Humility, the Bow of the Brave

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This post from Ann really spoke to me today. May it speak to your heart as well. It is well worth the minutes to read the entire thing...

when you get to the root of some of the fears

Who said courage wears a Red Badge?

It’s just khaki capris, a black tee, I pull out of the closet for a day dawning summer, me leaving the house for the heat, appointment and errands.

I have no red badge of courage, but I’m trying to wear prayer, the murmur of the weak made strong in the breaking.

Fear can snap the brave bones… stiff twigs underfoot. I keep fumbling prayer.

Pray for courage while I comb my hair, while I slip on my sandals, while I grab my bag, the keys.

Pray for courage because driving into town, even just to the grocery for bananas, can break me.

They call it agoraphobia: an anxiety disorder which leads to avoiding spaces or situations associated with anxiety. I call it the vise, chokehold to the neck, crushing esophagus hard, leaving you wild to breathe.

In the beginning, I took medication to ease the panic that surged in the gut, wave of terror to the throat, when I was in crowds. The last fifteen years, I take only prayer.

Then open the front door and take the first step.

I do. Courage isn’t only for for the everyday wars waging in our soul.

On the way to the city, country roads long ribbons unwrapping a morning all gilded, I spill herbal tea all over my pants.

I get lost.

Then I am late. Ridiculously so.

Then I get a ticket. I think I might die.

“This is the reason…” I catch my reflection in the rear view mirror, mutter to me a blotchy mess of hives, all flaming nerves. “This is the reason why you never leave home.”

The woman in the mirror is ashen and I look into her eyes and I know I should comfort, but a sharp rebuke’s burning up the tip of my tongue… The Spirit interrupts.

“It’s really your ugly pride that makes you afraid. “Just bow in humility to rise up in courage.”

His voice comes gentle, immediately, a grace caress for the angst-twisted. I exhale, a long slow release.

Bow in humility …

I whisper that comfort to pale face reflected.

Is it pride and appearances that box our lives up small and afraid?

Who dares explore, risk, attempt, when terrified to play the fool?

It’s only pride’s hunger for perfection that paralyzes a heart, keeps us enslaved to fear.

Pride is fear’s father and pride is the kin to all cowards.

He soothes my anxiety with surprising truth: Slip on humility, make humility the mainstay of a heart’s wardrobe, and the world enlarges. Open humility’s drawer and there lies courage. Courage to go anywhere, try anything, meet anyone.

If I wear humility, I’m not afraid of the falling.

Wear humility because really what’s the worst that can happen? Exactly what has happened on a summer morning: I play the fool. Isn’t that who I really am? Isn’t that okay — because isn’t that who I am?

Are all my fears evidence of all my pride?

Jesus didn’t find courage for the Cross in the pride of who He was or bold illusions of self-sufficiency. He didn’t find Calvary courage by pulling himself up by the bootstraps of self-confidence and self-determination.

Jesus gave the world the greatest courage of all in the lowest place of all:

“he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).

Courage for the impossible can only be found in the possibility of humility because “This is the one God esteems: he who is humble…” (Is. 66:2). Courage lives in the heart of the lowly… those who can embrace humility and the possibility of imperfection … because that needy place is the place we meet God.

Humility births courage and is brother to the brave.

I look at my watch, glance at the map, find that scared face again in the mirror and the laugh, long and good, begins in the pit of my stomach where it can unknot all my fears of failure.

I laugh and breathe deep and bow low to rise up and courage doesn’t wear a red badge but humility.

And maybe a pair of pants stained right through red, everything running all down…

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Walking the Life

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J. I. Packer aptly describes the abundant life:

It is the life of regeneration, repentance, and assured faith and hope in Christ,
based on knowing oneself to be a justified and adopted child of God
whom the Triune Lord has loved from eternity,
whom the Son has redeemed by dying on the cross,
and whom the Holy Spirit, the divine change agent, now indwells.
It is the life of loving both the written Word of the Lord
and the living Lord of the Word.
It is a life of rigorous self-watch and self-discipline,
for the deforming, distracting, desensitizing, demonic power of sin
in one’s spiritual system must be detected and resisted.
It is a life of reckoning with our temperamental limitations,
whatever mixture of sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic we find we are, and seeking to transcend those shortcomings.
It is a life of prayer—
praise and petition;
complaint
and confession;
meditation and celebration.
And with that it is a quest for full Christlikeness of character and action,
inasmuch as Christ “exhibited to the world such an illustrious pattern of humility, divine love,
discreet zeal,
self-denial,
obedience,
patience,
resignation,
fortitude,
meekness,
forgiveness,
compassion,
benevolence,
and universal holiness,
as neither men nor angels ever saw before.” 1
Finally, religion honors God by goodwill and integrity in all relationships
and by enterprise in seizing such opportunities for “good works” of benevolence and help as present themselves.

Beautifully said.

1 Jonathan Edwards, “The Life and Diary of the Rev. David Brainerd,” Works, ed. Hickman, 2:313 as quoted in A God Entranced Vision of All Things, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor (Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 2004), 95.

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His Glory, Our Joy

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Did you notice that the picture above is a mirror image?
As one side perfectly reflects the other,
a beauty is beheld,
a beauty that would not exist
without this reflection.

In the same way, the shining of God's glory and our true happiness work the same way. They are not opposed, but united in holy splendor. Hear Jonathan Edwards:

And though the emanation of God’s fulness,
intended in the creation,
is to the creature as its object;
and though the creature is the subject of the fulness communicated,
which is the creature’s good;
yet it does not necessarily follow that,
even in doing so,
God did not make himself his end.
It comes to the same thing.
God’s respect to the creature’s good,
and his respect to himself,
is not a divided respect;
but both are united in one,
as the happiness of the creature aimed at
is happiness in union with himself...
The more happiness the greater union...
And as the happiness will be increasing to eternity,
the union will become more and more strict [i.e., closely bound] and perfect;
nearer and more like to that between God the Father and the Son;
who are so united, that their interest is perfectly one...
Let the most perfect union with God be represented
by something at an infinite height above us;
and the eternally increasing union of the saints with God,
by something that is ascending constantly towards that infinite height...
and that is to continue thus to move to all eternity. 1

God's glory and our good are one. Our highest good is to bask in and shine forth His glory and His glory is resplendent all the more when poured into and through our lives to others and back to Him. It is glorious to contemplate...


1 Jonathan Edwards, “The End for Which God Created the World,” in Works, ed. Hickman, 120, as quoted in A God Entranced Vision of All Things, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor (Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 2004), 94.

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Soli Deo Gloria

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The glory of God and our joy weave together a bond that cannot be broken. We are made by our Creator to see, know, experience, and shine forth His glory. That is our purpose. And when we are living that purpose, our joy is full to overflowing. As we walk in love and obedience (which are really the same thing), the glory of God shines upon and into us and is likewise reflected back to its Luminary Source for all to see. This is beauty itself.

And yet, this joy-glory experienced here in our whisper of a life is nothing, nothing, compared to the glory that awaits in Heaven, in eternity. C. S. Lewis said it well in the Chronicles of Narnia when the children have been brought through a fatal train crash into the real Narnia that is to be their home forever.

Then Aslan [the Christ-like lion] turned to them and said:
“You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be ... all of you
are (as you used to call it in the Shadowlands) dead. The term is over;
the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

. . . We can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.
But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in
this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover
and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the
Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever:
in which every chapter is better than the one before. 1

Do we dare to live our lives this way? That all our days now are only the cover and title page to a tale we can hardly imagine? One yet to come?

Amy Plantinga Pauw captures it as follows:

Because “heaven is a progressive state,” the heavenly joy of the saints,
and even of the triune God, will forever continue to increase.... Saints
can look forward to an unending expansion of their knowledge and
love of God, as their capacities are stretched by what they receive ...
there is no intrinsic limit to their joy in heaven.... As the saints con-
tinue to increase in knowledge and love of God, God receives more and
more glory. This heavenly reciprocity will never cease, because the
glory God deserves is infinite, and the capacity of the saints to perceive
God’s glory and praise him for it is ever increasing. 2

Ah! What earthly trinkets can compare to such as this? Let us live now with this glory in view, beating in our hearts, animating our lives. Let us prepare now for the wonders we shall yet behold.

~~~

1 C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1964), 165.

2 Amy Plantinga Pauw, “The Supreme Harmony of All”: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002), 180-181.

Both as quoted in A God Entranced Vision of All Things, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor (Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 2004), 93.

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The Power

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A bite from the dessert of my day. A hard one to swallow, as I have walked this road far too often myself.

Many Christians think stoicism is a good antidote to sensuality.

It isn’t.

It is hopelessly weak and ineffective.

And the reason it fails is that the power of sin comes from its promise of pleasure

and is meant to be defeated by the superior promise of pleasure in God,

not by the power of the human will.

Willpower religion,

when it succeeds,

gets glory for the will.

It produces legalists,

not lovers.

~ John Piper, A God-Entranced View of All Things; The LIfe and Legacy of Jonathan Edwards

How great art Thou, Oh God of all, so merciful, so gracious and relentless in Thy pursuit of our deliverance from sin into Thy inexpressible life-giving joy.

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Rejoicing in the Thou

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Another bite from the dessert of my day. Chew very, very slowly to taste the sweet and the bitter in these oh so wise words.

This is ... the difference between the joy of the hypocrite,

and the joy of the true saint.

The [hypocrite] rejoices in himself;

self is the first foundation of his joy:

the [true saint] rejoices in God....

True saints have their minds, in the first place,

inexpressibly pleased and delighted

with the sweet ideas of the glorious and amiable [friendly, pleasant] nature

of the things of God.

And this is the spring of all their delights,

and the cream of all their pleasures. ...

But the dependence of the affections of hypocrites is in a contrary order:

they first rejoice ... that they are made so much of by God;

and then on that ground,

he seems

in a sort [in some sort of way],

lovely to them.

~ Jonathan Edwards, quoted in A God-Entranced View of All Things; The LIfe and Legacy of Jonathan Edwards

The first thing I thought of was how many of us Christians worship. Yes, God is personal and pours His blessings of comfort and joy and help and so on.

But do we ever worship Him merely for His greatness? Who He IS?

Is that where our thoughts start, when they wander on their own? His excellencies?

Is that where we take our thoughts when we are troubled? His supremacy? Or merely, our need?

Let's reintroduce these words in our daily vocabulary:

Thou, Thee, Thine

and stay there, linger there, dwell there... first and foremost.

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Godliness vs. Silliness

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Preach it, Matt.

Ye who have ears to hear, hear.

HT: Justin Taylor

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Love, Trust and Obey

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"Be amazed at this, O heavens!

Be shocked and utterly dumbfounded,”

says the Lord.

“Do so because my people have committed a double wrong:

they have rejected me,

the fountain of life-giving water,

and they have dug cisterns for themselves,

cracked cisterns which cannot even hold water.”

~ Jeremiah 2:12-13

From my morning devotions, Timothy Keller's Counterfeit Gods:

Idols as Lover:

Idols capture our imagination,

and we can locate them by looking at our daydreams.

What do we enjoy imagining?

What are our fondest dreams?

We look to our idols to love us,

to provide us with value and a sense of beauty, significance, and worth.

Idols as Savior:

Idols give us a sense of being in control,

and we can locate them by looking at our nightmares.

What do we fear the most?

What, if we lost it, would make life not worth living?

We make "sacrifices" to appease and please our gods,

who we believe will protect us.

We look to our idols to provide us with a sense of confidence and safety.

Idols as Lord and Master:

Whatever we trust, we also serve...

We can locate idols by looking at our most unyielding emotions.

What makes us uncontrollably angry, anxious, or despondent?

What racks us with a guilt we can't shake?

Idols control us, since we feel we must have them or life is meaningless.

"Come back to me, you wayward people.

I want to cure your waywardness...

If you, Israel, want to come back,” says the Lord,

“if you want to come back to me

you must get those disgusting idols out of my sight

and must no longer go astray.

You must be truthful, honest and upright."...

Yes, the Lord has this to say,...

“Like a farmer breaking up hard unplowed ground,

you must break your rebellious will and make a new beginning;

just as a farmer must clear away thorns lest the seed is wasted,

you must get rid of the sin that is ruining your lives.

Just as ritual circumcision cuts away the foreskin

as an external symbol of dedicated covenant commitment,

you must genuinely dedicate yourselves to the Lord

and get rid of everything that hinders your commitment to me"....

~ Jeremiah 3:22; 4:1-4

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"My Precious"

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Gollum's "My Precious"

from the movie of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

What is precious to you?

Most precious?

What would you name, "My Precious"?

From Timothy Keller's Counterfeit Gods:

The Ring is what Professor Tom Shippey calls "a psychic amplifier,"

which takes the heart's fondest desires

and magnifies them to idolatrous proportions.

Some good characters in the book want to

liberate slaves,

or preserve their people's land,

or visit wrong-doers with just punishment.

These are all good objectives.

But the Ring makes them willing to do anything

to achieve them,

anything at all.

It turns the good thing

into an absolute

that overturns every other allegiance or value.

...

What is an idol? It is anything more important to you

than God,

anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more

than God,

anything you seek to give you

what only God can give.

A counterfeit god is anything so central

and essential

to your life that,

should you lose it,

your life would feel hardly worth living.

...

An idol is whatever you look at and say,

in your heart of hearts,

"If I have that,

than I'll feel my life has meaning,

then I'll know I have value,

then I'll feel significant

and secure."

...

If anything becomes more fundamental than God to your happiness,

meaning in life,

and identity,

then it is an idol.

...

All good things can

and do

take on disproportionate size and power within a society.

They promise us

safety,

peace,

and happiness

if only we base our lives on them.

Fix our eyes, Lord Christ, upon You. Wrench our gaze from any lesser thing.

Let our love and allegiance admit no impediments.

For love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! It is an ever-fixed mark

~ from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116

May it be so in us, by Your grace, Amen.

Pray for Trials to Go Away?

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Wise words.

Ask Doug: Trials and Faith from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

Love this.

I would only add to remember that Jesus did pray for the cup to be taken away from Him, yet He then asked for God's will to be done. He asked to be spared, but was fully prepared to drink. And did, down to the last drop. Enduring, for the joy set before Him.

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Because He Is Good

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Audio: Matt Chandler

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Good News

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HT: Justin Taylor

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Be a Telescope

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Spiral Galaxy M74 Source: Hubblesite.org

A Perfect Storm of Turbulent Gases in the Omega/Swan Nebula (M17) Source: Hubblesite.org

Sharing a bite from the dessert of my day:

We waste our lives

when we do not pray

and think

and dream

and plan

and work

toward magnifying God

in all spheres of life.

God created us for this:

to live our lives in a way

that makes him look more like the greatness

and the beauty

and the infinite worth

that he really is.

In the night sky of this world

God appears to most people,

if at all,

like a pinprick of light

in a heaven of darkness.

But he created us and called us

to make him look like what he really is.

This is what it means to be created in the image of God.

We are meant to image forth in the world

what he is really like.

~ John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life

The Helix Nebula Source: Hubblesite.org

Flash From Star V838 Monocerotis Echoes Through Space Source: Hubblesite.org

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Enjoying and Displaying God

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Sharing yet another bite from the dessert of my day:

God created me—and you—to live

with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—

namely, a passion to glorify God

by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence

in all the spheres of life.

Enjoying and displaying are both crucial.

If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it,

we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism.

But if we claim to enjoy his excellence and do not display it for oth-

ers to see and admire,

we deceive ourselves,

because the mark of God-enthralled joy is to overflow and expand

by extending itself into the hearts of others.

The wasted life is the life without a passion

for the supremacy of God

in all things

for the joy of all peoples.

~ John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life

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To Glorify God = Enjoy Him Forever

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Sharing a bit of the dessert of my day:

[The] glory of God [does not] consist merely in the creature’s

perceiving his perfections:

for the creature may perceive the power and wisdom of God,

and yet take no delight in it,

but abhor it.

Those creatures that so do, don’t glorify God.

Nor doth the glory of God consist especially in speaking of

his perfections:

for words avail not any otherwise than as they express the sentiment of the mind.

This glory of God, therefore, [consists] in the creature’s admiring and rejoicing

[and] exulting in the manifestation of his beauty and excel-

lency. . . .

the essence of glorifying . . . God consists, therefore, in the creature’s rejoicing

in God’s manifestations of his beauty,

which is the joy and happiness we speak of.

So we see it comes to this at last:

that the end of the creation is that God may communicate happiness to the creature;

for if God created the world that He may be glorified in the creature,

He created it that they might rejoice in his glory:

for we have shown that they are the same.

~ Jonathan Edwards,

“Nothing Upon Earth Can Represent the Glories of Heaven,” The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 14

quoted in Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper.

(Emphasis added.)

God’s purpose for my life is

that I have a passion for God's glory

and

that I have a passion for my joy in that glory,

and

that these two are one passion.

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New Birth, Not New Resolutions

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The new year approacheth... A clerk in the local hardware store asked me what my new year resolutions were going to be. I replied by saying I don't do them.

Conversion under the terms of the new

covenant is more than a matter of position and status in Christ, though

never less: it includes miraculous Spirit-given transformation, something

immeasurably beyond mere human resolution. It is new birth; it makes us

new creatures; it demonstrates that the gospel is the power of God unto

salvation. All the creedal orthodoxy in the world cannot replace it. The

reason why ‘You must be born again’ is so important is that you must be

born again.”

~ D. A. Carson, Finally Alive by John Piper

I am resolved to be more like Christ

in whatever way He works within me.

I shall join Him in His work within me

but never by striving in the flesh

for it is by His power and by His Spirit.

It is continually

being born again.

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