Jul 14, 2023
You may think you need to save your life in order to do your ministry. On the contrary, how you lose your life may be the capstone of your m
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You may think you need to save your life in order to do your ministry. On the contrary, how you lose your life may be the capstone of your m
Solid Joys devo for the day hits me.
Who has given a gift to [God] that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. (Romans 11:35–36)
When it comes to obedience, gratitude is a dangerous motive. It tends to get expressed in debtor’s terms. For example, “Look how much God has done for you. Shouldn’t you, out of gratitude, do much for him? Or: “You owe God everything that you are and have. What have you done for him in return?”
I have at least three problems with this kind of motivation.
First, it is impossible to pay God back for all the grace he has given us. We can’t even begin to pay him back, because Romans 11:35–36 says, “Who has given a gift to [God] that he might be repaid? [Answer: Nobody!] For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.” We can’t pay him back because he already owns all we have to give him.
Secondly, even if we succeeded in paying him back for all his grace to us, we would only succeed in turning grace into a business transaction. If we can pay him back, it was not grace. If someone tries to show you a special favor of love by having you over for dinner, and you end the evening by saying that you will pay them back by having them over next week, you nullify their grace and turn it into a trade. God does not like to have his grace nullified. He likes to have it glorified (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14).
Thirdly, focusing on gratitude as a motive for obedience tends to overlook the crucial importance of having faith in God’s future grace. Gratitude looks back to grace received in the past and feels thankful. Faith looks forward to grace promised in the future and feels hopeful. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1).
This faith in future grace is the motive for obedience that preserves the gracious quality of human obedience. Obedience does not consist in paying God back and thus turning grace into a trade. Obedience comes from trusting in God for more grace — future grace — and thus magnifying the infinite resources of God’s love and power. Faith looks to the promise, I will be “with you wherever you go” (see Joshua 1:9), and ventures, in obedience, to take the land.
The Offense of Fearing Men
Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.” (1 Samuel 15:24)
Why did Saul obey the people instead of God? Because he feared the people instead of God. He feared the human consequences of obedience more than he feared the divine consequences of disobedience. He feared the displeasure of the people more than the displeasure of God. And that is a great insult to God.
In fact, Isaiah says it is a kind of pride to be afraid of what man can do while we disregard the promises of God. He quotes God with this piercing question: “I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker?” (Isaiah 51:12–13).
Fear of man may not feel like pride, but that’s what God says it is, “Who do you think you are to fear man and forget me your Maker!”
The point is this: If you fear man, you have begun to deny the holiness, the worth of God and his Son, Jesus. God is infinitely stronger than man. He is infinitely wiser and infinitely more full of reward and joy.
To turn from him out of fear of what man can do is to discount all that God promises to be for those who fear him. It is a great insult. And in such an insult God can take no pleasure.
On the other hand, when we hear God’s promises and trust him with courage, fearing the reproach brought upon God by our unbelief, then he is greatly honored. And in that he has much pleasure.
How much God wants to bless you
“The Lord will again take delight in prospering you.” (Deuteronomy 30:9)
God does not bless us begrudgingly. There is a kind of eagerness about the beneficence of God. He does not wait for us to come to him. He seeks us out, because it is his pleasure to do us good. God is not waiting for us; he is pursuing us. That, in fact, is the literal translation of Psalm 23:6, “Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life.”
God loves to show mercy. Let me say it again. God loves to show mercy. He is not hesitant or indecisive or tentative in his desires to do good to his people. His anger must be released by a stiff safety lock, but his mercy has a hair trigger. That’s what he meant when he came down on Mount Sinai and said to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6). It’s what he meant when he said in Jeremiah 9:24, “I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”
God is never irritable or edgy. His anger never has a short fuse. Instead he is infinitely energetic with absolutely unbounded and unending enthusiasm for the fulfillment of his delights.
This is hard for us to comprehend, because we have to sleep every day just to cope, not to mention thrive. Our emotions go up and down. We get bored and discouraged one day and feel hopeful and excited another.
We are like little geysers that gurgle and sputter and pop erratically. But God is like a great Niagara Falls — you look at 186,000 tons of water crashing over the precipice every minute, and think: Surely this can’t keep going at this force year after year after year. Yet it does.
That’s the way God is about doing us good. He never grows weary of it. It never gets boring to him. The Niagara of his grace has no end.
The Payout for Patience #SolidJoys https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-payout-for-patience
The sovereign grace of God can turn the unplanned place and the unplanned pace into the happiest ending imaginable.
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.” (Genesis 50:20)
I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting. —Isaiah 50:6 (ESV)
"Humans recoil from suffering. We recoil a hundred times more from suffering that is caused by unjust, ugly, sniveling, low-down, arrogant people. At every moment of pain and indignity, Jesus chose not to do what would have been immediately just. He gave his back to the smiter. He gave his cheek to slapping. He gave his beard to plucking. He offered his face to spitting. And he was doing it for the very ones causing the pain." —John Piper, "The Intensity of Christ’s Love and the Intentionality of His Death"