The World Is Against You: Fighting To Keep Our First Love

Article by Tony Reinke

September 20, 2017

Desiring God

Sooner or later the hard truth settles in that this world is out to kill you. Brown rivers swell up in Houston and Bangladesh to wash away everything you own, even wash you away if you don’t watch your step. Even on a calm, pristine beach day, the ocean’s sub-currents are silently trying to grab hold of you, and pull you out to sea, under the surface of the water before you even know what happened.

Forget sharks. The gentle tug of submerged water is our true ocean enemy. Look away for a moment and water attempts to assassinate — one reason why no one objects to bestowing upon the red-clad guardians the exalted title of “Life Guards” at the neighborhood pool.

But dried off and standing on solid ground, we fare little better because the air silently carries around invisible particles to slip in to our lungs and cultivate a little patch of cancer that can kill us from the inside. Or the burning rays of the sun might do the same from the outside.

And then of course there are the much less subtle forms of dangers. About one hundred times a second, bolt-action lightning snipers with an ungratified desire to spite mighty trees and tall steeples, and who occasionally take aim at arrogant creatures who dare to walk about on two legs. Under us, at any moment of the day or night, the ground can rumble and split and we can fall into an earthquake crack in the earth. Whole houses can get sucked down into a sinkhole without warning, or the gigantic white swirl of a hurricane or the wobbly freight train of a tornado can chase us off in a high-speed escape.

The world seizes one ankle and we pull it away and escape. For now. The world — as full as it is of wonder, and it is full of incredible wonders — surrounds us on all sides with deadly dangers.

Death of Love

Likewise, “this evil age” is perpetually trying to kill our loves — not through blunt force, but through coercion by seduction. The world tempts us daily to leave greater loves for lesser lusts.

“The moment we care for anything deeply, the world — that is, all the other miscellaneous interests — becomes our enemy,” wrote G. K. Chesterton. “The moment you love anything the world becomes your foe” (Works 1:59–60).

To love something genuinely is to immediately face all the second loves that are making an attempt at killing your first love. It is the wink of the adulteress to the married man. It is the invitation from a clique to abandon a true friendship. It is the ignoring of the familiar gifts around you, in search of the next thing to charge on your credit card. Worldliness kills because it exchanges loves. The world becomes your foe.

To Love Is to Fight

This is why true love must fight. “In every romance there must be the twin elements of loving and fighting,” writes Chesterton. “In every romance there must be the three characters: there must be the Princess, who is a thing to be loved; there must be the Dragon, who is a thing to be fought; and there must be St. George, who is a thing that both loves and fights.” The same is true of all our loves. In fact, “To love a thing without wishing to fight for it is not love at all; it is lust” (Works 15:255).

A man who has stopped fighting for his marriage will not fight against the lure of adulterous flirting, because he is driven by the passivity of lust, not the earnestness of love. Which means that true love must be fought for.

Misdirected Love

Theologically speaking, this is why to love the world is to lose the love of God. It’s a horrible trade, but we do it all the time.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life — is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17)

Misdirected love is the root cause of worldliness. Worldliness sucks the sap from our greatest love until it becomes a dried-up branch.

So we can love and treasure the day Christ will return. Or we can love the world. But we cannot go on trying to love the world and love the day of Christ’s return (2 Timothy 4:8–10). In the same way, we cannot love darkness and love the light (John 3:16–21). Love for the light will die once the heart falls in love with the darkness. And this is how the world proves to be our love-killer.

Heart of Worldliness

When we talk about worldliness, primarily we are not talking about the substitutes of adultery and materialism and money. We are not simply warning against television shows too graphic and media too lewd and skirts too short. All of those things are secondary matters. Curing the true heart of worldliness is not in the forbidding or what is forbidden; mending the true heart of worldliness must always begin with finding a core love worth fighting for — a love so precious that we will guard it with the proper holy jealousy it deserves.

The problem of worldliness only emerges with any real clarity in our lives once we have discovered our “first love,” a fundamental love, a central love for our Savior Jesus Christ (Revelation 2:4).

If talk of worldliness falls into hard times and does not surface much in our thoughts and conversations, it is not a sign that the dangers have disappeared. It is a sign that we have grown careless with the exclusivity of delight in Christ at the center of the Christian life. And once the jealous love is gone, the danger of worldliness grows more deadly and more invisible at the same time.

Tony Reinke (@tonyreinke) is senior writer for Desiring God and author of 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (2017), John Newton on the Christian Life (2015), and Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books (2011). He hosts the Ask Pastor John podcast and lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and three children.

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This post was shared from the Desiring God website. Original publication at http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-world-is-against-you

It Is Impossible To Read The Bible

Article by John Piper at Desiring God

July 16, 2017

Originally posted at: http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/it-is-impossible-to-read-the-bible

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO READ THE BIBLE

Reading the Bible should always be a supernatural act.

By “supernatural act,” I don’t mean that humans are supernatural. We are not God, and we are not angels or demons. What I mean is that the act of reading, in order to be done as God intended, must be done in dependence on God’s supernatural help.

The Bible gives two decisive reasons: Satan and sin. That is, we have a blinding enemy outside and a blinding disease inside. Together these two forces make it impossible for human beings to read the Bible, as God intended, without supernatural help.

It seems to me that thousands of people approach the Bible with little sense of their own helplessness in reading the way God wants them to. This proverb applies as much to Bible reading as to anything else: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6). At every turn of the page, rely on God. That is a supernatural transaction.

If more people approached the Bible with a deep sense of helplessness, and hope-filled reliance on God’s merciful assistance, there would be a far more seeing and savoring and transformation than there is.

Blinding Enemy Outside

Satan is real. His main identity is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). His way of lying is more by deception that bold-face falsehoods. He “is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Revelation 12:9).

Jesus described how Satan takes away the word: “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart” (Matthew 13:19). How does that happen? It might be by sheer forgetfulness. Or Satan may draw a person from Bible reading to an entertaining video, with the result that any thought of Christ’s worth and beauty is quickly lost in the ash of fire and skin.

Or Satan may simply blind the mind to the worth and beauty of Christ, which the Scriptures reveal. This is what Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 4:3–4:

Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

“The god of this world” is Satan. He is called “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30), and John says that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). It is this enormous blinding power that puts us in need of a supernatural deliverer. The thought that we could overcome this satanic force on our own is naïve.

No Divine Power, No Open Eyes

When the risen Christ sent Paul “to open the eyes [of the Gentiles], so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18), he did not mean that Paul could do this in human strength. Paul made that clear: “My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:3–4). That is what it takes to overcome the blinding effects of Satan.

Let it not be missed that the specific focus of Satan’s blinding work is the gospel. That is, his focus is on our reading — or hearing — the heart of the message of the Christian Scriptures. Satan “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” Satan would be happy for people to believe ten thousand true facts, as long as they are blind to “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.”

Let them make A’s on a hundred Bible-fact quizzes as long as they can’t see the glory of Christ in the gospel—that is, as long as they can’t read (or listen) with the ability to see what is really there.

Satan Loves Some Bible Reading

So, Jesus (Matthew 13:19), Paul (2 Corinthians 4:3–4), and John (1 John 5:19) warn that Satan is a great enemy of Bible reading that sees what is really there. Bible reading that only collects facts, or relieves a guilty conscience, or gathers doctrinal arguments, or titillates esthetic literary tastes, or feeds historical curiosities — this kind of Bible reading Satan is perfectly happy to leave alone. He has already won the battle.

But reading that hopes to see the supreme worth and beauty of God — reading that aims to be satisfied with all that God is for us in Christ, reading that seeks to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8) — this reading Satan will oppose with all his might. And his might is supernatural. Therefore, any reading that hopes to overcome his blinding power will be a supernatural reading.

Complicit in Deception

When we speak of the power of Satan over the human heart, we are not saying that all spiritual blindness is the sole work of Satan. We are not implying that Satan can take innocent people and make them slaves of deceit. There are no innocent people. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We are complicit in all our deception.

There is a terrible interweaving of satanic influence and human sinfulness in all our blindness to divine glory. No one will ever be able to scapegoat at the judgment, claiming, “Satan made me do it.” Our own sinfulness is another source of our spiritual blindness that puts us in need of supernatural help, if we hope to see the glory of God in Scripture.

Mind of the Flesh

Paul tells us in Romans 8:7–8: “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

These are very strong words: “It does not submit to God’s law [God’s instruction, God’s word]; indeed it cannot.” This is our rebellion prior to, and underneath, all satanic blinding. Before Satan adds his blinding effects, we are already in rebellion against God. And, Paul says, this rebellion makes it impossible (“cannot”) for us to submit to the word of God.

This inability is not the inability of a person who prefers God but is not allowed to cherish him. No. This is the inability of a person who does notprefer God and therefore cannot cherish him. It is not an inability that keeps you from doing what you want. It is an inability to want what you don’t want. You can’t see as beautiful what you see as ugly. You can’t embrace the glory of God as most valuable when you feel yourself to be more valuable.

Ignorance Is Not Our Deepest Problem

One of the implications of this pervasive human condition is that ignorance is not our deepest problem. There is a hardness of rebellion against God that is deeper than ignorance. That is why every natural attempt at enlightenment is resisted. This hardness of rebellion cannot submit to God’s revelation.

Paul issues an urgent call to all Christians at Ephesus to decisively turn away from this condition, which, he says, is typical of their Gentile roots:

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorancethat is in them, due to their hardness of heart. (Ephesians 4:17–18)

Notice the relationship between “ignorance” and “hardness of heart” as Paul describes it: “ignorance due to their hardness of heart.” Hardness is more basic. Hardness is the cause. This is our deepest problem. Not ignorance.

This is the condition of all mankind, apart from the saving work of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9–10). And it makes reading the Bible impossible — if our aim is to read the way God wants us to read. We cannot prefer the light when we love the dark. “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light” (John 3:19). Our problem is not that there is insufficient light shining from the Scriptures. Our problem is that we love the darkness.

God’s Word Radiates His Wisdom

The Scriptures are radiant with divine wisdom. This wisdom shines with the glory of God — and shows us the glory to come, which is the way Paul describes his own inspired teaching:

We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. . . . We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. (1 Corinthians 2:6–7, 12–13)

The problem is that apart from the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, we are not “spiritual,” but “natural.” Reading the inspired Scriptures must be a supernatural act if we are to “accept the things of the Spirit of God,” and if we are to “understand what is spiritually discerned.” Without God’s supernatural aid, we are merely natural and cannot see the glory of God in the Bible for what it really is — supremely beautiful and all-satisfying.

What's the Difference Between 'Foolish' and 'Sinful'?

Ask Pastor John Podcast with John Piper

Desiring God

May 12, 2017

Originally posted at http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-s-the-difference-between-foolish-and-sinful

Why God's Will Isn't Always Clear

Written by Jon Bloom - originally published at http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/why-god-s-will-isn-t-always-clear

April 30, 2017

If God wants us to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him” (Colossians 1:10), why doesn’t he give us more specific guidance in our decisions?

The Spontaneous 95%

Consider all of the decisions you make during a typical day. Most are quick and spur-of-the-moment. John Piper estimates “that a good 95% of [our] behavior [we] do not premeditate. That is, most of [our] thoughts, attitudes, and actions are spontaneous.” That’s true. And it’s a bit unnerving when you think about it. The majority of the decisions that end up becoming the bricks in the building of our lives are just “spillover from what’s inside.”

Even if we do stop and pray about such decisions, it is very rare that we discern God’s specific leading regarding what we should wear, what or where we should eat, if we should respond to this instance of our child’s sin with correction or forbearance, if we should put off that time-consuming errand till tomorrow, or whether we should check our email again.

The Massive 5%

But what about the other 5% of our decisions?

Some of these are massive and life-shaping. Should I marry this person? How much money should I give away and where? How much should we save for retirement? Should we adopt a child? Should I pursue a different vocation? Should we homeschool or not? Should I pursue chemo or an alternative cancer treatment? Should we buy this home? Which college should I attend? Is it time to put my elderly parent in a nursing home? Should I go to the mission field?

Shouldn’t we expect God to direct us more explicitly in these?

A Concealing Design

The answer is no, not necessarily. Why? Well, the short answer is because he is God, and we are not. “It is the glory of God to conceal things” (Proverbs 25:2). His wisdom and knowledge are unfathomably deep, his judgments are unsearchable, and his ways are inscrutable (Romans 11:33). Considering all the factors in play in the universe, it is likely no exaggeration that there are trillions of reasons for why God directs the course of our lives, and he prefers to carry out his purposes in ways that confound, surprise, and humble humans, angels, and demons.

There is a tremendous glory that God displays when, without tipping his hand to us in advance, we suddenly recognize that he was working his will all along when we couldn’t see it. And he is also merciful to withhold information from us that he knows we aren’t ready to know, even if we think we really want to.

A Revealing Design

But one reason why God usually doesn’t give us specific guidance in our sometimes perplexing decisions is that he places a higher priority on our being transformed than our being informed in order that we will be conformed to the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29). That’s why Paul writes,

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

“God doesn’t always make his will clear because he values our being transformed more than our being informed.”

What does this mean? It means that God has a design in the difficulty of our discerning. The motives and affections of our hearts, or “renewed minds,” are more clearly revealed in the testing of ambiguous decision-making.

In Scripture, God reveals to us everything we need to know to live godly lives (2 Peter 1:3) and to “be complete [and] equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). But the Father is not seeking workers, but worshipers (John 4:23). And he knows that if he made his will for our specific decisions more explicit more often, we would tend to focus more on what we do rather than what we love. Like the Pharisees, we would tend to focus more on our actions, rather than our affections.

But in decisions that require discernment, the wheat is distinguished from the tares. When we’re not quite sure, we end up making decisions based on what we really love. If deep down we love the world, this will become apparent in the pattern of decisions that we make over time — we will conform to this world.

But if we really love Jesus, we will increasingly love what he loves — we will be transformed by renewed minds. And our love for him and his kingdom will be revealed in the pattern of small and large decisions that we make.

The Pattern of Our Decisions

I say “pattern of decisions” because all of us sin and make mistakes. But conformity to the world or to Jesus is most clearly seen in the pattern of decisions we make over time.

“Conformity to the world or to Jesus is most clearly seen in the pattern of decisions we make over time.”

That’s one reason why God makes us wrestle with uncertainty. He wants us to mature and have our “powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14).

The wonderful thing to remember in all of our decisions is that Jesus is our Good Shepherd. He laid down his life for us so that all of our sins are covered — including every sinful or defective decision. He will never leave us or forsake us. He has a staff long enough to pull us out of every hole and a rod to guide us back when we stray.

And someday, if we truly seek to love him and trust him, we will see that he really was leading us through the confusing terrain of difficult decisions all along.

Jon Bloom (@Bloom_Jon) serves as author, board chair, and co-founder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight, Things Not Seen, and Don’t Follow Your Heart. He and his wife live in the Twin Cities with their five children.

MAKE GOD LOOK GREAT. CREATE.

Article by Stephen Altrogge, Desiring God

Creativity.

You’ve either got it, or you don’t, right? You’re right-brained or left-brained, into art or into computer science, a painter or a mathematician. Creative folks do creative things, like paint, write, and walk barefoot through the woods. Non-creative folks do non-creative things, like make spreadsheets and money.

Wrong.

Everyone is creative. Creativity is hardwired into our DNA by God himself. All of us were made to be creative people. Creative juices run hot through our veins. All of have an irresistible, divinely-inspired impulse to create, organize, and fashion.

We see this clearly in Genesis 1:27, which says:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

God, the greatest of all creators, the One who fashioned the Sun, and the humpback whale, and the Great Dane, made us in his image. The Divine image has been stamped upon us. We alone are made in the image of God. God has given us the glorious task of representing him on the earth. Of showing the world what our God is really like. Of showing the watching world that our God is a creative master who loves to bring beauty out of chaos.

When an accountant takes piles of raw data and fashions the data into a meaningful sales report, he is reflecting the image of God. When a woman works the raw soil and causes it to bring forth flowers and vegetables and herbs, she is reflecting the image of God. When an electrician corrals the wild, dangerous electrical currents into light bulbs, he is reflecting the image of God. When a writer assembles letters into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into books, she is reflecting the image of God.

Every man, woman, and child is creative. When we create, it pleases God, because He sees us reflecting his image. He sees us “imaging” him to the rest of the world. God loves to see his image shine throughout the world.

But creativity is hard work. It takes work to create a poem or garden or car engine or piece of furniture. It requires killing our laziness and working faithfully over extended periods of time. It requires a willingness to receive criticism with humility. It requires sweat and elbow grease. It requires diligence and faithfulness. It’s easier to not make anything at all. To be a consumer. To suffocate the creative gifts that God has given us.

John Piper writes,

If you are God, your work is to create out of nothing. If you are not God, but like God — that is, if you are human — your work is to take what God has made and shape it and use it to make him look great. (Don't Waste Your Life, 139)

That’s why I wrote the ebook Create: Stop Making Excuses and Start Making Stuff. It’s meant to be a divine kick in the pants, of sorts. It’s meant to inspire you and motivate you to use your creative gifts for the glory of God. To help you stop making excuses and start using your gifts.

You have creative gifts. You are a gifted musician or mechanic or teacher or dancer or woodworker or organizer or landscaper or quilter or preacher, and God wants you to use your gifts for his glory. He doesn’t want you to waste them or hoard them. He wants you to use them to benefit those around you and to bring him honor. He wants you to steward your gifts, not waste them.

Your church needs your creative gifts. Your family needs your creative gifts. Your friends need your creative gifts. You have gifts that no one else has. We need your gifts.

So stop making excuses and start making stuff for the glory of God!

Original article posted at Desiring God website - click here

BOASTING ONLY IN THE CROSS: THE INFAMOUS 'SEA SHELLS' SERMON

Sermon by Pastor John Piper - Passion's OneDay 2000 Conference

May 20, 2000

Scripture: Galatians 6:14