Express the following to God:
1 articulate sin in detail (including motivation and implicit unbelief in God's sufficiency and promises)
- This needs to be detailed. And by detailed, I mean graphic. Don't sugar coat your sin
- Sin's power is in its deceitfulness; it whispers that it's just a little bit of indulgence, just a little taste, not THAT bad
- Exposing sin for the disgusting reality of it helps break its power
2 feel the weight of it (just don't scoot past it - but don't try to earn forgiveness by taking on more guilt either)
3 fixate/meditate on the holiness of God, greatness of God, how his holy character is not like my sinful character
4 focus on the cross - this is where forgiveness comes from
5 ask for forgiveness grounded in the cross
6 rest in assurance - no guilt, no shame
7 commit to do it no more
8 ask God for strength to do it no more, ask for Spirit to enable you to stop (but because of 7, you own it)
9 move on - go and sin no more
10 gratitude, joy
I live in a pretty crummy, 2 bdrm apartment with my wife and two kids. And just to pay off all that seminary debt, I work all week, long hours, and my wife works overnight on the weekends.
I can accept this because I have a hope of heaven. I'm looking forward to heaven, when things will be better. Not just better, but perfect.
Now some would say, "That's pathetic. You believe a lie that was sold to people long ago to oppress them. After all, it was the masters who first told this lie to their slaves. Oh, they said, don't worry about being slaves in THIS life! There's a life after death! That's when things will get better for you!"
I don't doubt some have used the hope of heaven to exploit people. People are wicked.
But rather than criticize the Christian hope of heaven, let's do something that rarely, if ever, happens. Let's give some close scrutiny to the alternative.
Suppose there is no heaven - or should I say imagine? Yes, let's! Imagine there's no heaven. This life is all there is. When you die, you become nothing. You cease to exist.
Now, in this context of no heaven, what do you live for? Why are you alive? What is the purpose of your life? What do you WANT it to be? What do you want to get out of life? What would you like to achieve? What's on your bucket list?
I think most people today, at least in America, if they were honest, would explain the goals of their lives in financial terms. They'd probably say something about retirement, something about a nice house, perhaps on a golf course or a lake, not having to work, being comfortable, traveling at a leisurely pace, etc. All of this takes money, of course, and a heck of a lot of it. So most people feel like they can get what they want out of life if they just have enough money.
Money. Stuff. Comfort. Security. These are the goals of your life, if you've no hope of heaven.
In other words, if you have no hope of heaven, your goal is to make as much money as you can so you can stop working and live the good life of leisure and luxury.
Oh, that pull of leisure and luxury is strong, isn't it?
So maybe I come along and say, hey, do you really want to wait till you're retired to live the life of luxury? You know that big beautiful house with the gorgeous kitchen on a golf course you've always wanted? You qualify for some really nice mortgage packages. Let me tell you about interest-only loans and adjustable rate mortgages...
How about a nice big SUV with leather seats and a TV in the back to shut the kids up? Your life will love it! All her girlfriends will be envious, and she'll be very, very, very appreciative. You know what I mean. Ahem. Oh, you can't afford that $60k car? Sure you can! Have you ever heard of a lease? Heck, at these low, low monthly payments, you can buy TWO!
Say, that's a nice computer huh? We're doing zero down and zero percent financing for 3 months! That's plenty of time to save up the money and pay it off! What? You want to know the interest rate after 3 months? Why worry about that? What are you my mother? Who cares? Look at this computer! It's SOOOOO fast!
You deserve the life of luxury, and you deserve it now. Credit cards can make it happen. Easy credit is your friend. Everyone's in debt. It's not sad, it's amusing. It's just how life is! Who cares! Besides, you gotta have some debt to get that FICO score up there!
And you begin to think that obtaining these things are what will give your life meaning. Accomplishing this is what will put a smile on your wife's face, and then you will be satisfied that you lived your life to the fullest, and that you deserved to live the life you did.
To put it another way, if you can get all this stuff, you can justify your existence.
Easy credit can make you FEEL like your existence is justified. It affirms that yes, you DO deserve these things!
And so those who have no hope of heaven become enslaved to the banks, who have them running on a treadmill indefinitely.
And the sad part is, these things NEVER satisfy. When we seek to satisfy our desires, the desires only get stronger. Ask any rich person how much money will be enough, and if they're honest, they'll answer in the words of John Rockefeller: "Just a little more."
I don't care HOW rich you are, you'll always want more. I don't care HOW big your house is, you'll find a way to fill it with crap and complain about it being too small. I don't care HOW nice your brand new SUV is, because in 2 years it won't be gorgeous and shiny anymore, and you'll want the latest model. I don't care how nice that new computer is, they'll update the OS and your super fast computer will be slow as an old lady with a walker in 2 years.
When you have no hope of heaven, there IS no reward because there IS no satisfaction. Life becomes all about acquiring stuff, and no amount of stuff is ever enough.
So you've got that big house on the golf course with the gorgeous kitchen, but you hate the thing because it's so ridiculously expensive and it means you'll be working till you're 90 to pay the silly thing off! And you loathe that stupid car that's ALWAYS breaking down, and it's NEVER a simple fix but ALWAYS something wrong with the wiring or some computer and the poor mechanics have no idea how to fix it. You'll always want a new one in 2 years. And a new TV. And a new computer. A new cell phone. When does it end?
Meanwhile, you just keep paying, and you never get ahead. And what are you getting in return for all this tireless, exhausting effort? Ultimately everything you're getting in return is meaningless and empty.
Often what looks like a reward turns out to be a burden.
So you are ultimately sold a pack of lies. You think you're acquiring all these great things, these rewards that justify your existence, that prove you have a right to be alive. But in reality, you're just burdening yourself more and more heavily every single day.
You can't justify your existence because you didn't bring about your existence.
Let's think about what it means to justify something. Suppose you're on trial for murder. You killed someone. You admitted it freely. How can you justify what you've done? You could claim the murder was in self defense, right? And if you can prove that you killed in self defense, then the killing will be justified and you won't go to jail. They'll justify your action saying, He did what he had to do.
If I wanted to know why you exist, who would I ask? I can't ask you. You didn't do the deed. You didn't create yourself. How could you possibly know why you exist, much less whether or not that's a GOOD reason.
This is why we want that luxurious lifestyle. We figure that if we're blessed with such things, it means that the reason we exist must be a good one. Here's life rewarding me! The stuff we acquire proves that we're worthy of living.
And so, you lose your life savings in the stock market, and rather than start over from the beginning, you jump off a building. Why go on living? My life has no meaning, apparently, or this wouldn't have happened. Now I'll never achieve my goals. I might as well be dead. There is no good reason for my existence.
But Christians have a hope of heaven. We don't need our circumstances in life to justify our existence. We can acknowledge that God created us, and maybe we don't fully understand why, but we trust that we'll understand in heaven. Maybe life sucks. Maybe you work hard for a decade pursuing the ministry only to leave it behind. Maybe you work hard at a marriage that only ends in tears and bitterness.
Or maybe you're just poor. Sad. Alone. Bitter.
Habakkuk 3:17-19
Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer's;
he makes me tread on my high places.
When life falls apart, when churches close their doors, when livelihoods are destroyed, when friends commit suicide, when children are abused by priests, when people in church are more evil than the people outside the church, when careers end abruptly, when marriages come undone, when spouses cheat or just ignore...
...we who have a hope of heaven can look forward to that day when God himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes, when death and disease will be no more, when our sinful desires will finally completely melt away and we are finally and fully satisfied in knowing God and seeing Jesus face to face and being accepted and embraced in his presence forever.
That's why I am alive. To make it to that Day. It'll be worth it to get there, no matter the cost. As the old hymn goes, "Dark, dark has been the midnight, but dayspring is at hand...it were a well-spent journey though seven deaths lay between."
This is the only path of glory: to hope in Christ, to hope in heaven.
Have you ever been in a position to make a hiring decision? How did it work out?
I recently had an opportunity to do so. You see, the director of a group I'm working with asked me to sit in on an interview because he had no expertise in the relevant area. We were interviewing people to work with me and hopefully replace me (because I'm only with the group temporarily).
Well, he quit 2 days later, and didn't give 2 weeks notice. And it turned out we had a deadline to make a decision on who to hire the next day. There wasn't really time to interview more candidates.
Now when I interviewed this lady, she was a bit older, but she sure seemed very competent. She brought an extensive portfolio with her of all the projects she had worked on in her entire career. It was very extensive. I couldn't help but be impressed.
And yet, she didn't listen very well. And she was a chatterbox. Big time. I'd ask her a question, and she wouldn't really answer it. She'd begin by talking about something somewhat related to the topic of the question, but then would verbally meander into talking about whatever she felt like talking about. I was kind of concerned about this at the time. So was the director. We agreed that we weren't ready to say no to her, but we wanted to see some more candidates.
But in the end, seeing more candidates wasn't possible without it costing a considerable additional amount of money. There was a contractor who was supplying candidates, and they had to do so on a timeline, so extending that timeline meant more resources on their part, which meant more money on our part.
So the easiest thing to do was to hire the person we interviewed. I chose to focus on her portfolio and all the things she brought to the table. Ok, she wasn't a good communicator, but we didn't need her to communicate, we needed her to do more technical work.
So I assured the director's temporary replacement that this candidate was going to work out just fine.
Big mistake. That whole not listening part turns out to be ridiculously important. I can't TELL you how annoying it is to tell someone to do something, and they agree to it, but then they just...don't...and proceed to do whatever they want to do. If I were in charge, I would have fired her already, and she's only been there a week.
And there was one more red flag in her interview. You may recall that I said in previous posts that I'm involved with SharePoint. Well, this candidate had a LOT of SharePoint experience, since the time when SharePoint first came out. But she really thinks of herself as a technical writer, specializing in documenting processes, standard operating procedures, writing out step by step instructions with screen shots, etc. It was right there on the top of her resume in the summary: technical writer seeking challenging technical writing role...
So I asked her about that in the interview, and she downplayed the significance of it. I was satisfied with this because she had so much SharePoint experience. I told her about the job, essentially managing a SharePoint database, and she was fine with it. It seemed like a good fit, even if it wasn't her dream job.
So when she finally started, I told her that long term, we wanted her to document all the procedures involved in managing the database from the SharePoint side of things. But first, obviously, she needs to learn to manage the database.
Well.
She doesn't listen when I give her tasks related to managing the database. I'm so severely over tasked, I've had to just give her assignments to do and send her away and hope that she does them. She agrees to do them, seems to understand what she needs to do, and all seems well.
After what should be three times as much time as the assignment should take, I finally get a chance to follow up, and nothing, NOTHING is done.
What happened?
Well, she called the new director and set up a meeting with him - without even ASKING me, even though I'm training her to do my job - and started doing all kinds of tasks for him. Apparently he doesn't realize that she's there to take stuff off my plate so that I can return to my ACTUAL job. I'm just working with this group temporarily.
I ended up having to stay at work until 11pm the other day to do the work I was counting on her to do which she hadn't done.
Oddly enough, when I found out that she had scheduled this meeting, I emailed her and said that I wanted her to finish the tasks I had given her before she did anything for the summit director. She said she would. She didn't.
Like I said, if it were me, I'd have fired her already. I have no patience for this kind of nonsense. AT ALL.
So some advice for those just getting into the corporate world for the first time after leaving the ministry. Do what you're told. Make sure you understand what you were told to do, then do it as quickly and accurately as possible. Know exactly who you report to, and who you need to please to get ahead.
This new hire is not my asset. I am not her manager. Her job isn't to please me, it's to please the new director.
So what do I do to handle this situation? Well, I won't complain to the director. If he can't see what he's doing, then either he doesn't understand the situation or he's too wrapped up in his own self interests to care. He hasn't asked me what the roles should be.
So I'm just going to secretly conspire with some other folks to get my work covered so I can make an exit. Sometimes that's how you have to get things done.
Once these roles are sort of established, then I'll talk to the director and tell him it's time I move on to other projects. If I try to have that conversation with him now, I'm afraid he'll just object and try to keep me indefinitely. That's what I would do if I were him. I need to be able to demonstrate that they no longer need me before I can even propose this to him.
It's possible that I could just sit down and have a talk with him, but I don't feel like he's trustworthy at this point. He's shown an unwillingness to understand (or even care) how much work goes into satisfying his whims. So I don't trust him. If I lay out all my cards, then I'm vulnerable to him and risk being unable to get out before April.
Nope - I'm not claiming to be dispensing God's answer to this problem. It's just what I'm doing, what I'm thinking.
How do you measure success at work?
I am a contractor at a government agency. I remember when I first got the job. Lots of people said, "Oh, that's great! Do you think you'll have a chance to become a government employee? They can never get fired!"
And I think that's true. I think it's almost impossible to get fired as a government employee. For that reason, government jobs are very difficult to get. There are always hundreds if not thousands of applicants and how they select people has a lot to do with little tricks you use to make your resume look good to a computer. (The trick is to make it very long and repeat the key words from the job description as many times as possible.) Anyway, yep, it's almost impossible to be fired from a government job, which is why our government is so smooth and efficient in everything it does. Ahem.
Is that how you measure success? Never getting fired? Or perhaps obtaining a job that you can never be fired from? Is that what success looks like?
Perhaps you dream of being CEO of some huge company. What would you do with all that power and authority? Would you have a putting green in your office? A big mahogany desk? Would you smoke expensive cigars and drink only the finest single malt scotch? Would you sit back with your feet up on the desk all day and simply tell others what to do while you yourself drew a massive paycheck with tons of cheap stock options?
If these are how you measure success, if these are your goals, you're a fool.
And I don't mean fool in the sense of slightly gullible but I'm speaking hyperbolically in order to make a point. No - I mean fool in the biblical sense. I mean you're right up there with those who say there is no God. I mean you are not wise. I mean you are foolish, refusing to embrace common sense. I mean you are choosing the way of death rather than life. I mean pull your head out of your backside and embrace reality.
I don't want a job from which I can never be fired. Don't get me wrong - if my boss said to me tomorrow, "Please sign this piece of paper, after which you can never be fired from this job," you bet your sweet bippy I'd sign.
What I mean is, it is not my goal to obtain a job from which I CANNOT be fired simply because that's how that job works. It is not my dream to not be held accountable. I actually want to be held accountable. I want someone to push me to always do better. I want to live with that healthy fear and respect of those in authority over me. I want them to bear a sword as ministers of God's justice. That sword guards me from myself. I want my boss to be able to fire me for the same reason I want cops to carry guns.
I guarantee you if there were no consequences for murder I would have killed many people by now.
When you can't be fired for incompetence, people who lack other reasons for motivation will quickly stop caring about the quality of their work.
One thing I've noticed about government employees is that many of them, VERY many of them, simply do not own the mission of their organization. These people don't CARE if the work gets done - they only care if they will get BLAMED for it not being done. As long as "it's not my fault" they don't CARE. They're happy for the work to just go undone and care nothing for the consequences.
I'm just the opposite. I don't CARE about BLAME! I only care about the work getting done. I only care about the mission being accomplished. I don't much CARE about what I have to do to get it done. I only care about it getting done.
This is why I often have little tolerance for long meetings where a lot of energy is spent on figuring out exactly whose job is what and exactly who will be held accountable when certain goals aren't met. These meetings are often just a vehicle for people to justify shifting blame later when no one does what they said they would do. "But in the meeting you said you would...so it's not MY fault." "According to what the boss said, that's not my job."
Who cares about what your job is? Roles are always fluid! There's a mission to be accomplished! Quit talking about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it and just get it DONE!
It's really simple. If you want to be successful in the workplace, stop being afraid of being blamed. When things go wrong, take the blame. Who cares? I do it all the time and I get nothing but constant (often embarrassing) praise from just about everyone I work with. I work my butt off and accomplish as much as 4 or 5 government workers in a given day. Why? Because I CARE about the MISSION. I want to see things accomplished. I often skip out on meetings. Why? Because I have work to do. I take lunch at my desk. I don't whine about being entitled to a 15 minute break or a half hour or hour long lunch. I have better things to do than concern myself with such childish nonsense.
I don't know, nor do I care what the minimum acceptable amount of work is before I get fired. I'm not even interested in that question.
I'm far more interested in how MUCH I can get DONE in a day. That's what I'm interested in. I want to know how far I can push myself, how good I can get at my job, how quickly I can solve new problems, how much sharper my mind can get, how much further I can push my skills.
What do I care about not being FIRED? Getting fired isn't even on my radar! I want to know when I'm going to have my boss' job!
And it's not because I'm hoping that when I get THAT promotion I'll be the one....IN CHARGE. It's not because I think I deserve the finer things in life. It's not because I want people to serve me. It's not because I think that my boss does less work than me.
Let me tell you why.
Suppose I gave you a Ferrari. Here's the keys. It's yours. What would you want to know the very first time you drove it?
You'd want to know what it's capable of. How fast can it go? How fast can I take a corner? How fast does it accelerate? How are you going to find out? By pushing it to its limits. Or at least as far as you dare.
YOU are a brand new Ferrari. You are capable of amazing things, but you don't know what you can do yet. How are you going to find out? By getting out there and seeing what you're capable of. You've got to push yourself to the limits and go past them.
You don't know how much sleep you actually NEED until you don't get enough. You don't know where your limits are until you go past them.
This is why mistakes are ok on the job. You're going to make mistakes if you're pushing yourself and demanding of yourself more and more all the time. Mistakes are inevitable.
In fact, you HAVE to make mistakes in order to learn something NEW. Think about it. If you never make mistakes, you're either very lucky or you're simply doing something that you already know how to do and it's not a challenge for you. How boring.
If your goal on the job is to never make mistakes, then your dream job is George Jetson's job. Remember at the beginning of the show, George Jetson would be sitting at work, just pressing one button over and over and over again. Boring. No challenge. You already have the skills. You aren't stretching yourself. You aren't learning anything new.
You have buried your talent in the sand.
You are a brand new Ferrari. Your job is to work to the glory of God. If you want to just push a button over and over and never get fired and never make mistakes, then you aren't glorifying God. If you harbor dreams of sitting around telling others what to do while you yourself enjoy all the finer things in life, and resent that this hasn't happened for you, then you aren't glorifying God.
God made that brand new Ferrari. Get that thing out on the track. He's watching. And when he sees you take off like a rocket - that's when he smiles.
Yes, you'll make mistakes on your new job. Yes, it's going to be hard work. No, everyone won't like you. No, you won't like them either. And yes, you'll probably have to work closely with them. What are you capable of? You don't even know yet. Finding out is how you take 10 talents and make 10 more.
Be interested in everything. Don't just focus on one thing. Don't say, "Nope, I'll never do that on my job, so who cares?" Take whatever training you can get. Learn about as many different things as you can.
Learn by analogy. What you learn in a totally unrelated subject may be relevant someday, because you may come across something that...let's just say works the same way - analogically speaking. Maybe there's nothing similar about two situations, but the principles behind it work the same way.
So embrace being a sponge for as much information as you can get on anything and everything. You never know what sparks creativity and general cleverness. Everyone will think you're a genius, even if you're not.
And that's how you can bring glory to God and keep from burying your talent in the sand.
Ok, so you left the ministry and it was traumatic and hard. Now you've got a new job and you start tomorrow and you're scared to death. It's been ages since you've had a normal 9-5 workplace job and you're pretty sure you have NO IDEA what you're doing. Why on earth did these crazy people hire me anyway? How long will it be before my hypocrisy is exposed and they realize I don't know what's going on? Panic. Hyper-ventilation. Fear.
Stop. Remember Josh 1:9 "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
Be strong and courageous. Those are manly words. Just hearing them makes me feel like chopping wood in a red and black checkered flannel jacket on a brisk autumn morning somewhere in Northern Idaho at a cabin by a lake at 5 in the morning. Be strong and courageous. Be a man. Be a manly man.
Only fools don't feel a little overwhelmed when they take on a new job. It's scary because it's unfamiliar. What will the work be like? Will I hate my boss? Will my coworkers like me? Are they going to be negligent leaving me stuck to do all the work? What if I can't learn whatever it is they want me to do? How long will they give me before they fire me?
You should be asking questions like these when you start a new job. However, you should not be afraid of things just because they're unfamiliar.
Remember the Dr Seuss book, Green Eggs and Ham? The man in the story refuses to eat green eggs and ham. He's just as sure as he can be that he doesn't like green eggs and ham. And yet, he's never even tried them.
Children are like this with food, aren't they? That's why Dr Seuss wrote this book after all. The whole point is: how do you know whether you like it or not if you never try it?
My kids are often quite sure they don't like their dinner before they've had a single bite. Every kid pulls that sometimes. And ooooooohhh...it always drives their parents bonkers. Would you just TRY IT already?
So will you approach your new job like a child? Will you purse your lips together as tightly as you can, turn your head away and say, "NO!"
Or will you try that green eggs and ham?
Have you ever ridden a roller coaster? Of course you have. Everyone has. What was it like?
It seems to me that there are two kinds of people when it comes to roller coasters.
The first kind of person - and this was me as a kid - is overwhelmed with fear. They close their eyes, they wrap their arms around the bar, they clench their teeth, they squeeze their legs together and they press their feet into the floor of the car, hoping that it'll all be over soon. They don't like the feeling of having their stomach fly up into their throat, but they are afraid to admit this to their friends and afraid of being left out. It's fun hanging out at the theme park all day with your friends, and all you have to do to be accepted is endure the occasional minute and a half of pure, nightmarish torture. But hey, if you close your eyes and curl up in the fetal position, it's not so bad, and you'll survive. Then you will be accepted by the other cool kids, with whom now (they think) you have several shared experiences.
The second kind of person - which is apparently everyone ELSE in the entire world other than me - rides roller coasters much differently. They don't grip the bar, they throw their hands in the air. They don't close their eyes, they fling them open. They don't clench their teeth, they throw their heads back, open their mouths wide and let out a primal scream.
The first person survives. The second person thrives. The first person passively endures. The second person actively enjoys. The first is tortured, the second is thrilled. The first clings to security, the second embraces uncertainty.
But both are afraid. The first person is obviously afraid, but the second one is afraid too. That's why they're screaming - but they're screaming with delight as well as fear (or so I'm told). This is an important point. It's not the case that the second person lacks fear.
Courage is NOT the absence of fear. If you are not afraid, you have no opportunity to have courage because courage requires fear.
This is because courage is, fundamentally, a certain kind of RESPONSE to fear.
Courage is not the absence of fear, it is a response to fear.
In order to exhibit courage, you must first be afraid.
Often times, when we are afraid, we think we are cowardly. To be cowardly is to be afraid, right? In the church, our pious-sounding, proof-texting platitudes play into this. We quote the Lord's words to Joshua, "Be strong and courageous," and we say, "God has not given us a spirit of fear", so we think being afraid is sinful. This means that as soon as we feel fear, we are instantly overwhelmed with guilt, which only makes us embrace fear ever more tightly, which makes us feel more guilty, and the cycle feeds on itself until we're curled up on the floor in the fetal position.
So what exactly is the difference between the first person and the second person? It's not that one has fear and one doesn't.
It's their response to fear. That is the difference.
The first person hides from fear. They are overwhelmed by it. Their fear has mastered them. They are terrified of their fear. Thus fear becomes exponentially greater. This poor soul responds to fear very much like an abused dog, hiding and whimpering in the corner.
The second person faces their fear. They stand up to their fear. They are like the child on the playground who refuses to give the bully their lunch money, even if it means getting a bloody nose. They are afraid, but their fear has not mastered them. And that's not because their fear is any less, but because they simply refuse to accept its mastery over them.
We can call this refusal defiance. They defy their fear.
This is what courage actually is. It is defying your fear. It is refusing to give in to it. It is a choice, an act of will.
But there is one more key aspect of courage that we must pursue, and we're going to need the Lord of the Rings to help us investigate it.
If you look up courage on Wikipedia, you'll eventually get to a part about pagan notions of courage, and I found that I was drawn toward Tolkien's description of Norse courage:
"J.R.R. Tolkien identified in his 1936 lecture 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics' a 'Northern theory of courage'—the heroic or 'virtuous pagan' insistence on doing the right thing even in the face of certain defeat".
Something about that notion appeals to me. Perhaps an illustration of this idea is the 300 Spartans, who stood against the army of Persia, though they were doomed to die. Or we can think of the Lord of the Rings movies, when King Theoden gives a speech to his men before the armies of orcs and calls upon them to "Ride now! Ride to ruin and the world's ending!" and then he screams, "DEATH!" and all the Rohirrim echo him. It's an amazing moment that, if it doesn't affect you, there's something wrong with you.
And it is so moving that we are tempted to say, "There, now THAT is courage!"
Is it?
When God commands Joshua to "Be strong and courageous," is this what God calls him to? "Ride to ruin and the world's ending"?
Let's cut to the chase. There is a bright, shining example of courage that I think is very different from that of the King of the Rohirrim, or of the Spartans, moving as these examples are.
Once upon a time, the King of all the universe took on flesh in order to go to the cross for our sins. That is the greatest act of courage there ever was. Look at what he left behind! Look at how much he suffered!
Would you voluntarily become a grasshopper so your two boys (ages 5 and 6) could rip your legs and antennae off and leave you to be consumed alive by hungry ants? That's kind of like what Jesus did for us.
Now - it is one thing to go into battle, though you are outnumbered, and engage the enemy, risking your life. But it is quite another to be God, who created all things, and knows the future because he MAKES the future, to take on flesh, to willingly go to the cross and suffer and die, KNOWING EXACTLY how horrible it would be ahead of time. Jesus knew just exactly how awful the tortures of the cross would be, and he faced it.
Oh, you say, but he wasn't afraid. He knew he'd be raised from the dead. He went to the cross "for the joy set before him," right?
If he wasn't afraid, then why was he sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane? That was FEAR. That was ANXIETY. He asked his Father to take that cup away from him. He asked to be excused from the assignment. But he knew there was no other way, and knew his Father would not take that cup from him. And he knew just how bad it would be. Wouldn't you have been afraid? Only a FOOL wouldn't have been, and Jesus was certainly no fool.
So he, knowing exactly how much pain it would bring him, was cut off entirely from his Father, abandoned by his disciples, tortured by his creatures, and put to death by his people, the very people he'd come to save.
That is courage.
Now, you might be tempted to say that it's just the same as the courage of the 300 Spartans or the countless Rohirrim, riding into battle, doomed to die. But it's not. There's a very important difference.
"For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption."
The pagan unbeliever who faces their fear of death does exhibit courage in some measure, but it is an empty, baseless courage for courage's sake. Such men fight for their own glory and die vainly.
Jesus did not face a certain, painful and shameful death this way. Instead, he trusted his Father, that he would not abandon him to the grave, that he would not leave him to be consumed by death forever.
Now there is a very important distinction that is theologically necessary to make here. Jesus trusted his Father, but not for grace or mercy. Jesus earned the right to be raised from the dead by his righteousness. Death had no claim over him, once he had been baptized into death to pay the price for the sins of his people. Once that happened, he had a right to life that he had justly earned by his own righteousness, by his own merit. Jesus earned eternal life for himself by being sinless and perfectly righteous his whole life. He earned what Adam failed to earn.
So when I say that Jesus trusted his Father, do not take the silly route that many have taken in recent years and draw the conclusion that Jesus was therefore justified by faith. That's nonsense. There's a gigantic difference between us and Christ. We're sinners. He's not. It's that simple. He trusts in his Father's just response to his righteousness. He knew God would respond with raising him from the dead.
We too trust in God to raise us from the dead, even though we're sinners and should die eternally. Death has a claim on us sinners. But because Jesus was baptized into death for us, on our behalf - therefore we can be raised from the dead. Therefore we can be given eternal life, based not on OUR merits, but on the merits of Christ, which merits are granted us according to the terms of the eternal covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son, according to which the Father says of the Son, "You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizadek."
So.
Jesus rides the roller coaster like the second person. He stands up and leaves the Garden of Gethsemane, where he anxiously sweat drops of blood, and walks out to face his false accusers. He faced the men who would torment him. He loved the men who abandoned him. And he trusted in his Father to raise him from the dead.
You see, the second person trusts that the bar will do its job. They're afraid, yes, but they also know that the bar will keep them from falling. That knowledge is their weapon against their fear, and THAT is how they stand up to it and defy it to its face.
Jesus' weapon was knowing his own and his Father's character. He knew he had been perfectly faithful. He knew his Father would reciprocate. He trusted his Father. Jesus truly said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." And boy he owned that, and he proved that he owned it. He took the words of Scripture and owned them for his own because they are his. He IS the word incarnate.
And HE is our bar. Well, he and the Father and the Spirit, all three, working on our behalf. We trust the Spirit's testimony who promises that the Word of God is true, that his promises are real. We trust Christ's merit by which he earned eternal life for us. And we trust that the Father will be true to his Word and give us eternal life based on the righteousness of Christ, and not condemn us for all eternity based on our sin. This is our bar. The triune God in whom we trust. This is the foundation of our courage.
We can face our guilty fears because we trust that our sins are forgiven in Christ.
We can face our fears of death because we trust in God to save us by grace through faith in Christ.
We can face our fears of job loss because we trust that the Lord will make good on his promises to take care of us and our children.
We can face the fears of our children abandoning the faith because we know the Lord knows what he's doing.
We can face our fear of pain, of torments of all kinds, of hard work, of missing out, or any other fear that plagues us a thousand times a day, whether reasonable or completely irrational - all of it - we can face ALL of it because we trust in God.
Courage is the defiance of fear based on trust.
When I walked away from the ministry at last, in my own small way, I too owned those words: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him."
Yes, walking away from the ministry definitely felt like riding to ruin and the world's ending.
But it wasn't.
I am still here.
And the church will survive without me in the pulpit.
And I'm certain my family and I are better off in myriad ways.
And you know, I still haven't quoted what the Lord ACTUALLY said to Joshua. He didn't just command him to be strong and courageous. He said:
"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”
(Joshua 1:9)
Why can you face your fear? Why can you exhibit courage? BECAUSE something is true: the Lord, who is YOUR God, is with you wherever you go. HE has commanded you, HE has directed your steps.
Courage takes practice. It takes cultivating. It is a worthy pursuit. Find ways to exhibit courage today.
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Have you left the ministry? Would you like to tell your story anonymously on this blog? Email us at new2pew@gmail.com. We're always looking for more stories.
