Homesick to the Glory of God

Last week my wife and I visited our hometown (Albuquerque, NM). We moved away only 4 months ago, but for me it feels a lot longer. Over the past month or so I have been struggling periodically with some pretty strong homesickness and nostalgia, particularly missing the amazing sense of community I had grown into with other believers here.

Before we moved, my wife and I had what I would describe as an ideal community situation. We had many close friends who were strong believers. We attended church with them, participated in Bible studies, shared our resources and our homes with one another, and pushed each other towards Jesus. Of course no community is perfect, but when I think of what healthy Christian community should look like, what we had was definitely on target.

Since we've moved, I've been missing that quite a bit. We have definitely met some amazing people in our new home church, but strong relationships take time and, as you would expect, we haven't just automatically replicated what we had in Albuquerque. It has been hard for me to adjust to this.

Most people would look at my homesickness as something negative. Some might view it as me being too sensitive or impatient, while others might say it's a sign that our current situation is bad, but regardless most people would say that it is a bad thing, something I need to get rid of as fast as possible.

As I've prayed and attempted to rely on God through this however, I've come to a slightly different conclusion. Homesickness can be bad, it can even be an idol, but it can also push us closer to Christ; it depends on how I use it.

The truth is that no matter how good your situation in life is, you will almost certainly go through phases of homesickness or nostalgia: longing for a different time or place that feels more truly like home. Why is this? Why are we always longing for "home", even when we are as at home as we've ever been? The answer is simple.

No community or home that we have in this present life is truly our home in the ultimate sense. Good community, like what my wife and I have experienced, is merely a reflection of the ultimate reality of our relationship with and rest in God. Community is good, helpful, and important, but in our sinful state it is also always flawed, a blurred image of the original. We know as Christians that someday when this present life is gone, we will be eternally at home with our Savior. While having a solid home in this life is great, it is never perfect; it only signifies the reality of our true home in eternity with Christ, a perfection yet to be attained.

So homesickness then, is not ultimately about missing something on earth. As Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:2, right now we "groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling." Our entire being longs to be truly at home with God, because that is the home for which we were made. The manifestations of home that we have experienced on earth come to mind when we are homesick, because they are all we know right now.

At this point we reach the fork in the road, where homesickness becomes either good or bad.

If I allow my homesickness to consume me, and spend all of my time longing for an earthly community that I once had, I have created an idol, and my homesickness is very destructive. I am putting earthly community, something that can be good, in the place of God, who is the only source of all good.

However, if I recognize that my longing for the best community I have experienced is really a longing for God, homesickness can actually turn into beautiful worship. When the feeling hits, I can let it drive me into the arms of Christ, instead of driving me to utter despair. When we remember what the feeling of homesickness points to, it can be a catalyst for seeking God in prayer and worship like never before.

So when you feel isolated, nostalgic and homesick, remember why that really is. Let your emotions drive you into the arms of Christ, because one day we will have a perfect home with him.

The Prodigal Son

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been teaching on the parable of the prodigal son. Through the research process in preparing for these teachings I’ve learned so much and been re-awakened to how beautiful this story is, so I thought I would share some thoughts about it with you. I can’t include everything I would like in this relatively short post, but hopefully I can at least get you thinking!

The parable of the prodigal son is one of the most well-known parables told by Jesus. It can be found in Luke 15:11-34. While the story is very well-known, the main point that is being made is often easily missed. Many people tend to focus on unconditional forgiveness as the most important point, and while that is a piece of the parable, it is not the primary one.

Before I dive in, I would like to say that the book The Prodigal God by Tim Keller is a great resource on this parable, and just on the gospel in general, and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.

The Younger Son

The younger son in this story almost certainly represents the tax collectors and sinners, who had upset the Pharisees at the beginning of Luke 15 by flocking to Jesus. The point Jesus is making here is pretty clear; those who are considered sinners and abject failures by religious people are just as available for salvation as anyone else. God freely welcomes those who come to Him, and he embraces them enthusiastically, regardless of their past mistakes.

This point is the one which is often given the most attention when people talk about this parable. Ironically, it is probably the least critical of the three points I am covering. This is certainly a beautiful truth of the gospel, but in this context more than anything it seems to serve as preparation for the second point made with the elder son.

The Elder Son

When Jesus tells this parable in Luke his target audience is primarily Pharisees and Scribes, who had been complaining about the “sinners” flocking to Jesus (Luke 15:1-2). Thus, we would expect teaching directed at them, and that is what the illustration of the elder brother brings.

Many people see the problem of the elder brother as simply not being accepting of his sinful younger brother, and so they say the point is that we should just be less judgmental. However, if we understand the elder brother in context as a critique of the Pharisees and Scribes to whom Jesus was speaking, the meaning gets much more intense.

The elder brother in the story is actually no better than the younger brother. Though he seems to have been obedient and good all his life, when he refuses to go into the giant party his father is throwing, we should see that as an extremely embarrassing and blatant act of disrespect. This was no small dinner his father was hosting; he had killed the fattened calf (v. 23)! The older brother showed just as much disrespect here as the younger brother did at the beginning of the story.

The message to draw from the elder son is not simply that we should judge less, it is that even obedience can be sinful when it is for the purpose of extorting something from God. Just as the younger son only wanted the father’s material goods, so the elder son ultimately only truly cared about what he got from his father. His obedience wasn’t out of true love, but it was out of a desire to obtain blessings and goods. He felt his father owed him something. This is made evident by his reaction to the return of his younger brother.

If our obedience to God is driven, even subconsciously, by the thought that it gives us leverage, or earns us certain rights from God, we are in a dangerous place. Perhaps even more dangerous than abandoning God, because our lost-ness is so much harder to recognize. Through the elder brother, Christ presents a scathing indictment of the religious people of the day, warning them that obedience for the sake of obtaining blessings is just as bad as outright rebellion.

The Larger Context

The story of the prodigal son in Luke 15 is preceded by two other parables; the story of the lost sheep and the story of the lost coin. In all three stories, the finding of what was lost ultimately results in celebration and rejoicing on the part of the finder. Thus, based on the context we can see that the celebration in the story of the prodigal son must be the main point. Through all three stories Christ is illustrating that any sinner, even the tax collectors and sinners who were despised by the Pharisees, is precious to God (and that indeed the “morally upright” are still sinners).  This parable is a call for all to recognize their lost-ness, including those who who are “good” or “religious”, and their equal standing before a loving God who will rejoice at that realization.

This parable is at the same time a beautiful tale of redemption and a strong rebuke to the religious elite. Each one of us probably has traits of both sons in the story, ultimately boiling down to our desire for God’s blessings over God Himself. As we see it in ourselves may we lean on God’s grace to increase our love for Him.

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Being Part of the Family

Family can be hard to deal with. Parents embarrass their children, children disrespect their parents, and people can expect way too much of each other. All sorts of issues ranging from funny to very serious exist in families, and yet, we only abandon our families in extreme cases. Most of the time, we work through those issues because, well, it’s family.

The question I want to pose today is this; why is it so different with our spiritual family?

I’m talking here about the local church. Of course in a sense all believers are family, but it is clear in Scripture that God calls us to community, to special bonds as a  family of believers with whom we worship, grow in Christ, and live our lives. In 1 Timothy chapter 5 Paul exhorts Timothy to treat older men as fathers, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters. Indeed, one of Paul’s great concerns in the New Testament is the unity of the local church (cf. 1 Cor. 1:10, Tit. 3:10).

If this is true, and God calls us into strong, devoted community with other believers, why today do we see such a lack of commitment to local churches? Today more than ever, people leave churches for any reason they can conceive of. People leave because the worship style isn’t exactly what they prefer, or because the pastor isn’t as funny as they’d like, or because the church just doesn’t have the programs they want.

Whatever the reason may be, so many Americans feel comfortable taking off any time the church down the road seems a little nicer, and this is a MAJOR problem.

The root of this issue is that we’ve come to think of church as a product being dispensed for consumers, rather than a community growing in Christ. We believe, perhaps subconsciously but still wholeheartedly, that when we go to church its about worship that makes us feel good, and a message that is funny and not too hard to sit through, and comfortable chairs, and making every next step of involvement very easy. And if the church we are at can’t offer it to us, then we just go to one that is “better”. Church becomes all about MY experience, and not about Christ’s work in and through a community seeking him together.

In the long run, this mindset destroys the church. When we have a consumer mindset, we lose depth, because churches cater to what people want, and we want easy. We wan’t fun music with lyrics that don’t make us think. We want funny sermons that only barely prompt us to be slightly better people so we can feel better about ourselves. We don’t want the messy, hard work that goes along with truly getting involved in a community of imperfect people. We want polished and shiny.

And so we get what we want. We get shallow, topical sermons. We get fun, poppy music that all too often lacks any real depth. We get easy programs for getting “plugged in”. but at the end of the day, it doesn’t satisfy, and it creates a very surface-level Christianity.

This is because the hardships of the local church are one of God’s greatest ways of growing us. True, strong community is what can hold us up when we are hurting, it can correct us when we stray, and it can teach us patience and humility like nothing else can. God calls us to be part of a community of believers, not only until it gets hard, but especially when it gets hard. We are called to bear one another’s burdens, to love each other, to take care of the poor and hurting among us, and to strive for unity.

The point of church isn’t to simply go to the service that you like on Sundays, and then maybe join a small group if you really feel it. It is to be totally invested in a community. To love a group of imperfect, annoying people with all that you have, and to be loved by those people even though you’re imperfect and annoying too. And when things that you don’t like come your way, which they will, you are called to love that community, and at times deal with things you don’t like all that much, because family is hard.

There are certainly reasons to leave a church, such as departure from scriptural beliefs, but don’t let personal preference on ultimately insignificant things keep you from being part of the family that God has called you to.

This post is taken from my personal blog. See more here

Two Resolutions About Not Knowing

"The majesty of God in itself goes beyond the capacity of human understanding and cannot be comprehended by it... We must adore its loftiness rather than investigate it, so that we do not remain overwhelmed by so great a splendor" -John Calvin

One of the areas of reformed theology that is most constantly questioned is the reformed understanding of God's sovereignty. This idea is summarized well in what Job said to God in Job 42:2; "“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted." We struggle to understand the implications of this idea of a sovereign God. We struggle to harmonize this idea with God's love when we see suffering, or to understand how our own agency as beings relates. Even the most dedicated reformed Christian, when thinking logically about these ideas, comes to a point where he doesn't understand how it works.

However, this article isn't primarily about the doctrine of sovereignty. What I would like to address is how we handle mystery in God. In many areas, sovereignty being only one, we encounter things about God in Scripture that confuse us, and even upset us. How is Christ fully God and fully man? How are there three persons in the Trinity, but only one God? The list goes on and on. There are so many things we don't understand, that nonetheless seem to be clear in Scripture.

Often, when we encounter these things we don't understand, we simply seek to reason them away. After all, we are a modern society, reason is king. The problem is, when we start doing this we end up with teachings that make perfect logical sense, but are very obviously unscriptural. The Arian controversy was a clear example of this, when an attempt to preserve the oneness of God and the logic of the Incarnation, Arius claimed Jesus was a created being. Open theism is another, in which to preserve free will and (supposedly) God's love, theologians turn God into a desperate chess player seeking to lose as few pieces as He can.

For the new year, I have two resolutions when it comes to the mystery I find in God, and I hope you will consider taking them on yourself;

Enjoy the Mystery

The truth is, we will never fully understand God. His ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts (cf. Isa. 55:8). If we could fully understand God and wrap Him in our tight little logical box, He wouldn't be God. Our rationalist heritage has embedded in us the belief that there is no intellectual mountain that the human mind cannot climb, but God tells us something different.

So when you come to see something in Scripture that is hard to fully understand, don't run away or immediately seek to explain it away. Instead, enjoy it.

The majestic mysteriousness of God is an amazing thing, and when we approach it with a proper perspective it can be a source of great joy to us. Paul illustrates this perfectly in 1 Cor. 1, when he talks about how the gospel itself is foolishness to the world. Paul knew that to the religious minds of the time, God humbling himself, suffering, and dying for sinful man made absolutely no sense, yet despite the apparent lack of logic Paul said it was for Christians the very "power of God" (v 18). Just because we don't fully understand how something works in every logical detail, doesn't mean we can't appreciate God's glory in it. This year let us revel in the glory of a God who is so incredible that we can't fully grasp Him, and appreciate what He has revealed.

Seek to Understand

Maybe up to this point you are tracking with me, and so you are ready to say something like, "Great! I don't care about trying to understand the details! In fact, let's just throw out the study of theology altogether, because it's just a stupid attempt to fit God in a logical box!" While I appreciate the enthusiasm, this is what I would call some major over-correction. Deut. 29:29 sums it up perfectly;  “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."

It is definitely important to accept mystery in God, but once we have a healthy grasp on that idea we are also called to continue to seek to know Him more. While some things about God we will never know, He has revealed Himself in His word for a reason. Make no mistake, that is not just a call to a personal experience, but also a call to grow in knowledge of God. Take these examples;

Psalm 1:1-2;
Blessed is the man
    who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
    nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
² but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and on his law he meditates day and night.

Proverbs 1:5;
⁵ Let the wise hear and increase in learning,
    and the one who understands obtain guidance

Psalm 119:34
Give me understanding, that I may keep your law
    and observe it with my whole heart.

Rom. 12:2;
² Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

If we are to love God and grow nearer to Him, we will desire to understand Him and know more about Him, and as you seek Him you will continue to grow in understanding. It is wrong for us to refuse to attempt to understand what Scripture teaches; this attitude will only lead to ignorance. Instead, if we wish to follow God we must attempt to continue to grow in understanding.

The amazing thing is that even here there is a mystery! We are called to seek to understand and at the same time acknowledge that our understanding is limited.

So for 2017, I hope that you will join me in these two resolutions. Let's seek to understand as much as we can about God, and enjoy the beauty of a God who can never be fully understood.

This post is taken from my personal blog; see more here