Awake, O Sleeper!
What is it that raises faith to life? What makes a faith vibrant, robust, vigilant, and sharp, full of vitality and transformative energy? Why do we see this faith in some Christians but not in others? How do we know when faith is asleep, and how then do we wake it up?
Worthy to Fear
Imagine a paintbrush big enough to swath out Kilimanjaro with one stroke. Now imagine a hand delicate and steady enough to place the color in your eyes with that same brush. Look at yourself in a mirror. Understand that the person you see bears an uncanny family resemblance with the God of all creation, the maker and sustainer of life, the architect of beauty and the supreme lord of time and history. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
He will never cast out
Yet our God is different. When he sets impossible challenges, it isn’t to provoke us. Rather, his impossible tasks make it impossible to fail, not succeed. With him, even the most weak, weary and broken sinner is sheltered by this impossible challenge in Jeremiah 31. Even the most miserable and destitute can reach out and take hold of this solid covenantal promise. The terms of God’s covenant give us invincible eternal security.
His Sympathy is Comprehensive
The question before us is really, “Does God care?” Does he care about the embarrassing parts of me? The desires that make me cringe? Does he care when I’m hurt and throw a temper tantrum? When I’m overwhelmed by a thousand little things I’m not good enough to manage and I just want to give up and cry instead? Does he care about that stuff?
Make God Loud
When I step out that door, even with an earbud in, I can’t hear what I’m listening to. All of the calm, quiet life I need in my ear gets drowned out by the oppressive, industrial clamor of the factory. So I make God loud.
Why does my life have to be this way?
The cry of all these hearts is a universal one. “Why does my life have to be this way?” Scripture rarely answers every “why” that we ask. Instead, it shows us what God is doing and where he is leading us. Yet we all have felt that question forced out of us, whether through a brief flash of pain, or while enduring long seasons of relentless afflictions, the kind that feel dominating, life-defining, and eternal.
It's Already Done
Just as that gift from the donor would give you impenetrable material security, the gift of God in salvation gives you an impenetrable spiritual security. And while the material will pass away, the spiritual is eternal. The steadfast love of God means that you can’t ruin your life more than he can save it. It means that you can’t waste your life so much that he can’t redeem it. It means you can never yourself dig so deep that he’ll give up on you. Nothing can separate.
Christian, Be Small
God does not see hindrances. Insofar as it’s possible, I don’t believe he knows the word. He laughs at your inability, your weakness, your smallness – not because he agrees with any of that, but because he knows how little those words mean. What you believe are impossible hindrances in your life, what you perceive as disqualifying limitations, what you know for a fact are paralyzing incapabilities – God smiles at those things, because he sees abundant opportunities.
The Mirror Lies
I’m pretty helpless before that condemning voice. So in the end, I have no choice but to accept that I am completely unable to evaluate my own appearance; I am simply not an objective judge of my own self. I need a better standard.
When Jesus Turned 29
Here’s the good news: Jesus brings us a radically better hope than anything you or I could possibly imagine. How? Well, I am now twenty nine; and once upon a time, Jesus was also twenty nine. And when God was my age, he had to wait.