In our last session we ended with this brief comment below, a comment that cannot be left as it is.
“A second means for stoking fervor in God is being in the Word, the Bible, daily. This must come as no surprise to even the most casual Christian. God has revealed Himself in a book, and if we remain ignorant of what is contained in these pages, we will remain ignorant of God Himself, and all of our thoughts about Him will be little more than vague and vain speculations.”
And yet how many professing Christians today do not know even the general landscape of the Bible, let alone the great and deep mines of biblical glory. Today we live in an age where there are more Bibles available to us than ever before, whether soft back, hard back, on tape, CD or online. We have every conceivable translation at our fingertips and yet the current Christian community in America has never been as biblically illiterate as it is now! People who say they have given their lives to Christ, who say they have been born again, limp around sniffing Christian fumes like Our Daily Bread three minutes per day, or pat themselves on the back, declaring, “I read the Bible through last year!” What that person needs to know is that the Bible can be read in seventy two hours by someone reading at an average speed, which translates to a whopping twelve minutes per day.
Quite simply, not soaking your mind in the Bible daily and more, will result in clear conformity to the world and only minor transformation into Christlikeness.
J.I Packer said it this way; “If I were the devil, one of my first aims would be to stop folk from digging into the Bible. Knowing that it is the Word of God, teaching men to know and love and serve the God of the Word, I should do all I could to surround it with the spiritual equivalent of pits, thorn hedges, and man traps, to frighten people off . . . .At all costs I should want to keep them from using their minds in a disciplined way to get the measure of its message.”
God has spoken to us in words!! Let that hit you brothers and sisters. How we cut ourselves off at the knees, wondering why Jesus is little more than a historical figure to us, when we only nibble at the Word, or sniff at it. Paul wrote to Timothy, “All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness . . .” 2 Timothy 3:16. The writer of Hebrews wrote, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 12:4 That means God has laid up treasure, great wealth, great food for our minds, souls and hearts to glut ourselves on, and when we expose ourselves to God in this way, soaking like a tea bag soaks in boiled water, we become more like Christ, we reflect more and more of His reality in our lives, and become increasingly useful to God, useful and happy, because to be doing the works of God is profoundly satisfying, liberating and eternally significant.
Please read your Bible and pursue Christ there, and in so doing, seeking the best Being in the universe, find your true joy in the Friend who will never leave you nor forsake you.
Another means through which you can increase your delight in God is to put your faith to the test. Engaging in vigorous dialogue with people who may not share your Christian convictions can be very invigorating and faith-building. When the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses come to the door, tell them you can’t visit right now, but pin down a day and time, prepare yourself by doing some research, pray a lot, read your Bible a lot, and have at it. If you have had little experience with dealing with demons or spiritual darkness, this will give you a taste. It will not be pleasant, you will find it exhausting and perhaps even depressing, but in the defense of the Gospel you will also discover the hills upon which you are willing to die, and Christ will become more real to you.
Another means through which the fires of faith in Jesus Christ can be kindled is by being regular about setting aside time in the week to get away with God. Like a daily retreat into God, it is very helpful to build that habit on a slightly larger scale, giving extended time to God once a week, more extended time monthly and even more extended time yearly. As a marriage is strengthened by daily communication, by getting away together on weekly dates, and by making more extended time for one another on a monthly and yearly basis, so is your faith in God strengthened when this becomes the pattern of your life as a Christian seeking communion with his/her God. Perhaps it means taking two hours every Sunday to be alone in the Word, with a notepad and a pencil. Maybe it’s getting to the Schuyler Retreat Center once a year for a weekend of nothing but quiet contemplation. The point is that God is very much exalted in our pursuit of Him and we get to enjoy a deeper and deepening communion with Him. What a good deal!
We have obviously not exhausted all the means through which God can be more clearly seen and rejoiced in, but I would like to now turn the corner and begin examining why it is that delighting in God, tasting and seeing that He is good, is such a rare thing in many a Christian’s life.
There are lots of reasons, but let’s start with this one; undue affection for, or attraction to lesser satisfactions. Here’s an example; let’s say you go to the basketball game and your team loses a close one. You go home and have trouble sleeping because you are all stressed out because of the game. So distracted are you that you get up and go to the office to work in the middle of the night. The fellow who sat beside you saw the same game, got just as excited as you did and was also disappointed that his team lost, but when he got home, he went to bed and slept like a baby. What’s the difference? Could it be that you put a disproportionate amount of yourself into the game and its outcome, whereas the other guy simply treated it as a game, as entertainment, enjoying it, to be sure, riding the emotional roller coaster, but giving it the right amount of attention, and thus being able to turn it off once he got home?
There is nothing wrong with thoroughly enjoying life, delighting in your children, gaining deep satisfaction for a job well done at work, drinking deeply from the wellspring of your spouse’s affection etc . . ., but when those affections eclipse the affections we have for Christ, there’s something seriously askew. That is precisely where many of us are. We get more excited about our new sofa set or living room rug than we do about being in communion with Almighty God, and this, quite simply is idolatry. It is no less than taking the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me,” (Exodus 20:3) and crisply setting it aside, saying “this does not apply to me.”
I think we understand that the Christian life is a competition for the heart’s affections, but what we may not understand so well is that that very competition comes not just from sinful sources. Most of us believe and know from scripture and experience that sin will dull our affections for God, and that is pretty obvious, but perfectly good things, sweetly gracious gifts from God Himself can become idols that ensnare the heart and mind and thus serve an exceedingly evil purpose, which is to make less of God. This is so commonplace today! Think about it; men, do you like making love more than you like being alone in God’s counsel? Women, do you love cuddling with your kids more than you do being cuddled by God? The language of texts like Psalm 73:25 lay us bare and reveal just how taken we are by earthly delights, both good and evil. “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You.” Wow. Big pause. All I can say to that is, “I believe . . . but please help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)
Let’s end today’s note with yet another glimpse into what is possible for those who believe, and just how radically we can be held and taken by this universe-making, life-breathing God.
“For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Philippians1:21
“Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, (a word which Biblically defined lies somewhere between crap and sh_t) in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes from faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3:7-11
Paul was a man just like us, whose striving was to know Christ and make him known. Let us pray to God that we become increasingly more Pauline, and thus more intoxicated in Christ and increasingly weaned from the world.