Category: Soul

Theological or exegetical think-pieces relating to Christian spirituality.

When Leaders Break Down

In Paul’s letter to the Greek church in Philippi, Paul feels obligated to highlight the ministry of Epaphroditus, a guy sent to Paul from that church. Paul praises him saying:

I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need” (Phil 2: 25).

Paul goes out of his way to showcase Epaphroditus. What is a bit strange is why he would have to do that since Epaphroditus had come from Philippi. They would know him already.

But the reason Paul has to reassure the Philippians about Epaphroditus is because something happened.

He got sick.

Paul explained it to the Philippians:

Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious. (Phil 2:27-28)

So the fact was that Epaphroditus had failed, sort of.

Yes, he delivered the money to Paul (see Phil 4:18). But when Epaphroditus got sick, he wasn’t able to assist Paul, and instead he needed to be assisted by Paul.

The fact is, when people are shown to be weak— a health breakdown, a mental breakdown, a lack of skills, a lack of capacity, —- then all of us in the cynicism of our flesh will look down on them a little bit.

When it comes to weakness in others we can have a critical spirit.

Imagine the conversation near the back door of First Church of Philippi.

‘Oh yeah… Epaphroditus… We paid all his expenses and sent him on the big trip from Greece to Rome —- I’d love to go to Rome—- and then when he got there, he said he was sick and couldn’t come home. Wow… Rome would be a great place to be sick in….. I wonder how sick he really was? Sounds like a nice gig if you can get it. Why did we send him if he couldn’t even help Paul out. That was a waste of money. We should’ve sent someone else…..’

And on and on. You know how it goes.

The Philippians were a church that had a tendency to be proud of their strength. They needed to have the mind of Christ, in order to be humble (Phil 2:5). They needed to be reminded of the worth and value of godly servants in the church who were faithfully doing their jobs through great personal trial. The Philippians needed to be reminded to show some grace toward Epaphroditus.

So just in case the Philippians were missing the point, Paul is explicit in verse 29:

“So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men.”

The three takeaways are these:

  1. When we stop expecting leaders to be supermen, then we will stop being surprised and offended when they fail us.
  2. When we rejoice at leaders of proven worth and sacrificial service, we will be in a better position to distinguish who the faithful ministers are from all of the dogs and enemies of the cross.
  3. When we honor such men, even our honor is framed by grace. Which is just as it should be.

Also you might want to check out the 9Marks Journal on Pastoral Burnout, and the podcast on the same topic.

 

 

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Poetry for Pastors: To Be A Pilgrim by John Bunyan (1628-1688)

This hopeful poem from Bunyan is great for a pastor to read on Saturday before his Sunday sermon.

It is a reminder of Paul’s great charge:

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Letter to the Philippians 3:13-14

To Be A Pilgrim (He Who Would Valiant Be)
BY JOHN BUNYAN

Who would true Valour see
Let him come hither;
One here will Constant be,
Come Wind, come Weather.
There’s no Discouragement,
Shall make him once Relent,
His first avow’d Intent,
To be a Pilgrim.

Who so beset him round,
With dismal Storys,
Do but themselves Confound;
His Strength the more is.
No Lyon can him fright,
He’l with a Gyant Fight,
But he will have a right,
To be a Pilgrim.

Hobgoblin, nor foul Fiend,
Can daunt his Spirit:
He knows, he at the end,
Shall Life Inherit.
Then Fancies fly away,
He’l fear not what men say,
He’l labour Night and Day,
To be a Pilgrim.

There is a early Celtic sounding version sung here:
https://youtu.be/cOPW-9mSw8Y

Poetry for Pastors: Two Tramps in Mudtime by Robert Frost

I thought I’d post some poems that I’ve found helpful over the years. Poetry stirs both mind and soul. It gets beneath the layers and chills you or warms you as need requires.

When I look at the critical assessments of most poetry, I find that they sterilize all of the good bacteria out of them. Literary analysis can be helpful, but too often it microwaves the germ of the seed and kills any possibility that a poem can be fruitful. Its the same thing many scholars do with the Holy Scriptures.

So instead of analysis, I’ll leave my own comments to lie unfiltered except by my own limited understanding.

The following poem by Robert Frost is for the pastor on Monday. After preaching on Sunday and doing good ministry, he can enjoy the benefit of a job well done, a recognition of relative faithfulness to his calling, and hope for good fruit to result as God gracious works.

But on Monday, the pastor receives, or has received already, the cold criticism of others. The criticism comes up out of nowhere and more often than not, the criticism is correct, as far as it goes. The task for the pastor is to remember that while the critics corrections may be true, they don’t necessarily mean that the pastor shouldn’t be pastoring. His flawed labour is part of his calling. He knows he’s not perfect, but he is called to the work by his Lord, and that is warrant enough to do his job, albeit imperfectly.

If you are feeling a cold blast on Monday, then read this poem and remember the words of Paul:

This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.  I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.  Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.  1 Corinthians 4:1-5

Two Tramps In Mud Time

By Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!”
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn’t blue,
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut’s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right–agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

 

To Believe and To Suffer in Seedtime and Harvest

Farming is becoming romantic again. People are interested in where their food comes from. They want to know who grew it or raised it and how did they go about it. People love evocative stories about clean living farmers growing unprocessed food for romantic shoppers at the supermarket.

But for all of the urban nostalgia for farming, the reality is that it’s still a tough business. Farmers have to live on hope in the future, yet anticipate a lot of suffering along the way.

In a dry spring or a wet fall, through mid-summer hailstorms and late summer frosts, the farmer plants his seed in the ground with the hope of a harvest. Season after season, the farmer keeps believing and suffering through “seedtime and harvest” (Gen 8:22).

Pisteuein and Pascein

Christians are a lot like farmers in this way. They live by faith in the unseen, while accepting the suffering of the unknown. The difference between Christians and farmers is that Christians are given both faith and suffering.  Paul told the Philippian church (Phil 1:29), that they had this two-fold gift, “to believe” (pisteuein) and “to suffer” (pascein). So the Christian’s believing and suffering have a God-given design. I know many farmers whose hope for the future is based on how much money they spend on equipment and fertilizer. Their suffering is viewed as capriciously based on luck. Most farmers don’t see their lives as gifts in any sense.

Two Miracles

When the Christian believes, they recognize that to overcome their natural inclination to disbelief is nothing short of a miracle. Christian’s are like the troubled father of the demon possessed son who had a hard time believing in Jesus, yet confessed, “I believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). As Samuel Rutherford put it, “To believe is a miracle. For a sinner to believe is two miracles.”

Never Pointless

For people who confess that God is sovereign and salvation is all of grace the idea that saving faith is a gift is not too difficult. What can be hard to take is the idea that suffering is a gift too. Yet this is where it helps to notice the details of Philippians 1:29. Paul said, “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.” The gift of suffering is never pointless. God does not make suffering a nihilistic agony. What is the greatest angst that many people feel when they suffer? It’s that they can’t figure out why they suffer.

Not Alone

By contrast, Christians understand their suffering is purposeful not futile. It is “to suffer for his sake.” That gift is tied up in our union with Christ. Our sufferings are actually sharing in Christ’s sufferings (Phil 3:10). We aren’t suffering alone.  It is not like the farmer standing in his hailed-out field feeling suicidal because there is no point to it all. The Christian feels the suffering keenly, but takes it as one more season in the calendar of their heavenly journey.

The Family Heirloom

As the godly writer with the strange name, Horatius Bonar argues in his book, Night of Weeping, suffering is the family badge. Like a family crest or a family tartan, suffering is the heirloom that marks us out at God’s own (Heb 12:7-8; Rom 8:17). He puts it this way:

It is a solemn thought. Flesh and blood shrink from it. We look around to see if there be no way of escaping, and ask if it must be so?… It cheers us under trial to remember that this is the Father’s seal set upon His true-born sons. Oh! how it lightens the load to think that it is really the pledge of our divine adoption.

The Organic Connection

So “to suffer for his sake” is not very romantic, but it shows the deep bond Christians have to their Saviour. Farmers don’t have that unless they’re Christians. Farmers face “seedtime and harvest” yet miss the most important lesson which Jesus taught long ago, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24).

The Christian life might not be romantic or nostalgic but its real. Our organic connection to Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection is better than all of the hoped for clean eating and living that hopeless shoppers pursue.

A Song for the Collectors of Care

 

Psalm 13

1 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

3 Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the LORD,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.

We look to God to get some perspective on three things: time, memory and attention.

We need God to give us re-assurances that he is the architect of time and he knows how the story ends because he wrote it, and he is outside of it.

We also need re-assurance that God has not forgotten us. We project our limits upon God and assume that his memory is as short as ours. The thought that God has forgotten us becomes unforgettable in our fear-filled mind. So we look for repeated guarantees, pledges and tokens of remembrance.

If we recognize that Adam’s first sin was to desire more knowledge, then our troubles shouldn’t come as a surprise. In order to be like God, as Eve and the serpent promised, Adam was going to “know good and evil.” The result crippled him with knowing more than he bargained for. Adam and all of his descendants became collectors of cares.

So as hoarders of angst in warehouses of woe we appeal for God’s attention to intervene. We plead God to open windows and doors into our dark trembling shell. We call on God to reverse our cares with the reminder of hope. Time and eternity do not have to remain dark. “Consider and answer”, David says, once more appealing to God to give his attention in space and time to the care-filled man who is God’s own.

Can it be that collectors of care could purge their enslaving cache and be free? Surely God is able to deliver. Then the enemy’s imprisoning plots will end. Then the world-weary believer will sing!

There is no song so clear as a song of deliverance.

 

Martyn Lloyd-Jones Prayed for Don Carson

I remember some of the public prayers of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. In particular, I recall how shamed I was when one of Lloyd-Jones’s daughters told me some months before he died that her father had asked her to tell me that he prayed for me regularly. It was not as if I were within his inner circle of friends—and so I suddenly realized how extensive his prayer ministry must be and how deep his commitment to intercede for ministers of the gospel.

Don Carson, A Call for Spiritual Reformation, 28.

Between Youth and Old Age

In the span of three days I’ve seen the span of life. From ‘senior-highers’ to seniors, I have been able to travel the path of promise and mortality through the faces of a youth group on Friday night and a senior’s centre on Sunday afternoon.

On Friday, the bustling talk stumbled easily from the bible to Batman and bear attacks. Teenagers can talk a lot to cover up what is going on inside of them, or they can not talk and stay covered that way too.

But sometimes you can see the portal to their souls open up. You see lives filled with promise, hope and ambition. You also see real cares and real fears in search of true security and not the the platitudes they so often see from the adult world.

If someone takes the time to walk through key biblical texts with teens they are extremely smart and have an apprehension of large, significant truths. Youth group should be fun since it’s youth in a group. But if it is biblically thoughtful and faithful, it will also open those spiritual portals into young hearts.

At the other end of the spectrum is the senior’s home and a Sunday afternoon service. As the old hymns sound out in the foyer, the seniors hum and mouth the words or just sway to the melody. Truths long held are refreshed in their memories as they hear those old lyrics. When the request goes out for favourite hymns, the call-back is not only for Christmas traditionals, it’s for ‘the Old Rugged Cross’.

A simple message from a Gospel is offered. There can be no assumptions here. With all religious stripes in attendance, the urgency of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ clearly and succinctly is as needed as ever. So with wit and wisdom a short text is expounded. The seniors are stirred in their faith, if Christ is their own. Others shuffle off before the message is done. Some show their inattention intentionally. Others are inattentive because they can’t help being so.

After the service the children that have attended are star attractions. Each senior has questions for the kids. They also have their own stories to share of when they were that age, or what their own grandchildren are up to. Some seniors are forgotten. Others are just separated from loved ones.

Discussing biblical themes opens up those portals of the soul in seniors too. One widow shared about her time as a missionary in India and all the hours her husband spent trying to keep an old Jeep running. They shared the gospel there. And then again later on in Ontario in parish ministry. She told me her husband studied at Knox College in Toronto. I mentioned the significance of  D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ visit to Knox College library where he discovered the writings of BB Warfield. The widow had read Lloyd-Jones and we talked together about the great need for revival in our land. And finally she said that to see revival, we need praying Christians. What a simple and wise description of a disciple of Jesus: ‘a praying Christian’. 

So in both of these ministries, the youth group and the senior’s centre, I went to serve, but as usual, I was the one who was blessed. God reminded me of the vigour and enthusiasm of new faith and fresh effort from the youth. But I was also reminded of the seasoned perspective which persevering faith brings. It keeps the main things where they’re supposed to be. Faith in Christ, appeals to God to act for his glory, and finishing well— these are the lessons which I learned from aged saints.

If you are between youth and old age, consider your own need to have your blind-spots exposed and your soul to be expanded. Minister to young and old and enjoy their ministry to you. Remember, we are all interconnected. As Paul said, “the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Cor 12. 22).

Always Picking Up the Lighter End

Cowboys, farmers, oil workers or anyone who lifts heavy stuff knows what I’m talking about.

There is that guy who is always picking up the lighter end, leaving the heavier end for you.

Whether its the branding pot or the portable genset some guys always manage to get the lighter end of things.

With Easter now passed, but Jesus still risen, it is helpful to see that [Tweet “Jesus has given his followers the lighter end of things”].

Charles Spurgeon looked at the example of Simon of Cyrene who was conscripted to carry Jesus’ cross on the way to Golgotha. Spurgeon said that Simon’s example applies to us whom Jesus summoned to “take up your cross and follow me”:

Do not forget…that you bear this cross in partnership. It is the opinion of some that Simon only carried one end of the cross, and not the whole of it. That is very possible; Christ may have carried the heavier part, against the transverse beam, and Simon may have borne the lighter end. Certainly it is so with you; you do but carry the light end of the cross, Christ bore the heavier end. (Morning and Evening).

Now in Spurgeon’s example of Simon, he is applying it to Christian believers. He is talking about sanctification, not salvation. There is no sense in which a person can contribute to their salvation. There is not even a bit of ‘light lifting’ that a sinner can offer in order to partner with Jesus to save himself. As the old hymn put it:

Jesus paid it all, 

All to him I owe,

Sin has left a crimson stain,

He washed it white as snow.

 

But for the follower, who belongs to Jesus, and who is called to suffer with Christ, their suffering is described as cross-bearing (Matt 16.24, Luke 14.27).

Sometimes we can make a really big deal of our sufferings, going on and on about how bad we have it.  As Paul said, however, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor 4.17).

Even in our ‘crosses’ Jesus is carrying the load. Even our ‘lifting’ is only possible because of his grace.

Yet his grace allows us to always be picking up the lighter end.

 

Look in the Mirror

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing (James 1.22-25)

When there is only a cursory attention paid to God’s interpretation of things, then you will not remember God’s interpretation of things. The result is that you will be completely out of step with how to interpret things.

  • You can’t see life right.
  • You can’t see people right.
  • You can’t see your feelings right.
  • You can’t see your purpose right.
  • You forget what you are like, without Christ.

You forget. Because you are not taking care to look closely into the mirror. You are so unlike a teenager on Friday night— you’re not looking to see how things really look.

You can only know that through the mirror of the Word of God.

But when you do look intently at the Word, you find that it is gives clarity to you.

And when you get a clear view of yourself and all of life in this mirror, then you can have liberty.  The word becomes this law or principle of liberty. You are confident, because you have seen the way things really are in the Word. You are at liberty because you know what is true, what is not.

God promises that persevering in the Word in this way makes your “Word-ward” life lived in an outward way. This is evidence of grace. It is evidence of God’s blessing upon you. That is James’ beatitude here. “You will be ‘blessed’ in your doing’.

There is a blog run by a group of Australian Anglicans called the Sola Panel. It is a wordplay on the fact that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for God’s glory alone.  All of those ‘alones’ in Latin are the ‘Solas’. So they call it the Sola Panel.

But isn’t that what Christians do? They look into the Sola Panel of God’s Word and what do they see?  The blinding radiance of the Glory of God!

The heat, and brilliance and power and energy of God the Son is emblazoned before our eyes in the Word of God, the Scriptures, this great reflective mirror.

And when we gaze at it, something miraculous happens. We become a mirror. We become a reflector of the glory of God. And we join in the church with so many other reflectors so that we may cover the earth with Word of God, written, as Paul says, “not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.(2 Cor 3.3).

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2Cor3.18)

The Christian lives like a walking IPad with a constant streaming of God’s Word for all to see and read.

As Spurgeon said of John Bunyan, “this man is a living Bible! Prick him anywhere—his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is full of the Word of God. I commend his example to you, beloved.”

So if we are confused by how things appear in our world, all it takes is another look in the mirror –the mirror of God’s Word.

7 Questions to Ask Your Anger

If you were to take yourself aside and ask yourself  about your anger, what would you say? Based on James 1.19-21, these are a series of questions for you to ask yourself— ask your anger.

  1. First, think for yourself if you are growing in being attentive, quickly attuned and aware of others in what they say verbally and non-verbally?
  2. Second, think for yourself if you are growing in holding back your first instinct to speak, being careful, considered, thoughtful, and poignant in what you say?  Paul Tripp says, in his excellent book War of Words, “God is at work, taking people who instinctively speak for themselves and transforming them into people who effectively speak for him.” Are you being quick to speak for yourself?
  3. Third, Think for yourself if you are resisting and fighting against being irritable and impatient. Or are you easily angered, because you are always angry, just good at hiding it?
  4. Fourth, Ask your spouse, family member or close friend whether you are changing for the good in these ways. Or are you stagnating. Ask your co-workers or extended family members if they see change.
  5. Fifth. Will you yield to God today, and in that biblical way of Jer 4, Hos 10 ask Him to  ‘break up your fallow ground’ which is to ask God to grant you to repent of your hardness?
  6. Sixth, will make today a turning point away from  filthiness and rampant wickedness? Your tax fraud. Your pre-marital sex. Your drug use.  Your fantasizing. Your filthy mouth.
  7. Seventh, will you make today, a turning point, toward the Word of God, toward the Word heard together in this gathering, toward the Word shared together in these relationships, toward the Word confessed together in your local church?