Category: Ephesians

Dig Deeper

Pressing into our Doubts Can Lead us Straight to Jesus
3 minute read

I remember the first time I ever saw the Matrix: I was probably in middle school, maybe late elementary school, I’m not sure. But the memory of the experience itself is vivid and clear. There’s a lot going on in the Matrix trilogy, and I know a lot of you aren’t Matrix people. I get it. Sci-Fi isn’t for everyone (unless you start talking about the Avengers), so I won’t get into all the details. But there is one thing that I haven’t ever been able to shake.

Through the years, it’s always stuck with me that this idea of an entire world moving and working beneath what I perceive at a first glance absolutely fascinates me. To learn that there is more going on beneath the surface than I originally believed swings the door wide open to adventure, excitement, and all kinds of fun.

I think this is why I haven’t been able to shake it, though: every single day I’m learning that this thought of more to discover waiting for me below the surface of my perception is actually real. It’s everywhere. There is way more going on in the world than what we can see, or otherwise naturally apprehend.

The Bible has been teaching this for millennia, and to a degree, I’ve concurred. Paul says we don’t wrestle against flesh & blood, but spiritual powers. The entire book of Job is about an unseen deal between God & the enemy to test Job. I could go on.

What I’m learning though, is that this “unseen reality” motif is everywhere. Even in the abstract ideas and traditions that we carry on as Christians.

Don’t get me wrong – some traditions carried on by the church are vital, necessary, and sometimes even commanded by Jesus Himself; baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and others like marriage, service to the poor and underprivileged, etc.

But a lot of us have never stopped to ask ourselves why we do what we do. There might be reasons that I tell myself is my motivation for giving to the church, but is it really why I do it? Is it that reason that motivates me, or is there something deeper?

I’m finding that whenever I ask myself “Why do I do that this way?” or “Why do I even do this at all?” What ends up happening is 1 of 2 things:

EITHER:

  • I come to the conclusion that I’m doing what I’m doing for the wrong reasons, so I need to course-correct, and when I do, I fall ever more deeply in love with Him.

OR:

  • There’s an even better, fuller, more satisfying reason in Jesus to do what I do that I had overlooked, or had never been shown before, and I fall ever more deeply in love with Him.

Either way, they both end up in the same place: knowing why I believe what I believe always draws me closer to Jesus. Not once in my life has this ever resulted in growing a dislike for Him in me at all. It always shows Him to be more attractive and captivating then I had previously understood.

This is very difficult for people who have been taught to never doubt. That’s a big cancer in the church across the world that I’m hoping to help remove. Jesus never shuts down doubt, He invites His followers into an experience with Him. Thomas was never shamed for His doubt – He was invited to look at the fact of Jesus’s holes in His hands and side to prove the reality of what He hadn’t yet seen. He just had to dig a little deeper.

For example, why do I believe the Bible is inspired by God?

Answering that question with: “It tells me it is, and I believe it!” is good, but it’s not enough. I wish it were. God gave me a brain that never stops asking “Why?” Thankfully, He’s all about making His glory known, and He does it in ways that are anchored in facts. When I dug deeper into this belief, I found all kinds of fascinating reasons to love the Bible, believing that it came from God alone, through humans. In fact, the very information that shows how the Bible was written and compiled through human means and humans themselves is the very information that has convinced me it is from God alone.

So here’s my challenge: start asking yourself why you do what you do as you live your life. If you have the humility to second-guess yourself in your gut reactions and dig a little deeper into the things that you do, you just might end up right in front of Jesus.

And I’m telling you, there is no where else in the world you would want to be than with Him.

Priceless Bags of Dirt

He doesn’t make the darkness disappear; He makes it bow to Him.

5-minute read

I hate that I have to start with this, but there’s a huge Avengers: Endgame spoiler in this so if you haven’t seen it….

You get the drill.

Someone very close to me posed a rather pertinent question this morning:

“I struggle believing that God could be good–like, why do so many bad things happen to good people? Why do my family members experience death and sickness at the absolute least opportune times? Why do they have to experience this? If He’s good, why wouldn’t He intervene?”

I don’t agree that people are inherently good (This article from last month highlights school shootings in the US alone. Not to mention the 27+ million slaves worldwide, the refugee crisis and what’s causing it, international poverty levels, pollution, and so much more. Left to roam free, humanity is destructive. Haven’t you seen Avengers: Age of Ultron?). And while that might be true, the question stands: If God honestly is good and is love, then why would He let so many bad things happen? Why are more than 95,000 children murdered each year (not including abortion), 56% of them by their own parents? Why do 9.1 million people globally die of starvation each year? Why was a 5-year-old boy thrown off the 3rd-floor balcony at the Mall of America? Why did my college pastor’s son get diagnosed with Trisomy-18 in-utero and only survive 15 days outside the womb?

If He’s good, where is He? Why such pain? Why such heartache? Stress? Why?

Honestly I don’t know. “Just trust that it’s part of God’s plan” is an answer I’m not fully satisfied with. I know that He allows some things to happen for reasons we can’t understand. The book of Job explains this much. Like, sin has broken the world, and this is how we experience it personally. I get that. But why would He allow those specifics? I don’t know.

But am I supposed to? I don’t know about that either. Would I really be satisfied if I got those answers? Probably not. I think if God told me everything I wanted to know, I’d never follow Him into the darkness. Kinda like Tony Stark and Dr. Strange’s “1 in 14,000,605”. Tony never would’ve snapped in Endgame if Stephen would’ve told him he’d have to in Infinity War.

What I do know is this: all God has ever done is take that dirt in my life and the peoples’ around me and has made beautiful, wonderful, jaw-dropping things out of it.

Think about it: God made so many things that are intricately beautiful: mountains, rivers, New Zealand, Texas sunsets, diamonds, gold, wildflowers, and the Grand Canyon. But out of all those amazing things, do you know what He chose to use when He made you and me?

Dirt.

For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. –Ephesians 2:10 NLT

Do you see that? His masterpiece. Of all the things God created, we are His crown jewel. In everything He created, He values not one thing higher than humanity. And He used the last part of His creation anybody wants to be a part of except sometimes 2-year-old boys (not exactly at the peak of their goodness if you know what I mean).

I’ve yet to encounter even the mention of a culture that sees dirtiness as a virtue. Even the Bible uses that symbolism to describe so many negative aspects in life. Yet God took that dirt and made the one and only object of His affection. You have worth. You have value. Yeah, you’re dirt. But you’re His dirt. And He says you’re priceless.

He’s taken my lustful thoughts and fantasies (dirt, by all accounts–they’ve hurt the woman who will be my wife in 22 days, my mother, my father, my roommates, my bosses and workplaces, the women around me, and so many others) and He is using them, right now, to free other men. He’s taken my drive for being right and succumbing to anger and directed them toward good, toward a drive to be a faithful husband, father, brother, and son.

He did it with Abel. He’s doing it with family members of mine who are dealing with chronic illness. He’s done it with Peter, Paul (ON PAUL, HOLY COW READ THIS OMG), Jim Elliott, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, AW Tozer, Augustine, and so many more.

In 1st Peter 4:12, Peter says “quit being surprised by the dirt. Instead, trust your Faithful Creator” (ATV-Abridged Ty Version). He’s not just the Creator because of Genesis 1 & 2. He never stopped. Trust Him; it will lead to absolute, unending, fully-satisfied, & complete joy. Let Him in.

He doesn’t make the darkness disappear; He makes it bow to Him.

Wisdom & Revelation

It’s surprising to me how easy it is to forget what Jesus has done for me.

That sounds ridiculous, right? The perfect, holy, glorified God of the universe became a man and lived sinlessly only to die in my place and be raised from the dead so that I could live with Him forever. How on earth could I forget that? That’s like, the most profound thing to ever happen since like, ever, and to forget that would be virtually impossible.

Except it’s totally possible.

My life has been a constant roller-coaster–twisting around in every direction, while at the same time soaring up or crashing down or completely flipping upside-down–it’s been crazy. But two things that have been constant since the very beginning are that I am a sinner, feeling like the big shot in my life and being able to tell God how I’m gonna do things even though the themes of that attitude are totally false, and that in spite of that, God loves me enough to have sent His Son to nullify the crazy high payment that attitude costs me. It doesn’t matter what ridiculousness happens around me, good or bad–what will never change is that those two statements are 100% true. But my mind likes to fool me and tell me the opposite.

Paul knew the Ephesians were going through the same thing. Most of his letters were to specific people or churches who were dealing with a very particular problem that was plaguing them or the people around them and were attempts at correcting that behavior/solving that problem. Ephesians? Not so much. Ephesians isn’t a letter that addresses a specific problem. Instead, it’s a letter that attempts to avoid future problems by restating to the Ephesians what Christ has done for them through His sacrifice and the Holy Spirit and laying out for them what applying those truths to their lives would look like.

So Paul writes this letter, and he wastes absolutely zero time getting to the punch. Verse one just says who the letter is to, but verse two starts a 3-chapter-long exhortation of Jesus and what he has done for us. Three. Whole. Chapters. And the coolest part is, he tells the whole story under the context of glorifying the Father (i.e. God is the subject of the whole deal) rather than focusing on us. He constantly uses phrases like, “God…has blessed us,” “He chose us,” “He made known to us,” etc. etc. etc. It’s everywhere. God really wants us to know that this story does not focus on us, but rather, it focuses on Him and what He has done for us.

In verses 15-17 of chapter 1, Paul says this:

“For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease
giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers; that the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit
of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.”

Paul says, “I know you’ve chosen to follow Jesus–I get that. And because I get that, this is what I’m praying for you: that God would give you wisdom to know what He wants and revelation to know who He is. Neither of these are possible if you don’t know Jesus. So because you do, that’s what I want in your life.” And consequently, it’s what God wants in our lives, too.

Now the coolest part is, these two ideas point back to one specific place, and it’s amazing. If God wants His children to know Him and to know what He wants in their lives, where do they need to look to find those two things?

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Scripture. God loves His children enough to allow us to choose for ourselves what we will do in many areas of our lives, but if we’re not following His will in those choices, things are going to get scrappy real fast. The Gorilla Glue that fixes everything though is that His word is stuffed full with constant reminders and reiterations of what His will is for our lives: to bring glory to His name and to do so both within our hearts and outside our hearts to those around us. Colossians 3:17 says, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.”

How can we do that without first knowing Who exactly He is? How can I speak to my roommate of a God who is sovereign if I haven’t first looked to scripture to see where He has been sovereign in my own life? How can I accurately portray His love if I first haven’t let Him love me like He wants to?

Paul wants the Lord to give the Ephesians a spirit of wisdom and revelation. God wants us to have a spirit of wisdom and revelation. Jesus supplies us with what we need to live not just physically, but spiritually as well. The Ephesians, at that time, didn’t have 100% of the scripture we have today. They just had the Old Testament. But now, scripture has come full circle. The Word of God is complete, perfect, and just waiting to show you and me who God is through Jesus and His life here among us.

We just have to let Him.