what I'm reading: what are we holding back?

Have you been holding back?

Are you prepared to accept a lower standard of living so you can serve Jesus? Do you trust God to provide - to give you "all good things" as he promised?* Are you ready for a risky, costly life?

Those are the questions JI Packer asks in this uncomfortable quote from Knowing God:

We know what kind of life Christ calls us to ... But do we live it? Well, look at the churches. Observe the shortage of ministers and missionaries, especially men; the luxury goods in Christian homes; the fund-raising problems of Christian societies; the readiness of Christians in all walks of life to grumble about their salaries; the lack of concern for the old and lonely ...

We are unlike the Christians of New Testament times. Our approach to life is conventional and static; theirs was not. ... By being exuberant, unconventional and uninhibited in living by the gospel they turned their world upside down, but you could not accuse us twentieth-century Christians of doing anything like that.

Why are we so different? Why, compared with them, do we appear as no more than halfway Christians? Whence comes the nervous, dithery, take-no-risks mood that mars so much of our discipleship? Why are we not free enough from fear and anxiety to allow ourselves to go full stretch in following Christ?

One reason, it seems, is that in our heart of hearts we are afraid of the consequences of going the whole way into the Christian life:

• We shrink from accepting burdens of responsibility for others because we fear we should not have strength to bear them.
• We shrink from accepting a way of life in which we forfeit material security because we are afraid of being left stranded.
• We shrink from being meek because we are afraid that if we do not stand up for ourselves we shall be trodden down and victimized, and end up among life's casualties and failures.
• We shrink from breaking with social conventions in order to serve Christ because we fear that if we did, the established structure of our life would collapse all around us, leaving us without a footing anywhere.

It is these half-conscious fears, this dread of insecurity, rather than any deliberate refusal to face the cost of following Christ, which makes us hold back. We feel that the risks of out-and-out discipleship are too great for us to take ... We are not persuaded of the adequacy of God to provide ...

Let us call a spade a spade. The name of the game we are playing is unbelief, and Paul's 'He will give us all things' stands as an everlasting rebuke to us. ...

One day we shall see that nothing – literally nothing – which could have increased our eternal happiness has been denied us, and that nothing – literally nothing – that could have reduced that happiness has been left with us. What higher assurance do we want than that?  ...

Have you been holding back from a risky, costly course to which you know in your heart God has called you? Hold back no longer. Your God is faithful ... You will never need more than he can supply, and what he supplies ... will always be enough.

* in Romans 8:32.


Quote is from Knowing God 303-309.

a favourite quote: CS Lewis on "My time is my own"

This quote from CS Lewis' The Screwtape Letters has been running round and round my head for some reason.

It's a great reminder that, if Jesus demands nothing more taxing of me than bearing with an irritating visitor, who am I to say no? Yet take away an expected hour of rest or day of relaxation, and I feel hard done by.

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him.

It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tete-а-tete with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption “My time is my own.” Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employer’s, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.

You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon his chattels. He is also, in theory, committed a total service of the Enemy; and if the Enemy appeared to him in bodily form and demanded that total service for even one day, he would not refuse. He would be greatly relieved if that one day involved nothing harder than listening to the conversation of a foolish woman; and he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hour in that day the Enemy said “Now you may go and amuse yourself.” Now if he thinks about his assumption for a moment, even he is bound to realise that he is actually in this situation every day.

CS Lewis The Screwtape Letters

image is by Ingorr from flickr

what I'm listening to: last night's sermon

Last night our pastor John spoke on Exodus 12. I was so struck by something he said that I opened my journal and wrote it down:

To be free from Jesus' rule is to be a slave to sin.
To be a slave to Jesus is to be free.

If you want the longer version - it's beautiful! - here it is (from John's notes):

We who follow Jesus owe him our very lives
he bought us out of the death we deserved at the cost of his life
so that we are owned by him, body and soul.

Freedom is being your own boss, we want to think,
running life your own way -
but wait a minute, that's what sin is -
and when we seek to be independent from God, we become a slave to sin.

True freedom only comes in Christ
by being a slave to him
by being owned by him
because that's what we were made for,
and living the life you were designed and made for is what freedom is -
just as the fish only has freedom in the water,
the tram only has freedom on the tracks,
so we are only truly free being owned by Jesus -

and being owned by Jesus means we no longer have the right to live as we please
but rather we live to please our owner and master.

Amen.

Tim Keller Praying your fears

Last week I told you about Tim Keller's talk Praying our Tears. Today I'd like to tell you about Praying our Fears, in which he continues his series on Psalms.

If fear is not just being scared of real danger, but also worry about things that may never happen, then I'm an expert. I've known months when there was a band of anxiety around my middle and a sensation of butterflies in my stomach. If you're an anxious person, you know what I mean.

Tim Keller talks about both kinds of fear - fear of an immediate threat, and persistent anxiety - in his talk Praying our Fears on Psalm 3. Here's what he taught me about fear.

There are 2 steps into fear.
1. Fear: a healthy response to danger, which drives us to fight or flight, and then is gone.
2. Anxiety: a lingering, generalised, undefined sense of fear which paralyses us.

If fear is a thunderstorm, anxiety is a constant, cold drizzle: the first produces green growth, the second mildew. Fear can be good for us - it gets us out of danger! - but anxiety makes us agitated, nervous and upset. Constant anxiety can permanently turn on our autonomic nervous system, which is only meant to respond to crises, and so lead to all kinds of health issues.

What causes this second, debilitating kind of fear is not a threat to life or safety, but a threat to our identity: when something that makes us feel in control is threatened or taken away. In Psalm 3 David faces both kinds of fear: the physical threat from Absalom's armies, and the threat to his identity as the beloved, honoured, upright king of his people.

But how do we escape from this second, debilitating kind of fear?

There are 4 steps out of fear.
1. Follow your thread.
David describes God as a "shield around me" (Ps 3:1): a full-body shield which curves around the body, meant not for hand-to-hand combat but for following your commander into situations of extreme danger. If you turn and run, the shield won't protect you. It's only useful when you're heading into danger. Obedience takes us not away from fear, but through and beyond our fear.

2. Relocate your glory.
David says, literally, "but you are my glory" (Ps 3:3). He says "but..." because something else has become his glory: he has built his emotional and psychological identity on something other than God. When we put our worth and security in something finite, out there in time and space, we are always vulnerable. So we need to relocate our glory: not in our talents or our role, or others' opinion of us, but in God's approval.

3. See the substitute.
But how do we know we have God's approval? David says that God hears him because of his "holy hill", the temple (Ps 3:4), the symbol of our Saviour Jesus. Our significance doesn't come from what we have achieved or what we have, but from Jesus, the one who was cut off from God so we don't have to be.

4. Remember the people.
The opposite of fear is not an absence of fear, but love (1 Jn 4:18 cf Ps 3:8). Fear is self-centred, love is other-centred. You can't deal with fear by yourself: you have to get your mind off yourself by serving others in love.

So here's the solution to fear:

• go forward in obedience, whatever the cost
• seek my identity in God, instead of the thing I'm scared to lose
• look to the cross, where my significance comes from
• forget myself in love for others.

It sounds about right to me!

imags are from stock.xchng and sentex64 at flickr

the princess follows her thread

Have you read George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin? It was one of my favourite books as a child - and a great one to read with your kids, not least for the hidden messages about trust and obedience.

In the following passage, the princess follows a magic thread that her "great-great-grandmother" has said will always lead to her and safety, but which takes the princess into the dark passages at the heart of a mountain.

But presently she came to a huge heap of stones, piled in a slope against the wall of the cavern. On these she climbed, and soon recovered the level of the thread only however to find, the next moment, that it vanished through the heap of stones, and left her standing on it, with her face to the solid rock. For one terrible moment she felt as if her grandmother had forsaken her. ... She threw herself upon the heap, and began to cry. ... At length the thought struck her that at least she could follow the thread backwards, and thus get out of the mountain, and home. She rose at once, and found the thread. But the instant she tried to feel it backwards, it vanished from her touch. Forwards, it led her hand up to the heap of stones - backwards it seemed nowhere. ... She burst into a wailing cry, and again threw herself down on the stones.

In his talk Praying our Fears Tim Keller uses the princess's story as an illustration of obedience in the face of fear. When the princess follows her grandmother's thread, it leads her into dark places and she's tempted to go back; but when she tries to go back, the thread disappears.

When God calls us to obey, there are only 2 possible responses: obedience, which is hard; and disobedience, which is impossible. Obedience may seem to take us into danger, but backwards lies disaster: and so we face our fear and go forward.

That was just to whet your appetite! Tomorrow I'd like to follow up on last week's post and share what I learned from Tim Keller's talk on fear.

a worksheet for changing your behaviour

A couple of months ago, I posted some questionnaires to help you identify the lies and idols of your heart. Since then, we've talked about how important it is to not just change our thinking, but also to change our behaviour - to put off the old self and put on the new (Eph 4:22-24).

Today I'd like to tell you about a worksheet, inspired (again!) by Elyse Fitzpatrick's Idols of the Heart, to help you take practical steps to change your attitudes and actions.

Choose a habitual sin that you struggle with, or a persistent negative emotion like anger, guilt, despondency or anxiety. Draw up four columns on a page. Write these headings and questions at the top of the columns:

Put off
What attitudes and actions does God want you to put off?
What areas of temptation can you cut out?


Renewed thoughts
What thoughts of God’s truth and the gospel would help you combat these attitudes and actions?

Put on
What attitudes and actions does God want you to put on?
What would support this change (e.g. memorising relevant Bible verses, being accountable to someone)?


Specific actions
What specific steps can you take to start practising these new attitudes and actions?
What specific steps can you take to support this change?


I hope you find this as helpful as I have!

adapted from the worksheet in Elyse Fitzpatrick's Idols of the Heart 176

image is by TheAlieness at flickr

CS Lewis on love, feelings and the will

On Monday I mentioned that it's not just our beliefs that change our behaviour, but also our behaviour that changes our beliefs.

Actually, it's not so much that our behaviour changes our beliefs (change is from the heart) but that our behaviour strengthens our beliefs when it comes from a changed heart.

If a small, weak, faltering faith acts in love and obedience, this love and obedience will rebound and grow that faith. Faith and repentance grow stronger as they express themselves in love.

Here CS Lewis says something similar: that the choice to love grows the feeling or attitude of love.

Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will ...

Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. ...

This same spiritual law works terribly in the opposite direction. ... The more cruel you are, the more you will hate; and the more you hate, the more cruel you will become — and so on in a vicious circle for ever.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible. ...

On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God'. He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.

from CS Lewis Mere Christianity chapter 9

images are from Divine Harvester and ' B a r c a at flickr

how we change (9) what will you choose?

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph 4:22-24)

I've turned navel-gazing into an art form. A questionnaire about my idols? A thought-chart to identify my false beliefs? A journal, a pen, and an anxious heart? Give them to me, and I'm your woman.

I'll think, read, write, examine my heart, repent, analyse, pray, list, reflect, dissect, introspect, with the best of them.

In some ways, then, books like Tim Chester's You Can Change feed right into my tendency to self-absorption and my drive to perfect myself (although this isn't Chester's fault: he takes care to guard against these things).* He issues a gold-edged invitation to identify the lies and idols of my heart, and I'm the first on the RSVP list.

Don't get me wrong: every day I'm grateful for books like Chester's as I argue with my thoughts, battle my emotions and fight my besetting sins. It's important to deal with sin not just at the surface level, but at the deeper level of what I believe and what I worship.

But I've come to see that sometimes I need to stop praying and thinking and start acting. It's not just about "attitudes", it's also about "putting off" and "putting on" (Eph 4:22-24). Every day - every moment! - I stare sin in the face and have to choose to behave differently. That, I'm not so good at.

Which is why, in case you're like me, and in imitation of Elyse Fitzpatrick's Idols of the Heart, I've added a third step to Chester's two main steps for change:

1. thoughts- turning from lies to trust God's truth (faith)
2. desires - turning from idols to worship God alone (repentance)
3. will - choosing to act in love and obedience (repentance)

You'll notice that 3. is actually an extension of 2, which is why Chester deals with them together. As Elyse Fitzpatrick points out, our wills don't work independently - they follow our thoughts and desires. You can't abandon idols in your heart and not in your life. But I need help with changing my behaviour, so I like the way Elyse Fitzpatrick takes several chapters to talk about the nitty-gritty of practical change.

Perhaps it's a woman's thing. I've noticed we're much keener than the guys on thought-diaries and questionnaires and the details of daily life. This is both a disadvantage (navel-gazing, anyone?) and an advantage (we don't leave things at the level of theory).

Change begins in the heart, but it doesn't end there. Let me give you some examples:

• the woman who's been praying for years that God will improve a difficult relationship and transform her emotions. One day she realises it's time not just to pray, but to love. As she does, her attitudes and feelings begin to change.
• the woman who's terrified of crowded rooms. She avoids church and prays for God to take away her fear. But she knows she has to do the hard thing. She starts small - with a Bible study group - and works up to bigger church meetings. It's not easy, but her fears lessen with time.
• the woman who knows she should offer hospitality to her neighbours, but who's ashamed of her shabby house. She prays about her her idolatry - her need to impress people. She repents of her lovelessness. But she has to take another step: to pick up the phone and ask the neighbours over. When she does, her fears are shown to be the small things they always were.

I don't change my behaviour through a set of disciplines (though it will take self-discipline!) or in the strength of my will-power (though I do need to make a choice). God's Spirit is the great heart-changer. When I "put off" the old self and "put on" the new, I'm only doing what God has already done in me. I "work out" my salvation because God is powerfully "working in" me to "will and to act". I obey because I'm confident God has given me everything I need to be godly. **

But changing my behaviour isn't easy or automatic. It's violent, energetic and purposeful. I can play with sin, feed it, cuddle up to it. Or I can put off sin - kill it, gouge it out, throw it off - and put on obedience.**

Every moment, I can choose to resist the first intrusion of sin: the impure look, the self-pitying thought, the unkind word, the selfish act. This isn't legalism: it's a response to grace, which teaches me to say "no" (Tit 2:11-12).

Faith gets stronger as it expresses itself in love. As I stop giving in to my fears, I learn to trust God more. As I refuse to serve my idols, they become less important to me. Every time I say "no", "no" gets a little easier. I call this the faith that comes from obedience.***

If you want some help making practical changes in your behaviour, why not read Elyse Fitzpatrick's Idols of the Heart? Her practical exercises gave me a blueprint to use with any and every issue, especially when I get stuck. Because sometimes it's time not just to think, but to act.

For reflection:
What attitudes and actions do you need to "put off"? What attitudes and actions do you need to "put on"? Are there small steps that would help you with the bigger ones? Or is it time just to say "no" - or "yes"! - in confidence that God is powerfully at work in you?

* And Nicole's too, apparently!

** see Ezek 36:24-27; Eph 4:22-24, Rom 6; Phil 2:12-13;2 Pet 1:3, Eph 1:18-21, 3:20-21, Col 1:28-29). See Mt 5:29, Rom 8:13, Col 3:5, Rom 13:12, Eph 4:22, 25, Heb 12:1, Col 3:8-9, Jam 1:21, 1 Pet 2:1, Eph 4:24, Col 3:10, 1 Thess 5:8, Rom 13:14, Col 3:12, Rev 19:8.

*** If you want to explore this further, have a look at Stuart's series on this topic, where you'll find useful insights from someone working within The Crowded House church, founded by Tim Chester: The chicken of belief and the egg of behaviour, It's a heart issue, Hypercardiodynia: taking the 'heart issue' too far (Part 1), Hypercardiodynia: taking the heart issue too far (Part 2), and Back to the heart. HT Nicole

images are by gaspi your guide and kingary and TheAlieness and brioso at flickr

broccoli and the joy of obedience

I was cutting broccoli for our stir-fry this evening, and enjoying the simple pleasure of preparing healthy food for my family.

This is more remarkable than it sounds. I am not a natural cook, as you may have noticed. Cooking by nature feels like drudgery to me: messy, hot, unremitting hard work. Which shouldn't be surprising, since one of the results of the Fall was to make work difficult and laborious, whether in the home or outside the door.

But one of the things I have noticed about obedient service is that it becomes easier and more joyful with time. What was once a constant fight with self, and then relentless labour, becomes a happy freedom.

Like the body-memory of a skilled athlete or musician, whose muscles repeat a pattern of activity until it becomes natural, so the muscles and sinews of the soul become accustomed to obedience and service.

I didn't find it easy to serve my husband and children at first. It was a sharp struggle with the self-centred desire to have my needs met, my rights observed. With practice, it felt more natural, but still tedious, repetitive and never-ending. Those feelings haven't gone away, I won't lie to you. It's still a daily battle.

But I increasingly find myself smiling at the joy of service.

The pleasure that comes from nurturing loving relationships. The satisfaction of giving more than I thought I was capable of giving. The unlikely freedom to choose to put others' needs before my own.

The joy of pleasing my Lord, of giving him the love-gift of costly obedience. The wonder of humbly serving others, and in them serving the Master who humbled himself to serve me. The privilege of laying down my life, of walking in the footsteps of the One who laid down his life for me.

It shouldn't surprise us that obedient service feels natural and joyous. For we were made for this. God made us for himself, and we are never fully ourselves until we lose ourselves in him.

In his service there is glorious freedom and inexpressible joy.

the faith that comes from obedience

I have a beautiful thing, a mug with an oddly curved handle. It is the perfect size, the perfect weight, the perfect shape for my morning coffee. It is patterned with a delicately stylised tracery of leaves and flowers.

It has a chip on its rim.

Six months ago I would have noticed the sharpness against my lips and been irritated. Not just by the jarring sensation of roughness where I expected smoothness, but also by the fact that my perfect mug's perfection was now blemished. I would have made a mental note to go and buy another perfect mug to replace the damaged one.

But today I noticed the chip and, instead of being an imperfection, it became a symbol of value. An indication that I have treasured this lovely object, that it has been used many times and bears the signs of cherished age, that it is more beautiful for having been loved.

And I realised how insidiously our disposable culture - where a damaged object can be instantly and cheaply replaced with a quick trip to the shops, rather than mended and used again and again - teaches us to value that which is new, young and perfect over that which is old, worn and restored. A devaluing of the aged which is subtly transferred to people as well as objects.

I also noticed the changes that the practice of self-control has wrought in me. How something as simple as not buying new things for half a year has transformed the way I see the world. How an object which was once worthless and only fit for throwing out has become something to treasure. How what was once a difficult struggle for obedience has become a joyful freedom.

Obedience not only comes from faith, it also reinforces faith. Enacted truth, it helps us see God's truth more clearly. It creates a subtle shift in perspective. It remakes the world in new and startling ways. We begin to see the world as God sees it.

Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:31-32