My daughter wears a torture device around her neck. Please don’t think this makes me an unfit parent; it was her idea. Kids these days, right? But no, it’s not just the kids, lots of people do it. “Crazy Americans”? No, it’s not even just an American thing. Why would people voluntarily wear a torture device around their neck?
Let’s look at a passage that is both a powerful statement of the gospel and also a powerful lesson on how to live the Christian life. If you ever wondered what it means to live like Jesus, this little stretch of scripture gives an unforgettable picture of just what that looks like.
Dear friends,
In my last letter I wrote of preparing your mind for battle. Now let’s think about your bodies. Few can get up from a relatively sedentary lifestyle and run a race. You have to slowly prepare your body.
Physical training is uncomfortable and takes a long time, but the results can amaze you. What we need to concern ourselves with now, though, is not physical strength but the lives our physical bodies display before the world around us. Examining and improving our character can be just as difficult and painful as preparing our bodies to fight a war or run a race, but it is essential.
Dear friends,
I want you to take a moment and think about this question: If you knew you were going to be in the fight of your life in six months, how would you prepare?
Before soldiers are sent into battle, we try to prepare them by training their minds, strengthening their bodies, and teaching them to use the weapons of war. Christian, you will be going into battle, and you need to prepare.
Dear friends,
Every life has its troubles. Painful toil, disobedient children, health problems, or the sinful actions of other humans can bring hardship into our lives. But sometimes it is granted to us to suffer because of Christ. When that happens, rejoice!
Dear friends,
I do not know the world you will live in, but I know the Lord said, “In this world, you will have trouble,” so I want to give you some advice on how to continue to honor Christ when that trouble comes. There are so many things I’d like to be able to share with you, so many precious truths that can comfort your soul and transform the way you live. But if I only have the opportunity to tell you one thing, let’s make it this: No matter what happens, when life is easy, and especially when life is hard, remember the gospel!
No one wants to suffer; we’re going to avoid it if we can. But “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2Tim 3:12). So what do we do when it comes, when it’s unavoidable? We have more wisdom from “Babylon” on that matter.
The early church saw Rome as a new Babylon, embodying its power, wickedness, and oppression. Peter, writing from there, saw what was coming for the church and wanted to help them not just survive but honor Christ under persecution.
In June 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dumped 20-40 inches of rain on the Houston area in just a few days. Thousands of houses were flooded, including the homes of some of the couples in our “newlyweds” Sunday school class. Our class of mostly 20-somethings descended on those houses hauling out furniture, ripping out carpet, and tearing out drywall.
Isaiah 40-45 is one of my favorite stretches in the Bible. When I’m feeling down, this passage picks me up. It paints several pictures of who God is. And those pictures are big, which is why I love it. Because when God is big, everything else seems small.
Man cannot live by broccoli alone.
A diet of nothing but broccoli would lead to malnutrition. A healthy body requires a variety of foods to get the vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats that the body needs to operate properly.
A healthy mind and soul needs variety as well.
As we read the scriptures, we will come across boring parts. In the Old Testament, we find long lists of numbers. In both Old and New we find genealogies. In the epistles we find sections that seem like filler, where the author is basically saying hi from everyone here to everyone there. It’s natural to want to skim or even skip over those parts.
Don’t. A little effort can sometimes find some powerful truths hidden in those passages.
My thirtieth birthday brought me the gift of a chronic stomach problem. I’d taken the day off from work, but I woke up feeling bad, and it only got worse as the day progressed. But stomach bugs happen, and I fully expected it to last no more than a day or two and then life would get back to normal. I was wrong. That was the new normal.
I struggled with that condition for years. I spent most of 2006 nauseous. Finally they found a medicine that helped. It didn’t cure it, but it made the symptoms manageable. Ten years or so later, the doctor wanted to wean me off the medication and see how it went. By God’s grace it went well. I still have the occasional flare up, but nothing like the way it began. So the medicine worked. How do I know? I got better.
I’ve got this friend, let’s call him Bill. He’s had it pretty rough. But we can learn a lot from his tale of woe.
Bill met this girl and fell hard in love. I have no idea what he saw in her. She wasn’t pretty, wasn’t smart, wasn’t even very nice. But he was crazy about her. They got married, and she cheated on him before the ink was dry on the license.
The story of Jonah is a staple of children’s Sunday school classes. However, the big fish gets more of the attention than the theology of the book. As adults, I’m not sure we do it much more justice. The fish goes from an amazing story to a topic of debate. We need to let Jonah teach us an amazing truth about God.
Much of Christian theology is composed of two seemingly competing truths held in tension. Error creeps in when that tension is not maintained. Sometimes this results in heresy. Sometimes this results in misbehavior by the church. And sometimes this results in our failing our children and our culture.
There’s a common misconception among Christians. I’m not entirely sure where it comes from. I used to hold it myself, but I don’t know why. I don’t remember ever being taught it. Perhaps it’s a natural misunderstanding of some biblical truths. But it’s not true, and when we repeat it, we do harm to the cause of Christ and the reputation of our God. So let’s look at it.
Familiarity breeds boredom. When you’ve read a passage in the Bible countless times, it’s easy to assume you know it and breeze through, just trying to make it to the end. Slowing down and reading closer can make the familiar new.
I’ve been reading through Mark, but only a pericope or two at a time, repeatedly. I’m trying to read it like someone who’s never heard of this Jesus guy before and to keep an eye on the broader story Mark is telling. When I came to the account of Gadarene demoniac, a familiar story I’m quite fond of, I saw something on my third pass through I would probably not have seen if I wasn’t reading with a pen in my hand.
So you decide you want to try inductive reading. And then you vapor lock because there are just so many options in study tools. How do you decide what to use? Let me offer a little advice on that.
