Cling to the Rock

I once heard it said the Christian life is more like a rock climb than a walk down a path. Following in the footsteps of Christ is not so easy as walking down a path, however narrow it may be. Believers must cling to Truth, the Living Word of God, as they would the face of a mountain. Failure to do so results in falling away.

The Bible is replete in conveying our need for its pervasion of our lives. Moses declared to the Israelites:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Like any good simile of the Christian subculture, the rock climb connection convicted and inspired me. At the time, I didn’t realize how poignant it would become. I didn’t know I would be forced to move beyond conviction and inspiration, where the rubber meets the road in action.

We woman are emotional creatures. Wired that way, I’m told. Most of my life, I’ve been (I hate to jump into the mosh pit of post-modernist jargon, but…) relatively unemotional. Maybe it’s a product of growing up with only brothers; but times have changed, I guess. A few weeks ago, I found myself in an emotional blizzard. At least that’s what it felt like for a girl who normally cried once every few months to have uncontrollable crying episodes multiple times a day. Scary. Week-and-a-half scary.

The transition of moving, losing close-knit community, and changing plans isn’t easy, but it’s not that bad. My circumstances were only moderately more difficult. So the blizzard really made no sense. But it felt very real to me. Overwhelmingly real. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I prayed, read my Bible, called family and friends to pray, confessed sin, asked God to reveal hidden sin, sought community –all the things I knew to do weren’t changing the lack of comfort I felt. After all, didn’t God promise “I am He who comforts you” (Isaiah 51:12)? Why wasn’t I feeling comforted?

The rock-climbing analogy kept coming back to me. I didn’t understand the emotional craziness, but I kept hearing the lifeline cling to the Rock, cling to the Rock. When the blizzards would hit, I eventually came to the point where the only way I made it through without becoming completely hysterical was making myself recite a verse –any verse. It wasn’t like flipping a switch or performing a magic trick. I didn’t automatically feel better as soon as I thought of a verse. But it did keep me from falling. I realized I was on the mountain face. The grade was slightly steeper, but the real problem was the blizzards that would blindside me from nowhere. Now, clinging to the Rock didn’t make the blizzard go away, but it was the only way to survive. I had no other refuge. And, really, if I were in a blizzard, I would much rather be holding onto a mountain than wandering aimlessly.

I hope you’ve noticed the dangerous f-words which have infused my writing thus far. Feel. Felt. Feeling. Emotion is tantamount to intense feeling. We women are feelers. [Side note: If one more man tells me feelings are a good thing, it’s likely I’ll punch him in the mouth. I know it’s true; and I’ll even admit that it’s right for him to remind me of that truth. But he should beware the potential physical manifestations of my feelings at the intense point in which they are felt.] God created feelings. They must be good. But they can easily become the faulty foundation by which we live the day-to-day. This is fine, when feelings are supported by the truths of the Word of God. A Puritan articulated this in the beautiful prayer “The Divine Will” from The Valley of Vision: “Help me to honour thee by believing before I feel, for great is the sin if I make feeling a cause of faith.” Feelings, while good, must be constantly compared to Scripture. The Word of God is immutable, feelings are not. This is certainly a mental discipline. It’s much easier to roll with a feeling than consider its biblical validity and stop the thought at its onset. Rolling eventually turns to a spiral of despair. You will not find comfort apart from the Word, Immanuel. I realized, with the help of my brother, my definition of comfort was all about good feelings. The Always-Good-Feelings clause is not part of Christ's Covenant. In fact, He promises we will suffer persecution in following Him. (2 Timothy 3:12) But we can look to that with joy! For the Rock, the beautiful, majestic, steadfast Rock, is our Comfort! The promise of the Living Word, the hope of glory is our Comfort. And that's not a feeling -it's a fact.

So cling to the Living Word, brothers and sisters. Don't give your fellow believers the false hope of good feelings. This life is a difficult, uphill climb. The Rock is your only hope. The only Hope.

The Unbelieving Poet Catches a Glimpse of Truth

A Taste and See Article by John Piper
March 5, 2008

Since all humans are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and the work of God’s law is written on every heart (Romans 2:15), and the heavens are telling the glory of God to everyone who can see (Psalm 19:1), and God has put eternity in man’s heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and by God’s providence every person is set to grope for God (Acts 17:27), and in God we all live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28), it is not surprising that even people without eyes to see the glory of Christ nevertheless have glimpses into the way the world really is, and then don’t know what to do with them.

Stephen Dunn is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and not a Christian. “I think of God as a metaphor. God is a metaphor for the origins and mysteries of the world. . . . I think of beliefs as provisional. They’re not things that constitute anything fixed.” In an interview recently for Books and Culture (March/April, 2008, pp. 26-27), Aaron Rench asked him about his book The Insistence of Beauty.

In regards to your book The Insistence of Beauty, what is this notion that beauty has a demanding, compelling quality to it? Why is beauty that way?

Dunn answers:

I just think beauty is irresistible. It disarms us. Takes away our arguments. And then if you expand the notion of beauty—that there is beauty in the tawdry, beauty in ugliness—things get complicated. But I think that beauty, which is more related in my mind to the sublime, is what we cannot resist.

Yes, and this is how we all were converted to Christ. The eyes of our hearts were enlightened to see the beauty of Christ, and in that moment he became irresistible. This is the way divine, spiritual beauty works. It authenticates itself. It "takes away our arguments.” Or better: It replaces all our false arguments with one grand, true argument that cannot be resisted.

This is the point of 2 Corinthians 4:4-6.

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 “glory of Christ” is the beauty of Christ. It is the radiance of the fullness of his person—the impact of all his perfections. The reason people do not believe on Christ is that they do not see what is really there. That is what it means to be “blind.” Beauty is really there to be seen, but we are blind to it.

If we see it, we believe. “Beauty is irresistible.” If you resist, you have not seen Christ as beautiful as he is (1 John 3:6b). So the way we are converted to Christ is by having this blindness taken away. Verse 6 says, “God has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” God replaces blindness with light. The light is specifically “the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

That is all it takes. There is no coercion after that revelation. The light compels. We don’t behold it and then ponder whether to believe. If we are still pondering, we have not yet seen.

Poet Stephen Dunn, groping toward God, says that beauty “is related to the sublime.” It is “what we cannot resist.” Yes, the sublime is summed up in Jesus Christ. And it is his glory that is supremely irresistible.

Let this be your life: Ponder him; be pervaded with him; point to him. The more you know of him, and the more you admire the fullness of his beauty, the more you will reflect him. O that there would be thousands of irresistible reflections of the beauty of Jesus. May it be said of such reflections, “It disarms us. It takes away our arguments.”

Pastor John

Nothing But a Promise

Then the high priest said, “Are these things so?” And [Stephen] said, “Brethren and fathers, listen: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said to him, ‘Get out of your country and from your relatives, and come to a land that I will show you.’ Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. And from there, when his father was dead, He moved him to this land in which you now dwell. And God gave him no inheritance in it, not even enough to set his foot on. But even when Abraham had no child, He promised to give it to him for a possession, and to his descendants after him.

Acts 7:1-5

Nothing but a promise. Those were the words that went through my head as I read these verses yesterday morning –especially verse 5. God called Abraham to leave everything and follow him. Abraham obeyed. Even then, God didn’t give an inheritance. No land. No possessions. “Not even enough to set his foot on.” Nothing. But God did give a promise. A promise that Abraham’s descendants would receive the blessing.

I’ve always loved the faith of Abraham. But this retelling of his story by Stephen really resonated with me at this point in my life. I feel like I’ve left my country and relatives to come to the land God showed me. But when I arrived, there was no inheritance. No fruition of my plans. No job. It feels like, for all I came for, I have nothing. Not even enough to set my foot on. No tangible “proof” to affirm my decision to come here. But I do have a promise. A promise that the Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, is working for my good. (Romans 8:28) A promise that He knows the plans He has for me, plans to give me a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11) A promise that He delights to give me the kingdom. (Luke 12:32) Actually, I have 100 promises. 200 promises. Enough promises to fill my cup and overflow.

The question I have to ask myself is if that is enough. The TRUTH is that it is more than enough. It was enough for Abraham. He didn’t even have a child when God made a promise to His descendants. How easy is it to believe a promise based on something that was nonexistent? Bottom line: Abraham gave up everything, had nothing, and God’s promise was all he needed.

No matter what I feel, I cannot escape that truth. I have much. My cup overflows with the goodness of the promises of God. And more than that, I have the Promise who came in the Flesh. I have Jesus. And I have the Promise indwelling. I have the Holy Spirit.

I’ve grown to love the old spiritual “Give Me Jesus.” Imagine the life of an American slave. They go to bed from a long day of sweat and toil in the stifling heat. Sometimes they’re beaten and bloody. Sometimes they’ve seen a family member sold. Never to be seen again. Yet those whose God is the Lord would fall asleep singing, “In the morning, when I rise, give me Jesus. You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.” In the morning, when I rise to return to the sweat and the toil, and the heat and the whip, and the pain and the loss, give me Jesus. He’s what I need. He’s all I need. That’s what they said. They believed it facing the trials of every day. They believed it facing the loneliness of separation. They believed it facing death. Nothing but a promise. But that’s all they needed.

Across the ages, from Genesis to now, many have followed the Lord when they had nothing but a promise. Consider for a moment that not one child of God has been abandoned. The faithfulness of God is great and immutable. We need not doubt it.

Dear brother or sister, you may have nothing. Not even enough to set your foot on. But you have a promise. A host of promises. Believe them. You have Jesus. He’s all you need.

Yahweh, Your Dwelling Place

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.

Psalm 90:1

A dwelling place, or shelter, is built to protect its inhabitants from the elements specific to the region in which it is placed. The basements and cellars of Kansas farms offer protection against the Kansas tornadoes. The architecture of structures found along the San Andreas fault provides additional defense against earthquakes. Floodplain dwellings are often built on stilts. The thick-walled pueblos offer a reprieve from the heat, while the dome-shaped igloos maintain warmth.

All of these earthly shelters are designed to offer a specific protection. But they are faulty. An F5 tornado can pick a house up and drop the whole of it back into the basement without any regard for the inhabitants therein. The floods rise high, knock the stilts from under a home, and carry it away in its powerful current. Earthquakes topple the most reinforced of buildings. The cold penetrates. The heat wearies.

But, child of God, rejoice knowing the almighty Yahweh is your dwelling place. He has promised it. And He is perfect. There is no storm or element or disaster that can impale His walls or shake His foundation. And just as our Lord has been a dwelling place to His children for generations and generations, He is a dwelling place to you. Uniquely to you. If you stand in the freeze of relational strife, Your God will give you warmth. If you walk the dessert of spiritual dryness, your Divine Dwelling Place will provide you water. He is your steadfastness in the earthquake, your refuge in the tornado. The rivers will not overwhelm you. The fire will not burn you.

In Yahweh, your dwelling place, you are as safe as you need to be. Do not doubt His desire for your good.

Falling in the Mire

A while back, I was talking to a friend about besetting sins. You know those struggles against which you are constantly striving? In our total depravity, we’re going to sin. Genesis says “every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.” There’s no getting around it. But my question is why couldn’t God give us an absolute victory over a sin. Why couldn’t we move to the next mud puddle? Why do we have to keep falling back into the same stagnant, smelly pool? I mean, wouldn’t it be great if we could just move on to another sin? Like the levels in Mario Brothers. Well, therein lies the answer.

How do you feel when you climb up the little Mario Mountain and jump on the flag at the end of Level 1? Proud, of course. You’ve accomplished something! So if Cristi were to overcome the sin of selfishness forever, she would only look at the triumph as something she’d done. Though she knows her salvation comes from Christ alone, she would forget the filth from which her Beloved rescued her. She would try to make the victory her own. The danger of any success is that it breeds independence.

So, brothers and sisters, that’s why we fall back into the same putrid mire. Because without the grace of Jesus we are abominable muck. Besetting sins remind us from where we come. They send us back to the foot of the Cross. Prostrate, face covered in grime, I know my need for dependence. How poignantly strong is the reminder of my depravity in my recurring failure! And how blissfully sweet the aroma of Christ’s amazing grace!

I waited patiently for the LORD;
And He inclined to me,
And heard my cry.
He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,
Out of the miry clay,
And set my feet upon a rock,
And established my steps.
He has put a new song in my mouth—
Praise to our God;
Many will see it and fear,
And will trust in the LORD.
Psalm 40:1-3


Author’s note: I know this isn’t an exhaustive reasoning behind besetting sins. Nor is the topic itself developed to its fullest potential. Another day, another note.