2017

2017 has been the most jarring year of my life. Death surrounded me as friends' parents passed, my own father gone, Christian figures leaving this world, a child I worked with weekly passed, hospitalizations, broken friendships having closure, the world not making sense, faith tested, doubts of God's goodness. How do people who suffer more or big Christian figures who've passed (Nabeel and Sproul) have such faith and fight for God's truth adamantly? Only God's grace sustained me, and as I look back I have no idea how I would go through these things again. His truths seem so foreign yet He reminds me of them daily. How could the simple fact that Jesus is God and came die for people seem so meaningless when it is all of life? Although I may not "feel" it, it is His grace and doing that I trust in the One I cannot see. 

So many lessons learned and to be learned. And I don't want life to simply be a "lesson" and thankfully it isn't. As much as I feel like God is merely testing me, He isn't. 
Dorthy Sayers says:

“For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is— limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.”

Psalm 23 reminds me that God is sovereign, He loves us, He is with me.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters.

He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness

for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD

forever.

This world is short and is not our home. I need not to worry circumstances nor what I look like to people. In my doubts of God I saw myself the worse of sinners. How can I look myself above others who are struggling, doubting God, weak in their faith when I was the weakest?
I hope this post will remind me in the future of God's faithfulness and that life is still about God when all appears to have gone wrong and the world attempts to hide or ignore Him. Our Holy Almighty Loving Just God is worth it and deserves all the glory. Now to live it and believe as so...

What is God doing?

From New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp. (I highly recommended this devotional)

The difficulties of your life are not in the way of God's plan; they are a tool of it. They're crafted to advance his work of grace.

Perhaps the two most important questions you could ask between your conversion and your final resurrection are:

1. What in the world is God doing right here, right now?
2. How in the world should I respond to what God is doing?

The way that you answer these questions determines, in a real way, the character of your faith and the direction of your life. Consider how James answers these questions in the very first part of his letter:

 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 
    If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. 
    Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. 
    Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. (1:2-12)

What is God doing in the here and now? He is employing the difficulties of life as tools of grace to produce character in you that would not grow any other way. So your trials are not a sign that god has forgotten you or is being unfaithful to his promises. Rather, they stand as a reminder that he is committed to his grace and will not forsake it - it will complete its work. No, he's not exercising his power to make your life easy. No, he's not at work trying to deliver your particular definition of happiness. He's giving you much more than that - eternally faithful, forgiving, and transforming grace.
And what should your response be? James says, "remain steadfast under trial." Don't become discouraged and give up. Don't listen to the lies of the enemy. Don't forsake your good habits of faith. Don't question God's goodness. Look at your trials and see grace. Behind those difficulties is an ever-present Redeemer who is completing his work.

When People are Big and God is Small Part 1

After a couple months, I am back at reviewing the book When People are Big and God is Small by Ed Welch. It has many truths that hit to the core and points out the subtlety of the things culture tells us. Read the book! I will quote a few things from some chapters I found poignant.

Chapter 1 Love Tanks with a Leak

Many Christians responded by saying that a better treatment for codependency is to know that God loves you more than you think. God can fill you with love, so you don’t have to be filled by other people. This certainly is better than the exhortation to love yourself more, but – and this might sound controversial – even this answer is incomplete. The love of God can be a profound answer to just about any human struggle, but sometimes we can use it in such a way that it becomes a watered down version of profoundly rich truth. For example, sometimes, because of shortcomings in us rather than Scripture, this answer misses the call to “consider others better than yourselves” (Phil 2:3), or it ignores personal repentance. (18)

To really understand the roots of the fear of man, we must begin to ask the right questions. Instead of “How can I feel better about myself and not be controlled by what people think?” a better question is “Why am I so concerned about self-esteem?” or “Why do I have to have someone – even Jesus – think that I am great?” (19)

Chapter 2 “People Will See Me”

The massive interest in self-esteem and self-worth exists because it is trying to help us with a real problem. The problem is that we really are not okay. We truly are deficient. The problem is, in part, our nakedness before God.

Chapter 3 “People Will Reject Me”

Only people-lovers are able to confront. Only people-lovers are not controlled by other people Paul indicated to the Galatians that if he were still trying to please men, he would not be a servant of God (Gal 1:10).

But people are our idol of choice. They are worshiped because we perceive that they have power to give us something. We think they can bless us.

Chapter 5 “The World Wants me to Fear People”

“Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 19:19) is considered the biblical proof text. When interpreted through cultural spectacles, this verse means that we must love ourselves in order to love other people. But in reality the passage doesn’t even suggest such an interpretation. Jesus spoke these words to a rich young man who clearly loved himself and his possessions too much. There is only one command in the passage and it is “love your neighbor.” Nobody, including the writers of Scripture, could have dreamed that this passage taught self-love.

The Bible rightly understood, asks the question, “Why are you so concerned about yourself?” Furthermore, it indicates that our culture’s proposed cure – increased self-love – is actually the disease. If we fail to recognize the reality and depth of our sin problem, God will become less important, and people will become more important. (81)

Can you hear the way our culture encourages the fear of man? “Needs” or “rights” lead irresistibly into fear of man. We’ve seen that whatever you think you need, you come to fear. If you “need” love (to feel okay about yourself), you will soon be controlled by the one who dispenses love. (87)

Meanwhile, the Christian church has been listening to all that the world has been saying… But just because I feel a “need” to be loved doesn’t mean that this desire is really a “God-given need,” a “legitimate need”, or a “primal need.”