Encouraging - Class of 2011

“You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor 3:2-3).

Yesterday the Class of 2011 graduated. They will be missed; they are extraordinary. There have been many special classes in the past, but this particular class was special to me because we encountered many milestones together. They rejoiced with us by welcoming our two little boys into the world and shed tears with us over the passing of multiple family members, including my beloved mom. They experienced life with us and vice versa. Those experiences helped to keep everything in the right perspective. There is a spiritual depth to this class that is marked and unique. Prior to graduation, I had the privilege of chaperoning their senior trip in Colorado. The senior trip serves as a wonderful bookend to a great high school career. Countless fun activities are planned, but it’s also one last time to share the Gospel as well as provide opportunities for the students to mend broken relationships and simply enjoy each other. I am forever grateful for having the opportunity to play a small role in these children’s lives. They are ready for a new adventure and I am “confident that he who began a good work in [them] will carry it out until completion” (Phil 1:6).

Encouraging - Comfortable

It is not God’s plan to give you everything you want for your life or to ensure that your life is comfortable and problem-free. God has made life so that it is filled with times of receiving and times of letting go. He wants you to learn to be content where you are now because He is with you…Since we cannot see the full picture and do not have all the facts, our judgment is skewed. God would not be God if He could not see all things and judge all situations for the ultimate good.

Bill Dunn & Kathy Leonard, Through a Season of Grief (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN: 2004), 98, 104.

Encouraging - Ache

Knowing the Lord and His comfort does not take away the ache; instead, it supports you in the middle of the ache. Until I get home to heaven, there’s going to be an ache that won’t quit. The grieving process for me is not so much a matter of getting rid of the pain, but not being controlled by the pain.

Bill Dunn & Kathy Leonard, Through a Season of Grief (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN: 2004), 5.

Encouraging - Opportunities through Loss

Loss provides an opportunity to take inventory of our lives, to reconsider priorities, and to determine new directions. “Few people,” someone once told me, “wish at seventy that they had worked more hours at the office when they were forty. If anything, they wish that they had given more time back then to family, friends, and worthy causes. They wish they had dared to say ‘no’ to their own selfishness.” As Jesus said, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet forfeit his soul?” Loss invites us to ask basic questions about ourselves. “What do I believe?” “Is there life after death?” Is there a God?” “What kind of person am I?” “Do I really care about other people?” “How have I used my resources – my time, money, and talent?” “Where am I headed with my life?”

Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 2004), 76.

Encouraging - Pain & Pleasure

What is true in the body is also true in the soul. The pain of loss is severe because the pleasure of life is so great; it demonstrates the supreme value of what is lost. The screaming pain I feel at the loss of my mother, my wife, and my daughter reflects the pure pleasure I felt in knowing them. I cannot have one without the other, for both show what the soul is capable of feeling, sometimes simultaneously.

Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 2004), 55.

Encouraging - Growth through Loss

It is therefore not true that we become less through loss –unless we allow the loss to make us less, grinding our soul down until there is nothing left but an external self entirely under the control of circumstances. Loss can also make us more. In the darkness we can still find the light. In death we can also find life. It depends on the choices we make. Though these choices are difficult and rarely made in haste of with ease, we can nevertheless make them. Only when we choose to pay attention to our souls will we learn how much more there is to life than the external world around us, however wonderful or horrible that world is. We will discover the world within. Yet such attention to the soul does not have to engender self-absorption. If anything, it eventually turns us toward the world again and makes us more compassionate and just than we might otherwise have been.

Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 2004), 49.

Encouraging - Loss

It is not, therefore, the experience of loss that becomes the defining moment of our lives, for that is as inevitable as death, which is the last loss awaiting us all. It is how we respond to loss that matters. That response will largely determine the quality, the direction, and the impact of our lives.

Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 2004), 17.

Encouraging - American Dream

The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn to such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

David Platt, Radical, (Multnomah, Colorado Springs, CO: 2010), 46.

Encouraging - Judgment

The gospel reveals eternal realities about God that we would sometimes rather not face. We prefer to sit back, enjoy our clichés, and picture God as a Father who might help us, all the while ignoring God as a Judge who might damn us. Maybe this is why we fill our lives with the constant drivel of entertainment in our culture – and in the church. We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in his Word, we might discover that he evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give him.

David Platt, Radical, (Multnomah, Colorado Springs, CO: 2010), 29.

Encouraging - Wisdom

Read Proverbs 2:1-22

The first way to get wisdom is to store up God’s commands (1). The second way is turn your ear to wisdom (2). And the third way is to call out for insight (3). To put these ways into familiar language, we could say we get wisdom by reading our Bibles (storing up God’s commands), listening to sound advice (turning ears to wisdom), and praying to God (calling out for insight). The second and third are nearly interchangeable because when God gives us wisdom, He most often gives it through other people.

Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something (Moody, Chicago, IL: 2009), 91.

Encouraging - Worry

Worry and anxiety are not merely bad habits or idiosyncrasies. They are sinful fruits that blossom from the root of unbelief. Jesus doesn’t treat obsession with the future as a personal quirk, but as evidence of little faith (v. 30). Worry and anxiety reflect our hearts’ distrust in the goodness and sovereignty of God. Worry is a spiritual issue and must be fought with faith. We must fight to believe that God has mercy for today’s troubles, and not matter what may come tomorrow, that God will have new mercies for tomorrow’s troubles (Lamentations 3:22-23). God’s way is not to show us what tomorrow looks like or even to tell us what decisions we should make tomorrow. That’s not His way because that’s not the way of faith. God’s way is to tell us that He knows tomorrow, He cares for us, and therefore, we should not worry.

Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something (Moody, Chicago, IL: 2009), 56-57.

Encouraging - Future

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. We should stop looking for God to reveal the future to us and remove all risk from our lives. We should start looking to God – His character and His promises – and thereby have confidence to take risks for His name’s sake.

Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something (Moody, Chicago, IL: 2009), 37.

Encouraging - Choices

With so many choices, it’s no surprise that we are always thinking about the greener grass on the other side of the fence. We are always pondering what could be better or what might be nicer about something or someone new. “Decide” comes from the Latin word decidere, meaning “to cut off,” which explains why decisions are so hard these days. We can’t stand the thought of cutting off any of our options. If we choose A, we feel the sting of not having B or C and D. As a result, every choice feels worse than no choice at all. And when we do make an important choice, we end up with buyer’s remorse, wondering if we are settling for second best. Or, worse yet, we end up living in our parents’ basement indefinitely as we try to find ourselves and hear God’s voice. Our freedom to do anything and go anywhere ends up feeling like bondage more than liberty, because decision making feels like great pain, not pleasure.

Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something (Moody, Chicago, IL: 2009), 37.

Encouraging - Truth

We are an adulterous generation. We love man-centered error more than Christ-exalting truth, and our rational powers are taken captive to serve this adulterous love. This is what Jesus exposed when he said, “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” In other words, your mind functions just fine when seeking out partners in adultery (like comfort and safety on the sea as more precious than Christ), but it cannot see the signs of Christ-exalting truth.

John Piper, Think, (Crossway, Wheaton, IL: 2010), 63.

Encouraging - Think

Thinking is indispensible on the path to passion for God. Thinking is not an end in itself. Nothing but God himself is finally an end in itself. Thinking is not the goal of life. Thinking, like non-thinking, can be the ground for boasting. Thinking, without prayer, without the Holy Spirit, without obedience, without love, will puff up and destroy (1 Cor. 8:1). But thinking under the mighty hand of God, thinking soaked in prayer, thinking carried by the Holy Spirit, thinking tethered to the Bible, thinking in pursuit of more reasons to praise and proclaim the glories of God, thinking in the service of love – such thinking is indispensible in a life of fullest praise to God.

John Piper, Think, (Crossway, Wheaton, IL: 2010), 27.

Encouraging - Goal

The ultimate goal of life is that God be displayed as glorious because of all that he is and all that he has made and done – especially the grace he has shown in the work of Christ. The way we glorify him is by knowing him truly, by treasuring him above all things, and by living in a way that shows he is our supreme treasure.

It is my eager expectation and hope that…Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me is Christ, and to die is gain…To depart and be with Christ…is far better…I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord (Phil 1:20-21, 23, 3:8).

John Piper, Think, (Crossway, Wheaton, IL: 2010), 15.

Encouraging - Christianity

The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians – when they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths. But, though it is just to condemn some Christians for these things, perhaps, after all, it is not just, though very easy, to condemn Christianity itself for them. Indeed, there are impressive indications that the positive quality of joy is in Christianity – and possibly nowhere else. If that were certain, it would be reproof of a very high order.

Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy (HarperSanFrancisco, NY, NY: 1980), 85.

Encouraging - Actions

It was typical of Jim that, once sure of God’s leading, he did not turn aside easily. The “leading” was to Ecuador, so every thought and action was bent in that direction. Jim practiced what he preached when he wrote in his diary: “Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God”.

Elisabeth Elliot, Through Gates of Splendor (Crossings Classics, USA: 1981), 9.

Encouraging - Community

Christian community is like the Christian’s sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (Harper & Row, NY, NY: 1954), 30.

Encouraging - Shalom

I would suggest that a theology of faithful presence first calls Christians to attend to the people and places that they experience directly. It is not that believers should be disconnected from, or avoid responsibility for, people and places across the globe. Far from it. Christians are called to “go into all the world,” after all and to carry the good news in word and deed that God’s kingdom has come. But with that said, the call of faithful presence gives priority to what is right in front of us – the community, the neighborhood, and the city, and the people of which these are constituted. For most, this will mean a preference for stability, locality, and particularity of place and its needs. It is here, through the joys, sufferings, hopes, disappointments, concerns, desires, and worries of the people with whom we are in long-term and close relation - family, neighbors, coworkers, and community – where we find our authenticity as a body and as believers. It is here where we learn forgiveness and humility, practice kindness, hospitality, and charity, grow in patience and wisdom, and become clothed in compassion, gentleness, and joy. This is the crucible within which Christian holiness is forged. This is the context within which shalom is enacted.

James Davison Hunter, To Change the World, (Oxford University Press, NY, NY: 2010), 253.