Jonathan Evans

"Show me"

At times we can be found as Christians living before God as young children playing hide and seek with their parents: if we can’t see them, they can’t see us. 

 

How often we are aware of something in our heart that we know we need to bring to light, to reveal, to confess and repent of, but we cover our eyes and believe that if we’re not looking at it, God isn’t either. “If it were a big deal,” we reason, “God would bring it up.”

 

So we choose to turn away, to ignore, to minimize, to push what we don't want seen behind whatever it is we do. At times God mercifully comes anyway and, like a good father, brings up and brings out those things that we didn’t want to look at or hear about.

 

But, also like a good father, sometimes he mercifully doesn't. Instead, he’ll wait for us to bring up what he’s known is there all along. In fact, as we grow and mature, this expectation becomes one of our primary responsibilities.

 

It’s one thing to be shown your heart. It's another to ask to be shown your heart. “Search me, oh God, and know my heart!…And see if there be any grievous way in me…” (Psalm 139). See, show me, if there is any wicked way in me.

 

It’s one thing for us to come to God and see what he will do. It’s another for us to come and seek what God will do—to seek to know his will, to seek to do his will, to seek for his will to be done. 

 

“Ask and it will be given to you” (Matthew 7:7) includes the things we ask and want to be left unseen; “You have not, because you ask not” (James 4:2) includes the things God is wanting and waiting for you to see.

And we can do no better

 

The desire to do something the right way can cripple the desire to do the right thing. The fear of getting it wrong strangles the conviction of doing what is right. So the mind and heart are convinced that it is better to do nothing than to do something and get it wrong.

 

But to do what is right is sometimes to do what is right simply because it is right to do. We do the thing that seems right in the manner that seems best at the moment, and we can do no better. We cannot control consequences, only actions. If God in his wisdom gives actions, then in his wisdom he can take their consequences and make something good of them. 

 

God does work all things together for good. "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." (Proverbs 16:9). "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord." (Proverbs 16:33) His is the wisdom and sovereignty and power, ours is the obedience and trust and rest.

Beyond words, but not apart from words

 

Dear Christian,

 

We read the Bible to remember that God With Us (Matthew 1:23) has acted in history, in time, and what he has done in Jesus. We see that we're a part of a story that is timeless, that doesn't end in time, on earth, but is written from eternity to eternity. It's a story bigger than any one of us that yet includes each one of us.

 

We read the Bible to realize that God's activity is not something centered around my individual life but someone focused exclusively on Jesus Christ: God Himself is set on exalting Jesus on earth from beginning to end – past, present, future.

 

We read the Bible to recognize that my life and yours are created, formed, and made to be a reflection of the greatness, majesty, and glory of God. Our life saved from sin is being recreated, reformed, remade into the perfect image of God, Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3), and is called into and empowered for full participation in his kingdom. We not only read this in the word of God but we live this through The Word of God, Jesus Christ (Revelation 19:13; John 1:1, 14), to whom the whole Bible is pointing and in whom the whole Bible is fulfilled.

 

We read the Bible to respond to a God who speaks. Exceeding, and more exhilarating than, a perfect day is hearing one word from God. Anyone in a significant relationship knows that conversation is better than a thousand gifts and that a thousand gifts without a meaningful conversation are meaningless. To listen to the voice of the one you love, of the one who loves you, is fulfilling beyond words, but not apart from words.

 

Listen closely, read slowly.

Have faith in God, not in time

 

If God promises me that he will do something "tomorrow”, I will likely wait patiently for today to pass. But if God is more vague and says, “soon”, I will likely become impatient. If I know God is going to do something anyway, what harm is there in rushing it a little? 

 

The witches have told Macbeth that he will one day become king. So why wait? Why not today? Isn't it all the same? Perhaps faith in fate is not me waiting for things to unfold but rather, in faith, acting and taking hold of things. Macbeth murders King Duncan.

 

Young David is anointed future king of Israel by the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel 16:12-13). But David will wait over 20 years for this to fully come to pass. Although during those long, trying years he has several opportunities to kill the current king and cut short the waiting, he refuses. He has faith in God, not in fate or time.

 

Often we wait for God because we can’t do anything about our circumstances. But how often do we wait precisely because we can change things? The temptation to play God, to force God’s hand, to get ahead of God is attractive. Isn’t faith refusing to let things stay the way they are?

 

Time is a funny thing. We like to manage it and be productive. It makes us believe, feel that we're powerful; that we can control our lives; that we can plan for what’s coming tomorrow (James 4:13-14); that we can add hours to our days and days to our lives (Matthew 6:27; Psalm 139:16). But in the end we can't use time to impose our will, or dominate our lives, or speed things up.

 

Watching humanity exist in technologically primitive or underdeveloped cultures, we easily feel like they're wasting time. When our plans fail or our dreams take longer than we pray they will, we feel like we're "wasting time" or that "time is passing me by". But these feelings, beliefs, are often a misplacement of our trust in God; they betray our trust in our activity, busyness, productivity, technology, management. Not that these are wrong, but that they're not God's parting gift to a now mature, ready, self-sufficient humanity.

 

Has God given us everything we need, in order that we should no longer need him? Is the world and all that is in it a substitute for God, his word, his Spirit? Has he created and saved us to work, be productive, and be successful in recognition of him, a tipping of the hat, but not in worship to him, a surrendering of our life? 

 

If time is only a resource by which we seize opportunity, then how we manage it is of paramount importance. But if time is the revealing and ordering of God’s will, then how we live in time is of paramount importance.  

 

David “served the purpose of God in his own generation” (Acts 13:36), a purpose that included the times of waiting in David’s life – nearly a third of his life. Ultimately, his life, my life, your life, our time, is not for God’s purposes for us but for his purposes for us for him – his name, his glory, his will, and his kingdom. 

 

It was in the fullness of time – a fullness that includes not only the past but the present and the future – that God sent Jesus Christ into the world (Ephesians 1:10; Galatians 4:4), which means that time is not left to blind, random or automated fate, but that God is eternal, in eternity, and time is his servant, not ours.

The lived-in and lived-out reality of love

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:1-3)

 

Heard with our ears. Seen with our eyes. Touched with our hands. Words that describe a sensory experience. This experience wasn’t a "what" as much as it was a "who". Jesus is Who the disciples experienced – listened to, looked upon, touched. He was the “word of life”, “the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest". “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory” (John 1:14). 

 

The glory of God in Jesus Christ was what, who, the disciples proclaimed, spoke of, conversed about. Yet, not just who they’d heard with mortal ears, or seen with mortal eyes, or touched with mortal hands, but who with their entire beings they’d come to know and to understand, to receive and to believe, to follow and to obey. Like a friend who is able to describe a loved one articulately, intimately, and stunningly, in a way a stranger never could or even imagine, is the disciple who knows Jesus able to describe him to others.

 

It is one thing to know about a country from reading about it – information as facts, pictures, maps. This is the student. It is quite another thing to know about a country from having visited it – the experiences of people and conversation, food and places of significance. This is the tourist. But it is still a different thing altogether to know a country from living there – life and daily routines, roads and secret places, stories and names, struggles and victories, etc. This is the citizen.

 

As Christians, we are saved and “born again”, born from above (John 3:3; 1 Peter 1:3, 23), to live in, through, with, and for Jesus, not to read about him or visit him occasionally. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20) We are now to live here, there, wherever we are “by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20); to build a home, pray, work, rest, play, dig in, root ourselves, make friends, and serve and seek the prosperity of our cities (Jeremiah 29:4-7). We are citizens of a heavenly kingdom (Philippians 3:20) that takes the necessary and daily routines, roads and secret places, stories and names, struggles and victories of our lives and communities and gives them their higher and deeper meaning and purpose in Jesus. 

 

We are citizens of this kingdom by grace, not by our works nor for our works but by the King’s work and for his works. We hear and see and embrace him by grace; he hears and sees and embraces us in mercy. And far from being a postcard or a t-shirt or a visit from there (a distant land), our lives are the lived-in/lived-out reality of him (who has come near), his love articulated and manifested in and through us.

Idolatry is a well-worn path

 

If I have an hour or three to go anywhere, I always find my way to water. Whether a stream, or a river, or the lake, there’s something in the sight, sound, and feel of the water that is satisfying to my soul. So I go there.

 

Have you ever looked at the path across a bridge, how it is faded in the middle from a thousand steps? Or down your stairs, the variation in the color of the carpet or wood? Or through the woods, how the paths are trodden and worn? 

 

As well-marked by their own footprints was the path God’s people took to worship…their idols.

 

“Look at your way in the valley” (Jeremiah 2:23), God says. The people of God had worn a path that was unmistakable in direction and undeniable in destination. God didn’t have to go looking for his people; he knew exactly where to find them.

 

When we feel sad, where do we travel to find happiness? When we feel in danger, where do we run to find security? When we feel rejected, where do we crawl to find acceptance? If we have a pressing problem or desire, we try to find our way to that place, that thing, that person, that we believe can ultimately save us. 

 

What paths are well-travelled in your life? Where do your footprints lead to most often?

 

In the end, we are all put to shame by our idols, that is, we are all embarrassed that having put all our hope in them, they failed to deliver what they promised us. All our idols “are false, and there is no breath in them.” (Jeremiah 10:14) They cannot speak to the deepest parts of us. They cannot heal our deepest hurts, satisfy our deepest longings nor deliver us from our deepest sins. 

 

But in Jesus (John 1:14-17), God’s grace is poured out towards us, and not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:10). It doesn’t leave us or abandon us or deceive us into believing what is not true. It redirects our feet, it makes a new path, it leads us into the truth of who Jesus is and who we are. In him our soul can find its deepest, truest, and fullest satisfaction forever.

Unbelief is a yearning

“I don’t believe in God,” writes Julian Barnes, “but I miss him.” Unbelief is a yearning. It leads you away from believing in certain things, but not in all things. It leads you to believe in many other ways and in many other things that are to it more believable than God. 

 

“I don’t believe in love, but I miss it,” is the self-confession of many in the heartache of another broken and lost, deep and meaningful relationship. Though they vow, “Never again”, they long for love more than ever before. So they will search for, or create, or force new ways to be loved. With a mixture of faith and doubt they knock, hoping to be invited in, and if not, to invite themselves in.

 

Saul of Tarsus didn’t believe in Jesus, but he had a passionate, violent yearning for God's love. Restlessly, tirelessly he pursued it and found it exactly where he wasn’t looking, where he was convinced it wasn't, where he had sought to in (un)belief destroy it. "And he said, 'Who are you, Lord?' And he said, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.' " (Acts 9:5)

 

“I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Jesus meets and helps me when and where I barely or partly believe, not when and where I fully and completely believe. Because belief or faith is not a work that earns and deserves anything from God. It is that which knows in some small, child-like way that I can’t and don’t have to earn this; I can’t and don’t have to be deserving of this; I can’t and don’t have to go out and get this on my own; here it is and it is mine. Perhaps a child believes suddenly that they are all alone. Whatever the cause, that belief just as suddenly effortlessly rises up from the heart and races to call out, “Mom? Dad?”

  

Unbelief and belief wrestle with each other in my heart and my mind, and that's ok. Sometimes I can’t sleep and I wrestle with my thoughts, pinning one only to be lifted by another. It disturbs my wife’s sleep. And I wonder, would she sleep better with my wrestlings and turnings or with my complete absence?

Idolatry and adultery

 

When Jesus says, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28), he is not saying that any man who notices or recognizes the beauty of another woman has committed adultery. He is saying that any man who looks on a woman in order to desire her sexually, in order to have sex with her in his imagination, has committed adultery. 

 

The Bible often equates idolatry with adultery. God, who has redeemed for himself a people for his own possession through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, has done so with the anticipation and expectation that his people will worship and love him exclusively, completely, and permanently. "For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called." (Isaiah 54:5)

 

However, Biblical narrative and the history of the church and the experience of any Christian’s heart show that the people of God often turn away to worship and serve other gods. We idolize; we commit idolatry, spiritual adultery.

 

This first happened following God’s miraculous salvation of Israel from slavery to Egypt. “Our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him  (Moses) aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt saying to Aaron, ‘Make for us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ And they made a calf in those days, and offered a sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.” (Acts 7:39-41). 

 

This happened again when God through Joshua brought Israel into the promised land. He commanded them to break down the altars representative of worship to other gods. “Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done?” (Judges 2:1-2). Don’t miss this dear Christian. Before Israel joined and bowed in worshipping other gods, they failed to obey and break down their altars. There was a breakdown in their heart towards God before there was a breaking away in their actions against God.

 

Idolatry does not begin the moment we bow to another god, anymore than adultery, as Jesus has pointed out, begins the moment you have sex. Idolatry begins the moment we determine in our hearts that God is not all-sufficient for our life. We find something in addition to or apart from God to be as or more worthy of our trust and obedience, our love and our worship, and we pursue it. 

 

God is all-sufficient for your needs, your wants, your hopes, and your dreams. He belongs to you. But that’s not all he’s “good for”. He is all-sufficient for your obedience, your purity, your holiness, and your calling. You belong to him. He did not begrudgingly redeem and free you from slavery to your sin. He freely gave himself for you; he wholeheartedly took your place; he loved you. "you were ransomed...not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ" (1 Peter 1:18-19). We are “the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” (Acts 20:28).

 

There is no grudge or mistrust or fear in the heart of the slave who has been freed by grace. There is only joy and thanksgiving and the desire to willingly follow their new Master all the days of their new life.

The hardest and the strongest and the most courageous thing you can do

 

David Foster Wallace writes in his short story, All That, “This was the year, at five or six, that I learned the meaning of ‘reverence’, which, as I understand it, is the natural attitude to take toward magical, unverifiable phenomena, the same way that ‘respect’ and ‘obedience’ describe the attitude one takes toward observable physical phenomena, such as gravity or money.”

 

At the end of his life, Joshua says to the people of Israel, “be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left” (Joshua 24:6). This is in fact an echo of what was said to Joshua at the beginning of his life in leadership. 

 

Being chosen and commissioned after Moses to lead Israel into the conquest of the promised land, God says to him, “Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.” (1:6-7)

 

It is true that Joshua would need to be strong and courageous because of the more numerous and stronger enemies in the land; because of their well-built and fortified cities. It is true God would divide rivers and cause the sun to stand still; he would deliver kings and armies into Joshua’s hands. But above all these phenomena and more, the act requiring the greatest strength and courage would be Joshua’s obedience to God’s word: “Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you.” This he must “be careful” to do, giving it his greatest attention to detail. 

 

In the face of adversaries, threats, and impassable and unassailable obstacles, obedience to God would be discouraged, called into question. Is it realistic? The observable, the tangible, the measurable, the visible, the audible would provoke great respect in Joshua and Israel. But God is to be more than respected; He is to be revered. He is the Holy One, the Deliverer, and the Savior.

 

Today, as Christians, we respect God, but often lose our reverence of Him. When God becomes associated with what is observable, we respect him so long as he is more observable than our trials or temptations. If we associate him with what is measurable, we respect him so long as we can measurably hold or feel more of Him, i.e. His blessings. But when and where God is only respected on the basis of what we see or feel, our obedience to him is tentative at best; it is conditional upon what is happening around us, that is, on what appears more real or more impressive, or on what feels to makes more sense than God and His Word.

 

But when and where God is revered, no matter what is happening around us or within us, we know that he still transcends all things, that he is still more Other than all things, that he is still over all things – that "from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." (Romans 11:36). This means that the hardest and the strongest and the most courageous thing we can do in this observable life is not to conquer what holds us back but to be careful to obey God and His Word. 

 

The surprising, challenging, often hard-to-accept and hard-to-explain observable earthly movements and developments in our lives are but a small reflection of the unobservable, eternal divine movements and developments in our lives. When all that is around us attempts to conquer or seduce our reverence – our obedience to, our worship of, our love for, our faith in the living, sovereign God – we don’t surrender. We are bold and courageous.

To be wiser not stronger is the goal

 

“Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.” (Psalm 119:78)

 

No one likes to be taken advantage of or tricked. No one likes to lose or come in last. No one likes to give up the fight or surrender the war. So we search for and cling to common sense, insight, wisdom, strength, strategy, even shrewdness. To be wiser, not stronger than our enemies is the desired goal. For God’s people, this wisdom is hidden and found in God’s word.

 

We are a DIY kind of people, though. “Do it yourself” is a great mindset and motivation for learning new skills, for challenging yourself, for making yourself into something better. But it is not a great mindset and motivation for growing in God’s wisdom. For that you can’t look to yourself.

 

God spoke through Jeremiah to his people, “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us’?…they have rejected the word of the LORD, so what wisdom is in them?” (Jeremiah 8:8-9) If you absent yourself from God’s word, you absent your life from God’s wisdom – from God.

 

God’s people know where to find him. Sadly, “Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, and the turtledove, swallow, and cranekeep the time of their coming, but my people know not the rules of the Lord.” (8:7) There should be within the heart of God’s people an innate, intuitive, instinctual, natural longing for God’s word, and we should know how to get to it. Like birds have a knowledge of seasons and times and respond automatically to these in nature, so God’s people should be sensitive and not insensitive, responsive and not unresponsive to the seasons and times, the movements and patterns of God in and for our lives through his word. It is unnatural for God’s people not to desire his word.

  

It is not enough to know how to do something. You must actually do it. You must put your hand and feet to the task, your heart and mind into it, your love and commitment behind it. Fighting a war against your enemies is not an easy, quick, comfortable task. But having wisdom, the right kind of wisdom, from above, keeps you one step ahead of your enemies. You can come to know how they think, feel, plan, and move. 

 

For God’s people in our fight against sin, temptation, the devil, injustice, and “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life” (1 John 2:16), the word of God is indispensable and irreplaceable. For this reason it must be “ever with me.”