in the Gospels soon erupt into magnificent hope for the Gentiles in Acts and Romans, in the great “turning to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46). No Gentile, no matter how far off he once was, is beyond Christ’s reach. And our Lord loves to redeem the ways that we, Jew or Gentile, fail to love, pray, live, and lead as we ought.

God is not surprised that we need deep retraining, and often default back to our Gentile ways. Yet at every turn in our journey to final glory, knowing him makes all the difference.

David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor for desiringGod.org and pastor at Cities Churchin Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is a husband, father of four, and author of Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines.

Posted at: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/knowing-god-makes-all-the-difference

Awaken Me to Today

by Scott Hubbard

Many of us walk through a world of sepia.

Maybe life was more vivid once. You went to bed and couldn’t wait to wake up. You loved your job, or were engaged to be married, or just had your first child. But life changed, and slowly, the colors drained from your days. Now you wake up, walk through another bland day, and lie down, simply to do it all over again tomorrow. The calendar has become 365 shades of brown.

We need God to awaken us to today. We need him to remind us again that “this is the day that the Lord has made” (Psalm 118:24) — a unique day, a meaningful day, a day that comes to us from the hands of divine love. We need God to help us resolve, as Clyde Kilby writes, that we will “not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities.”

In order to come awake to today, we probably don’t need to do something spectacular. We probably just need to meditate on the ordinary glories we so often forget. We probably need to look up, around, and ahead again.

Look Up

Look up to God today.

God is. The most basic fact about today is also the most wild and wonderful: God is. Behind all that we see and feel today is an eternal dance of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: never changing, ever happy, a constant volcano of goodness and joy.

He is the Love beneath all love (1 John 4:8), the Beauty behind all beauty (Psalm 27:4), the Truth below all truth (John 14:6). He is the Creator, the Lord, and the King; the Shepherd, the Word, and the Savior; the Comforter, the Guide, and the Teacher. He is the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ (John 1:18) — and he is.

God is here. “We can’t talk about God behind his back,” John Webster said. Nor can we think, breathe, sleep, or eat there. There is no such place as “behind his back” — not on Icarus, nine billion light years away, nor in our living rooms. God is here, in this moment, holding us together by the power of his word (Hebrews 1:3). Breathe in, breathe out, and feel his speech expand your lungs. He hems you in, behind and before — seeing you, searching you, knowing you (Psalm 139:5).

God is for you. In Christ, this God is for you today — with all of his infinite heart and soul (Jeremiah 32:41). Look out at the sunrise, and feel his new mercies (Lamentations 3:22–23). Look behind you, and see his goodness on your heels (Psalm 23:6). Open his book, and hear him rehearse the story of his love (Romans 5:8). Open your mouth, and pour your heart into his hands (Psalm 62:8).

Then, go out into your day, and know that he is with you — inside of you (John 14:17). He will help you. He will strengthen you. He will uphold you with his righteous right hand (Isaiah 41:10). And he will weave whatever happens today, no matter how humdrum or heartbreaking, into a tapestry of goodness and mercy and love (Romans 8:28).

Look Around

Now, look around at the world today.

The heavens sing of his beauty. Why did the sun come up again this morning? Not out of clockwork necessity, but because “God,” as Chesterton puts it, “says every morning, ‘Do it again’” (Orthodoxy, 29). And of course, the sun doesn’t mind: How could he stop telling us of God’s glory (Psalm 19:1)? When the sun steps over the horizon like a bridegroom coming for his bride, can you hear him shout for joy (Psalm 65:8)?

The earth is full of his love. The sun is just one member of creation’s choir — the bass, perhaps. Look down from the sky, and see God’s steadfast love spilling from every corner (Psalm 33:5). Yes, creation groans for the day when it will finally shed this cocoon of corruption and walk in the glorious freedom of God’s children (Romans 8:19–21), but creation is also shouting, chanting, dancing, singing to the tune of the triune love song (Psalm 104:24).

Can you hear every gift whisper God’s goodness (James 1:17)? Can you feel his kindness in an autumn breeze? Can you hear his might in the midnight thunder? Can you feel his warmth in your wool sweater? Can you taste his sweetness in an apple cobbler?

Tonight, when God draws the darkness over our continent like a comforter, look up at the stars. They come out because he calls them — by name (Isaiah 40:26). All one hundred billion of them. While we set our alarm clocks, brush our teeth, and kneel beside our beds, his voice will rush through galaxies we haven’t discovered yet, bringing out their host like a hunter calling his dogs.

This is our Father’s world. Don’t walk through the world asleep today, like a tourist who misses the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel because he’s staring at his phone. Lift up your eyes. Stop on the sidewalk. Roll down the window. Sit on the ground. And hear creation’s song.

Look Ahead

Finally, look ahead to your life today.

You are a soldier in the King’s army. On this ordinary, typical, predictable day, you walk through a war zone. Can you feel the battle for your soul today, as you face temptations toward anger, or lust, or envy, or worry (Romans 6:12–13)? Can you see the kingdoms clashing? Can you hear the serpent hissing? Can you feel his fiery arrows flying through the air (Ephesians 6:16)? And can you hear your Captain say, “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20)?

You have people to love. Look again at the people you’re with today, especially the troublesome ones. Who is that man who just cut you off in traffic? Who is this cashier looking distracted? Who are these roommates who irritate you?

They are image bearers of the living God (Genesis 1:27), crowned with glory and honor (Psalm 8:5), but marred by our common curse (Romans 3:23) and rushing toward eternity either with Jesus or without him. As C.S. Lewis reminds us, “It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors” (The Weight of Glory, 46). How will we treat these people today? As obstacles to our comfort? As mere annoyances? Or as people to listen to, serve, and forgive (Colossians 3:12–13)?

You have good works to walk in. Many of the good works in front of you today will not feel magnificent. But they are your birthright in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:10), and not one will go unnoticed or unrewarded — from the biggest sacrifice of your comfort to the smallest deed done in faith (Ephesians 6:8).

So call a depressed friend, and remind her of God’s character. Meet up with your dad, and look for ways to share Jesus with him — again. Go to work in dependence on God, and then fill out the spreadsheet, peel the potatoes, schedule the appointments, change the diapers, or write the lesson plan. And know that, in it all, the God of the universe sees and smiles (Matthew 6:4).

Come Awake

As you consider your life, maybe it feels mundane. Maybe it feels like you’re walking through a forest of boredom, monotony, or stress. To be sure, we will not be able to escape all of life’s tedium. We will walk through some days so bent over by this world’s futility that we can barely lift our eyes up to God, around to the world, or ahead to our life.

But can you believe, as you walk through this forest of routine, that God is able to lead you out into clearings where the sun is shining, the air is tingling, and life is pulsing with wonder? He can. So look up to God today. Look around to his world today. Look ahead to your life today. And ask God to awaken you.

Scott Hubbard is a graduate of Bethlehem College & Seminary and an editor for desiringGod.org. He and his wife, Bethany, live in Minneapolis.

What Captures Your Heart?

by Jay Younts, Shepherd’s Press

What is it that captures your heart? What matters more than anything else? Whether you are conscious of it or not, these questions drive both you and your children. Jesus graciously leads us into this discussion in Matthew 13:44:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

This man found a treasure. He quickly buried it again hoping no one noticed. Filled with joy, he went off and sold everything so that he could buy the field and possess the treasure. He did not sell all out of a sense of obligation. Can you imagine finding the treasure and saying, 

Wouldn’t you know that I would have to find the treasure in the field? I hate it when this happens to me! Now I will have to sell all my stuff so I can buy that stupid field and possess that treasure.

This man wasn’t driven by obligation. He sold his belongings out of a sense of profound joy. The treasure captured his heart! This is what the kingdom of heaven is like. Until your children have understood that nothing in all the earth matters but knowing and loving Jesus, they will never know him and love him and serve him. Delight in God cannot occur in a vacuum.

 What do your children believe about what captures your heart?  Do they believe that following after God and his treasure is your obligation or your greatest joy?  You see, the man who found the treasure knew that there was nothing on earth more important than possessing the priceless treasure. He knew that his earthly stuff was not was his life was about. 

Jesus told his followers that pursuing the righteousness of his kingdom, the treasure in the field, would lead to having everything that is important in life. The passionate pursuit of God’s treasure keeps worry from dominating your life. 

You want good things for your children. The best gift that you can give them is a heart that is captured by the pursuit of the treasure in God’s kingdom. Your children know what your heart values. They are able to look beyond the words of your mouth. They know what captures your heart.

Posted at: https://www.shepherdpress.com/what-captures-your-heart/?fbclid=IwAR1srSJp5VSbe35tfpnGRRyak0UppAUzc1e6a1PlJU-cbnT573WcQ39JdGo

4 Popular Lies About Singleness

by Elizabeth Woodsen

Many unmarried people in the church struggle to accept the label “single,” since churches can treat singles as second-class citizens. This treatment rests on wrong teaching about singleness. Simply put, the church can idolize marriage and make it the ultimate goal for maturity in Christ, relegating singles—no matter how old—to perpetual immaturity until they find someone to marry.

Confusing marriage with maturity has always been wrong, but it was easy when marriage was a cultural norm for the American church. At the turn of the century a large majority of the general population was married; in the 1970s the marriage rate had dropped to 70 percent; and by 2014 it had dropped to 50 percent. The inescapable reality is that countless congregations include singles of all ages. The church needs to learn how to love singles better—and the first step is repairing broken theology.

While this list isn’t exhaustive, here are four major lies that contribute to an unbalanced theology of singleness. By correcting these misguided interpretations of Scripture, we’ll be better equipped to love and serve the unmarried people in our congregations.

Lie 1: Single = Alone

“Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’” (Gen. 2:18).

Outside the companionship of animals and God, Adam was functionally alone. By default, he was also single. God declared that being on mission alone is problematic, and so he gave Adam a wife to help him.

We tend to approach Genesis 2:18 as a prescriptive text, concluding that God’s solution for lack of companionship is marriage. Yet if this is true, what does it imply about being single? It would mean God doesn’t think singleness is good. But if that were true, why were some of the major characters in Scripture single, including John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul?

To understand this text we need to widen our lens. I believe Genesis 2:18 is a descriptive text from which we can extract the prescriptive truth that living outside of community isn’t good. God created us to live in the context of relationships, and those relationships look different for different people.

For some of us, community will take the form of a spouse and kids. For others, it will look like a good network of friends and extended family members. For all of us, it will mean belonging to a local church.

Lie 2: Your Value Is in a Role

“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (Prov. 31:10).

I’m particularly sensitive about the messages we send single women regarding their value and significance in God’s kingdom. One phrase I’ve heard consistently is that a woman’s greatest fulfillment comes from being a wife and a mother. And for many of us, Proverbs 31is the passage that springs to mind when we ponder what it means to be the epitome of a godly woman.

Yes, the Proverbs 31 woman is an example of spiritual maturity, but not simply because she was managing her home and providing for her family. It was because she embodied godly character.

Temporary life roles—like wife or mother—aren’t the ultimate markers of godliness. We should most strongly accent the godly character that will help a believer glorify God in any season of life. There is nothing special you need to be successful in marriage that you don’t need in singleness. No matter our marital status, we still need to confess and forgive, communicate well, and die to self every day. Let’s encourage singles to place their value not in what is temporary, but in what is ultimate: godliness.

Lie 3: Marriage Is Guaranteed

“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 37:4).

Context is crucial here. When we don’t read Scripture in context, we can make God responsible for promises he never made. David wrote Psalm 37 to remind God’s discouraged people that God would bring justice and bless their faithfulness. David wasn’t giving a blanket guarantee that whatever they desired God would grant, simply because the desire was good.

Sometimes people conscript this verse to teach about marriage, leaving many singles angry and bitter toward a God who never promised them marriage in the first place.

Not all godly people get married.

The truth is, not all godly people get married. We need to embrace this, preach this, and celebrate this! God’s best for many will include a life without a spouse and biological children. These people will know him more deeply, serve him more powerfully, and experience greater joy than they could as a married person. Not because singleness is better, but because marriage wasn’t part of God’s perfect will for their life.

No matter how deeply we desire it, Scripture never guarantees marriage. But it does teach us to “not be anxious for anything, but with prayer, supplication, and with thanksgiving make [our] requests known to God and the peace of God will guard [our] hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6–7).

Scripture also teaches that God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts higher than our thoughts (Isa. 55:9). We can ask God for whatever we desire—but he reserves the right to decide what’s best for us. And his “best” is never a consolation prize.

Lie 4: Marriage = Happiness

One common perception of marriage is that it’s near-perfect bliss. Social media, movies, TV shows, and books communicate that all our “single problems” will be solved when Prince Charming swoops in on his white horse and rescues us. In reality, marriage is two deeply broken people joining their deeply broken lives to become one.

Wherever we’ve believed one of these lies, our theology of singleness needs to be revised. We need to dethrone our idol of marriage and learn to define our identity the way God does. He views singleness and marriage as equally blessed gifts to be stewarded for his glory (1 Cor. 7:7). Do we share his vision?

Elizabeth Woodson is a passionate Bible teacher whose deepest desire is to know Christ and make him known! She currently has the joy to serve on staff at The Village Church writing curriculum, teaching, and developing leaders. Elizabeth is also a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary with a master’s in Christian education. You can find her at www.elizabethwoodson.org and follow her on Instagram and Twitter.

You Are Richer Than You Think - Using Technology as "Wealth"

Tim Challies

We tend to react to new technologies in one of two ways: Wide-eyed terror or breathless excitement. Some people look at that new gadget and see it as the enemy, the latest in a long line of innovations that really only undermine our humanity or captivate us with bells and whistles. These people are suspicious and usually longing for times that have long since gone by—times when technologies were just so much simpler. Other people look at the new gizmo and see it bursting with the possibility of happiness or enrichment or social advancement. These people are exuberant and always longing for the better and happier times ahead—times when technologies will be just so much more advanced. Neither one is thinking quite right.

If technology is wealth, we are the richest generation that has ever lived.

Last year I spoke at a conference with Matt Perman and he helpfully summarized a key concept when it comes to technology: Technology is wealth. Technology is a form of wealth and, like every other form of wealth, one that Christians are responsible to steward. If technology is wealth, we are the richest generation that has ever lived. You are richer than you think.

As Christians we are in the business of doing good to others. Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). That is our calling and our privilege as believers: To bring glory to God by doing good to others, and to bring more glory to God by doing more good to others. In Christ we have been freed from sin so we can now do good works—not the works that earn us salvation, but the works that display our salvation. Little wonder, then, that in his letter to Titus Paul can command us to be good works zealots, to be utterly consumed with doing good deeds.

Opportunities to do good come at a million different moments and in a million different forms, but the theme is always the same: looking and living outside ourselves to do what benefits others. We give of our skills, our talents, our money, our energy, our possessions, and even that most precious of commodities, our time. We faithfully steward all of these things, attempting to use them in a way that glorifies God.

And that brings us back to technology. If technology is wealth, we are responsible for faithfully stewarding it by using it to do good to others. Technology offers countless opportunities to do this. This was true of past technologies: the technology of the Roman road allowed missionaries to move quickly, spreading the gospel across the entire known world; the technology of the book allowed even the most common person access to God’s Word; the technology of radio broadcast the good news about Jesus to the world’s most distant regions. However and wherever new technologies have arisen, Christians have used them to do good to others and bring glory to God. Not only that, but Christians have felt responsible to use them to do good to others and bring glory to God.

Not one of these technologies was perfect. Each one of them changed us in some unfortunate and unforeseen ways. Still, Christians used them and used them well. And today we are responsible to use our abundance of technologies well. This does not necessarily mean that we need to fully and unthinkingly embrace whatever is new and innovative and shiny. It does not mean that every form of technology is good and worthy of our time and attention. However, it does mean that we at least need to evaluate whatever is new and innovative and shiny. We need to evaluate with our eyes wide open, looking for the inevitable strengths and equally inevitable risks that come with that technology. And we need to consider how we can best use this newfound technological wealth. These technologies are ones we can and must use to do good for others and bring glory to God.

So take a look at the abundance of technology in your church, in your home, and in your pocket. Consider just how wealthy you are. And then ask the question: How will I use this extravagant wealth to do good to others and glorify God?

Posted at: https://www.challies.com/articles/you-are-richer-than-you-think/