Deyoung Quotes

The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God.

We can stop pleading with God to show us the future, and start living and obeying like we are confident that He holds the future.

The one indispensable requirement for producing godly, mature Christians is godly, mature Christians.

Seek first the kingdom of God, and then trust that He will take care of our needs, even before we know what they are and where we're going.

So go marry someone, provided you're equally yoked and you actually like being with each other. Go get a job, provided it's not wicked. Go live somewhere in something with somebody or nobody. But put aside the passivity and the quest for complete fulfillment and the perfectionism and the preoccupation with the future, and for God's sake start making some decisions in your life. Don't wait for the liver-shiver. If you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you will be in God's will, so just go out and do something.

If you think God has promised this world will be a five-star hotel, you will be miserable as you live through the normal struggles of life. But if you remember that God promised we would be pilgrims and this world may feel more like a desert or even a prison, you might find your life surprisingly happy.

If the gospel is old news to you, it will be dull news to everyone else.

We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God. And that's all we need to know. Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.

The only chains God wants us to wear are the chains of righteousness--not the chains of hopeless subjectivism, not the shackles of risk-free living, not the fetters of horoscope decision making--just the chains befitting a bond servant of Christ Jesus. Die to self. Live for Christ. And then do what you want, and go where you want, for God's glory.

Busyness does not mean you are a faithful or fruitful Christian. It only means you are busy, just like everyone else. And like everyone else, your joy, your heart and your soul are in danger.

Anxiety is simply living out the future before it gets here.

So the end of the matter is this: Live for God. Obey the Scriptures. Think of others before yourself. Be holy. Love Jesus. And as you do these things, do whatever else you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you’ll be walking in the will of God.

Esther was more man than most men I know, myself included. Many of us—men and women—are extremely passive and cowardly. We don’t take risks for God because we are obsessed with safety, security, and most of all, with the future.

It sounds really spiritual to say God is interested in a relationship, not in rules. But it's not biblical. From top to bottom, the Bible is full of commands. They aren't meant to stifle a relationship with God, but to protect it, seal it, and define it. Never forget: first God delivered the Israelites from Egypt, then He gave them the law. God's people were not redeemed by observing the law. But they were redeemed so that they might obey the law.

Some Christians need encouragement to think before they act. Others need encouragement to act after they think.

We wake up most days not trying to serve, just trying to survive.

Sincerity is a Christian virtue, as is honesty about our struggles. But my generation needs to realize that Christianity is more than chic fragility, endless self-revelation, and the coolness that comes with authenticity.

Justice in a fallen world is not equality of outcome but equal treatment under a fair law.

Am I trying to do good or to make myself look good?

We're not consistent. We're not stable. We don't stick with anything. Most of the time we can't even make decisions.

We take hold of Christ as his words take hold us.

J. C. Ryle observed, “A man may preach from false motives. A man may write books, and make fine speeches, and seem diligent in good works, and yet be a Judas Iscariot. But a man seldom goes into his closet, and pours out his soul before God in secret, unless he is serious.

You can exaggerate your authority in handling the Scriptures, but you cannot exaggerate the Scriptures' authority to handle you. You can use the word of God to come to wrong conclusions, but you cannot find any wrong conclusions in the word of God.

God's will is always your sanctification.

What is wrong, and heartbreakingly foolish and wonderfully avoidable, is to live a life with more craziness than we want because we have less Jesus than we need.

Legalism is a problem in the church, but so is anti-nomianism. Granted, I don't hear anyone saying, 'Let's continue in sin that grace may abound'. That's the worse form of antinomianism. But strictly speaking, antinomianism simply means no-law, and some Christians have very little place for the law in their pursuit of holiness.

Stewarding my time is not about selfishly pursuing only the things I like to do. It’s about effectively serving others in the ways I’m best able to serve and in the ways I am most uniquely called to serve.

Think of (the Kingdom) like the sun. As it peeks through on a cloudy day, we do not say the sun has grown. We say, 'The sun has broken through.' Our view of the sun has changed, or obstacles to the sun have been removed, but we have not changed the sun.

It sounds really spiritual to say God is interested in a relationship, not in rules. But it’s not biblical. From top to bottom the Bible is full of commands. They aren’t meant to stifle a relationship with God, but to protect it, seal it, and define it.

No matter how goofy or insignificant your church may seem, fellowship in that body of believers is fellowship with God.

Most moms and dads think they are either the best or the worst parents in the world. Both are wrong.

My fear is that of all the choices people face today, the one they rarely consider is, "How can I serve most effectively and fruitfully in the local church?" I wonder if the abundance of opportunities to explore today is doing less to help make well-rounded disciples of Christ and more to help Christians avoid long term responsibility and have less long-term impact.

The biggest deception of our digital age may be the lie that says we can be omni-competent, omni-informed, and omni-present. We cannot be any of these things. We must choose our absence, our inability, and our ignorance—and choose wisely.

There is an eternal difference between regret and repentance. Regret feels bad about past sins. Repentance turns away from past sins. Regret looks to our own circumstances. Repentance looks to God. Most of us are content with regret. We just want to feel bad for awhile, have a good cry, enjoy the cathartic experience, bewail our sin, and talk about how sorry we are. But we don’t want to change. We don’t want to deal with God.

God's will for your life is not very complicated. Obviously, living a Christlike life is hard work, and what following Jesus entails is not clear in every situation. But as an overarching principle, the will of God for your life is pretty straightforward: Be holy like Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, for the glory of God.

Every true Christian should feel deep in his bones an utter dependence on God’s self-revelation in the Scriptures. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4).

He calls us to run hard after Him, His commands, and His glory. The decision to be in God's will is not the choice between Memphis or Fargo or engineering or art; it's the daily decision we face to seek God's kingdom or ours, submit to His lordship or not, live according to His rules or our own.

Christ justifies no one whom he does not also sanctify.

We have been stuffed full of praise for mediocrity and had our foibles diagnosed away with hyphenated jargon and pop psychology.

You can’t make sense of the Bible without understanding that God is holy and that this holy God is intent on making a holy people to live with him forever in a holy heaven.

busyness must start with the one sin that begets so many of our other sins: pride.

We have to schedule time to be unscheduled.

Good works should always be rooted in the good news

We will have to work hard to rest.

Reconciliation for the powerful and privileged means trusting those who have lived under oppression and even following their lead in becoming one new humanity.

Reconciliation: Our Greatest Challenge--Our Only Hope.

Christians often equate holiness with activism and spiritual disciplines. And while it's true that activism is often the outgrowth of holiness and spiritual disciplines are necessary for the cultivation of holiness, the pattern of piety in the Scripture is more explicitly about our character. We put off sin and put on righteousness. We put to death the deeds of the flesh and put on Christ. To use the older language, we pursue mortification of the old man and the vivification of the new.

we think of our children as amazingly fragile and entirely moldable. Both assumptions are mistaken. It’s harder to ruin our kids than we think and harder to stamp them for success than we’d like.

Jesus understood his mission. He was not driven by the needs of others, though he often stopped to help hurting people. He was not driven by the approval of others, though he cared deeply for the lost and the broken. Ultimately, Jesus was driven by the Spirit. He was driven by his God-given mission. He knew his priorities and did not let the many temptations of a busy life deter him from his task.

To paraphrase Titus 3:3, we live as slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in chaos and envy, hassled by others and hassling one another. We are all very busy, but not with what matters

It’s true that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1), but this does not mean God will condone all our thoughts and behaviors. Though in Christ he overlooks our sins in a judicial sense, he is not blind to them.

My point is that we should spend more time trying to figure out how to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God (as instructed in Micah 6: 8) as a doctor or lawyer and less time worrying about whether God wants us to be a doctor or lawyer.

Here's the problem: when every sin is seen as the same, we are less likely to fight any sins at all. Why should I stop sleeping with my girlfriend when there will still be lust in my heart? Why pursue holiness when even one sin in my life means I'm Osama bin Hitler in God's eyes? Again, it seems humble to act as if no sin is worse than another, but we lose the impetus for striving and the ability to hold each other accountable when we tumble down the slip-n-slide of moral equivalence. All of a sudden the elder who battles the temptation to take a second look at the racy section of the Lands End catalog shouldn't dare exercise church discipline ont he young man fornicating with reckless abandon. When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness; we've cheapened God's goodness.

Perhaps out inactivity is not so much waiting on God as it is an expression of the fear of man, the love of the praise of man, and disbelief in God's providence.

Just about the worst thing a leader can nurture in his heart is self-pity. And just about the worst thing a leader can do in front of his people is murmur and complain.

the happiest and most fulfilled times of my life have all involved a prolonged separation from the Internet.

They wish the church could be more diverse, but then leave to meet in a coffee shop with other well-educated thirtysomethings who are into film festivals, NPR, and carbon offsets.

Our feelings matter. Our stories matter. Our friends matter. But ultimately we must search the Scriptures to see what matters most.

Busyness kills more Christians than bullets.

They took a bite from the forbidden fruit, and the fruit bit back.

God gives us Sabbath as a gift; it’s an island of get-to in a sea of have-to.

Busyness is like sin: kill it, or it will be killing you.

You can borrow time, but you can't steal it.

The more my brain was fed, the hungrier it became.

Bad theology leads to despair, and proud theology leads to disdain. But humble, heartfelt Reformed theology should always lead to doxology.

The church needs lifers and those who can be counted on for the long haul.

the right conclusion can be handled in the wrong way. Focusing on other people’s sins, while ignoring our own, would be the wrong way.

We’re not only living lives of vanity; our passion for God is often nothing more than a passion to have God make our search for vanity a successful one.

Opportunities have often felt like obligations to me.

The salvation we all know we need is not to be found by looking within ourselves but by looking for grace outside ourselves.

We don't get to pick the age we will live in, and we don't get to choose all the struggles we will face. Faithfulness is ours to choose; the shape of faithfulness is God's to determine.

I tell my congregation at times, “You don’t have to feel conviction for every sermon. Some of you are actually obedient and faithful in this area.” Not perfectly, of course, but truly and sincerely.

Some Christians make the mistake of pitting love against law, as if the two were mutually exclusive. You either have a religion of love or a religion of law. But such an equation is profoundly unbiblical.

We are busy because we try to do too many things. We do too many things because we say yes to too many people. We say yes to all these people because we want them to like us and we fear their disapproval.

The world' is not another way of saying 'the people around us'. The world is everything that opposes the will of God. To put it another way, worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal, and righteousness look strange. In every society there is a principle of Babylon that makes war agains the children of God.

Nothing in the Bible encourages us to give sex the exalted status it has in our culture, as if finding our purpose, our identity, and our fulfillment all rest with what we can or cannot do with our private parts.

Most people leaving church still see the need for some kind of community. We shouldn't think most of them as interested in lone-ranger Christianity. Often, these ex-churchgoers meet together for prayer, accountability, and encouragement.

The biblical teaching is consistent and unambiguous: homosexual activity is not God’s will for his people. Silence in the face of such clarity is not prudence, and hesitation in light of such frequency is not patience. The Bible says more than enough about homosexual practice for us to say something too.

I think most Christians hear these urgent calls to do more (or feel them internally already) and learn to live with a low-level guilt that comes from not doing enough. We know we can always pray more and give more and evangelize more, so we get used to living in a state of mild disappointment with ourselves.

The Church acts as a sort of embassy for the government of the King. It is an outpost of the Kingdom of God surrounded by the kingdom of darkness. Just as an embassy is meant to showcase the life of a nation to the surrounding people, so the Church is meant to manifest the life of the Kingdom of God to the people around it.

If there really is a perfect will of God we are meant to discover, in which we will find tremendous freedom and fulfillment, why does it seem that everyone looking for God’s will is in such bondage and confusion? Christ died to give us freedom from the law (Galatians 5:1), so why turn the will of God into another law leading to slavery?

It used to be, as far as I can tell, that Christian parents basically tried to feed their kids, clothe them, teach them about Jesus, and keep them away from explosives. Now our kids have to sleep on their backs (no, wait, their tummies; no, never mind, their backs), while listening to Baby Mozart and surrounded by scenes of Starry, Starry Night.

The word of God is more than enough for the people of God to live their lives to the glory of God.

We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours.

God is love, but this is quite different from affirming that our culture’s understanding of love must be God.

The man who attempts Christianity without the church shoots himself in the foot, shoots his children in the leg, and shoots his grandchildren in the heart.

A theologically astute, immature Christian is like a 5-year-old flying an Apache helicopter.

The antidote to busyness of soul is not sloth and indifference. The antidote is rest, rhythm, death to pride, acceptance of our own finitude, and trust in the providence of God.

The whole of the Christian life, from election to justification to sanctification to final glorification, is made possible by and is an expression of our union with Christ.

The most important decision we face is the daily decision to live for Christ and die to self.

This book is a call for reconciliation in society that is radical, that goes to the roots.

Opening our home to others is a wonderful gift and a neglected discipline in the church.

Margin,” Swenson says, “is the space between our load and our limits.

The biggest deception of our digital age may be the lie that says we can be omni-competent, omni-informed, and omni-present.

We live in a permissive society that won’t count any sin against you as an adult, but will count the calories in your kids’ hot lunches.

Christian spirituality does not rest on mysticism; it rests in a Mediator.

when it comes to sanctification, it’s more important where you’re going than where you are.

Our genuine feelings aren’t always what others would recognize as socially appropriate.

They’re more tied up than we think, love and hate— both emotions are a confession that someone matters to us, that they have power over how we feel.

We are so busy with a million pursuits that we don’t even notice the most important things slipping away.

The best-looking Christian is the one growing by the Spirit into the likeness of Christ.

God does expect us to say no to a whole lot of good things so that we can be freed up to say yes to the most important things he has for us.

One of the most resilient and cherished myths of parenting is that parenting creates the child.

reconciliation is radical because it is biblical.

So much of our busyness comes down to meeting people’s expectations.

But friendship and love cannot survive without truthfulness, nor can a healthy view of ourselves.

The less we expect to suffer, the more devastating suffering is to bear.

The people on this planet who end up doing nothing are those who never realize they can't do everything.

Battling busyness is a community response.

Detachment from the pressing need to have my achievements be counted publicly is possible when I have a strong sense of being known and loved by God.

We must make learning from Him and taking time to be with Him a priority.

The person who never sets priorities is the person who does not believe in his own finitude.

. . .your tolerance is not love. It is unfaithfulness.

Taking a strange book seriously, Leviticus 18, 20

Reconciliation occurs between equals.

We don't get to pick the age we will live in, and we don't get to choose all the struggles we will face. Faithfulness is ours to choose; the shape of faithfulness is God to determine.

Our teachers, our friends, our science, our studies, even our eyes can deceive us. But the word of God is entirely true and always true: God’s word is firmly fixed in the heavens (v. 89); it doesn’t change. There is no limit to its perfection (v. 96); it contains nothing corrupt. All God’s righteous rules endure forever (v. 160); they never get old and never wear out.

I think the church is often a culprit in the busyness, especially in the evangelical church. Again, it's part of being Americans. Part of being evangelicals too is that we're highly activist. We are always diving in, willing to solve problems, and again there's a lot good there. But we also need the theological balance that the Kingdom is not ours to bring or ours to create.

What makes the Bible utterly unlike any other book—religious or otherwise—is the unsurpassed grace we encounter in its pages. We need Scripture because without it we cannot know the love of God.

God is not a Magic 8-Ball we shake up and peer into whenever we have a decision to make. He is a good God who gives us brains, shows us the way of obedience, and invites us to take risks for Him.

We don’t expect to be able to buy anything we want, because we know there is a limit to our money. But somehow we live as if time knew no bounds, when in fact time is much more limited than money.

To affirm the sufficiency of Scripture is not to suggest that the Bible tells us everything we want to know about everything, but it does tell us everything we need to know about what matters most.

nowhere do Jesus or the apostles ever treat the Old Testament as human reflections on the divine. It is instead the voice of the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:25; Heb. 3:7) and God’s own breath (2 Tim. 3:16).

If God opens the door for you to do something you know is good or necessary, be thankful for the opportunity. But other than that, don’t assume that the relative ease or difficulty of a new situation is God’s way of telling you to do one thing or the other. Remember, God’s will for your life is sanctification, and God tends to use discomfort and trials more than comfort and ease to make us holy.

As Christians we ought to fear being on the wrong side of the holy, apostolic, and universal church more than we fear being on the wrong side of discredited assumptions about progress and enlightenment.

An unchurched Christian is a grotesque anomaly. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought.”13

Jesus submitted his will to the Scriptures, committed his brain to studying the Scriptures, and humbled his heart to obey the Scriptures. The Lord Jesus, God’s Son and our Savior, believed his Bible was the word of God down to the sentences, to the phrases, to the words, to the smallest letter, to the tiniest specks—and that nothing in all those specks and in all those books in his Holy Bible could ever be broken.

When we embrace everything the Bible says about itself, then—and only then—will we believe what we should believe about the word of God, feel what we should feel, and do with the word of God what we ought to do.

Our feelings matter. Our stories matter. Our friends matter. But ultimately we must search the Scriptures to see what matters most. Don’t discount the messenger as a bigot if your real problem is with the Bible.

Hope for a future … free from oppression and injustice, when a new humanity includes all peoples, languages, tribes, and nations—now exists in the realm of mystery. Only the mystics see and experience it in its fullness.

God, don’t let anything unpleasant happen to anyone. Make everything in the world nice for everyone.” And when we aren’t praying this kind of prayer, we are praying for God to tell us that everything will turn out fine. That’s often what we are asking for when we pray to know the will of God. We aren’t asking for holiness, or righteousness, or an awareness of sin. We want God to tell us what to do so everything will turn out pleasant for us.

But before we get up close to the trees, we should step back and make sure we are gazing upon the same forest. As is so often the case with controversial matters, we will never agree on the smaller subplots if it turns out we aren’t even telling the same story. The Bible says something about homosexuality. I hope everyone can agree on at least that much. And I hope everyone can agree that the Bible is manifestly not a book about homosexuality.

Just remember the most serious threats are spiritual. When we are crazy busy, we put our souls at risk. The challenge is not merely to make a few bad habits go away. The challenge is to not let our spiritual lives slip away.

If you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you will be in God's will, so just go out and do something...Die to self. Live for Christ. And then do what you want, and go where you want, for God's glory.

We usually think of law leading us to gospel. And this is true—we see God’s standards, see our sin, and then see our need for a Savior. But it’s just as true that gospel leads to law. In Exodus, first God delivered his people from Egypt, then he gave the Ten Commandments. In Romans, Paul expounds on the sovereign free grace and the atoning work of Christ in chapters 1–11, and then in chapters 12–16 he shows us how to live in light of these mercies.

That I shrank back from all God called me to be and that I judged my own abilities as inadequate because I was not relying on God’s grace to grant me strength—these perhaps are insights so obvious I should have seen them for myself.

The only thing worse than failing to realize any of your dreams, is seeing them all come true. You were meant for something more. Even if you could be known the world over, what does it matter if you have no time to be known by God?

Many of us have had it so good that we have started looking for heaven on earth. We have lost any sort of pilgrim attitude. It’s all a matter of perspective. If you think that God has promised this world will be a five-star hotel, you will be miserable as you live though the normal struggles of life. But if you remember that God promised we would be pilgrims and this world may feel more like a desert or even a prison, you might find your life surprisingly happy.

This cannot be stated too strongly: From the very beginning, Christianity tied itself to history. The most important claims of Christianity are historical claims, and on the facts of history the Christian religion must stand or fall.

It may sound boring or out-of-date, but it just happens to be true: the way to grow in your relationship with Jesus is to pray, read your Bible, and go to a church where you’ll get good preaching, good fellowship, and receive the sacraments.

It’s hard not to conclude from a straightforward reading of Genesis 1–2 that the divine design for sexual intimacy is not any combination of persons, or even any type of two persons coming together, but one man becoming one flesh with one woman.

Obsessing over the future is not how God wants us to live, because showing us the future is not God’s way. His way is to speak to us in the Scriptures and transform us by the renewing of our minds. His way is not a crystal ball. His way is wisdom.

As long as there is one single child on the cross of pain, and indignity, of suffering, and futurelessness, I will stand up and I will fight for that child—a crucified child is my child. That is what solidarity means: every child on a cross is my child.

We usually think of law leading us to gospel. And this is true- we see God's standards, see our sin, and then see our need for a Savior. But it's just as true that gospel leads to law... the good news of the gospel leads to gracious instructions for obeying God.

But I know from personal experience that some forms of busyness are from the Lord and bring him glory. Effective love is rarely efficient. People take time. Relationships are messy. If we love others, how can we not be busy and burdened at least some of the time?

We have to believe that hearing from God is our good portion. We have to believe that the most significant opportunity before us every day is the opportunity to sit at the feet of Jesus. We won’t rearrange our priorities unless we really believe this is the best one.

But when interpreted correctly—paying attention to the original context, considering the literary genre, thinking through authorial intent—the Bible is never wrong in what it affirms and must never be marginalized as anything less than the last word on everything it teaches.

Any gospel which purports to save people without also transforming them is inviting easy-believism. If you think being a Christian is nothing more than saying a prayer or joining a church, then you’ve confused real grace with cheap grace. Those who are justified will be sanctified.

I’ll forever be grateful to my childhood pastor for making me read the Heidelberg Catechism and meet in his office with him to talk about it before I made a profession of faith in the fourth grade. I was nervous to meet with him, even more nervous to meet before all the elders. But both meetings were pleasant. And besides, I was forced to read through all 129 questions and answers at age nine.That was a blessing I didn’t realize at the time. Ever since then I’ve had a copy of the Catechism and have grown to understand it and cherish it more and more over the years.

Leviticus 18 doesn't tell us everything we need to know about sex, but it gives us the basic rules: incest is bad (vv. 6-27); taking a rival wife is bad (v 18) . . . adultery is bad (v 20); killing our children is bad (v 21); homosexuality activity is bad (v 22); and bestiality is bad (v 23).

hardly anyone knows what vainglory is anymore. If anything, people use the word “vain” or “vanity” today to mean being conceited or puffed up about yourself (usually in an unjustified way) — roughly speaking, it’s a form of pride equivalent to having an inflated sense of your worth or importance.

We must be given a new heart. We must be regenerated. We must be converted. We must be changed. The Christian life-the life of faith in God, hope in Christ, and love for others-necessitates, first of all, a life that has been given a supernatural new start by the Holy Spirit. We must be born again.

Do you know why so many Christians are caving on the issue of homosexuality? Certainly cultural pressure plays a big role. But our failure to really understand the holiness of heaven is another significant factor. If heaven is a place of universal acceptance for all pretty nice people, why should anyone make a big deal about homosexuality here on earth? Many Christians have never been taught that sorcerers and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood will be left outside the gates of heaven (Rev. 22:15). So they do not have the guts (or the compassion) to say that the unrepentantly sexually immoral will not be welcomed in either, which is exactly what Revelation 21–22 teaches. Because God’s new world is free from every stain or hint of sin, it’s hard to imagine how we could enjoy heaven without holiness. As J. C. Ryle reminds us, heaven is a holy place. The Lord of heaven is a holy God. The angels are holy creatures. The inhabitants are holy saints. Holiness is written on everything in heaven. And nothing unholy can enter into this heaven (Rev. 21:27; Heb. 12:14). Even if you could enter heaven without holiness, what would you do? What joy would you feel there? What holy man or woman of God would you sit down with for fellowship? Their pleasures are not your pleasures. Their character is not your character. What they love, you do not love. If you dislike a holy God now, why would you want to be with him forever? If worship does not capture your attention at present, what makes you think it will thrill you in some heavenly future? If ungodliness is your delight here on earth, what will please you in heaven, where all is clean and pure? You would not be happy there if you are not holy here.6 Or as Spurgeon put it, “Sooner could a fish live upon a tree than the wicked in Paradise.”7

If we had done something—almost anything, really—faithfully and humbly for God’s glory for all that time, we could have made quite an impact. But if we do nothing, because we are always trying to figure out the perfect something, when it comes time to show what we did for the Lord, we will not have anything.

I sometimes find, especially among my peers, that authenticity is not a…means of growing in holiness, but a convenient cover for endless introspection, doubt, uncertainty, anger, and worldliness. So that if other Christians seem pure, assured, and happy we despise them for being inauthentic. Granted, the church shouldn’t be happy-clappy naive about life’s struggles. Plenty of psalms show us godly ways to be real with our negative emotions. But the church should not apologize for preaching a confident Christ and exhorting us to trust Him in all things. Church is not meant to foster an existential crisis of faith every week

Self psychology has always understood a client’s symptoms and defenses as efforts to maintain his self-cohesion. When a client enters therapy guardedly, a self psychologist understands this resistance as necessary; the client needs to protect his self-organization from being re-traumatized in this new relationship.

At the Lausanne missions gathering in 2010, John Piper made the statement that “we should care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering.” He chose the word “care” quite carefully. He didn’t want to say we should do something about all suffering, because we can’t do something about everything. But we can care.

In their book Radical Reconciliation, Curtiss DeYoung and Allan Boesak unpack why this happens. They write, "reconciliation is revolutionary, that is, oriented to structural change." Which means, reconciliation can never be apolitical. Reconciliation chooses sides, and the side is always justice. This is why white American churches remain so far from experiencing anything resembling reconciliation. The white Church considers power its birthright rather than its curse. And so, rather than seeking reconciliation, they stage moments of racial harmony that don't challenge the status quo. They organize worship services where the choirs of two racially different churches sing together, where a pastor of a different race preaches a couple of times a year, where they celebrate MLK but don't acknowledge current racial injustices. Acts like these can create beautiful moments of harmony and goodwill, but since they don't change the underlying power structure at the organization, it would be misleading to call them acts of reconciliation. Even worse, when they're not paired with greater change, diversity efforts can have the opposite of their intended effect. They keep the church feeling good, innocent, maybe even progressive, all the while preserving the roots of injustice.

Simply put, God’s will is your growth in Christlikeness. God promises to work all things together for our good that we might be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:28–29). And the degree to which this sounds like a lame promise is the degree to which we prefer the stones and scorpions of this world to the true bread from heaven (Matthew 7:9–11). God

We simply don’t think of our busyness as even a possible part of our cross to bear. But what if mothering small children isn’t supposed to be easy? What if pastoring a congregation is supposed to be challenging? What if being a friend, or just being a Christian, is supposed to mean a lot of time-consuming, burden-bearing, gloriously busy, and wildly inefficient work?

There are other ways family members avoid saying what they feel. People hide behind silence or behind a lot of pleasant chatter. Maybe nobody wants to talk because nobody will listen. Maybe people are afraid to get hurt. It’s hard to speak up if you think the others will ignore you or attack you. And you can’t listen while you’re preparing your defense or counter-attack.

Darkness must not be confused with light. Grace must not be confused with license. Unchecked sin must not be confused with the good news of justification apart from works of the law. Far from treating sexual deviance as a lesser ethical issue, the New Testament sees it as a matter for excommunication (1 Corinthians 5), separation (2 Cor. 6:12–20), and a temptation for perverse compromise (Jude 3–16).

Unjust systems appear normal to those in power, and any change will produce feelings of loss. True reconciliation, through the cross of Jesus, will affect the lives of the privileged. The colonizer has to completely leave the confines of power and privilege and join with those who are colonized. Of the colonizer Memmi declared, “let him adopt the colonized people and be adopted by them; let him become a turncoat.

Andrea’s mother was the parent who gave her no emotional response. For years, Andrea didn’t know that she was angry with her mother. She just gave up hope of experiencing love in her lifetime. She didn’t know about her own deep, core shame either. She just refused to need emotional closeness with others. Staying cool, contained, and in her head kept her safe from the relationships she “knew” would only hurt her, and it kept her safely disconnected from her own emotions, too.

So here’s the real heart of the matter: Does God have a secret will of direction that He expects us to figure out before we do anything? And the answer is no. Yes, God has a specific plan for our lives. And yes, we can be assured that He works things for our good in Christ Jesus. And yes, looking back we will often be able to trace God’s hand in bringing us to where we are. But while we are free to ask God for wisdom, He does not burden us with the task of divining His will of direction for our lives ahead of time.

Few things are more important in life than repentance. It is so important that the Gospels and the Epistles and the Old Testament make clear that you don’t go to heaven without it. Ezekiel said, “Repent and turn from your transgressions” (Ezek. 18:30). John the Baptist said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). Jesus said, “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Peter said, “Repent and be baptized” (Acts 2:38). And Paul said God “commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).

We need the bible if we are to be competent Christians. The Bible will build us up so that we can endure suffering. It will give us discernment for difficult choices. It will make us strong enough to be patient with others and patient enough to respond with kindness when others hurt us. The Bible will get us up to bring meals to new moms and pray for people on their hospital beds. The bible equips us to be truth lovers and truth tellers. It sens us out to care for the poor and welcome the stranger. There is no limit on what the Bible can do for us, to us and through us.

like the biggest burden of all. We can always pray more, and we can’t possibly pray for every need in the world. Even if we are extremely organized and disciplined, we won’t be able to consistently pray for more than a handful of people and problems. But that doesn’t mean our prayers are limited to the items we can write on a 3 × 5 card. If your aunt’s cousin has upcoming heart surgery, pray immediately after you hear about it. When a missionary shares her requests, pray right on the spot for them. Don’t let the moment pass you by. Pray a short prayer. Trust God for the results and, in many cases, move on.

God has a wonderful plan for your life - a plan that will take you through trial and triumph as you are transformed into the image of His Son (Romans 8:28-29). Of this we can be absolutely confident. But God's normal way of operation is not to show this plan to us ahead of time - in retrospect, maybe; in advance. rarely. Are you feeling directionally challenged by this? Don't despair. God promises to be your sun and your shield and to carry you and protect with His strong right arm. So we can stop pleading with God to show us the future, and start living and obeying like we are confident that He holds the future.

The unity of Scripture also means we should be rid, once and for all, of this “red letter” nonsense, as if the words of Jesus are the really important verses in Scripture and carry more authority and are somehow more directly divine than other verses. An evangelical understanding of inspiration does not allow us to prize instructions in the gospel more than instructions elsewhere in Scripture. If we read about homosexuality from the pen of Paul in Romans, it has no less weight or relevance than if we read it from the lips of Jesus in Matthew. All Scripture is breathed out by God, not just the parts spoken by Jesus.

Thomas Aquinas (1224–74) on the virtue of courage, I happened across a vice he called pusillanimity, which means “smallness of soul.” Those afflicted by this vice, wrote Aquinas, shrink back from all that God has called them to be. When faced with the effort and difficulty of stretching themselves to the great things of which they are capable, they cringe and say, “I can’t.” In short, the pusillanimous rely on their own puny powers and focus on their own potential for failure, rather than counting on God’s grace to equip them for great work in his kingdom—work beyond anything they might have dreamed of for themselves.

A rant is not an idea, and feeling hurt is not an argument. To be sure, how we make each other feel is not unimportant. But in our age of perpetual outrage, we must make clear that offendedness is not proof of the coherence or plausibility of any argument. Now is not the time for fuzzy thinking. Now is not the time to shy away from careful definitions. Now is not the time to let moods substitute for logic. These are difficult issues. These are personal issues. These are complicated issues. We cannot chart our ethical course by what feels better. We cannot build our theology based on what makes us look nicer. We can’t abdicate intellectual responsibility because smart people disagree.

When Christians maintain that homosexual behavior is sinful or that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, you can count on a chorus of voices declaring confidently that these old views are on the “wrong side of history.” The phrase is meant to sting. It conjures up pictures of segregationists clinging to their disgusting notions of racial supremacy. We are meant to think of the church persecuting Galileo or of flat-earthers warning Columbus about sailing off the edge of the world. The phrase seeks to win an argument by not having one. It says, “Your ideas are so laughably backward, they don’t deserve to be taken seriously. In time everyone who ever held them will be embarrassed.

We can say all the right things about the Bible, and even read it regularly, but when life gets difficult, or just a bit boring, we look for new words, new revelation, and new experiences to bring us closer to God. We feel rather ho-hum about the New Testament’s description of heaven, but we are mesmerized by the accounts of school-age children who claim to have gone there and back. From magazine articles about “My Conversation with God” (see chapter 2), to best-selling books where God is depicted as giving special, private communications, we can easily operate as if the Bible were not enough. If we could only have something more than the Scriptures, then we would be really close to Jesus and know his love for us.

This is exactly the point Jesus reiterates in Matthew 23:23, where he exhorts the people to keep “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness,” without neglecting the responsibility they have to tithe their mint, dill, and cumin. Clearly, Jesus doesn’t want us to keep the little commandments in Scripture and miss the big stuff, but neither does he allow us to overlook the smallest parts so long as we get the big picture right. He expects obedience to the spirit of the law and to the letter. Our Messiah sees himself as an expositor of Scripture, but never a corrector of Scripture. He fulfills it, but never falsifies it. He turns away wrong interpretations of Scripture, but insists there is nothing wrong with Scripture, down to the crossing of t’s and dotting of i’s.

For two millennia the church has focused on worshiping a Christ who saves, a Christ who forgives, a Christ who cleanses, a Christ who challenges us and changes us, a Christ who convicts us and converts us, and a Christ who is coming again. If, as the Apostles’ Creed tells us, Jesus Christ is coming again to judge the living and the dead (Acts 17:31; Rev. 19:11–21); and if those who repent of their sins and believe in Christ will live forever with God in his new creation (Mark 1:15; Acts 17:30; Rev. 21:7; 21:1–27) through the atoning work of Christ on the cross (Isa. 53:1–12; Rom. 5:1–21); and if those who are not born again (John 3:5) and do not believe in Christ (John 3:18) and do not turn from their sinful practices (1 John 3:4–10) will face eternal punishment and the just wrath of God in hell (John 3:36; 5:29); and if among those in the lake of fire excluded from the heavenly garden are the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars (Rev. 21:8, 27)—then determining what constitutes sexual immorality in God’s mind has everything to do with the storyline of Scripture. Is homosexual activity a sin that must be repented of, forsaken, and forgiven, or, given the right context and commitment, can we consider same-sex sexual intimacy a blessing worth celebrating and solemnizing?

John Calvin writes, in one of the best paragraphs you’ll ever read, “We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ [Acts 4:12]. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is ‘of him’ [1 Cor. 1:30]. If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects [Heb. 2:17] that he might learn to feel our pain [cf. Heb. 5:2]. If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross [Gal. 3:13]; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain and from no other” (Institutes 2.16.19). 2Institutes 3.2.24.

But what do we pray for if we aren’t asking God to tell us exactly what to do? Well, first of all we pray for illumination. We ask God to open our minds so we can understand the Scriptures and apply them to our lives. Don’t forget about this prayer. God can show you amazingly relevant things in His Word if you ask Him to. Second, pray for wisdom. We have not because we ask not. God wants us to make good decisions that will help us be more like Christ and bring Him glory. Third, pray for things that you already know are God’s will. Pray for good motives in your decision making. Pray for an attitude of trust and faith and obedience. Pray for humility and teachability. Pray for His gospel to spread. You know that He wants these things in the world and for your life. Pray for them. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, as Jesus asked us to (Matthew 6:33). And then after you’ve prayed and studied and sought advice, make a decision and don’t hyper-spiritualize it. Do what seems best. Sometimes you won’t have time to pray and read and seek counsel for a month. That’s why the way of wisdom is about more than getting a decisive word about one or two big decisions in life. The way of wisdom is a way of life. And when it’s a way of life, you are freer than you realize. If you are drinking deeply of godliness in the Word and from others and in your prayer life, then you’ll probably make God-honoring decisions. In fact, if you are a person of prayer, full of regular good counsel from others, and steeped in the truth of the Word, you should begin to make many important decisions instinctively, and some of them even quickly. For most Christians, agonizing over decisions is the only sure thing we know to do, the only thing that feels safe and truly spiritual. But sometimes, oftentimes actually, it’s okay to just decide.

Now did God want you to read that verse at that moment? Sure. God could have used a thousand other verses to speak to you, but He used that one for you in a specific way. God does that sort of thing all the time. He brings versus to mind. He gives us a powerful sermon in our moment of great need. He leads us to a passage of Scripture that says just what He wants to say. So the problem is not with God’s mysterious ability to direct us to the right verses. The problem is not only in treating random verses as holier than other kinds of Bible reading, but in taking verses out of context and making them say things they were never meant to say. I can imagine a young man dating a girl named Becky. He is considering marriage, but he’s not sure. So he asks the Lord to give him a sign. Well, the day is January 24 and his Bible reading plan has him reading from Genesis 24 (NIV). He gets to the end of the chapter and reads “and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her.” The young man takes it as a sure word from the Lord to propose to Becky. To delay any longer would be disobedience. Or what about the woman who turns at random to 2 Samuel 7:3: “Go, do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you”? Is that always good advice, straight from the Lord? Maybe you’ve heard the joke about the man who was hoping to get a word from the Lord and happened to turn to Matthew 27:5 where it says that Judas “went and hanged himself.” Not happy with this word for the day, the man flipped his Bible open to another page, where his eyes descended upon Luke 10:37, “And Jesus said to him, ‘You go, and do likewise.’” These may be extreme examples, but they are not too far removed from how many Christians approach the Bible. Even if the answers seem thrilling in their relevance, we must not put any stock in anachronistic, out-of-context answers we read into the Bible after asking questions the Bible never intended to address.

If the ultimate measure by which society judges everything is its monetary or material value, then people who are no longer economically valuable are too easily seen as no longer valuable, period.

No doubt, some people are quantitatively less busy than others and some much more so, but that doesn’t change the shared experience: most everyone I know feels frazzled and overwhelmed most of the time.

the concept of “margin.” There’s nothing uniquely Christian about the idea itself, but there is something very un-Christian about ignoring it. “Margin,” Swenson says, “is the space between our load and our limits.”9 Planning for margin means planning for the unplannable. It means we understand what’s possible for us as finite creatures and then we schedule for less than that.

For most of us, it isn’t heresy or rank apostasy that will derail our profession of faith. It’s all the worries of life. You’ve got car repairs. Then your water heater goes out. The kids need to see a doctor. You haven’t done your taxes yet. Your checkbook isn’t balanced. You’re behind on thank you notes. You promised your mother you’d come over and fix a faucet. You’re behind on wedding planning. Your boards are coming up. You have more applications to send out. Your dissertation is due. Your refrigerator is empty. Your lawn needs mowing. Your curtains don’t look right. Your washing machine keeps rattling. This is life for most of us, and it’s choking out spiritual life.

As Peter Drucker observes, “The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for it and no marginal utility curve for it. Moreover, time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday’s time is gone forever and will never come back. Time is, therefore, always in exceedingly short supply.

The Christian approach to marriage is not so much “his needs, her needs” as “his opportunity to honor Christ, her opportunity to honor Christ.” The wife submits as to the Lord, and the husband loves as Christ to the church.

The world stands for everything that opposes the will of God. In its simplest form, this means "the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life" (1 John 2:16). Or to put it another way, worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange.

Shiloh’s Recommended Listening Tears for Fears. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” By Olzabal, Roland, Stanley, Ian and Hughes, Chris. Somerset, UK: Fontana/Mercury/Phonogram. Songs from the Big Chair. 1985. Joey Ramone. “What a Wonderful World.” By Thiele, Bob and Weiss, George David. Sanctuary Records Group. Don’t Worry About Me. 2002. The Moody Blues. “Question.” By Hayward, Justin. London, UK: Threshold Records. A Question of Balance. 1970. The Church. “Under the Milky Way.” By Kilbey, Steve and Jansson, Karin. Australia: Arista. Starfish. 1988. The Pixies. “Where is My Mind?” By Francis, Black. Boston, MA: 4AD. Surfer Rosa. 1988. The Beatles. “All You Need Is Love.” By Lennon-McCartney. London, UK: Parlophone Capitol. Magical Mystery Tour. 1967. Styx. “The Grand Illusion.” By Dennis DeYoung. Chicago, IL: A&M Records. The Grand Illusion. 1977. The Flaming Lips. “Do You Realize??” By Coyne, Wayne, Drozd, Steven, Ivins, Michael and Fridmann, Dave. New York, NY: Warner Brothers Records. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. 2002. The Beatles. “Across the Universe.” By Lennon-McCartney, London, UK: Regal Starline. No One’s Gonna Change Our World. 1969.

Queremos saber qué nos deparará el mañana en lugar de enfocarnos en obedecer durante el recorrido

When Jesus tells us to forgive, he does not mean we are to play with rattlesnakes as if they’re puppies. Forgiveness means that if the rattlesnake becomes a puppy, we won’t always remind him that he used to be a snake.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t “fit” with your spouse. And, of course, once you’re married he or she will be the only puzzle piece for you. But before that don’t think that I’ve met this great gal, but what if she’s not the one? What if the one is in Boise and I haven’t found her yet? Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t fret about finding your soul mate. And especially after you’re married and you’re having difficulties, don’t tell your pastor, “I’m going to file for divorce; he just wasn’t the one.” The problem with the myth of “the one” is that it assumes that affection is the glue that holds the marriage together, when really it is your commitment to marriage that safeguards the affection. So ditch the myth and get hitched.

Contentment is saying, “God has me here for a reason, and if He never does anything different, I’ll still serve and praise Him.” Complacency is saying, “Things will never change, so why bother trying?

Unfortunately, we’ve turned the idea of calling or vocation on its head. The Reformers emphasized calling in order to break down the sacred-secular divide. They said, if you are working for the glory of God, you are doing the Lord’s work, no matter whether you’re a priest or a monk or a banker. But we’ve taken this notion of calling and turned it upside down, so instead of finding purpose in every kind of work, we are madly looking for the one job that will fulfill our purpose in life.

You can be just about anything you want as long as you aren’t lazy (Proverb 6:6–11; 26:13–16), and whatever you do you perform to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Finally, pray less that God would show you who is the right husband or wife and pray more to be the right kind of husband or wife. If everyone was praying to be the right spouse, it wouldn’t matter nearly so much who is the “right” spouse. Dump your list of the seventeen things you need in a wife and make yourself a list of seventeen things you need to be as a husband.

But instead of “letting go and letting God,” we need to make every effort to grow up in our faith (2 Peter 1:5ff).

Ecclesiastes may seem a strange book, but it’s more relevant than ever. Too many of us are chasing after the wind, looking for satisfaction in work, family, and success—all good things, yet all things that don’t ultimately satisfy.

mankind” (Donald B. DeYoung, “Design in Nature: The Anthropic Principle,” Impact, no. 149 [November 1985]: p. ii). A change in the rate of Earth’s rotation around the sun or on its axis would be catastrophic. The Earth would become either too hot or too cold to support life. If the moon were much nearer to the Earth, huge tides would inundate the continents. A change in the composition of the gases that make up our atmosphere would also be fatal to life. A slight change in the mass of the proton would result in the dissolution of hydrogen atoms. That would result in the destruction of the universe, because hydrogen is its dominant element.

Trusting in God’s will of decree is good. Following His will of desire is obedient. Waiting for God’s will of direction is a mess. It is bad for your life, harmful to your sanctification, and allows too many Christians to be passive tinkerers who strangely feel more spiritual the less they actually do.

Trusting in God’s will of decree is good. Following His will of desire is obedient. Waiting for God’s will of direction is a mess. It is bad for your life, harmful to your sanctification, and allows too many Christians to be passive tinkerers who strangely feel more spiritual the less they actually do. God is not a Magic 8-Ball we shake up and peer into whenever we have a decision to make. He is a good God who gives us brains, shows us the way of obedience, and invites us to take risks for Him.

The better way is the biblical way: Seek first the kingdom of God, and then trust that He will take care of our needs, even before we know what they are and where we’re going.