Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands

Resources for Changing Lives

A series published in cooperation with

THE CHRISTIAN COUNSELING AND EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

Glenside, Pennsylvania

Susan Lutz, Series Editor

Available in the series:

Edward T. Welch, When People Are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man

Paul David Tripp, Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens

Edward T. Welch, Blame It on the Brain? Distinguishing Chemical Imbalances, Brain Disorders, and Disobedience

James C. Petty, Step by Step: Divine Guidance for Ordinary Christians

Paul David Tripp, War of Words: Getting to the Heart of Your Communication Struggles

Edward T. Welch, Addictions—A Banquet in the Grave: Finding Hope in the Power of the Gospel

Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change

David Powlison, Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lens of Scripture

INSTRUMENTS

in the

REDEEMER’S

HANDS

People in Need of Change

Helping People in Need of Change

PAUL DAVID TRIPP

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—except for brief quotations for the purpose of review or comment, without the prior permission of the publisher, P&R Publishing Company, P.O. Box 817, Phillipsburg, New Jersey 08865-0817.

Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL

VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible

Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Homework assignments from appendix 5 may be photocopied under the following conditions: (1) you have purchased a copy of this book, (2) you use these photocopied assignments with your counselees, and (3) you charge no more than the cost of photocopying.

Italics in Scripture quotations indicate emphasis added.

Page design by Tobias Design

Typesetting by Michelle Feaster

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-62995-144-7 (ePub)

ISBN: 978-1-62995-145-4 (Mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tripp, Paul David, 1950–

Instruments in the Redeemer’s hands : people in need of change helping

people in need of change / Paul David Tripp.

p. cm.—(Resources for changing lives)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-87552-607-2 (pbk.)

1. Peer counseling in the church. I. Title. II. Series.

BV4409.T75 2002

253—dc21

2002028537

To Tedd.

Thanks for leading the way.

Contents

Illustrations ix

Preface xi

1. The Best of News: A Reason to Get Up in the Morning 1

2. In the Hands of the Redeemer 17

3. Do We Really Need Help? 37

4. The Heart Is the Target 57

5. Understanding Your Heart Struggle 75

6. Following the Wonderful Counselor 95

7. Building Relationships by Entering Their World 115

8. Building Relationships by Identifying with Suffering 141

9. Getting to Know People 161

10. Discovering Where Change Is Needed 183

11. The Goals of Speaking the Truth in Love 199

12. The Process of Speaking the Truth in Love 221

13. Establishing Agenda and Clarifying Responsibility 239

14. Instilling Identity with Christ and

Providing Accountability 259

Appendixes

1. Opening Blind Eyes: Another Look at

Data Gathering 277

2. What the Counselor Brings to the Process of

Data Gathering 288

3. Strategies for Data Gathering 301

4. Doctrines that Drive Homework 318

5. Homework and Four Phases of Counseling 329

Notes 355

Index of Scripture 357

Illustrations

6.1 Serving as an instrument of change 110

7.1 The Relational Foundation for Ministry:

Salvation as Our Model 121

7.2 The Four Elements of a Loving Ministry Relationship 126

8.1 Fellow Sufferers with Christ (Heb. 2:10–11) 149

10.1 Knowing a Person Biblically 188

11.1 A Balanced Gospel Perspective 218

13.1 Clarifying Responsibility 250

Preface

What God has ordained for his church is both wonderful and sobering. It is wonderful because he is a jealous and determined God. His work in his people will not fail, but will continue until it is completed. It is sobering because this work follows an “all of my people, all of the time” model.

Many of us would be relieved if God had placed our sanctification in the hands of trained and paid professionals, but that simply is not the biblical model. God’s plan is that through the faithful ministry of every part, the whole body will grow to full maturity in Christ. The leaders of his church have been gifted, positioned, and appointed to train and mobilize the people of God for this “every person, everyday” ministry lifestyle.

The paradigm is simple: when God calls you to himself, he also calls you to be a servant, an instrument in his redeeming hands. All of his children are called into ministry, and each of them needs the daily intervention this ministry provides. If you followed the Lord for a thousand years, you would still need the ministry of the body of Christ as much as you did the day you first believed. This need will remain until our sanctification is complete in Glory.

That is what this book is about: how God uses people, who are themselves in need of change, as instruments of the same kind of change in others. This book’s goal is not just that people’s lives would be changed as they give help and receive it. The goal is to help change the church’s very culture.

I am persuaded that the church today has many more consumers than committed participants. Sure, Joe and Sheila may volunteer for a specific activity like VBS or a diaconal project, but this frequently falls woefully short of the “everyone, all the time” model of the New Testament. Our tendency toward ecclesiastical consumerism has seriously weakened the church. For most of us, church is merely an event we attend or an organization we belong to. We do not see it as a calling that shapes our entire life.

But consider this: we could never hire enough paid staff to meet the ministry needs of the average local church. The “passive body that pays the professionals” culture of the modern evangelical church must be forsaken for the ministry model God has so wisely ordained. To that end this book has been written.

As always when I come to the end of a project like this, I am aware of how privileged I am. To be released for six months from normal ministry responsibilities to focus on writing is an amazing gift. My thanks goes out to John Bettler, the faculty and staff of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation, and to all of God’s people who have sacrificially given to make this work possible. I must extend my thanks as well to Sue Lutz. Sue, your editing ability is outstanding. Thank you for being willing to turn my thoughts into words that make sense, and thank you for being willing to give me the “bad news” when you are convinced it will make the book better.

Finally, as you read, some of you may wonder why this book doesn’t have a chapter-by-chapter study guide. The reason is that this material has been developed as discipleship curriculum for local churches. The Instruments of Change curriculum contains twelve lessons with both leader’s guide and student manuals available. Each lesson has a threefold focus: concepts you need to know, how those apply to you personally, and how they set an agenda for your relationships and ministry.

The Instruments of Change course is the first piece of the Changing Hearts, Changing Lives Curriculum. This curriculum will also include courses entitled, How People Change and Change and Your Relationships. The Changing Hearts, Changing Lives Curriculum is an expression of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation’s commitment to do all it can to assist the local church to train, equip, and mobilize God’s people for personal ministry.

If you would like to know more about the Instruments of Change curriculum or CCEF, you can log onto our website, www.ccef.org or call 215-884-7676.

I must thank my family. Luella, you are my helper and greatest supporter, but more than that you are my closest friend. I have benefited from your ministry day after day for over thirty years. Justin, Ethan, Nicole, and Darnay, thank you for being patient with a dad who is still learning how to live what he has been called to teach.

To you, the reader, may God richly bless you as you take up his call to be part of the most important thing happening in the universe: redemption.

Paul David Tripp

The Best of News: A Reason to Get Up in the Morning

What is the best news you can imagine? What is your “If only . . .” dream? Is it becoming a multi-millionaire and buying the house of your dreams? Perhaps it would be the job you have always wanted. Maybe your spouse would suddenly become the person you always hoped for, or your child would finally turn out all right, living responsibly and married to a wonderful person. What would be your best news?

Let’s ask the question another way. What is your reason for getting up in the morning? What moves and motivates you through the day? What is so worthwhile that you are willing to give it your time, talents, and energy? What is so significant that you will build your whole life around it?

This book is about the best news a human being could ever receive. It is about something so significant that it makes everything we do worthwhile, even though we are just flawed people in a broken world. This news has nothing to do with fantasies, dreams, or unrealistic expectations. It is rooted in historical facts and present realities. It penetrates the harshest human situation with life-altering hope. It is the only thing really worth living for! It is the good news!

To “Get” the News You Have to

Understand the Story

For a brief period of time when God created the world, perfect people walked through a perfect world in perfect union with God. The environment was lush and rich, with a menagerie of animals that inhabited the air, land, and sea. Every physical and spiritual need was fully met. There were no unfed stomachs or diseases to be feared. The gardens were free of weeds and thorns.

Man and woman, Adam and Eve, lived in perfect union with each other. There was no unhealthy competition, no power struggle, no vengeance or recrimination. There were no secret plots or harsh words, no fear, guilt, shame, or rebellion against authority. There was understanding, communication, and love.

There was no struggle with identity, anxiety, depression, or addiction. There was no painful personal history to overcome. There was no fear of what might happen next, no mixed motives, no struggle with inordinate desire. There was no temptation to sin.

With God, too, there was a perfect union. People loved, worshiped, and obeyed as they were created to do. In the cool of the day they actually walked with God in the Garden, enjoying perfect fellowship with their Maker. They were God’s resident managers, placed there to govern what he had made, and they did their job well. God had no reason to confront them, and they had nothing to confess. All was right, day after day. Life was better than anything we can imagine from our sin-scarred vantage point.

But sadly, it didn’t last long. In the most significant rebellious act ever committed, man and woman stepped outside of God’s ordained plan. In a second it all came crashing down. All of the amazing beauty of that world was deeply and permanently scarred.

In an instant, fear, guilt, and shame became standard human experiences. People who once lived in perfect harmony now accused, deceived, and fought for control. Weeds and disease became daily concerns. People began to desire what was evil and do what was wrong. Rather than submit to God’s authority, they lived as their own gods. The world that once sang the song of perfection now groaned under the weight of the Fall.

Sin altered every thought, desire, word, and deed. It created a world of double-mindedness and mixed motives, self-worship and self-absorption. People desired to be served, but they hated serving. They craved control and nurtured delusions of self-sufficiency. They forgot their Creator, but worshiped his creation. Rather than loving people and using things to express it, people loved things and used people to get them. Humanity’s second generation even committed murder. They began to lie, cheat, hide, and deny. People suffered at the hands of others, from momentary thoughtlessness to unspeakable acts of physical and sexual abuse. For the first time, people wept from grief within and suffering without.

God now saw his world ravaged by sin. He was unwilling for it to stay this way, so he devised a plan. It would take thousands of years. It would mean harnessing the forces of nature and controlling the course of human history, but he could do it. From the moment of the Fall, for generation after generation, he controlled everything so that someday he could fix what had been so horribly damaged. Into this world, at just the right moment, he sent his one and only Son.

Now for the Best of News

The initial announcement of this good news is so brief that it would be easy to overlook. It comes at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, just a few sentences in one little verse. Yet it was a fitting summary of Jesus’ reason for coming.

Mark records Jesus’ words this way: “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15). It is tempting to think that this is merely Jesus’ way of introducing himself, but his announcement is more than that. It gives all of us who endure the harsh realities of the Fall the only valid reason to get up in the morning. It offers hope that is wonderfully practical and intensely personal.

The news begins with these words: “The time has come.” Jesus is saying, “This is what God has been working on. All of history has been moving toward this one moment.” God had not forgotten or lost interest in humanity. Since that horrible first fall into sin, he had been bringing the world to this day. What looked pointless and out of control was, in fact, the unfolding of God’s wonderful story of redemption, which reached its crescendo with the coming of Christ.

Think about it: every good and bad thing that the Old Testament records had a purpose. All of the battles, journeys, trials, kingdoms, revelations, and miracles; all of the political and personal intrigue, were part of a careful plan to bring the world to this point. Long before the words in Mark were spoken, God had been telling his people that he would restore what was broken. But they rarely understood. Jesus begins his ministry by saying, “Do you understand what is finally taking place? This is the day spoken about by the prophets, when cloudy hope becomes a bright reality. The time has come!”

The question is, “The time has come for what?” Jesus is announcing the nearness of the kingdom of God. It is a quiet way of saying, “I am the King of Kings, and I have brought the power of my kingdom with me.” Elsewhere Christ makes it clear that this kingdom is not a political, earthly rule. He calls it a “within you” kingdom (see Luke 17:20–21). God’s redemptive solution would not come by political revolution or physical war. The primary battle would be fought and won in human hearts.

In our self-absorbed culture, we need to see the grandeur of this kingdom. We cannot shrink it to the size of our needs and desires. It takes us far beyond our personal situations and relationships. The King came not to make our agenda possible, but to draw us into something more amazing, glorious, and wonderful than we could ever imagine. Perhaps the best way to understand these grand purposes is to eavesdrop on eternity. In Revelation 19:6–8, the great multitude of the redeemed stands before the throne and, like the roar of rapids, exclaims:

“Hallelujah!

For our Lord God Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and be glad

and give him glory!

For the wedding of the Lamb has come,

and his bride has made herself ready.

Fine linen, bright and clean,

was given her to wear.”

Think about what they are singing. It is not, “I got that job! My marriage was fantastic! I was surrounded by great friends and my kids turned out well.” It is not, “I defeated depression and mastered my fears.” Two things capture the hearts of the assembled throng. The first is that Christ has won the final victory. His will has been done, his plan accomplished, and he reigns without challenge forever. God has gathered a people who have a passion for his glory and find ultimate comfort in his rule. They are people who followed by faith and obeyed at great cost, who sacrificed and suffered, but with no hint of regret. They have found lasting satisfaction in the person and rule of the Redeemer.

The second glorious thing is that the ultimate celebration has finally come, the wedding of the Lamb. A thunderous shout goes out as the multitude realizes that they haven’t just been invited to the wedding—they are the bride! They stand clothed in the finest of linen. All the scars and blemishes of sin are gone. All the rags of iniquity have disappeared. They are finally and forever clean. They stand before the Groom, pure and holy.

As we listen to eternity, we realize that the kingdom is about God radically changing people, but not in the self-absorbed sense our culture assumes. Christ came to break our allegiance to such an atrophied agenda and call us to the one goal worth living for. His kingdom is about the display of his glory and people who are holy. This is the change he came, lived, died, and rose to produce. This is the life and work he offers us in exchange for the temporary glories we would otherwise pursue. This kingdom agenda is intended to control our hearts and transform our lives.

Notice that Christ connects the good news to a call to repentance. The Bible defines repentance as a radical change of heart resulting in a radical change in the direction of one’s life. It is only possible if there is power to change. How cruel it would be to call sin-paralyzed people to repent without giving them the power to do so! This is where the message gets most exciting. Jesus is saying, “Because I have come, lasting heart change can take place.” Yes, the world is terribly broken, but the King has come, bringing the power and glory of his kingdom with him!

Maybe you are gripped by a particular sin that you have never been able to defeat. Maybe you are part of a community that seems hopelessly divided. Maybe your own marriage has fallen far short of God’s good plan. Maybe you are lugging around painful relics of your own history wherever you go. Perhaps you are tired of good intentions gone sour, broken promises, and shattered hopes and dreams. Our need for change is around us and inside us.

The sin that grips our hearts makes everything more difficult. It morphs love into selfish lust. It takes the God-ordained safety of home and makes it a place where the deepest human hurts can occur. It corrupts the workplace, robs government of its good, and even stains the church. And at the end of the day, it results in death.

You cannot escape sin because it dwells within you. All the things you learn get twisted by its power. You can’t outsmart it or buy your way out of it. You can’t move to escape it. This is why the coming of the King is the best of news.

Change is possible! You can stand amid the harshest realities of sin and have hope that will never disappoint you (Rom. 5:1–5). That marriage can change. That teenager can change. That church can change. That friendship can change. That bitterness can be put to death. That compulsion can be broken. That fear can be defeated. That stony heart can be made soft, and sweet words can come from a once-acid tongue. Loving service can come from a person who once was totally self-absorbed. People can have power without being corrupt. Homes can be places of safety, love, and healing. Change is possible because the King has come!

In all of this, God’s ultimate goal is his own glory. Christ came to restore people to the purpose they were made for: to live every aspect of their lives in worshipful, obedient submission to him. He accomplishes this by breathing life into dead hearts so that we grasp our need for him. He lives sinlessly, keeping the law on our behalf. He lays down his life as a penalty for sin, so that we can be fully forgiven. He adopts us into his family, giving us all the rights and privileges of his children. He daily conforms us to his own image. He enables us by his grace to do what is right. His Spirit lives inside us, convicting of sin, illumining truth, and giving us the power to obey. He places us in the body of Christ where we can learn and grow. He rules over every event for his glory and our good. He makes us the objects of his eternal, redemptive love.

The Bible calls this change redemption. We are not only changed, we are restored to God. This is what makes all other change possible.

Our News Must Be the Good News

When Jesus commissioned his disciples to minister in his name, this is the message he told them to proclaim. As we face our own struggles with sin and minister to people who seem trapped by things they cannot overcome, this must be our message too. We must faithfully proclaim, “Hope is only to be found in Jesus Christ, the King of Kings. In him, lasting, personal heart change is possible.” Any other message encourages false hope.

People struggling with life in a fallen world often want explanations when what they really need is imagination. They want strategies, techniques, and principles because they simply want things to be better. But God offers much more. People need to look at their families, neighbors, friends, cities, jobs, history, and churches, and see the kingdom. They need imagination—the ability to see what is real but unseen. This is what Paul fixed his gaze on (2 Cor. 4). They need to look at a city and see the glorious company of the redeemed being gathered, amidst a brutal spiritual battle, to live in union with God. They need to look at their children and see a Redeemer pursuing their hearts for his own. They need to scan history and see God accomplishing his purpose. People need to see the shining hope of human existence: people can know, love, and serve God. They can commune with him forever and form a community of love that is possible no other way. All of this is possible because the King has placed his love and grace on them.

As sinners, we have a natural bent to turn away from the Creator to serve the creation. We turn away from hope in a Person to hope in systems, ideas, people, or possessions. Real Hope stares us in the face, but we do not see him. Instead, we dig into the mound of human ideas to extract a tiny shard of insight. We tell ourselves that we have finally found the key, the thing that will make a difference. We act on the insight and embrace the delusion of lasting personal change. But before long, disappointment returns. The change was temporary and cosmetic, failing to penetrate the heart of the problem. So, we go back to the mound again, determined this time to dig in the right place. Eureka! We find another shard of insight, seemingly more profound than before. We take it home, study it, and put it into practice. But we always end up in the same place.

The good news confronts us with the reality that heart-changing help will never be found in the mound. It will only be found in the Man, Christ Jesus. We must not offer people a system of redemption, a set of insights and principles. We offer people a Redeemer. In his power, we find the hope and help we need to defeat the most powerful enemies. Hope rests in the grace of the Redeemer, the only real means of lasting change.

This is what separates believers from our culture’s psychology. Because it has fundamentally turned its back on the Lord, the world can only offer people some kind of system. It reduces hope to a set of observations, a collection of insights, or steps in a process. We, on the other hand, meet people as they desperately dig and lovingly ask for their shovels. We gently turn them away from the mound, and joyfully turn them to the Man, Jesus Christ. This is the essence of personal ministry.

But our inclination to replace the King with a thing does not die easily. It rears its ugly head even when we search for answers in Scripture. We approach the Bible with a “where can I find a verse on ______” mentality. We forget that the only hope the principles offer rests on the Person, Jesus Christ. And we forget that the Bible is not an encyclopedia, but a story of God’s plan to rescue hopeless and helpless humanity. It’s a story about people who are rescued from their own self-sufficiency and wisdom and transported to a kingdom where Jesus is central and true hope is alive.¹

We cannot treat the Bible as a collection of therapeutic insights. To do so distorts its message and will not lead to lasting change. If a system could give us what we need, Jesus would never have come. But he came because what was wrong with us could not be fixed any other way. He is the only answer, so we must never offer a message that is less than the good news. We don’t offer people a system; we point them to a Redeemer. He is hope.

Why Hope Rests on a Person

If you are going to help someone, you need to know what is wrong and how it can be fixed. You go to your auto mechanic because he can determine why your car is malfunctioning and get it running again. Any trustworthy perspective on personal change must do the same. It must correctly diagnose what is wrong with people and what is necessary for them to change.

This is where our culture gets it completely wrong. In rejecting a biblical view of people, the world eliminates any hope of answering the “what is wrong?” question accurately. And if it wrongly answers this question, how can it possibly provide a proper solution?

Why do people do the things they do? Is my problem fundamentally an informational one? Will a well-researched, logical set of insights provide the solution? Or is my problem fundamentally experiential? Will dealing with my past solve my problem? Is my problem fundamentally biological? Will helping me achieve chemical balance solve my problem? Or is there something beneath all these things that is more deeply wrong with me? Scripture’s answer to this last question is a clear, resounding, “Yes!”

Scripture would agree that my problem is informational, in that I don’t know what I need to know. It also affirms the impact of our experiences, though it maintains that our core problem precedes our experience and goes deeper. The Bible also acknowledges the complex interaction between our physical and spiritual natures, but it never locates our core problem in our biology. In this way, the Bible is radical compared to our culture.

The Bible says that our core problem, the fundamental reason we do what we do, is sin. What is being said here? Scripture is defining sin as a condition that results in behavior. We all are sinners, and because of this, we all do sinful things. This is why I said that our core problem precedes our experience. David captures it well in Psalm 51: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (v. 5). David is saying, “I was born with a fundamental problem. I had it long before my first experience. Something is wrong with my inner self that fundamentally affects the way I operate as a human being.” This has thunderous implications. Because sin is my nature as a human being, it is inescapable. It marks everything I think, say, and do. It will guide my cravings, my response to authority, and my decision making. It will alter my values, direct my hopes and dreams, and shape every interpretation I make.

If you are going to deal with your own difficulties or assist others who want to deal with theirs, you must correct wrong thinking. Yes, you must deal with the suffering of the past and ways the body isn’t properly functioning, but you must do more. You must help them conquer the sin that distorts all these experiences. Consider two examples.

Pamela came from a very abusive home. The worst time of day was when her dad got home from work. Pamela would try to be out of the house or safely hidden in her room in order to stay out of harm’s way. These were powerfully influential experiences. We should weep with Pamela, and we should be angry at the wrongs done against her. But we should do more.

As you examine Pamela’s current struggles, you realize that her problem is not just her experience, but how she has dealt with it. Pamela is extremely controlling, so she is hard to work with or befriend. She is constantly arguing, always demanding to be affirmed as right. She is obsessed with what people think of her, which shapes every interaction she has with others. Her personal mantra is “What’s in it for me?” She is critical and judgmental, seldom giving anyone the benefit of the doubt.

But when Pamela talks with you, she portrays herself as one who suffers deeply. She talks of feeling constantly rejected and alone. She is mystified that people find her intimidating. She feels like no one respects her opinion.

What is going on with Pamela? Are all her present issues the result of her past? It is clearly more than that. Pamela is not only struggling with the horrors of her past, but with how she has dealt with them. This is where Scripture always leads us. If sin is part of our nature, we will always be dealing not only with our history, but with how sin distorts the way we handle it. Help will only come as we deal with our past and own our sin. This is essential because sinners tend to respond sinfully to being sinned against.

This is why the only hope for Pamela (and for us) is a Redeemer. We cannot step out of our sinfulness. We need more than love and encouragement, information and insight. We need rescue. Anything less will not address what is really wrong with us.

Consider a second person, Jack. Jack’s dad was an active elder in their church, and his mom was committed to ministry. He was raised in a fine Christian home where family worship was a daily, shared experience. Jack’s dad worked hard and was very successful. His parents had a solid relationship and communicated fairly well with their children. Jack went to a Christian school, and his parents could afford to send him to a fine college. Yet all is not well with Jack.

By the time you talk to Jack, he has had a string of short-term jobs and been married twice. He is palpably angry. Jack complains that he lives in a world of jerks who have no time to listen to someone who knows what he’s doing. He says he has lost his jobs because his bosses were intimidated by the fact that he knew more about their businesses than they did. He views his ex-wives as emotionally weak, unable to live with someone who was confident and had his “act together.”

Is Jack’s present life influenced by his family of origin? Of course! But once again, there is more going on. Jack is fundamentally struggling with Jack. Sin not only causes me to respond sinfully to suffering, it causes me to respond sinfully to blessing. The smart kid teases the dumb kid. The athlete makes fun of the kid with two left feet. Something is so wrong inside us that we can’t even handle blessing properly.

Jack needs more than insight. He needs to be rescued from himself, and for this he needs a Redeemer. This is why we cannot simply offer people a system or give advice on how to deal with their past. We must point them to a powerful and present Redeemer. He is our only hope. He has conquered sin on our behalf! He willingly offers us his heart-transforming, life-altering grace!

This is why Paul writes so pointedly in Colossians 2:8, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world and not on Christ.” The world’s philosophy is deceptive because it cannot deliver what it promises. It may be well researched and logically presented, but it is not centered on Christ. Because sin (the condition) is what is wrong, true hope and help can only be found in him. Any other answer will prove hollow.

What Sin Does to Us

Sin is the ultimate disease, the grand psychosis. You cannot escape it or defeat it on your own. Look around and you will see its mark everywhere. Sin complicates what is already complicated. Life in a fallen world is more arduous than God ever intended, yet our sin makes it worse. We deal with much more than suffering, disease, disappointment, and death. Our deepest problem is not experiential, biological, or relational; it is moral, and it alters everything. It distorts our identity, alters our perspective, derails our behavior, and kidnaps our hope. As Moses noted when he described human culture before the flood, “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Gen. 6:5). This is what sin does to us. It is the ultimate disease!

Our first child was an incredibly active baby. He spent his days grabbing, clinging, and climbing on my wife, Luella, as if she were the ultimate jungle gym. Then, at eight-and-a-half months, this little boy took his first steps. Before long he was moving through our house with amazing speed. I remember thinking that it did not seem natural. He wasn’t supposed to be walking, but he was!

When a baby begins to walk, he needs protection from a whole new set of household perils. One way to protect your child is to get down on your knees, look him in the face, and warn him about specific dangers. You take him around the house, pointing out the things to be avoided. It seemed like a huge waste of time at his age, but I went ahead and warned my little boy about the electrical sockets in every room. I told him, “Don’t touch them, and don’t ever stick anything in them. It could kill you!” He looked at me with a blank stare, while one finger fidgeted with his t-shirt and the other traveled halfway up his nose. I asked him if he understood, he nodded his little head unconvincingly, and off he stumbled to his next toddler adventure. I was sure I had accomplished nothing.

A couple of afternoons later, I was reading in the living room when out of the corner of my eye I saw our baby peeking at me. He glanced at me and then at the wall, then back at me, repeating the cycle several times. When he thought I was sufficiently distracted, he made a beeline for the wall socket. But just before he gave it that first exhilarating touch, he did something that left me amazed. He stopped, looked back to see if I was watching, and then reached for the socket as I leaped to his rescue.

That final glance demonstrated that he had understood my toddler-sized lecture, that he knew he was acting against my will, that he was trying to hide his rebellion, and that he was inexplicably drawn to what had been clearly forbidden. At least three of sin’s devastating elements are clearly displayed in this little vignette.

The first thing sin produces is rebellion. This is more than breaking a few rules; it is a fundamental flaw in my character. It is not something I learn; I was born with it.

I did not have to teach my little boy to desire what was prohibited, to look for an opportunity to skirt around authority, and to reach for the “forbidden fruit.” I do the same thing myself, and so do you. Whether it’s parking in the no parking zone, fudging on income taxes, running away from Mommy in the toy store, refusing to submit to the counsel of an elder, or indulging in secret lust, rebellion is present in each one of us.

Rebellion is the inborn tendency to give in to the lies of autonomy, self-sufficiency, and self-focus. It results in a habitual violation of God-given boundaries. Autonomy says, “I have the right to do what I want when I want to do it.” Self-sufficiency says, “I have everything I need in myself, so I don’t need to depend on or submit to anyone.” Self-focus says, “I am the center of my world. It is right to live for myself and to do only what brings me happiness.” These are the lies of the Garden, the same lies Satan has whispered in generation after generation of willing ears. They deny our basic makeup as human beings. We were not created to be autonomous. We were designed to be in daily submission to God and to live for his glory. Living outside this design will never work.

This rebel spirit affects the way we approach difficulty and blessing. Independence, self-sufficiency, and self-absorption lead us to think of ourselves first and to climb over the fences between ourselves and our desires. We want control and hate being controlled. We want to make up the rules and change them whenever it suits us. Essentially we want to be God, ruling our worlds according to our own will. No matter what else we are rebelling against, our rebellion is ultimately directed at God. We refuse to recognize his authority, robbing him of his glory and usurping his right to rule.

Sin also produces foolishness in us. Foolishness believes that there is no perspective, insight, theory, or “truth” more reliable than our own. It buys into the lie that we know better. It causes us to distort reality and live in worlds of our own making. It is as if we look at life through a carnival mirror, convinced that we see clearly.

My little boy had been warned of danger, but in his foolishness he thought he knew better. Foolishness controls the man who is open to no one’s counsel and the person who sees little need to study God’s Word. This foolishness distorts our sense of identity, destroys relationships, retards growth, and derails change.

Foolishness convinces us that we are okay, and that our rebellious, irrational choices are right and best. Foolishness is a rejection of our basic nature as human beings. We were never created to be our own source of wisdom. We were designed to be revelation receivers, dependent on the truths God would teach us, and applying those truths to our lives. We were created to base our interpretations, choices, and behavior on his wisdom. Living outside of this will never work.

When David says in Psalm 14:1, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ ” he gets to the foundation of foolishness. Our foolishness is a rejection of God, an inborn desire to replace God’s wisdom with our own. Beneath it all, we want to be our own gods, revealing to ourselves all the “truth” we need.

Finally, sin renders us incapable of doing what God has ordained us to do. This inability colors every situation and relationship of our lives. It is not just that I don’t want to do God’s will, or that I think my way is better, it’s that even when I have the right intentions, I can’t pull it off. I always fall short of God’s standard.

Have you ever prepared yourself for a difficult conversation with a friend? You rehearse your lines and anticipate the other person’s possible responses. You try to identify where the conversation could go wrong, and you prepare yourself not to say something you will regret. You don’t want to “lose it” this time. But when you have the conversation, in the middle of it, something happens. The other person hurts you, the emotional temperature spikes, and you let him have it. In the aftermath, you can’t believe it! You did exactly what you had decided not to do!

The apostle Paul powerfully captures this experience in Romans 7: “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” Haven’t you been there too? Paul continues, “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members” (vv. 19, 21–23). Paul says in effect, “Even when I desire to submit to God’s authority and listen to his wisdom, I end up doing what is wrong! I fail despite my best intentions!”

It is not just that we are rebels and fools. Sin makes us moral quadriplegics. We are fundamentally unable to do what is right. Which of us could say that our anger toward our friends has always been righteous? What husband could say he has always loved his wife as Christ loves the church? What person consistently loves his neighbor as himself? We fail at these things even when we desire to do right, because our moral muscles have been atrophied by sin. We simply cannot do the good we were created to do. This is one of the most tragic results of the ultimate disease, sin.

As human beings, we cannot walk through life on our own. We need rescue, healing, and forgiveness. In short, we need God. We need the good news, the news of the King who has come, making lasting change possible. This alone is our personal hope and the basis of our ministry to others.

The good news of the kingdom is not freedom from hardship, suffering, and loss. It is the news of a Redeemer who has come to rescue me from myself. His rescue produces change that fundamentally alters my response to these inescapable realities. The Redeemer turns rebels into disciples, fools into humble listeners. He makes cripples walk again. In him we can face life and respond with faith, love, and hope. And as he changes us, he allows us to be part of what he is doing in the lives of others. As you respond to the Redeemer’s work in your life, you can learn to be an instrument in his hands.

In the Hands of

the Redeemer

Sam called me in a panic. It had been an ordinary day: get up, go to work, and do his job until quitting time. But as he was rushing home, he was approached by a desperate man. The man said that his life was a mess; he didn’t even know where he was going to sleep that night. Sam could tell that he wasn’t a seasoned street person. Hoping to be a conduit of help, Sam took him home and called his pastor—me. “Paul,” he said, “I came across this guy who lost his job, had a terrible fight with his wife, and was thrown out on the street. I thought I’d bring him over to your house so you could give him the help he needs. Is now okay?”

Before Sam could say anything else, I responded, “Isn’t God’s love amazing? God cares about this man and put one of his children in his path. God cares about you and has given you an opportunity to be an instrument in his hands. I am persuaded that God never gets a wrong address, and he intends to use you in this man’s life. Let me pray for you right now, that God will fill your heart with his love and your mind with his wisdom.” When I finished praying, Sam said, “But I don’t think I am able. . . .” I interrupted, “I will continue to pray for you tonight, and I will call you in the morning. I am so encouraged by your ministry to this man.” I said goodbye and hung up the phone.

For the next several weeks, I stood alongside Sam, determined not to take over for him, as he learned how to love his desperate friend. He learned how to be a tool God could use to encourage change in someone’s life. In the process, God changed Sam and his wife in some significant ways as well. I had pushed Sam out of the nest, but not because he lacked compassion. His problem was that he lacked courage. Sam had assumed that whatever this man needed was way beyond what he could offer. He didn’t see himself as one of God’s instruments, only as one of God’s conduits—a passive channel connecting one thing to another. An instrument is a tool that is actively used to change something, and God has called all of his people to be instruments of change in his redemptive hands.

Embedded in the larger story of redemption is a principle we must not miss: God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things in the lives of others. What mission board, what ministry, what local church would use the people God used in Scripture? There was Moses (an exiled murderer), Gideon (fearful and hiding), David (the shepherd boy with no military training), Peter (who publicly denied Christ), and Paul (persecutor of the church), to name a few. Along with these are untold numbers of little people God used in big ways to fulfill his plan on earth. God never intended us to simply be the objects of his love. We are also called to be instruments of that love in the lives of others.

Many Tools in the Toolbox

When you think of personal growth and change, what comes to your mind? Are you like Sam, immediately assuming that you need the help of your pastor, an elder, or a professional counselor? This is what our culture assumes is required to bring about change. Clearly, God raises up particular people for formal ministry roles, but the Bible’s circle of helpers includes all of God’s people. What’s more, the Bible’s view of personal change is radically different from our culture’s. Scripture declares that personal transformation takes place as our hearts are changed by God’s grace and our minds are renewed by the Holy Spirit. We don’t change anyone; it is the work of the Redeemer. We are simply his instruments.

The problem is that most of us think that God is carrying around a very small toolbox! A successful carpenter uses many tools, each one designed for a particular job. God has a huge toolbox, and his principal tools are his children. Sadly, many people in the church do not see themselves this way. They think of ministry as something for the paid professional. When they think of their own involvement, they don’t think very far beyond saying a prayer or making a meal. Yet their adoption into the family of God was also a call to ministry, a call to be part of the good work of the kingdom.

The overall biblical model is this: God transforms people’s lives as people bring his Word to others. Our instinct is to ask, “Who are the people God uses, and what are their qualifications? Does God only use certain people? Why some and not others? Am I one of them?” These questions are answered in Ephesians 4:11–16.

It was he [Christ] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

The only metaphor that captures God’s plan for the church is the metaphor of a body. Christ has given his church leaders, not to bear the full ministry load of the body of Christ, but to equip each member to join in God’s work of personal transformation. Remember: no local church could hire enough staff to meet all the ministry needs of a given week! In the biblical model, much more informal, personal ministry goes on than formal ministry. The times of formal, public ministry are meant to train God’s people for the personal ministry that is the lifestyle of the body of Christ. Reflect on your own life. Isn’t it true that change has not come only through the formal ministry of the Word? Hasn’t God also used ordinary people to change your heart and transform your life?

To say that God has given us each other to help us mature still doesn’t do justice to the body metaphor Paul employs. A body only grows as each part does its work. Think of all the interdependencies implied by this image. No change can take place in you that involves only one part of the body.

I was recently reminded of this fact when I began to feel pain in my left shoulder. Whether it was bursitis, arthritis, or the sad encroachment of old age, I suddenly became aware of how much I use that joint. I had never thought much about my shoulders before, but I suddenly gained a new appreciation for how the body works. It is a system of intricately interdependent parts.

The body metaphor also points to careful design. Think of how different a hand is from an eye, or a shoulder joint from a liver! The human body is a picture of intelligent, intentional design. Each part has been carefully crafted and placed to do its work. So is the body of Christ. Not all of God’s people are the same. Each of us has been gifted, called, and positioned to do our part in God’s kingdom work. Our histories, personalities, abilities, and maturity levels differ, which is how the Redeemer intends it. He is sovereign over it all.

Most of the time, we are oblivious to this. We are too easily captivated by our self-centered little worlds. But Ephesians 4 propels us beyond a life consumed by personal happiness and achievement. Your life is much bigger than a good job, an understanding spouse, and non-delinquent kids. It is bigger than beautiful gardens, nice vacations, and fashionable clothes. In reality, you are part of something immense, something that began before you were born and will continue after you die. God is rescuing fallen humanity, transporting them into his kingdom, and progressively shaping them into his likeness—and he wants you to be a part of it.

Your life is bigger than you ever imagined. You live in one moment in time, yet you stand hand-in-hand with Enoch, Noah, Joseph, Moses, Joseph, Abraham, Isaac, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Matthew, Peter, Paul, Augustine, Calvin, Luther, and generations of unknown believers who understood their place in the kingdom and did their part in its work. Only as you keep this huge world in view will you be able to live and serve effectively in the small world where God has placed you.¹

But There Is More

Let’s focus now on the second half of the statement: God transforms people’s lives as people bring his Word to others. The changes God produces in his people are directly connected to the ministry of the Word. Again, this is radically different from the way our culture (and sometimes even the church) thinks about personal growth and change. Too often the philosophy of ministry that guides the pulpit and the private conversation are very different. For example, why does it seem right to say “preach the Word” but odd to say “counsel the Word”? From a biblical perspective, both public and personal ministries base their hope for change on the Word of God. They are simply different methods of bringing the Word to people in different contexts.

In personal ministry, I want to bring more than a heart of compassion, a willingness to listen, and a commitment to help bear someone’s burden. Though these are the sweet fruit of Christian love, I want to offer more. I want to bring the heart-changing truths of Scripture to people in the midst of their situations and relationships. Personal ministry is about people loving people, but in a way that includes bringing them God’s Word. This is the “truth in love” model Paul describes in Ephesians 4. The combination of powerful truth wrapped in self-sacrificing love is what God uses to transform people.

If it is true that there is more informal ministry than formal ministry in any given week, then surely we should evaluate the quality of our counsel in those informal moments. Suppose your neighbor tearfully tells you that she found a pornographic magazine in her son’s book bag. Maybe your golfing buddy says he’s been thinking about leaving his wife. Perhaps you observe a volunteer behaving inappropriately toward the girls in the youth group. No matter what you do next, your response will be personal ministry or counseling. Yet we usually approach such situations much more casually than we do formal, public ministry.

If you were asked to teach a Sunday school lesson, preach a sermon, or lead a Bible study, you would immediately ask yourself, “Do I have the time I need to prepare?” Yet we often respond to our neighbor, golfing buddy, or church volunteer with little preparation, reflection, or prayer. Why do we spend hours preparing to teach while we offer important personal direction without a second thought? We forget that God uses those interactions to apply the transforming power of Scripture to people’s hearts. We forget that God’s Word is our primary tool of change. Instead, we come up with a little personal wisdom and personal experience and let the words fly.

This is why the second part of our model is so vital. God is placing people next to people to create a system of intricate interdependencies, but he has also ordained what we are to give each other in those relationships.

God’s Monsoon

I have visited northern India several times. For most of the year this part of the world is extremely dry and hot. (I once endured a temperature of 127 degrees in New Delhi!) During the dry season, northern India looks parched and barren, but Indians know that change is on the way. Hope comes from the south as the torrential seasonal rains called monsoons make their way up the continent. When the rains finally reach northern India and satiate its parched ground, it is as if someone flicks a switch: the earth explodes into bloom. In a matter of days, northern India is alive with exotic leaves and flowers.

The transformational power of God’s Word is no less dramatic. Personal ministry brings the monsoon of God’s Word to the parched terrain of the heart. Though a complete transformation will not take place overnight, our lives will burst forth in new beauty of character and new fruitfulness of life. Isaiah 55:10–13 captures this dynamic well.

As the rain and the snow

come down from heaven,

and do not return to it

without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is my word that goes out from my mouth:

It will not return to me empty,

but will accomplish what I desire

and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

You will go out in joy

and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills

will burst into song before you,

and all the trees of the field

will clap their hands.

Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,

and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.

This will be for the LORD’s renown,

for an everlasting sign,

which will not be destroyed.

God’s Word changes people this dramatically. The rain that soaks the parched land always has an effect. It bathes soil, which feeds roots, which nourish plants, which produce flowers. So it is with the Word of God. It changes what it touches, producing beauty and fruitfulness in people’s lives. These changes point to two wonderful realities. First, we are, in fact, God’s covenant children. He has promised to be our God, to be with us and to bless us. Second, these changes point us to his glory. The flowers and fruit that the rain produces give glory to the One who sent it. As we bring God’s Word to one another, we are all signs pointing to his glory.

What is the hope here? It is the hope of the kingdom. The King has come and sent his children to one another with his life-changing Word. People who were lost find their way; people once paralyzed with discouragement walk in hope; alienated people live in community as broken relationships are restored; confused minds think in ways that are true, pure, and right; and the person who once lived for his own power now rests in God’s. God’s rain waters the roots of the heart, and the person’s life bursts forth with new fruitfulness. This is the way of the Lord, the hope and work of his kingdom.

Answers, Encyclopedias, and Outlines

Isaiah 55 should instill a great deal of hope in us, but it also raises a question. What is the best way to minister biblically to another person? How can we best bring the power of Scripture to another person’s life?

Many Christians simply don’t understand what the Bible is. Many think of it as a spiritual encyclopedia: God’s complete catalog of human problems, coupled with a complete list of divine answers. If you turn to the right page, you can find answers for any struggle. A more sophisticated variation views the Bible as a systematic theology textbook, an outline of essential topics you must master to think and live God’s way. In either case, we tend to offer each other isolated pieces of Scripture (a command, a principle, a promise) that seem to fit the need of the moment. What we think of as ministering the Word is little more than a spiritual cut-and-paste system.

This kind of ministry rarely leads to lasting change because it does not bring the power of the Word to the places where change is really needed. In this kind of ministry, self is still at the center, personal need is the focus, and personal happiness remains the goal. But a truly effective ministry of the Word must confront our self-focus and self-absorption at its roots, opening us up to the vastness of a God-defined, God-centered world. Unless this happens, we will use the promises, principles, and commands of the Word to serve the thing we really love: ourselves. This may be why many people read and hear God’s Word regularly while their lives remain unchanged. Only when the rain of the Word penetrates the roots of the problem does lasting change occur.

In personal ministry, there is often a lot of pressure to handle Scripture topically. Usually, you are talking with someone facing some personal, relational, or situational difficulty. You want to find out what the Bible has to say on the subject and apply it to the person’s life. So you get out your concordance or topical Bible, scan all the verses on the topic, pick the passages that seem most relevant, and share them with the struggling person. Unfortunately, you are misunderstanding what the Word is and how it is to be used.

Let’s say that you are talking with a wife who is in the midst of an all-out war with her husband. Everything in their lives has become a contest for control. They say remarkably unkind things to each other. He has buried himself in his work, and she has found refuge in her children. They spend time with each other only when duty demands it. What is wrong with this marriage? Would you agree that their problems run deeper than communication, role division, work, parenting, and time management? These issues are the fruit of a much more deeply rooted set of problems. The surface chaos will only change as the transforming power of the Word is brought to those roots. Anything less will keep the rebellious, foolish, powerless self at the center, unmoved and unchanged.

What the wife wants is a sweeter, more attentive husband. What the husband wants is a kinder, more content wife. These things are not bad, but God wants more for them—more than a better marriage, and more than the spouse of their dreams. Need-driven, self-focused, solution-defined ministry may use the Bible, but it is not truly biblical. It distorts what the Bible was meant to do. This error can rob the body of Christ of its vitality and productivity, relegating many true believers to lives of long-term immaturity. We must opt for something better.

Tell Me the Old, Old Story

The Bible makes a poor encyclopedia. If that’s what God had intended, Scripture would have been arranged differently and included many volumes. As it is, there are many issues that the Bible doesn’t address in a topical fashion. The Bible has nothing explicit to say, for example, about schizophrenia, A.D.D., teenagers, family television viewing, or sexual techniques for married couples. If you try to use your Bible as God’s encyclopedia, you will either conclude that it has little to say about some crucial issues of modern life or you will bend, twist, and stretch passages to suit your purposes. Either way, you are not getting from the Word what God intended. This misunderstanding underlies the frustration many people feel with Scripture. We secretly wish that God had made it simpler and just arranged it topically!

The Bible does in fact have powerful and important things to say about all the topics listed above, but it does so in a form very different from what we might expect. For example, the Bible never uses the word “teenager,” but it does speak with wisdom and practicality to the struggles of this period in life. Without speaking explicitly about many issues I face every day, God in his Word gives me everything I need to be who he wants me to be and do what he wants me to do.

However, if you want God’s full perspective on a particular subject, you cannot limit yourself to the Bible passages that specifically focus on it. The couple immersed in the battle for control will not learn how to break out of their endless cycle of turmoil by studying the standard Scripture passages on marriage. Without the perspective of the rest of the Bible, those marital passages will offer little help. In fact, they can be used for purposes that are more about what I want than what God has ordained.

That is how Scripture differs from an encyclopedia. When I use an encyclopedia, I do not need to read other articles to understand the one I am reading at the moment. One article has no connection to another; there are no overarching themes. In the Bible, however, every passage is dependent on the whole, and the whole Bible is held together by interdependent themes that run through every passage like rebar, the steel rods that reinforce concrete. If I handle Scripture topically, I will miss the overarching themes at the heart of everything else God wants to say to me. These themes give me a sense of identity, purpose, and direction that will fundamentally alter the way I think, desire, speak, and act. They will go to the root of my problem, producing change that lasts.

The sad fact is that many of us are simply not biblical in the way we use the Bible! Being biblical does not mean merely quoting words from within its pages. Being truly biblical means that my counsel reflects what the entire Bible is about. The Bible is a narrative, a story of redemption, and its chief character is Jesus Christ. He is the main theme of the narrative, and he is revealed in every passage in the book. This story reveals how God harnessed nature and controlled history to send his Son to rescue rebellious, foolish, and self-focused men and women. He freed them from bondage to themselves, enabled them to live for his glory, and gifted them with an eternity in his presence, far from the harsh realities of the Fall.

This overarching story reflects the fact that our problem as human beings is deeper than the individual sins we commit each day, creating the specific problems that complicate our lives. Our deepest problem is that we seek to find our identity outside the story of redemption. If the entire goal and direction of our lives are wrong, we need much more than practical advice on how to do the right thing in a particular situation. We need a message big enough to overcome our natural human instinct to live for our own glory, pursue our own happiness, and forget that our lives are much, much bigger than this little moment of life. Every day, in some way, we buy the lies of autonomy and self-sufficiency, worshiping the creation rather than its Creator.

It is because our sin problem is so pervasive and so deeply ingrained that we need more from Scripture than insight, principles, understanding, or direction. An encyclopedic, problem-solving approach to Scripture is totally inadequate for the true depth of our need. We need something that will change us from the inside out—we need Christ! Only his person and work can free us from our slavery to self and our tendency to deify the creation. Only as we see our story enfolded in the larger story of redemption will we begin to live God-honoring lives. Lasting change begins when our identity, purpose, and sense of direction are defined by God’s story. When we bring this perspective to our relationships, we will have a dramatically different agenda. It will take the principles and commands of Scripture and use them as God intended. We will see how each principle, promise, and command finds its meaning and fulfillment in Christ. Separate them from Christ and they lose their God-intended meaning and get hijacked by other agendas.

For example, what do you learn from the story of the Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea? Do you see a hero named Moses and a call to be like him? Principles for dealing with difficulty? Keys to leading a rebellious people? Hints for crossing large bodies of water? The seven habits of highly effective nomads? You’ve probably heard sermons or Sunday school classes to that effect. But they all forget what the Exodus story is ultimately about. The Exodus is but one chapter in the larger story of redemption. It points to our need for a Christ who delivers us from slavery, defeats the Enemy, and leads us in the way we should go. If you learn how to take that identity to your marriage, it will help you understand the passages that directly discuss God’s plan for marriage.

The Exodus story has much to say to the warring couple. It can tell them about who they are, why they are struggling, and where hope and help can be found. The themes that run through the Exodus story also run through every marriage passage, because the marriage passages apply God’s story of redemption to one of the most important relationships of life. But those marriage passages will not be fully understood if they are divorced from the themes that run through the rest of God’s Word. We cannot use the Bible as a divine self-help book! We will always try to use it to get the things our hearts are set on, though this is precisely the bondage that sabotages our relationships. The Redeemer lived, died, and rose again so that we would no longer live for ourselves but for him and his glory (2 Cor. 5:14–15).²

God’s Rebar

When builders lay a huge slab of concrete, they reinforce it with rebar, metal rods that run horizontally and vertically through the center, adding strength and stability. Similarly, the grand themes of God’s story run through every passage of Scripture, producing a stability in my life that I can find nowhere else. Only in the context of these themes will the pieces of my story make any sense.

Let’s consider three grand themes of the story of redemption. Embedded in each is a practical comfort, as well as a clear call to wise and godly living. The first is the theme of God’s sovereignty. Nebuchadnezzar offered one of the best single summaries of this theme after God had taken away his sanity and then restored it.

His dominion is an eternal dominion;

his kingdom endures from generation to generation.

All the peoples of the earth

are regarded as nothing.

He does as he pleases

with the powers of heaven

and the peoples of the earth.

No one can hold back his hand

or say to him: “What have you done?” (Dan. 4:34–35)

From the rise and fall of governments to tomorrow’s weather to the exact location of every human being, the universe is under God’s control. He has the power and authority to do exactly what pleases him, anywhere he chooses to do it. God’s sovereignty is not only about power and position, but also about a plan. Scripture clearly teaches that God has a plan for his world and the people in it. God is calling a people to himself, forming them into his likeness, and preparing them for an eternity with him. This is his overarching plan of the ages, revealed in history, present in current events and in the lives of everyone who has ever lived. At any moment in time, the right answer to the question, “What is God doing?” is, “Accomplishing his plan.”

This theme is meant to be a great practical comfort to us. Look around—don’t things often seem to be out of control? Doesn’t it often look like the bad guys are winning? Haven’t you cried, “Why me?” or wept at the suffering of another? Don’t you sometimes feel lost in the crowd, the custodian of a small and relatively meaningless life? Don’t you daily face your powerlessness to even change yourself?

In response to humanity’s deepest, heartfelt questions, God sweetly speaks of his sovereignty. “Take heart, I am in complete control. I am the definition of holiness and love. All of my ways are right and true, all of my decisions are best, and I will not rest until my plan has been completed.”

There is comfort in your moment of greatest mystery. There is encouragement in your time of greatest confusion, and hope in your moment of greatest discouragement. Your world is not a world of constant chaos controlled by impersonal forces. Your destiny is not in your hands or in the hands of other people. You are held in the hands of your heavenly Father, who rules everything! You are a child of the King of Kings and you live under the shadow of his wing. You are part of his plan. That means that the exercise of his power and authority is for your blessing.

You and I can rest in the middle of deep and personal mysteries. We can press on when little around us makes sense. There is reason in the mystery and order in the chaos, because behind it all stands the One in control of it all.

What does this mean for each of us? It means peace when my brain is unable to put it all together. A Christian’s inner peace is never based on his ability to take the teachings of Scripture and figure it all out. Our peace always rests on the presence, power, and character of the Lord. Because he rules heaven and earth according to his wise plan, I need not live in anxiety and fear. God’s absolute sovereignty guarantees the fulfillment of each of his promises to every one of his children. This includes you!

King David understood this in one of his darkest moments. His son Absalom had plotted to take his throne. Imagine having to flee the palace for fear of your own son! (This was a monarchy in which the throne passed from father to son only at death.) At one point David is hiding in a cave, surrounded by a loyal band of soldiers. They come to David and essentially ask, “What’s going to happen now?” According to Psalms 3 and 4, David responds with a perspective that should be true for all of us. “Lord, when I think about you, my heart is filled with joy. This joy is greater than when the harvest and new wine is bountiful [the happiest time of the year for an agricultural society]. Yes, I am in this cave, but my life is not in the hands of Absalom. My life is where it has always been, in your sovereign hands. So I will not give in to fear. I will not assault my mind with questions I cannot answer. I will sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety” (Selected verses from Pss. 3–4, author’s paraphrase).

Every time you love your enemy, you are resting in the sovereignty of God. Every time you speak lovingly and softly in the face of someone else’s anger, you are choosing to rest in the sovereignty of God. Every time you resist the temptation to win an argument at all costs, you are resting in God’s sovereignty. Because he rules, nothing you do in obedience to him is ever futile. Your life has meaning and purpose because you are included not only in the plan of the One who rules it all, but also in his family!

Imagine how this rest could change the marriage of the couple we have been considering. Their constant war of words, competition for power, and mutual condemnation are rooted in a deeper battle about who or what will rule their lives. Marriage exposes their controlling desire to get what they want. When my hope is in my ability to rule the day, my spouse becomes a constant threat rather than an intimate companion. This destroys any hope of experiencing the loving, self-sacrificial unity at the heart of any good marriage. All of the Bible’s marital passages rest on this theme. Each of them calls me to entrust my mate and myself to the Lord, and to joyfully do what he says is right and best, knowing that my hope rests in his power, not mine.

Amazing Grace

The second grand theme is God’s grace. This theme confronts and encourages me at the deepest personal level, diagnosing the problems that infect my relationships and giving me the only reliable reason to press on.

In all the drama of the story of redemption, one reality repeatedly bursts to the surface: we live in a world where there is grace to be found. God is not only sovereign, he is also abounding in grace. Immediately after Adam and Eve disobeyed him, God made it clear that he was going to do more than punish them. He would send the seed of the woman (Christ) to defeat the Enemy and provide redemption for his people (see Gen. 3:15). God’s response to the willful rebellion of his creatures was grace! This grace justifies, providing complete forgiveness and unwavering acceptance with God. This grace adopts, welcoming us into his family with all the rights and privileges of true sons and daughters. This grace enables, empowering me to think, say, and do things I could not do in my own strength. This grace transforms, radically changing every aspect of my life.

Grace is the thick rod of rebar that courses through the concrete of the biblical story. From the first moments of the Fall, to the call of Abraham, to the liberation of the Exodus, to the provisions of the wilderness, to the victories of the Promised Land, to David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos, to the preaching of John the Baptist, to the miraculous pregnancy of Mary, to the earth-bound ministry of the Messiah, to the cross and the empty tomb, to the faithful ministry of the apostles, to the resilience of the church under persecution, to the expectant children of God waiting for his return, this story is a story of grace. Grace defines the story and gives it direction.

The story tells me in a thousand ways that God has made a way to deal with my deepest problem, sin. It reminds me that my life need not be imprisoned by my own rebellion, defeated by my own foolishness, or paralyzed by my own inability. God’s grace is most powerful and effective at the moment of my greatest weakness.

How practical and life changing is this? Think of our couple again. One of the most significant problems in their relationship is that there is no economy of grace. With all their obvious difficulties, what is most shocking is the profound gracelessness of their marriage. There is no willingness to look within and confess deep-seated sins, so they never find sweet forgiveness. There is no vertical hope to carry them in dark and discouraging times. There is no rest that comes from entrusting each other to the God of grace. There is no faith that he will give them all they need to respond to each other in godly ways. As a result, their relationship is reduced to human demands, human performance, human failure, human judgment, and human punishment. There is no hope or power for change. And because they are not daily soaking in the fountain of God’s grace, they do not extend it to one another.

All of their marriage books, communication skills, and attempts at reformation will fail, because their only true hope is God’s heart-transforming, relationship-revolutionizing grace. When they begin to rely on that grace and extend it to each other, the foundations of their present economy will crumble, and a foundation of grace-infused, God-empowered love will grow. Only in the economy of grace can the biblical principles for healthy marital relationships bear lasting fruit.

It’s Not Your Party

In 1978 I did one of the most courageous things in my life: I became a kindergarten teacher! Along with a few other brave souls, I had founded a Christian school and begun functioning as its principal. Since our budget and staff were limited, I agreed to temporarily function as the kindergarten teacher.

One Monday afternoon, the mother of one of my novice aca-demics asked if she could have a birthday party for her daughter in the classroom on the following Friday. The day came, and after the mother’s frenetic preparation, we all entered the room. She had turned our little classroom into a birthday kingdom! The walls and table were lavishly decorated; multi-colored streamers hung from the ceiling, and a balloon within a balloon was tied to the back of each chair. At each seat was a ribbon-tied cellophane bag of party favors. The only exception was the birthday girl, who was surrounded by a huge pile of beautifully wrapped gifts.

At the far end of the table sat Johnny. Johnny kept doing the same thing over and over. He would look at his little bag of party favors, then at the birthday girl’s mountain of gifts, fold his arms, stick out his lower lip, and let out an audible humph! Each time, the look on his face got more ugly and his humphing more audible. Before long he had become the center of attention and was well on his way to spoiling the party. Then one of the mothers walked over and knelt beside him. She turned his chair so that Johnny was looking directly into her face, and she spoke these profound words: “Johnny, it’s not your party!”

Johnny wasn’t supposed to be the center of attention. He wasn’t supposed to have a huge pile of gifts. It was Susie’s birthday, and everything was rightly focused on her. Johnny would never enjoy his inclusion in the event if he demanded to be at the center.

So it is with the grand story of the Bible. With all of its locations and people, with all of the dramatic events of nature and history, at the center of the story is the Lord. It is his story. Paul summarizes the story this way, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen” (Rom. 11:36).

We were made for his glory, and we are called to display his glory in everything we do. This theme of glory is the last of our three over-arching themes. Sin makes us glory thieves. There is probably not a day when we do not plot to steal glory that rightfully belongs to the Lord. When we compete with one another for glory, we fail to experience the unity that can only be found when we join together to live for him.

At the bottom of a broken marriage, a shattered family, or a forsaken friendship you will always find stolen glory. We crave glory that does not belong to us, and we step on one another to get it. Rather than glorifying God by using the things he has given us to love other people, we use people to get the glory we love. Sin causes us to steal the story and rewrite it with ourselves as the lead, and with our lives at center stage.

But there is only one stage and it belongs to the Lord. Any attempt to put ourselves in his place puts us in a war with him. It is an intensely vertical war, a fight for divine glory, a plot to take the very position of God. It is the drama that lies behind every sad earthly drama. Sin has made us glory robbers. We do not suffer well, because suffering interferes with our glory. We do not find relationships easy, because others compete with us for glory. We do not serve well, because in our quest for glory, we want to be served.

But the story of Scripture is the story of the Lord’s glory. It calls me to an agenda that is bigger than myself. It offers me something truly worth living for. The Redeemer has come so that glory thieves would joyfully live for the glory of Another. There is no deeper personal joy and satisfaction than to live committed to his glory. It is what we truly need. Living for God’s glory would revolutionize the marriage of the couple we have been considering by completely redefining their agenda.³

A Life Worth Living

The central work of God’s kingdom is change. God accomplishes this work as the Holy Spirit empowers people to bring his Word to others. We bring more than solutions, strategies, principles, and commands. We bring the greatest story ever told, the story of the Redeemer. Our goal is to help one another live with a “God’s story” mentality. Our mission is to teach, admonish, and encourage one another to rest in his sovereignty, rather than establishing our own; to rely on his grace rather than performing on our own; and to submit to his glory rather than seeking our own. This is the work of the kingdom of God: people in the hands of the Redeemer, daily functioning as his tools of lasting change.

Do We Really Need Help?

Emily was twelve years old, bright and gifted, but more and more things were making her afraid. She didn’t want to play sports any more. She cried each morning about going to school. Her mother Sara didn’t know what to do.

Over their regular weekly lunch, Jean told Crystal about her ongoing struggles with her husband. Crystal managed to mumble some heartfelt words of comfort, but she really didn’t know what else to say.

Frank loves leading his small group, except when it comes to the prayer time. Each week someone shares something that Frank knows he should follow up on, but he doesn’t know how to minister to people who haven’t really asked for his help.

Fred and Ellen enjoy their relationship with the Smiths, but the Smith kids are driving them crazy. They know the Smiths are struggling as parents, and they have talked together about it. They know they should do more—but what?

Since her husband’s death, Mary has had little desire to do much of anything. She spends hours in front of a television she isn’t even watching. She would love to talk to a friend about what is happening, but she doesn’t think anyone could really help.

Andy’s struggle with lust is spinning out of control. He can barely look at a woman without impure thoughts. He has begun to live a secret life, and in his rational moments, he is scared. He would love to talk with someone, but who? He fears that he would be judged and his life would get trashed.

Drew’s anger toward his parents grows daily. When he’s not at school or work, he is holed up in his bedroom. He has talked to his friends about leaving home, but they seldom say anything helpful. He can’t imagine finding an adult he could confide in.

Richard’s life is dominated by his work, and his friend George can see its effect on Rich’s spiritual life and his family. When George brings up the topic, Rich is prickly and defensive. George knows it’s wrong to back off, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

Bob loves being a pastor. He loves preparing sermons and he loves to preach. He enjoys organizing church programs that help people grow. What he doesn’t love is when someone drops a crisis in his lap. Bob feels tremendous pressure to be a miracle worker, to wave his pastor’s wand and make everything all right. A knot forms in the pit of his stomach, and he wonders what the next few weeks are going to be like.

In each of our lives the drama of sin and suffering plays itself out. It may be a secret struggle that is growing more difficult. It may be a relationship that is increasingly conflicted. The horrors of the past may have reared their ugly heads.

Honesty compels us to admit that we are people who need help, surrounded by people in the same situation. You see it in your friends, your family, your neighborhood, your workplace, and your church. You see it in yourself, in moments of candid self-reflection. There are things inside of us that simply don’t go away. We do wrong things, feel regret, confess them, resolve not to repeat them, but, in the heat of the moment, go on to do exactly what we promised ourselves we wouldn’t!

How does God help us, and how does he use us to help others? We know that God has called us to be part of his kingdom work, but he hasn’t given us a neat formula to follow. He hasn’t given us “seven steps to personal and relational perfection.” Instead, he has told us to place our hope in the presence and work of Jesus the Redeemer. Both the helper and the person needing help depend on his power and wisdom for change.

What does this look like? How do we actually become tools that God can use? To answer this question, we need a biblical understanding of people and their need for help, and a biblical perspective on how change takes place.

Scripture looks at human beings from three angles: Creation, Fall, and Redemption. This sweeping perspective provides the foundation we need for personal ministry. When we start with the Bible’s big picture and learn to see with biblical eyes, we will be equipped to be part of God’s ongoing work of transformation.

The Best Place to Start Is at the Beginning

As we’ve seen, there is clearly a biblical mandate for personal ministry. What may surprise you is the fact that the need was present even in Genesis 1.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Gen. 1:26–28)

Because this passage is so familiar, it is easy to miss its radical view of people. Properly understood, it will change your life and the way you respond to others.

The account of Creation has a cadence to it, a beat. God creates light, declares that it is good, and there is evening and morning, the first day. God creates heaven and earth, land and water, declares that it is good, and there is evening and morning, the second day. God creates something, declares that it is good . . . and the beat goes on—until he decides to create people. All of a sudden the rhythm is interrupted. God does something with Adam and Eve that he has not done with anything else. His actions demonstrate why personal ministry is necessary for all of us. Immediately after creating Adam and Eve, God talks to them. He didn’t do this with anything else he created. He simply rested and moved on. When the cadence is broken and God does something different, you should ask yourself why. Why did God talk to them?

God knew that even though Adam and Eve were perfect people living in perfect relationship with him, they could not figure out life on their own. They were created to be dependent. God had to explain who they were and what they were to do with their lives. They did not need this help because they were sinners. They needed help because they were human.

This is the first instance of personal ministry in human history. The Wonderful Counselor comes to human beings and defines their identity and purpose. Why couldn’t Adam and Eve live without this? What made them different from the rest of creation? There are three reasons.

First, Adam and Eve were created to be revelation receivers. They were given communicative abilities that no other creature was given. They were created with the ability to hear, understand, and apply God’s words to their lives. These abilities were not given primarily to encourage human relationships. They were given so that we could know God and understand him.

The rest of creation doesn’t need these abilities to live for God’s glory. You and I instinctively know this, which is why we don’t have religious discussions with the oak trees in our back yards! The oak tree brings glory to God simply by raising its limbs toward heaven. Its presence and form bring glory to its Creator. But human beings need God’s words to live fully for his glory.

Our culture tends to think that we need help because of something we did or something that was done to us—the result of either bad biology or bad personal chemistry. But Genesis 1 confronts us with the fact that our need for help preceded sin. We were created to be dependent.

Trying to live without God’s help is to assign myself a sub-human existence. It is to live like an animal, as if I were something other than what I am. Vast numbers of people attempt to live this way, but it is an act of irrationality. They deny their identity, subvert their own lives, and crush their own hope. Human beings were created to live on the platform of God’s revelation, which is why we were given the unique communicative abilities we possess.

Personal ministry must begin with a humble recognition of the inescapable nature of our need. If there had been no Fall, if we had never sinned, we would still need help because we are human. A proper understanding of yourself and the work God has called you to starts here.

People Think

The second thing that distinguished Adam and Eve from the rest of creation was that they were created to be interpreters. People are meaning-makers; we have been created with the marvelous ability to think. We are always organizing, interpreting, and explaining what is going on inside us and around us. We all think, though some of us do it better than others. We do not live life based on the bare facts of our existence; we live our lives according to our interpretation of those facts. God gave Adam and Eve the unique ability to think, but only his words could accurately interpret their world.

When I was a young pastor in Scranton, Pennsylvania, our family lived in an old Victorian home with a long, steep staircase. One afternoon I was sitting in the living room when I heard someone falling down the steps. I ran to the bottom of the staircase to see my three-year-old son, Ethan, fall three or four more steps and stop. I asked him if he was okay, and he assured me that he was.

As I was turning to go back to my newspaper, Ethan said, “Thank you.” I said, “Ethan, you don’t need to thank me. I didn’t do anything.” “Not you, Daddy. I’m thanking the angels,” Ethan responded, looking at me as if I should have known exactly what he meant. That’s sweet, I thought, as I turned to walk away again. But before I could take a step Ethan said, “I know how they do it!” I said, “Who?” “The angels, Daddy, I know how the angels do it. Everybody has two angels that you can’t see. One stands on this side [his right] and one stands on this side [his left] and they carry a big beach ball that you can’t see over your head. [We had just returned from a vacation at the shore.] When you start to fall, they stick the beach ball in front of you, you bounce off it and you are okay!” And off he walked, quite satisfied with his explanation.

Perhaps your response is, “How cute!” But something remarkable is happening here as well: Immediately after escaping a fall down the steps, this little boy was trying to make sense of what happened. Three years old and he was already thinking, organizing, interpreting, and explaining! Ethan combined a Sunday school fact and a family vacation fact, out of which he formed a (seemingly) plausible explanation of his experience.

That little boy is now twenty-three years old. Think of the thousands of times he has interpreted his world, and how those interpretations have set the direction for his life.

A situation with another of our sons illumines how our interpretations shape the way we respond to what goes on around us. Our youngest son, Darnay, was also three years old when he was wandering in our back yard, oblivious to the fact that his older brother was playing baseball by hitting stones with a rake handle. Before long, Ethan accidentally hit Darnay square in the forehead. Darnay fell to the ground, bleeding profusely. While his sister functioned as an ambulance siren, his brother anxiously pled his innocence, and I mopped away the blood to determine the extent of his injury, Darnay lay quietly, utterly at peace. I noticed his lips were moving, so I bent down, put my ear near his mouth, and heard him say to himself over and over again, “I’m just so glad my daddy is a doctor!”

Darnay knew that his daddy had a “Dr.” in front of his name, and that he occasionally had appointments with people. To him, that meant Daddy must be a medical doctor. But when I heard him whisper those words, my thought was, You’re in deep trouble because that is not the kind of doctor I am!

This little family crisis demonstrates the significance of our interpretations. We not only interpret situations and relationships, we interpret ourselves. We assign ourselves an identity and we live it out. Darnay did not respond to his situation based on his sister’s screams, his brother’s panic, or the amount of blood that flowed. He responded according to the identity he had assigned himself—one that was, unfortunately, terribly mistaken. Because he thought his daddy was a medical doctor, he was at peace when he would otherwise have been afraid. But it was a false peace, and he would soon find out that he was not who he thought he was.

Notice how Darnay’s interpretation shaped his responses to the situation. First, it conditioned his emotions. His lack of fear was based on a particular assumption about how much danger he was in. Second, his interpretation of life defined his identity. He was (he thought) the son of a competent medical professional. This interpretation defined, third, how he thought about others. He had infinite confidence in me and he didn’t need to be upset with Ethan when help was so nearby. Fourth, his thinking shaped his view of the solution. Very simply, Daddy would take care of it! Fifth and finally, his assumptions about reality shaped the way he would receive counsel. In his ignorance, Darnay would have had implicit faith in whatever instructions and assessments I offered!

When we say that God designed human beings to be interpreters, we are getting to the heart of why human beings do what they do. Our thinking conditions our emotions, our sense of identity, our view of others, our agenda for the solution of our problems, and our willingness to receive counsel from others. That is why we need a framework for generating valid interpretations that help us respond to life appropriately. Only the words of the Creator can give us that framework.

You Gotta Serve Somebody

Those words from one of my favorite theologians, Bob Dylan, capture the third thing that separates us from the rest of creation. Human beings by their very nature are worshipers. Worship is not just something we do; it defines who we are. You cannot divide human beings into those who worship and those who don’t. Everybody worships; it’s just a matter of what, or whom, we serve.

God intended worship to be the motivational core of our lives. Adam and Eve were created to live so that everything in their lives drew its meaning and purpose from the person, presence, and purpose of God. This is called a God-ward referent. Because of this design, everything a human being does expresses worship. What you do and the way you do it express your desire to serve something. Some central love commands our allegiance and directs our behavior.

We begin to worship from our earliest years. Have you ever been a parent taking a young child to a toy store? You can steer your cart down the center of the aisles and keep your child’s hands from touching everything in sight. All is well until you reach the checkout line. There Johnny spies the Captain Bonco X-Rider Poseable Space Figure. “Mommy, I want this! Can’t I have it, Mommy?” Johnny pleads. “No, not today. Remember, Mommy said she was only going to get you one thing today,” you respond. “I want it! I want it!” Johnny wails. “Billy has all of the X-Riders, and he even has the tabletop play station! It’s not fair. I never get anything!” “That’s not true,” you respond, as your patience slips away. “I bought you a puzzle, and it is all you are going to get today.”

At this point Johnny stiffens his body, throws back his head and begins to scream. You feel every eye in the store on you. You wish you could fall through a trap door that would lead to your car. You begin contemplating a catalog of disciplines, looking for the one most appropriate for this crime.

This incident is not merely a horizontal problem between a mother and her son. Their problem stems from the fact that even as a child, Johnny is a worshiper, and his responses express worship. What’s wrong with Johnny is not just that he wants a toy and throws a fit when his parent says “no.” On a deeper level, Johnny is displaying the natural human instinct to live for oneself and one’s own pleasure, oblivious to the presence of God. This relatively minor mother-child struggle reflects our built-in desire to serve something, and our sinful assumption that the “something” should be us! Johnny wants to be the sovereign ruler of his little universe, and he is demanding that his mother go along. If you stand in his way, you will pay dearly. Little Johnny is a worship thief.

Stolen worship is at the core of what is wrong with fallen human beings. Sadly, we are all guilty of the crime. Because we are worshipers by nature, we are always (1) giving proper worship to God, (2) serving something else, or (3) worshiping ourselves, demanding to be the center of our own universe. Isn’t this what fantasy is about? In a person’s disappointment with the real world, he creates worlds of his own where everyone does his bidding. Who has ever fantasized about someone saying “no”? Fantasy is an attempt to be God.

Adam and Eve were created as worshipers. They needed God to come to them and say, “I am your Creator, and you belong to me. You were created to love, serve, worship, and obey me. These things should underlie everything you do.” They needed lives with a God-ward referent, and for that they needed God’s revelation.

Putting It All Together

You cannot understand the world of personal ministry without Genesis 1. It explains that our need for help is part of our design. It is not a result of the Fall. Human beings need truth from outside themselves to make sense out of life. We need God’s perspective to interpret the facts of our existence. We were created to be worshipers.

These facts lead to a radical observation. If it is true that all human beings are constantly trying to make sense out of life, then all of life is counseling or personal ministry. Counseling is the stuff of human life! We are always interpreting and always sharing our interpretations with one another. This “sharing” ultimately amounts to advice or counsel about how to respond to life.

The bottom line is that you cannot have a relationship without being a person of influence. You give and receive counsel every day. It is not a task confined to paid professionals; it is woven into the fabric of human relationships. The problem is that we don’t often recognize the powerful impact of those everyday encounters.

Proverbs captures this dynamic well. From the wise words of a father to his son, to the life-complicating advice of the fool, Proverbs depicts life as one huge counseling forum. Within that forum are two sectors, the counsel of the wise and the counsel of the fool. You and I receive wise and foolish counsel every day. The different voices compete for your attention. They influence your thoughts, desires, choices, and actions. The counsel comes to you in the words of a friend, the content of a TV show, and the Sunday sermon. There is counsel in the rebuke of a parent and the opinion of your spouse. People counsel people. It is inescapable.

We should be concerned about the thousands of hours of formal counseling that are not based on God’s Word. But we should also be concerned about the far greater amount of counseling that goes on every day between people who do not know what they are doing and people who do not know how much they are being influenced. If you are alive on this planet, you are a counselor! You are interpreting life, and sharing those interpretations with others. You are a person of influence, and you are also being influenced. There are people in your life who have your ear. Perhaps without even knowing it, they will shape your thinking, direct your desires, and influence your plan of action. The issue is not who is counseling. All of us are. The core issue is whether that counseling is rooted in the revelation of the Creator.

The Entrance of Another Counselor

We’ve seen our need for help from the perspective of Creation. We need to view it from the vantage point of the Fall as well. Genesis 3 has thunderous implications for the world of personal ministry.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”

“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (Gen. 3:1–7)

For the first time in history we witness the entrance of another voice, another counselor. Notice the content of his counsel, his advice to Eve. He takes the very same set of facts (the things God said to Adam and Eve) and gives them a different interpretation. The Serpent puts a particular spin on the words of God because he is anything but objective.

Eve stands in one of the most important moments of history. You can almost imagine the deathly silence of creation as it waits to see what she will do. Will she follow the counsel of the Creator or the counsel of the Serpent? Where will she find her meaning and purpose? To whom will she entrust herself? What, finally, will she believe about God, his character, and his plan? These are the underlying questions of the moment.

The moral drama here gets to the core of human existence. Notice that the passage says that Eve saw the fruit as “desirable for gaining wisdom.” Satan was not just selling Eve the best fruit in the garden, but something more fundamentally appealing. He was telling Eve that if she ate the fruit, she would be independently wise. The promise was autonomous personal wisdom, without any need for God or his revelation! This was the attraction that led to the Fall.

Satan was offering a different path to wisdom, holding out the promise that people can discern life on their own. His words suggest that however beautiful God’s revelation, it is not really necessary. Satan’s wisdom places peoples’ lives in their own hands, so that they rely on their own ability to think, interpret, understand, and apply. The Serpent is selling Eve the most attractive and cruelest of lies, the lie of autonomy and self-sufficiency. He offers her wisdom that does not need to bow the knee to God.

If Adam and Eve choose to follow the counsel of the Serpent, they will have to do two things. First, they will have to deny God and his revelation of himself as their Creator and Counselor, the one who defines their identity and purpose. The apostle Paul says of Christ, “in [him] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” He says that what is wrong with the “hollow and deceptive philosophy” of the world is that it “depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ” (Col. 2:3, 8). The Bible declares that wisdom is a person, and his name is Christ! This has been true from the beginning. Thus in a real way Adam and Eve are rejecting not just God the Father, but Christ, believing they can find elsewhere what only he can offer.

Psalm 14 says that this is the core of all foolishness. Foolishness is more than being stupid, that deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance. The core presupposition of fools is that there is no God, and we don’t need his revelation in order to live. Genesis 3 is a counseling passage, a wisdom passage. Whose voice will I listen to? What will be the source of my wisdom? Adam and Eve must listen to one voice or the other, and their decision, like ours, has lasting implications.

To listen to this new counselor (Satan), they must not only deny God, but their own nature. What the serpent offers as a credible option is no option at all. Adam and Eve were created for a certain kind of existence. They cannot live successfully outside their design. Yet this is what Adam and Eve are about to do, and what millions of people attempt every day.

Why Obey God?

This alternate system of wisdom, with its new counselor, is not neutral. It carries a clear moral agenda. If Adam and Eve decide to believe the interpretation of this new speaker, they would be stupid to continue to obey God. God would be unmasked as a liar and a cheat, a manipulative, insecure deity who is afraid that they will become like him.

This is how it is with all advice, counsel, and personal ministry. The interpretations we share with one another always define right and wrong, good and bad, true and false, wise and foolish. They always tell us what to desire, think, and do. My interpretations all rest on some view of God, myself, and others. And they always tell me what to do with both my heart and my hands.

If Adam and Eve reject the words of God and follow the Serpent, they will think and act in very different ways. Sadly, they followed the Serpent, and life has never been the same. Now we live in a world with thousands of voices that interpret life and compete for the allegiance of our hearts. No wonder we are confused! No wonder we can’t think straight! These voices tempt us because they appeal to one sinful, deluded desire first felt in the Garden: to be out on our own, to have it our way, to answer only to ourselves, and to find life somewhere other than at the feet of the Creator.

This is what sin does to us. It reduces us to fools who live in ways that deny both God and our own nature. We may not profess to be atheists, but in practice we live purely horizontal, godless lives. The things of this world capture and enslave us. We may go to church and possess a high level of biblical and theological knowledge, but these pursuits can exist on the fringes of our lives. They are the icing on an all too self-absorbed, self-directed, and self-sufficient cake. Another system of counsel commands the thoughts and motives of our hearts.

People, the Serpent, and Personal Ministry

What principles can we draw from Genesis 3 to develop our biblical understanding of personal ministry?

1. Thoughts, opinions, advice, and relationships are always agenda setting. Though we may be unaware of it, we daily advise each other what to desire, think, and do.

2. Advice is always moral, defining right and wrong, true and false, good and bad, wise and foolish.

3. We should hunger for the simple dependence of Genesis 1, where everything people thought, said, and did was based solely on the words of God.

4. The voices of the world appeal to a core delusion in sinful hearts, the desire to be God, able to understand and live life on our own. We need people in our lives who love us enough to call us back to a life with God at the center.

5. We need the words of God (Scripture) to make sense out of life. We need to listen for the one reliable voice of the Creator. His Word alone can cut through the confusion of the world’s philosophy and our own foolishness to make us truly wise. Real knowledge begins with knowing him. Wisdom is the fruit of worship, and received on bended knee. It is the product of a life lived in submission to the One who is wisdom, Christ.

Saved, But Still Needy

Are Christians still people who need help? Is personal ministry a necessity for those who have been forgiven by God’s grace, adopted in his family, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Isn’t the public ministry of the Word enough? In emphasizing personal ministry, aren’t we simply following the lead of a therapeutic culture?

A woman once approached me during a seminar on this material and asked, “If I have the Bible in my hands and the Holy Spirit in my heart, why do I need to be counseled by others?” How would you answer her? Indeed, the Holy Spirit is the Wonderful Counselor of the church. He enables us to understand God’s Word, convicts us of sin, works in us a willingness to obey, and enables us to do what we have been called by God to do. But does this mean that I no longer need one-on-one ministry? You could use the same logic to argue that you don’t need public worship and the public ministry of the Word. This woman was missing something significant, which is captured by a few short verses in Hebrews: “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (Heb. 3:12–13).

There is a lot packed into these two short verses. First, notice that the passage is written to “brothers,” that is, believers. The writer is addressing issues that are part of the normal life of every Christian. He is not talking to those outside the faith or to some special class of believers. The writer is saying that there is something in each of us that places us in danger, and because of that, we need the daily ministry of others.

Next, look at the content of the warning: “See to it that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving [i.e., turning away, ultimately hardened] heart.” The fact that there is a need for this kind of warning should get our attention. What is being described here is a process, one I have seen many times in people I have counseled.

It all starts with the person giving in to the sinful desires of his or her heart. A married man becomes interested in a woman at work. He thinks about what it would be like to get to know her better. He begins to spend way too much time studying the way she dresses, the look of her face, the way she keeps her hair, and the shape of her body. As he does this, his desires grow. He has not considered a physical relationship, and he is not thinking of leaving his wife at this point. He decides to talk with the woman. What harm could it do? After all, she is colleague, so he ought to have a good relationship with her.

It isn’t long before they are having long lunches together and talking often during the day. One day he offers to take her home and spends forty-five minutes sitting close to her on the couch. He touches her hand and tells her how much he appreciates their friendship. On the way home, for the first time he wishes he wasn’t married. When he arrives home he is careful about how he reports on his day. That night he lies in bed next to his wife, thinking about the woman at work. He is progressively giving in to subtle patterns of sin, but he doesn’t see them for what they are.

Yet there is something else going on inside him, the conviction of the Holy Spirit. He is uneasy. He feels a bit guilty. He doesn’t experience the joy he once did at seeing his wife at the end of a long day. He knows he is all too excited to go to work in the morning. He knows he has begun to be more critical of his wife and that he feels a unique kinship with this other woman. So he argues with himself, trying to quiet his conscience. He doesn’t see it, but he is responding to subtle patterns of sin with subtle patterns of unbelief. He tells himself that he hasn’t done anything wrong, that the Bible does not forbid a man’s friendship with a woman, that he is a faithful husband, and that he hasn’t done anything adulterous. He convinces himself that this relationship is a good thing, that he needs more of these kinds of relationships at work, that he has existed too long in the comfortable Christian ghetto, and that God is actually pleased that he has reached out to someone.

Not only is he acting upon the sinful desires of his heart, he is subtly backing away from the interpretive authority of Scripture. Giving in to patterns of sin has been followed by unbelief, and all the while the man and his wife are still actively involved with their church. But underneath, he has begun to lose his spiritual moorings. A childlike trust in and obedience to the Word had been his moral anchor. He had been sensitive to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. But now he has cut the anchor chain and is adrift. And he doesn’t even know it.

Because he has lost his spiritual moorings, he drifts away further. Before long he and his coworker are leaving at lunch and not returning. He begins to volunteer for business trips when he knows she is going. The relationship is increasingly physical. His relationship with his wife is disintegrating, but he doesn’t care. In fact, he wonders why in the world he married her. He is spending more time at work in the evenings and on weekends, and so he is less involved with activities at his church. He has quit reading his Bible and praying; he feels quite trapped by the whole “Christian thing.” His wife pleads with him to go with her for counseling, but he is not interested.

There are more evenings when he doesn’t even come home. Lies fill his conversations with his wife. His pastor pursues and pleads with him, but he is unmoved, no longer attentive to the Word or sensitive to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. His heart has become hard. He is not sure he believes “that stuff” any more, and before long he is making plans to leave his wife.

Sinful ➞ unbelieving ➞ turning away ➞ hardened hearts. What a terrifying progression! Perhaps you are wondering, “How could this ever happen to a believer?” This passage answers the question with its detailed description of how things went wrong. Notice the words in Hebrews 3:13: “so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” This explains why we need the daily ministry of fellow believers.

The writer of Hebrews directs us to the doctrine of indwelling sin. On the cross and in the resurrection, Christ broke the power of sin over us (Rom. 6:1–14), but the presence of sin remains. Sin is being eradicated within us, and this process will continue until we are sin-free. But while sin remains, we must remember that sin is deceitful. Sin blinds—and guess who gets blinded first? Me! I have no trouble seeing the sins of my family, but I can be astonished when mine are pointed out! Christ captures this truth with his word picture in Matthew 7. He says we can see a speck of dust in our neighbor’s eye, but we are oblivious to a huge piece of lumber sticking out of our own!

Since each of us still has sin remaining in us, we will have pockets of spiritual blindness. This problem has a great impact on personal ministry.¹ Our most important vision system is not our physical eyes. We can be physically blind and live quite well. But when we are spiritually blind, we cannot live as God intended. That is why so many Old Testament prophecies say that the Messiah would come to open blind eyes. That is why he is called the Light. Physically blind people are always aware of their deficit and spend much of their lives learning to live with its limitations. But the Bible says that we can be spiritually blind and yet think that we see quite well. We even get offended when people act as if they see us better than we see ourselves!

The reality of spiritual blindness has important implications for the Christian community. The Hebrews passage clearly teaches that personal insight is the product of community. I need you in order to really see and know myself. Otherwise, I will listen to my own arguments, believe my own lies, and buy into my own delusions. My self-perception is as accurate as a carnival mirror. If I am going to see myself clearly, I need you to hold the mirror of God’s Word in front of me.

Notice also that this is a universal need. There are no “haves” and “have nots” here. There is no group that has arrived spiritually and therefore can provide all the ministry to a group of strugglers. This passage teaches that everybody ministers and everybody needs ministry. It warns us to admit our need for help and to become God’s helpers. I need to wake up in the morning and say, “God, I am a person in desperate need of help. Please send helpers my way and give me the humility to receive the help you have provided.” And I need to pray further, “Lord, make me willing to help someone see himself as you see him today.”

As Christians who still have pockets of spiritual blindness, we need two character qualities. First, we need the loving courage of honesty. We need to love others more than we love ourselves, and so, with humble, patient love, help them to see what they need to see. Second, we need the thankful humility of approachability. We need to forsake defensiveness, be thankful that God has surrounded us with help, and be ready to receive it—every day!

Bringing It All Together

The world of personal ministry is rooted in three principles: First, we were created with the need for truth outside ourselves to live life properly. Second, many interpretive voices compete with God’s Word for our hearts’ attention. Third, the power of sin has been broken, but the blinding presence of sin remains. Therefore, we need to live in humble, honest community with one another, where personal ministry is part of the daily culture.

Do people really need help? The answer from the perspective of Creation, Fall, and Redemption is a resounding “yes.” Each of us needs help, and each of us is called to offer it. In the next chapter, we will explore what that means for our individual lives and for the life and ministry of the church.

The Heart Is the Target

I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, and our family usually went east for our vacations. But when I was sixteen years old, my dad decided to take our family on the Great Trip West. That year, Dad loaded my mother, my brother Mark, and me into a Ford Falcon and we headed out. Although we were to see many things (Yellowstone, the Rockies, etc.), the highlight of the trip for my father was seeing the Grand Canyon. For Dad, everything else we did was but a prelude to this experience.

As background, I should note that Dad approached vacations as a contract between the family and himself. His part of the bargain was to plan and finance the trip. Our part was to have a good time. Thus whenever he would ask us if we were having fun, the prudent answer was a hearty “yes.” Otherwise, he would launch into a well-rehearsed speech about how much money he was spending and how much time he had invested in planning our trip. He would conclude by saying that if he had known we were not going to have fun, we would have stayed home where we could do it for free!

Finally, the “Day of the Grand Canyon” came. Dad had never been more excited—an emotion that was obviously not shared by my mother. He awakened us early and we soon were on our way. When we reached the Grand Canyon, Dad refused to see it at a location that was “all fences and tourist traps.” He began to explore, and we ended up driving down a dirt road and then over open ground until we parked 200 feet from the rim.

Mark and I immediately ran for the edge. We pretended to push each other over the rim and sat dangling our feet over the mile-high wall of rock. We threw stone after stone over the edge, oblivious to anyone who might have been hiking and camping below us. It was amazing to witness stones silently disappearing without ever hearing or seeing them hit. We were having a blast, totally unencumbered by fear.

Meanwhile, Mom hadn’t even gotten out of the car. She had one foot on the ground, tapping to make sure that the turf was solid. She had visions that the rim would crumble and we would all fall to the bottom of the Canyon with the car on top of us.

My dad knew she was struggling so he had placed himself near the car. But then Mom would say, “Bob, the boys, the boys!” and Dad would run toward us to make sure we were okay. At that point, Mom would get queasy and call him back. In short, I don’t think my dad saw much of the canyon that day; he was too busy running back and forth, ensuring that everyone was having fun according to the plan. All of us were in the very same place at the very same moment, interacting with the very same natural phenomenon, but each was of us having a very different experience.

I tell this story because it gets to the heart of what personal ministry is about. Effective personal ministry takes the Kingdom promise of lasting change to the place where it is needed—the heart. In my vacation story, the heart of each member of our family was revealed in our behavior that day. Why did each of us experience such a different day when we were in the same location at the same time? Why did each of us act so differently? The answer goes back to our hearts.

My dad’s heart was filled with a desire for his family to have a great time. Everything he said and did was controlled by that desire. Mom’s heart was gripped by a powerful fear of heights and her concern for her sons, and this was reflected in her words and actions. Mark and I approached the scene with the fearlessness, invincibility, and immaturity of teenage boys. We just wanted to have fun. Each of us brought a different heart to the situation and so our experiences and actions differed. Our hearts directed our behavior.

Why Do People Do the Things They Do?

If you want to be part of what God is doing in the lives of others, you need to understand how God designed human beings to function. Why do people do the things they do?

Why can your toddler be so contrary? Why did your friend get upset in the middle of the conversation? Why is your teenager so angry? Why is Amy swallowed up by depression and despair? Why would a man risk his family for twenty minutes of sexual pleasure? Why do you get angry in traffic? Why is that once-romantic couple now engaged in guerilla warfare? Why is Bill driven in his career? Why is Sue so critical and controlling? Why does George speak so bluntly and unkindly? Why is your daughter afraid of what her friends will think? Why does Pete refuse to talk? Why do people do the things they do? The simplest, most biblical answer is the heart.

Even though the heart is one of the Bible’s most dominant themes, there is much confusion about the term. In western culture the term is relegated to the fields of romance (Valentine’s Day) and sports (“he plays with a lot of heart”). In the Bible, however, the heart is an essential category. You cannot understand the human being without understanding the heart. So, what does this term describe?

The Bible uses “heart” to describe the inner person. Scripture divides the human being into two parts, the inner and outer being. The outer person is your physical self; the inner person is your spiritual self (Eph. 3:16). The synonym the Bible most often uses for the inner being is the heart. It encompasses all the other terms and functions used to describe the inner person (spirit, soul, mind, emotions, will, etc.). These other terms do not describe something different from the heart. Rather, they are aspects of it, parts or functions of the inner person.

The heart is the “real” you. It is the essential core of who you are. Though we put a tremendous amount of emphasis on the outer person, we all recognize that the true person is the person within. For example, when you say that you are getting to know someone, you are not saying that you have a deeper knowledge of his ears or nose! You are talking about the inner person, the heart. You know how the person thinks, what he wants, what makes him happy or sad. You can predict what he is feeling at any given moment. Because the Bible says your heart is the essential you, any ministry of change must target the heart. This perspective is explained in several Scripture passages.

Fruit, Roots, and the Heart

One of the most important word pictures in the New Testament reveals Christ’s perspective on how people function. It is Christ’s answer to the age-old question, “Why do people do the things they do?”

No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:43–45)

Christ used ordinary physical things to explain unfamiliar truths. Here he likens the way people function to a tree. If you plant apple seeds and they take root, you don’t expect to see peaches or oranges growing. You expect apple seeds to become apple trees that produce apples. There is an organic relationship between the roots of the plant and the fruit it produces. Christ is saying that the same is true with people.

In Christ’s metaphor, fruit equals behavior. The particular fruit (behavior) this passage discusses is our words. Christ says that our words are literally our heart overflowing. People and situations don’t make us say what we say, though we tend to blame them. (“He made me so angry!” “If you had been there, you would have said the same thing!” “These kids simply make me insane!”) Rather, this passage says that our words are controlled by our hearts. A tree produces fruit, and our hearts produce behavior. We recognize a tree by the fruit it produces, and, in the same way, the Bible says people are known by their fruit.

In my early pastoral days we lived in a twin home, with our elderly landlady living in the other side of the house. In exchange for reduced rent, I agreed to do all of the yard work. In the busyness of ministry and family life, it was sometimes hard to find time to mow, rake, or shovel, but I tried to be prompt and faithful. However, no matter how disciplined I tried to be, my work never seemed timely enough for our landlady. To get me to work on her schedule, she would go out and start shoveling or raking, knowing full well that I would rush out and complete the job. I was unaware of how irritated I had become over her manipulation until one afternoon when I heard the leaves rustling outside. I looked out the window to see my landlady, in her housedress and slippers, raking the leaves. In my anger, with my hands on my hips, I said aloud, “If she thinks I’m going to rush out there and rake for her, she’s nuts! I’m going to rake on my time or not at all!”

What I didn’t realize was that one of my sons had been standing beside me. In a split second, to my horror, I saw him in the front yard, hands on his hips, yelling at my landlady, “My dad says if you think he is going to rush out here and rake for you, you’re nuts!” I couldn’t believe it. I was mortified. I wanted to back away from my words and rush out to tell my landlady that I had said no such thing—or at least that my son had misunderstood what I’d said. But I had to face the fact that the words had come out of me, that I had said what I’d meant, and that the words were the fruit of anger I had carried for quite a while. There was an organic connection between my words and my heart. You would not solve my heart problem by removing my son or teaching me to be more judicious with my words (though you would save me a lot of embarrassment!). The problem with my words was directly tied to the problem with my heart, which is where a comprehensive solution needed to be applied. This leads us to the second half of Christ’s illustration.

In Christ’s example, the roots of the tree equal the heart. They are underground and therefore not as easily seen or understood. But Jesus’ point is that a tree has the kind of fruit it does because of the kind of roots it has: we speak and act the way we do because of what is in our hearts.

There may be no more important thing to say about how people function, yet this seems to be hard for us to accept. In many ways we deny this connection and blame people and circumstances for our actions and words. Here Christ calls us to humbly accept responsibility for our behavior. He calls us to humbly admit that relationships and circumstances are only the occasions in which our hearts reveal themselves.

If my heart is the source of my sin problem, then lasting change must always travel through the pathway of my heart. It is not enough to alter my behavior or to change my circumstances. Christ transforms people by radically changing their hearts. If the heart doesn’t change, the person’s words and behavior may change temporarily because of an external pressure or incentive. But when the pressure or incentive is removed, the changes will disappear.

This is the spiritual truth Christ accused the Pharisees of missing in Matthew 23:25–26: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside will also be clean.”

Christ looked at the externalism of the Pharisees and said, “You guys just don’t get it. You pride yourselves on your right behavior, yet your hearts are a mess! Start with your hearts and right behavior will follow.” To make his point, Christ pushes his illustration to the limit. He says, “Clean the inside of the dish and the outside will also be clean.” You can’t really do this with your dishes at home—washing the inside of a dirty pan will not automatically clean the outside. Yet this is what Christ is advising; that’s how powerful the heart is. Do we really believe what Christ is teaching here?

Many of our attempts to change behavior ignore the heart behind the actions. We threaten (“You don’t want to even think about what I will do if you do that again!”), we manipulate (“Would you like a car of your own? All you have to do is . . .”), instill guilt (“I do and do for you and this is the thanks I get?”), raise our voices, and do a host of other things to change behavior, but change never lasts. The moment the outside pressure wanes, the behavior reverts to what it was before. The body always goes where the heart leads.

Personal Ministry and Fruit Stapling

Christ’s word picture helps set the direction for personal ministry, as we can see when we expand and apply it. Let’s say I have an apple tree in my backyard.¹ Each year its apples are dry, wrinkled, brown, and pulpy. After several seasons my wife says, “It doesn’t make any sense to have this huge tree and never be able to eat any apples. Can’t you do something?” One day my wife looks out the window to see me in the yard, carrying branch cutters, an industrial grade staple gun, a ladder, and two bushels of apples.

I climb the ladder, cut off all the pulpy apples, and staple shiny, red apples onto every branch of the tree. From a distance our tree looks like it is full of a beautiful harvest. But if you were my wife, what would you be thinking of me at this moment?

If a tree produces bad apples year after year, there is something drastically wrong with its system, down to its very roots. I won’t solve the problem by stapling new apples onto the branches. They also will rot because they are not attached to a life-giving root system. And next spring, I will have the same problem again. I will not see a new crop of healthy apples because my solution has not gone to the heart of the problem. If the tree’s roots remain unchanged, it will never produce good apples.

The point is that, in personal ministry, much of what we do to produce growth and change in ourselves and others is little more than “fruit stapling.” It attempts to exchange apples for apples without examining the heart, the root behind the behavior. This is the very thing for which Christ criticized the Pharisees. Change that ignores the heart will seldom transform the life. For a while, it may seem like the real thing, but it will prove temporary and cosmetic.

This often happens in personal ministry. From a distance it looks as if the person has really changed. When held accountable, the person does and says different things. The husband seems to be gentle and attentive to his wife. The teenager seems to treat his parents with new respect. The depressed person is up and out of the house. The broken relationship seems to have been restored. But the changes don’t last and in six weeks or six months, the person is right back where he started. Why? Because the change did not penetrate the heart, so changes in behavior were doomed to be temporary.

This is what happens to the teenager who goes through the teen years fairly well under the careful love, instruction, and oversight of Christian parents, only to go off to college and completely forsake his faith. I would suggest that in most cases he has not forsaken his faith. In reality, his faith was the faith of his parents; he simply lived within its limits while he was still at home. When he went away to school and those restraints were removed, his true heart was revealed. He had not internalized the faith. He had not entrusted himself to Christ in a life-transforming way. He did the “Christian” things he was required to do at home, but his actions did not flow from a heart of worship. In the college culture, he had nothing to anchor him, and the true thoughts and motives of his heart led him away from God. College was not the cause of his problem. It was simply the place where his true heart was revealed. The real problem was that faith never took root in his heart. As a result, his words, choices, and actions did not reveal a heart for God. Good behavior lasted for a while, but it proved to be temporary because it was not rooted in the heart.

Christ’s illustration establishes three principles that guide our efforts to serve as God’s instruments of change in the lives of others.

1. There is an undeniable root and fruit connection between our heart and our behavior. People and situations do not determine our behavior; they provide the occasion where our behavior reveals our hearts.

2. Lasting change always takes place through the pathway of the heart. Fruit change is the result of root change. Similarly, in Matthew 23, Christ says, “Clean the inside of the cup and dish and the outside will become clean.” Any agenda for change must focus on the thoughts and desires of the heart.

3. Therefore, the heart is our target in personal growth and ministry. Our prayer is that God will work heart change in us and use us to produce heart change in others that results in new words, choices, and actions.

The Heart of the Matter

Though the Bible has much to say about the heart, few Christian books on marriage and family, communication, conflict resolution, or even discipleship focus on it. These practical books seldom display an understanding of the centrality of the heart and how it operates. We can’t assume that people understand us when we talk about these things. We need to develop the ideas further.

An interesting Old Testament passage can help us do this.

Some of the elders of Israel came to me and sat down in front of me. Then the word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I let them inquire of me at all? Therefore speak to them and tell them, ‘This is what the sovereign LORD says: When any Israelite sets up idols in his heart and puts a wicked stumbling block before his face and then goes to a prophet, I the LORD will answer him myself in keeping with his great idolatry. I will do this to recapture the hearts of the people of Israel, who have all deserted me for their idols.’ ” (Ezek. 14:1–5)

The elders of Israel have come to the prophet Ezekiel with questions they want to ask God. It would seem like these spiritual leaders are doing the right thing. But God recognizes that there is something wrong with them. What is it?

God points out their idolatry, which is idolatry of a specific kind. They have idols in their hearts, a more personal and fundamental form of idolatry than ritual religious or cultural idolatry. An idol of the heart is anything that rules me other than God. As worshiping beings, human beings always worship someone or something. This is not a situation where some people worship and some don’t. If God isn’t ruling my heart, someone or something else will. It is the way we were made.

Romans 1 is helpful here. It is probably Scripture’s best analysis of the nature and effects of sin. Paul presents the core of our struggle as a “great exchange.”

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. (Rom. 1: 21–25)

Sin is fundamentally idolatrous. I do wrong things because my heart desires something more than the Lord. Sin produces a propensity toward idolatry in us all. We all migrate away from worship and service of the Creator toward worship and service of the created thing. This is the great spiritual war beneath every battle of behavior—the war for control of the heart. This struggle is captured well by the old hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. The third verse says,

O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be;

let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wander—Lord, I feel it—prone to leave the God I love:

here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

The hymn reflects the fact that a person does not wake up one morning and say, “You know, I’m tired of being a theist. I think I’ll become an atheist.” No, the hymn depicts the great exchange that takes place within our hearts in the routine moments of life. Sin leads us to believe that life can be found away from the Creator, and so we, in subtle and obvious ways, forget the Creator and deify the creation. Our behavior is ruled, not by worship and service of the Lord, but by a ravenous desire for something in the creation. As John Calvin said, our hearts are “idol factories,” and our words and actions are shaped by our pursuit of the things our hearts crave.

To make matters worse, this idolatry is hidden. It is deceptive; it exists underground. We can make this great exchange without forsaking our confessional theology or even our observance of the external duties of the faith. So we hold onto our beliefs, tithe, remain faithful in church attendance, and occasionally participate in ministry activity. Yet at the level of what we are really living for, we have forsaken God for something else. This is the silent cancer that weakens the church, robs individuals of their spiritual vitality, and leads to all kinds of difficulty in relationships and situations.

At its core, sin is moral thievery. It steals the worship that rightly belongs to God and gives it to someone or something else. It robs the Trinity to purchase the creation. Every sinner is in some way a worship thief.

At its center, sin is also spiritual adultery. It takes the love that belongs to God alone and gives it to someone or something else. It is a life shaped by the satisfaction of cravings, rather than by heartfelt commitment and faithfulness. Every sinner is in some way a spiritual adulterer.

The deepest issues of life are issues of worship. Worship is more fundamental to our essential nature than the pain, pressures, or pleasures of our experiences. What we worship determines our responses to all our experiences. Sin is much more than doing the wrong thing. It begins with loving, worshiping, and serving the wrong thing. Sin in some way always involves the great exchange.

God’s Response

The Ezekiel passage then gives God’s response to the elders. Because these men have idols in their hearts, God says he is going to answer them “in keeping with their great idolatry.” What does this mean? God is saying, “Because you have idols in your hearts, the only thing I want to talk about is your idolatry.” Why? Maybe these men had important things to ask God. Maybe they had pressing decisions to make. Why would God refuse to talk to them about anything but the idols?

A crucial phrase explains God’s response and reveals much about how the heart functions: “These men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces” (Ezek. 14:3).

Imagine that someone places his hand up to his face so that he is looking through his fingers. What will happen to his vision? It will be seriously obstructed, and the only way to clear it is to remove his hand. In a similar way, an idol in the heart creates a stumbling block before the face. Until the idol is removed, it will distort and obscure everything else in the person’s life. This is the principle of inescapable influence: Whatever rules the heart will exercise inescapable influence over the person’s life and behavior. This principle has obvious implications for personal growth and ministry.

I once counseled a successful executive from New York City. He was the most controlling man I have ever met. He had been married for thirty years and handled all of the financial, parenting, and decorating decisions of the family. He was so obsessed with control that he would rearrange his wife’s clothes closet according to his prescribed plan (blouses, skirts, pants, and dresses, in graduated shades of color)! Now, imagine that I did not know all this as I spoke to his wife. His controlling tendencies would not be in my mind as I listened to her complain that she and her husband never talk and that many conflicts are left unsolved. What would happen if I rolled up my counselor’s sleeves and gave the husband good biblical instruction on communication and conflict resolution? Would this lead to basic changes in his marriage? The answer is no, because he would use his new understanding and skills to get what his heart worshiped. Because my counsel would not have addressed this man’s idols of the heart, it would only produce a more successful controller. As long as the desire for dominance ruled his heart, he would use whatever principles and skills he learned to establish even greater control over his family.

If we fail to examine the heart and the areas where it needs to change, our ministry efforts will only result in people who are more committed and successful idolaters. This is why God will only answer the elders of Israel in keeping with their heart idolatry. If they do not change there, whatever God tells them will only be used to serve the idols that rule their hearts. We will even use the principles of the Word to serve our idols!

Because idolatry operates in the subtle shadows of the thoughts and motives of our hearts, most committed idolaters have no idea that this is their problem. But the influence is powerful just the same.

Covert and Overt Idolatry

I have traveled to northern India several times. Spiritually, this is one of the darkest places on earth. Idolatry permeates every aspect of individual and cultural life. Stand almost anywhere in northern India and you can see an altar to one of Hinduism’s many gods. One day I stood in a temple and watched a young priest feed, bathe, and clothe an idol. I watched his colleague lie prostrate on the floor before an image of wood and gold. I was overcome by their sincerity and devotion. These inanimate images controlled every waking moment of the priests’ young lives, even though they had no ability to see, speak, or act in any way beneficial to their worshipers. I witnessed hordes of poverty-stricken pilgrims bathing in the Ganges River after long, arduous journeys, so that their souls would be cleansed and their prayers answered.

One day I entered a temple and watched person after person do homage to a fifteen-foot, black stone phallus. I thought to myself, How blind and deceived these people must be! How utterly disgusting this must be in the eyes of the true and living God! I literally ran out of the temple, overcome with the darkness, saying to myself, I am glad I’m not like these people! But as I looked back at the temple, I was humbled by the thought that I am like them. My idols are not the overt idols of Hindu polytheism; they are the covert idols of my heart. But either way, they are god-replacements. From God’s vantage point, my idols are just as disgusting as anything I had seen that day. They command my daily devotion, shape my daily routine, and guide the way I interact with life, though they have no power whatsoever to deliver. There are times when I am just as deceived and blind as the young priests I observed. Overt idolatry has much to tell us about how covert idolatry controls our lives.

Nowhere but in Scripture will you get this perspective on human motivation. The Bible alone declares that human beings are worshipers by their very nature and that everything we say and do is shaped by worship. God’s Word alone insists that we are always serving God or some aspect of the creation, and whatever rules our hearts will exercise inescapable influence over our lives and behavior.

Heart idolatry can subvert even our most worshipful moments. For example, prayer is our most God-directed act, yet it too can be warped by an idolatrous heart. Have you ever rehearsed a prayer before publicly praying it? (You know, “Our dear Heavenly Father . . . No, no . . . Our sovereign, gracious Heavenly Father . . . no . . . Father in heaven, we are. . . .”). Why do we do this? Are we trying to get it right for the Lord? That doesn’t work because he hears the rehearsal! Isn’t it really an attempt to use public prayer to gain the respect of the people around us? Because our hearts are captured by a desire for human approval, we use an act of worship to get glory for ourselves!

This is why the principle of the Ezekiel passage is so important, and why the focus of God’s transforming grace is heart change. Our spiritual battle is a war for the heart. When that war is won, people behave in ways that please their Creator. God will never be satisfied with the crumbs of externalism. He rails against this in Isaiah: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isa. 29:13a).

Applying the Principle

My daily behavior is my attempt to get what is important to me in various situations and relationships. My choices and actions always reveal the desires that rule my heart. I never come empty. This is the deepest issue of human experience and a major answer to the question, “Why do people do the things they do?” As James says, we are led away by our own desires (James 1:14).

This principle has several applications for personal growth and ministry.

1. Our hearts are always being ruled by someone or something.

2. The most important question to ask when examining the heart is, “What is functionally ruling this person’s heart in this situation?”

3. Whatever controls my heart will control my responses to people and situations.

4. God changes us not just by teaching us to do different things, but by recapturing our hearts to serve him alone.

5. The deepest issues of the human struggle are not issues of pain and suffering, but the issue of worship, because what rules our hearts will control the way we respond to both suffering and blessing.

It’s a Matter of Treasure

Christ also talked about what rules the heart using the metaphor of treasure, as we see in Matthew 6:19–24:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Three principles in this passage speak to what we have been considering.

1. Everyone seeks some kind of treasure. (This is Christ’s operating assumption.)

2. Your treasure will control your heart. (“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”)

3. What controls your heart will control your behavior. (“No one can serve two masters.”)

There are only two kinds of treasures, earthly and heavenly, and whatever treasures we choose will become our rulers. They exercise control over us, for if something is your treasure, you will live to gain, maintain, and enjoy it. Sadly, we often fail to see this in ourselves, though we can see it in others. One of the most tragic things that could happen to a human being is to invest his life in pursuit of the wrong treasure.

Luella has always been the fire marshal in our family. Whenever we moved into a new house, she explored all the possible exit routes and came up with exit plans in case of fire in various parts of the house. She would then gather the family, explain the plans, and quiz us until she was sure we all knew what to do in an emergency.

This usually worked well, except for the time when I had recently acquired the guitar of my dreams. I had been in a music store buying new strings when I saw a handmade nine-string guitar. Its sound was more beautiful than any guitar I had ever heard. When I told my mother about it on the phone, in a miracle moment she said that she and my dad would buy it for me. This was more than I had ever hoped for, but in a week, I was the owner of my beloved instrument. Every evening after supper, I would retire to the living room and play, scarcely believing that this guitar belonged to me.

Shortly thereafter, Luella held her fire safety talk around the dinner table. She turned to me and asked, “Paul, if a major fire broke out on the main floor of our house, what would you do?” Without a moment’s thought, I responded, “I would run into the living room, grab my guitar, and get it out of the house!” I will never forget the look on the faces of my family, or the silence that seemed to last about a year. Finally, one of my children asked, “What about us, Dad?” My embarrassment and shame were deepened by the look on Luella’s face that asked the same question.

The guitar in the music store had become a dream, the dream had become a purchase, and the purchase had become a major treasure capable of rearranging my priorities in a fundamental way. So it often is. We rarely say, “I am going to set my heart on this thing and let it completely control my life,” but that is exactly what happens.

The person you met and mildly enjoyed becomes the person whose approval you cannot live without. The work you undertook to support your family becomes the source of identity and achievement you can’t give up. The house you built for the shelter and comfort of your family becomes a temple for the worship of possessions. A rightful attention to your own needs morphs into a self-absorbed existence. Ministry has become more of an opportunity to seek power and approval than a life in the service of God. The things we set our hearts on never remain under our control. Instead, they capture, control, and enslave us. This is the danger of earth-bound treasure.

Every human being is a worshiper, in active pursuit of the thing that rules his heart. This worship shapes everything we do and say, who we are, and how we live. This is why the heart is always our target in personal ministry.

Understanding Your

Heart Struggle

They were at it again, the twenty-seventh verbal gunfight of the year. It started over nothing and would accomplish little except to make them ready for the next skirmish. I waited and listened, increasingly angry that I would have to play referee for the thousandth time. One underhanded comment followed another. They fought with commitment and skill, using words to inflict pain. Finally I had enough. I threw down my book and stomped upstairs. I told them what I thought of their petty little self-centered wars. They said I didn’t understand. I told them I had forgotten more than they would ever understand. They started blaming each other and even blaming me for not doing something sooner! Suddenly I began to hear what I was saying. I was not the peacemaker I had intended to be. I had become another gunslinger. The conflict did not cease with my presence—it widened. I asked them to be silent for a moment, asked for their forgiveness, and then said I was going to pray. Afterwards, we sat down and talked about living in a house full of gunslingers.

Do you have any conflict in your life? Do you experience moments of extreme irritation toward someone you otherwise love? Are there people who simply push your buttons more than others? Do certain things drive you crazy on a daily basis? Did you have a lot of conflict last year? How about last month? Last week? So far today? If you could watch the video of a typical week in your life, you would recognize an astonishing amount of conflict going on around you. Conflict is one of the principal effects of the Fall, and it doesn’t take much to incite it.

It could be the bathroom in the morning. You are rushing to get ready for work. You walk down the hallway and the bathroom door is closed. You have probably never once thought, “How nice that someone in the family is going to be ready on time!” No, you bellow at the door, “Who’s in the bathroom?” What happens next is interesting. No one ever gives a name! They simply say, “Someone’s in here.” You respond, “Well, if you know who it is, please tell him I need to get in there right away!”

Perhaps the conflict is more serious. Maybe your marriage has deteriorated into a cycle of irritations followed by unkind comments that escalate into mini-wars. You are living a “don’t trouble trouble ‘til trouble troubles you” life with the one who was once your best friend. Or maybe there is severe brokenness in your extended family. There are blood relatives you have no desire to see or talk to again. When you think of them, your heart floods with anger and bitterness.

Maybe it’s the guy in your department at work. He critiques every suggestion you make and obstructs everything you try to do. You walk long distances to avoid his desk. You dread the team meetings you used to enjoy. You are convinced he is out to get you, and you are determined not to let him do it.

Conflict is all around us, from petty quarrels to all-out war. None of us is immune, and conflict is actually a very illuminating window into our hearts. James 4:1–10 uses conflict to give us significant insight into the heart’s daily struggle.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud,

but gives grace to the humble.”

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Looking for Conflict in All the Wrong Places

James gets our attention, not only because he addresses an issue in all of our lives but because he explains why it is there. Wouldn’t you like to understand why some people irritate you more than others? Why relationships turn sour, and your own anger can flare so quickly? Why it’s hard not to replay those hurtful words over and over in your head? Shouldn’t we consider why we, as sinners, are better at making war than making peace?

James answers his first question with a series of questions that challenge us to something radically different from our usual reactions to conflict. When angry, most people explain their anger by blaming something or someone outside themselves. (“She makes me so angry!” “This traffic drives me crazy!” “He has an uncanny ability to push my buttons!” “The noise in our house would drive anyone insane!”) James says we will never understand our anger that way. Instead, he counsels us to do the exact opposite—to look within. This is a fundamental biblical principle. The only way to understand your anger is to examine your own heart. According to Christ, angry words and actions are the heart overflowing (see Luke 6:45). Our feelings of anger and the words and actions that follow reveal very important things about our hearts.

If you really pay attention, you will realize that people and situations do not force us to be angry. For one thing, the same relationships and situations do not make every person angry. Recently I was sitting in traffic, stewing over the important things I was about to miss, when I glanced out the window toward the car next to me. The driver was a woman who seemed quite relaxed, even relieved, to be stuck. She was using the unexpected free time to put on her makeup! People don’t affect us all the same way either. The talkative person who drives you crazy may be quite interesting to the person next to you. Though there are situations and relationships that we all dread, there is enough variety in the how, when, and where of our anger to suggest that something else is going on. That something is the heart. We do not respond to people and situations in the same way because we do not bring the same heart to them. This is why any attempt to examine the causes of conflict must begin with the heart.

Notice, further, that James’s focus is not just on the heart, but on the desires of the heart. James makes a strong connection between our desires and our conflict, between what we want and what makes us angry. Understanding this connection can pave the way to lasting change in your life. The desire-conflict connection is the foundation on which James builds all the practical insights of this passage. What does James’s second question reveal about our desires?

An Army of Desires in a World at War

You and I are always desiring. Desires precede, determine, and characterize everything you do. Desires get you up in the morning and put you to bed at night. Desire makes you work with discipline to get one thing done, and run as hard as you can to avoid another. Desires sculpt every relationship in your life. They are the lenses through which you examine every situation. At the foundation of all worship, whether true or false, is a heart full of desire.

James encourages us to examine our desires because it is the only way to understand our anger. Desire lies at the base of every angry feeling, word, and action. But we need to add some qualifications in order to properly understand James’s counsel. First, he does not say it is wrong to desire. God is a God of purpose and desire, and desire is one way our design mirrors God. Here we are much closer to him than we are to the rest of creation, which either functions by instinct or by biochemical processes. To stop desiring is impossible, because when you quit desiring, you are dead!

Notice also that James does not place the word “evil” before the word “desire.” Although evil desires for wrong things can be a source of conflict, James is addressing something more fundamental. He says, “Don’t your conflicts come from your desires that battle within you?” Beneath the wars between people is another, more fundamental war that rages every day but never makes a headline. It is a “within you” war, a direct attack on God’s “within you” kingdom.

We don’t typically think about our desires waging war. We think of surprising, powerful, or wrong desires. But we must understand the war metaphor James is using. If a war is being fought between nations, it is fought for geographical and political control. Control is the purpose of war. So it is with our desires, which fight for control of our hearts. What controls our hearts will exercise inescapable influence over our lives and behavior.

In that little phrase, “desires that battle within you,” James gives us a window into how the heart operates. The heart of every person is a fount of competing desires. We rarely do anything with one simple motive. Most of the time there is a battle within. For example, let’s say that you are driving home after a long day at work. You can’t wait to see your family, but you would also like to relax. You want to be a good parent, but you would also love to take a run, or study for that Sunday school class. The desire that wins will shape your behavior when you get home that night.

Yet there is a deeper battle beneath that one: the battle between our desire for anything in the creation and our desire for God. Every day creation battles with the Creator for the control of our hearts. The stakes are high, because whatever rules our hearts will control our behavior. James is saying that our horizontal desires (for people, possessions, recognition, control, acceptance, attention, vengeance, etc.) compete with the Lord for the rule of our hearts.

Our desire to set up our own kingdom is in direct conflict with the King who has come to rule in our hearts. This is the war beneath all others. Who will rule that tense situation at work—your desire for a raise, or God’s glory? Will God rule that conversation with your child, or your desire for peace and quiet? Will God rule your relationship with your father, or your desire for vengeance for years of mistreatment? These skirmishes within your heart are battles in the most important war.

Dueling Kingdoms and Relational Chaos

What does all of this have to do with conflict? It points us to the cause. James connects our horizontal conflicts to the internal war between the kingdom of creation and the kingdom of God. Think about it this way. If my heart is ruled by a certain desire, there are only two ways I can respond to you. If you are helping me get what I want, I will be happy with you. But if you stand in my way, I will be angry, frustrated, and discouraged when I am with you. There will be times when I will wish you weren’t in my life.

My problem is not you or the situation we are in together. My problem is that a legitimate desire has taken over my heart and is now in control. This desire has so much power that it is no longer legitimate. It has become an inordinate, sinful desire, because it has grown to a position of authority over my heart. This authority belongs to God alone, who sent his Son to set up his kingdom there. The focus of James’s discussion is not evil desires (desires for the wrong thing), but inordinate desires (desires that may be right in and of themselves, but must never rule my heart). It is not wrong to desire relaxation at the end of a long day. It is wrong to be ruled by relaxation in such a way that I am irritated with anyone who gets in the way. It is not wrong to desire the tender attention of your husband. It is wrong to be so ruled by it that your days are filled with bitterness because of its absence and your nights are filled with manipulative attempts to get it.

A humbling example from my own life took place on a Wednesday night. I was driving home particularly exhausted. I love to cook and find it relaxing, so I stopped and bought the ingredients for a traditional Cuban meal. I could hear the meat searing in the pan, and I could smell that wonderful combination of tomato, garlic, cumin, and lemon. I left the grocery store tired but happy, thinking about how much my wife would appreciate the meal, since she was born and raised in Cuba. I was thinking about how our children love black beans and rice, and how they would appreciate me as well (“We are so blessed! We have a dad who cooks!”). The vision of a happy family and a relaxed dad made me smile as I drove into the garage.

But I was not even out of the car when my daughter greeted me and said she needed a ride downtown (nearly an hour round trip) right away. I couldn’t believe it! I could already feel my emotional temperature rising. I was not yelling, but I drove her downtown in silent irritation. On the way back I gave myself the “this always happens to me” speech. A few blocks from home, Luella called on my cell phone to tell me that she had to see someone on her way home from work. She suggested that I not wait for her for supper. She also asked me to run to the store because Darnay, our high school son, didn’t have a thing for his lunch the next day. With my wonderful Cuban meal decaying in the trunk, I drove past our house to another grocery store. This time I was not a happy man! I flung the lunch items in the basket and when I got to the checkout line, I was quite irritated at the elderly lady in front of me who couldn’t find a pen to write her check.

I finally arrived home an hour and a half later to find Darnay standing in the door with a paper in his hands. On the paper were the exact specifications for a scientific calculator he needed for math the next day. Before he could get another word out of his mouth, I exploded. “What am I, the delivery boy for the world? Do you have a clue what my day has been like? Whatever happened to really learning math, instead of learning how to use a calculator that does it for you? Is this what I am paying for at that school of yours?” I walked to the car, and he followed—at a great distance behind me.

Waiting outside the store, I examined my shattered hopes, wishing someone would pay a little attention to me, and angry with the people who had gotten in my way. I suggested we pick up a couple pizzas for supper, drove home in silence, stored the ingredients for my Cuban meal, and went into the living room to sulk.

Don’t miss the point of this story. My anger was not caused by the people and situations I encountered. My anger was caused by completely legitimate desires that came, wrongly, to rule me. By the time I finished shopping for the Cuban meal, I was holding the desire for a relaxing evening with a closed fist. But God had another plan. He had arranged to give me an evening where I could serve him by serving my family. He gave me the blessing of giving, the joy of laying down my life for others. Yet I did not see it because I was ruled by my own desires. Beneath my war with people, the war for my heart was raging.

Spiritual Adultery and Anger with People

James calls the people he is addressing “adulterous” (James 4:4). Is he changing the subject? No, what he is talking about is spiritual adultery. If adultery is the sin of giving someone the love I have promised another, then I am a spiritual adulterer whenever I give the rule of my heart to someone or something other than God. Verse 4 gives us the core principle of this passage: Human conflict is rooted in spiritual adultery. My problem is not sinful people and difficult situations. My problem is that I give the love that belongs to God to someone or something else.

It is my own spiritual adultery that causes me to be angry with you. You stand in the way of what I crave, so I lash out against you. This battle goes on in us all the time. We all tend to worship and serve created things rather than the Creator (see Rom. 1:25). If you want to understand what causes you to be angry, you must look at your own heart.

James points out that what is true of our horizontal relationships is also true of our relationship with God. If my heart is ruled by the desire for a certain thing, it will affect my relationship with God in two principal ways. First, it will shape my attitude when I pray. Rather than prayer being a worshipful act of submission to God, I will pray self-centered and demanding prayers—if I pray at all. I may be so intent on getting what I want that I forget God. Not only will my attitude in prayer be affected, but the kind of god I want will change as well. Let me explain.

If a certain set of desires rules my heart, I will not want God to be a wise, loving, sovereign Father who gives me what he knows is best. Instead, I will want a divine waiter who delivers what I have set my heart on. Imagine going to a restaurant and ordering a sixteen-ounce, medium-rare prime rib with a huge baked potato slathered in butter and sour cream. The waiter takes down your order and disappears into the kitchen, only to emerge twenty minutes later with a dry salad. You say to the waiter, “This is not what I ordered!” and he responds, “Well, I took down your order, but I began thinking about your age and your health, and I decided that what you ordered was the worst thing you could possibly have. So I had the chef prepare this salad.” Would you thank the waiter and dive into your lettuce? Of course not, because the desire for steak is ruling your heart.

When a certain set of desires rules our hearts, we reduce prayer to the menu of human desire. Worse, we shrink God from his position of all-wise, all-loving, all-powerful Father to a divine waiter we expect to deliver everything we ask. But God will not shrink to this size. He will only be our Father and King, who “satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Ps. 103:5). He knows what is best, and he will not let there be peace until he alone controls our hearts. He is a Warrior King, who will not rest when we are captive to other kings. He fights for us, for the thoughts and desires of our hearts.

A Jealous Grace

Does the thought of this constant inner war discourage you? Then you need to hear the encouragement James includes in this passage. We are not battling by ourselves—God battles for us! James is saying, “Don’t you know that the Spirit who lives inside you envies intensely? In the middle of the battle you can’t forget that God is a jealous God. He loves you too much to make room for other lovers. He will oppose your proud and self-absorbed living, not because he is against you, but because he loves you.” Praise God that he will settle for nothing short of the final victory in our hearts. Our hope to be who we were meant to be is directly tied to his jealous desire for our hearts.

We should be encouraged by God’s jealousy. Wives, how would you react if your husband plopped down on the couch, pulled you close and said, “Dear, of all the women I love, tonight I think I love you the most”? You would not be encouraged. You would be outraged! True love is always jealous.

James says more. This jealous God is a giver of grace, the most powerful weapon in the war for the heart. God’s grace gives us power to say no to powerful desires. It enables us to turn from the creation toward the Creator. It makes us willing to forsake our kingdoms for his. God’s grace forgives, but it also constrains and draws and wins. It is jealous, God-focused grace, fitted for the moments we are tempted to follow our desires. This is the grace Paul talked about when he wrote to Titus:

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

These, then, are the things you should teach.

(Titus 2:11–15)

Paul is saying, “Titus, keep reminding people what the great story of redemption is all about. It is not simply about God helping flawed people to be a little better. It is not simply about his willingness, through the sacrifice of Christ, to forgive sinful people. The goal of God’s grace is his own glory, as he calls out and purifies a people that belong to him alone. When he owns their hearts unchallenged, these people will be eager to do what is good in his eyes.” Paul wants Titus to teach the theology of jealous grace, so that people place their personal stories in the larger story of God’s kingdom, for his glory.

Jealous grace doesn’t simply focus on the forgiveness of the past and the hope of eternity. It gives us immediate hope for the struggles at the end of the day, after years of marriage, in the life of a church, or in the journey of a family. It reminds us that we can win the one war that must be won, the war for the heart. His jealousy for our hearts is not a threat, but our one true hope. Our God is eternally unwilling to share our hearts. Thank him for that!

The Capture of the Heart

If you have understood everything up to this point, perhaps you wonder how our hearts get captured by our desires. How do we wander away from serving the Lord to serving other things? How do desires that were okay in themselves become our functional masters? These questions lead us to examine the stages of the war for the heart.

The objects of most of our desires are not evil. The problem is the way they tend to grow, and the control they come to exercise over our hearts. Desires are a part of human existence, but they must be held with an open hand. All human desire must be held in submission to a greater purpose, the desires of God for his kingdom. This is what Christ expressed in the Garden of Gethsemane when he cried, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

When I was engaged to Luella, I prayed every morning with my hands open and outstretched before the Lord. My posture was a metaphor. I was holding Luella with open hands. I was not ashamed that I wanted her as my wife, but I was concerned that my desire for her would overwhelm my desire for the Lord and his will. So each morning, with open hands, I would say, “Lord, I love Luella. I think you have brought her into my life. My prayer is that you would give us a life together, but today I say again, ‘Not my will but yours.’ ”

The problem with desire is that in sinners it very quickly morphs into demand (“I must”). Demand is the closing of my fists over a desire. Even though I may be unaware that I have done it, I have left my proper position of submission to God. I have decided that I must have what I have set my heart on and nothing can stand in the way. I am no longer comforted by God’s desire for me; I am threatened by it, because God’s will potentially stands in the way of my demand. I can no longer conceive of a good life (moment, day, week, situation, location, relationship) without this thing. The morphing of my desire changes my relationship to others. Now I enter the room loaded with a silent demand: You must help me get what I want. If you are an obstacle, I will immediately be angry and impatient with you. But you don’t know the rules of the game. I haven’t announced my demand to you because I am unaware that my heart is increasingly controlled by it.

The expansion of desire doesn’t end there. Demand quickly morphs into need (“I will”). I now view the thing I want as essential to life. This is a devastating step in the eventual slavery of desire. To give a rather silly example, cake is nice after a meal, but it is not essential. Respiration, on the other hand, is a basic human need. Without oxygenated blood, I will die. To “christen” desire as need is equivalent to viewing cake as I do respiration. Cake no longer has a simple “nice if you can get it” quality. Now I must have it at the end of every meal. If I do not get it, I will be angry.

If you are a parent, you know how quickly and frequently desire morphs into need. I have never had a child come to me and say, “Dad, I sort of desire a new pair of shoes, but I am holding this desire with an open hand. You know what is best for me and what you can afford.” No, my children come to me and say, “Dad, I neeeeeeeeeed a pair of shoes, really bad!” I look down at the ends of their legs and see leather-encased feet. Their shoes aren’t lost or falling apart. The sight of a cool pair of shoes had simply sparked desire, and in an instant the shoes were viewed as something they could not live without.

How often do we live with a sense of need for things we do not need at all? How does this change the way we view ourselves, our lives, others, and God? How much envy, discouragement, bitterness, and doubt of God comes from being convinced that we are being denied the things we need to live life as it was meant to be lived? This silent (and often unseen) war for the heart is taking place all the time.

Perhaps no word is used more poorly and improperly than the word need. As James reminds us, it quickly surfaces in our relationships. When my heart is ruled by the desire for a certain thing, it cannot help but affect my relationship to you. Need inevitably produces expectation (“You should”). If I am convinced I need something and you have said that you love me, it seems right to expect that you will help me get it. The dynamic of (improper) need-driven expectation is the source of untold conflict in relationships.

Eventually I will come to accept the logic of my neediness. I will find it painful to live without the thing I desire. I will think it is appropriate to do everything in my power to get it. It becomes my right. This powerful expectation will not only shape my relationships with people, but with God as well. This is an “I love you and I have a wonderful plan for your life” view of relationships. My plan for our relationship is that it would meet my needs.

But it doesn’t stop there. You do not know that I have christened these desires as needs, and you do not meet my expectations. Expectation very quickly leads to disappointment (“You didn’t!”). The direct relationship between expectation and disappointment is clear to anyone who has looked at resort brochures before a family vacation. When our children were young, we decided to go to Disney World. We sat with them and pored over the gloriously multi-colored brochures that only Disney can produce. We approached the park with thoughts of amusement park bliss. No one told us that we would actually experience a fifty-five-minute wait to get into rides that lasted thirty-three seconds, while we endured a temperature of ninety-seven degrees accompanied by 100 percent humidity! There is a direct relationship between expectation and disappointment, and much of our disappointment in relationships is not because people have actually wronged us, but because they have failed to meet our expectations.

Disappointment then leads to some form of punishment (“Because you didn’t, I will . . .”). We are hurt and angry because people who say they love us seem insensitive to our needs. So we strike back in a variety of ways to punish them for their wrongs against us. We include everything from the silent treatment (a form of bloodless murder where I don’t kill you but act as if you do not exist) to horrific acts of violence and abuse. I am angry because you have broken the laws of my kingdom. God’s kingdom has been supplanted. I am no longer motivated by a love for God and people so that I use the things in my life to express that love. Instead I love things, and use people—and even the Lord—to get them. My heart has been captured. I am in active service of the creation, and the result can only be chaos and conflict in my relationships.

The Humble Cleansing of the Heart

What is James’s solution? The turnaround in this passage is very interesting. You would think that his first counsel would be to go the people we have sinned against and confess it. But James’s turnaround is first vertical (with respect to God) and then horizontal (with respect to people). James’s first call is for us to “humble ourselves before God.” This is a direct plea to deal with the idolatry (spiritual adultery) of our hearts. If human conflict is rooted in spiritual adultery, change must begin by bowing before God in humble repentance for the idols that have replaced him in our hearts.

James also calls us to “cleanse our hearts” (4:8). Reconciliation and restoration in our relationships begin with the purification of the heart. The unrighteous anger we experienced and the conflict that took place are direct results of our heart idolatry. The biblical logic is clear. You can’t keep the second Great Commandment unless you are first keeping the first. Only in bowing before God and submitting to his desires can we really turn to one another in peace and love. Any agenda for change that forgets this vertical causality will prove temporary and cosmetic. But grace and blessing are promised to those who humble themselves before him. This is God’s way of change. All of our relationships have a worship base, driven by active worship and service of the Creator or the creation. Problems in relationships are rooted in problems of worship, so James’s advice is clear: “Start with God.”

James provides a helpful window into the struggles of the heart. Galatians 5:13–26 literally takes us onto the scene and shows us how the struggle takes place.

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Powerful Passions and Powerful Desires

This passage adds a dimension to our understanding of the struggles of the heart. Like James, Paul’s logic is simple. He reduces our living to two foundational lifestyles. Our lives are either shaped by indulging the sinful nature or by self-sacrificing love. Loving your neighbor as yourself summarizes God’s will for us. This is true because only those who love God first will love their neighbors as themselves. In verse 15 Paul follows his command with a stern warning that what we do and say does make a difference. Your words and actions can lead a person into temptation. You can crush a person’s hope. You can do and say things that weaken someone’s faith. If God intends us to be instruments of change, then we are people of influence, for good or for evil.

Take note especially of the phrase, “indulge the sinful nature [flesh]” (v. 16). This little phrase dynamically captures the war that rages within. The rest of the passage exposes its true nature (see vv. 16–18). Paul is addressing the same war that James does, the war between the flesh and the Spirit for control of the heart.

What does it mean to “gratify the desires of the sinful nature”? When you indulge something, you feed it. You go where it takes you. What does this look like in daily life? Verse 24 says, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.” The inclusion of the words “passions and desires” is very helpful. When you are in a situation with someone, you will be greeted with motivating emotions (passions) and desires. You and I experience the powerful draw of our emotions and desires every day.

Let me give you a common example of this phenomenon, since we spend most of our time in insignificant moments that teach us things about the more significant struggles of life.

I am not known to my family as a handyman. In fact, I have an extensively documented reputation as a home-repair incompetent! Early in my marriage our kitchen sink was clogged, so I removed that U-shaped pipe that is under every sink in the universe. As I did, I discovered it was full of water. As I lay under the sink, holding the pipe, I got a brilliant idea. I have a sink above me. I’ll reach up and pour it in there. So I reached up and dumped out the pipe, only to have the water come splashing down on my face, since the pipe meant to catch that water was in my hand! As I lay there with head drenched, I could hear my wife laughing hysterically.

With that level of ability, it should come as no surprise that I dread home repairs. But on one occasion, the closing mechanism on our front storm door was not operating properly. We were living in an old house where simple jobs often proved to be anything but. Still, the door could not be ignored and I promised Luella that I would fix it.

Early Saturday morning, with tools in hand and delusions of expertise, I approached that broken door. What should have taken me a few minutes occupied my entire day, but I did it. I completed the task and the door was operating perfectly! I walked through the rest of the day with a spirit of self-satisfied celebration. On Monday, Luella had forgotten that the door was fixed, and one of our children had propped the door open. When she saw the door hanging open, she yanked it shut as she had done every day for months. With one swift yank, she re-broke the thing I had spent all Saturday repairing.

As I drove home, I had been looking forward to saying to Luella, “Isn’t it nice not to come home to that door flapping in the wind?” But when I hopped on the porch, I saw the door, broken again, swinging back and forth as always. In an instant my self-satisfaction became intense anger. I could not believe it! After all my hard work! I wanted to find the perpetrator, stick my tools in his hands, and say, “I don’t care if it takes you a millennium. You will stay on this porch until this door is in perfect working order!”

Galatians 5 is about what we do next. In the face of powerful emotions and desires, what will we do? As sons and daughters of the King, will we live in self-imposed bondage to our emotions? Will we submit to the mastery of our sinful desires? Or will we grab hold of the promises of the gospel and turn in a completely different direction?

That Monday evening on the porch, a war was raging. Would my heart be ruled by the Lord and the servant love to which he has called me, or would it be ruled by the powerfully motivating passions and desires of my flesh? By God’s grace, I had just come from teaching this material. I was acutely aware of the temptation to storm into the house with guns blazing. I am so thankful for the privilege of working with this material day in and day out! I stood on that porch, looked at that door, and prayed that, as I entered the house, I would not forget who I am in Christ.

Not only does this passage capture the nature of the struggle for the heart, it takes the gospel out of the realm of abstract theology to where we live every day. The fact is that although I experience powerful emotions and desires, I can say “no” and go in another direction because of the resources that are mine in Christ. I am indwelt by the Warrior Spirit (vv. 16–18) who battles with my flesh. He lives with power and glory in my heart. I can choose to go where he leads rather than where the passions and desires of the flesh would lead me. I have also been crucified with Christ (v. 24). When Christ died, I died. When Christ rose, I rose to a new life. Because I am united with Christ in his death and resurrection, the mastery of sin over me has been broken. I no longer have to submit the members of my body to its rule. In the face of difficulty, I can do and say what is right.

Two Realities

Galatians 5 calls us to hold onto two realities. The first is the everyday reality of the war for the heart, the war between God’s “within you” kingdom and the kingdom of creation. I must face the reality of indwelling sin and my propensity to run after god-replacements. I am called to face my duplicity and my idolatry, and the fact that this war is the most significant inner dynamic of human experience. It rages in every moment of suffering and blessing. What rules my heart will shape the way I deal with life’s saddest and sweetest moments. Though I am powerfully influenced by my experiences and my biology, what rules my heart will determine how I respond to life.

The second reality must be held tightly at the same time. It is the reality of my identity as a child of God and the resources that are therefore mine in Christ. The apostle Paul tends to reduce these resources to two foundational themes. The first is the reality of the person and work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Our condition is so desperate it was not enough for God to forgive us. He had to unzip us and get inside us, or we would not be able to do what he has called us to do. We no longer live under the control of the flesh, but by the power of the Spirit, who daily battles the flesh on our behalf.

The second theme is the reality of our union with Christ. On the cross, Christ did not purchase potential save-ability. No, he took our names to the cross! His death and resurrection is efficacious; that is, it will accomplish his purposes in the lives of each of his children. Our union with him in his death and resurrection means that we do not have to obey sinful desires any longer. We can say no and go in another direction.

There is a war going on beneath the human skirmishes of everyday life. On one side is a jealous God, the giver of a jealous grace. He will not rest until our hearts are completely his. He will not deny the covenant he has made. On the other side is a devious enemy, who allures us with the attractions of the creation. He knows our weaknesses all too well. He knows that we are prone to wander, prone to replace God. He whispers in our ears the lie of lies, that life can be found apart from God. When we begin to believe that created things give life, he’s got us. We will seek and serve the creation, often unaware of our idolatry. We will blame people and situations for the resulting chaos and conflict, when they are really the fruit of our idolatry.

We must humbly admit we are sinners while we lay hold of the hope of our union with Christ. We don’t simply suffer; we suffer as sinners with a deep propensity to run after god-replacements. And, as believers, we don’t just suffer as sinners, but as those who have been united with Christ and therefore no longer live under the mastery of sin. We bring these two realities to times of blessing as well. Holding onto both truths is the only way to do battle with our own hearts, and the only way to be part of what God is doing in our lives and others’.

This is a perspective on life that only those who believe God’s Word will ever embrace. It is the heart of biblical personal ministry. It is more than a topical list of problem-solving principles, more than a collection of morals on how to live life, more than an empathetic relationship or a dynamic therapeutic encounter. Biblical personal ministry is rooted in the story of a war and a Savior King. As we place our stories within this great story of the compassion and love of Christ, we will understand who we are and live as we were meant to live.

Following the Wonderful Counselor

I was a young pastor and I loved to preach. I worked hard on my sermons and planned my preaching series a year at a time. I prepared weeks in advance for every message and developed creative outlines to support my key points. I carried my sermon files around with me so that I could add or delete illustrations when inspiration struck. I would preach each sermon to myself until it was almost completely memorized so that I would only need a brief outline in the pulpit. I tried to preach with a passion that matched the content of my message. I was sure that our congregation was being well fed on the spiritual food I was serving them each week.

One day a member of the congregation asked to meet with me privately. I was so excited! I was convinced that my preaching had convicted “Pete” to talk about things God had exposed in his heart. But when we sat down, Pete said, “I know you probably think I am here to talk about me, but I’m here to talk about your preaching. You’re killing us. At first I thought it was just me, but I know that many others feel the same way. You’re driving us crazy, so I am here to give it to you straight.” I asked, “Is it the content or the delivery that upsets you?” He said, “It’s the whole package, but I have a solution.” He handed me a set of tapes by a well-known preacher. “Just listen to these and do what he does until you understand how to preach a decent sermon.” I went home devastated.

I knew that the conversation had affected me, but I didn’t realize how much until I got up to preach the next Sunday. Everyone looked normal to me except Pete. His head seemed like the size of a blimp! Everywhere I looked, I seemed to see his disapproving face. I stumbled and stammered my way through the sermon, relieved when it was finally over.

The next Sunday was the same. I felt as if only Pete and I were in the room. By the third week, I was determined to get Pete to approve of my preaching. Although I didn’t fully realize it, I tried to craft sermons to his liking. But they were not me and they did not fly.

This went on for about two months until, finally, the oldest lady in our congregation approached me after the service. She said she wanted to talk to me about my preaching. Oh no, not you too! I thought. She pointed her finger at me and said, “Paul, I don’t know what has happened to you or who has gotten to you, but you have lost your freedom in preaching. You may be preaching out of fear or the need to please, but something is wrong. You need to get up tomorrow and prepare what God has given you to preach. Then preach it with courage or we’re all in trouble!” With that, she walked out.

I stood there, knowing that she was exactly right. I had quit serving God and had begun preaching to please Pete. I had been evaluating the success of each effort by the reaction of one man and I was becoming enslaved and embittered.

So You Want to Be an Instrument of Change?

We all have Petes in our lives, people who attack the borders of our comfortable lives. We have all had attempts at ministry blow up in our faces. We have all been torn between God’s calling and the fear of man, between compassion and anger, between love and bitterness. Given the messiness of sinners helping sinners, we need a model. And as God’s people, we do not have to stumble around. We have the example of the Wonderful Counselor. This chapter will consider his example and its implications for us as we seek to be part of his work.

Being an instrument of heart change means following Christ’s example and focusing on the heart—starting with your own. Pete’s attacks and criticisms had filled me with the fear of man and caused me to forget my primary allegiance to God. These heart issues subverted my knowledge and skill, rendering them ineffective. This was a vivid demonstration of the way my heart shapes my response to the ministry opportunities God sends me. Paul said it to Timothy this way: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1Tim. 4:16).

Starting with your heart means understanding and submitting to God’s calling, which will shape your life and relationships. God has called us to nothing less than incarnating Christ to others. I am to be rooted in the Word, and zealous to bring the living Word—Christ—to lost, blind, and struggling people. You and I are called to put flesh and blood on who Christ is and what he came to do.

To Understand Your Calling, You Need

to Understand the Incarnation

Most of us think of the incarnation as an event—that moment when Christ came to earth, took on human flesh, and lived as a man. Yet, as central as the incarnation is to everything we believe, I don’t think we fully understand it. We do not grasp that the event of the incarnation is also an agenda and a calling. Understanding the elements of agenda and calling will help us understand the nature of personal ministry and the importance of starting with our own hearts.

No one captures better than John the amazing historical moment when Christ came as a baby to this fallen world. Two of John’s summary statements are very helpful. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:14, 18).

John’s summary includes an observation with powerful implications. The power of the incarnation is that it makes the presence and glory of God visible. By taking on flesh and blood, Christ made known the unseen God. Why does the Light need to shine on earth? Because people are groping around in darkness. Why does God need to be revealed? Because people do not see him. In coming to earth, Christ died for his own, but he also gave sight to eyes that had been blind for far too long.

The incarnation addresses a problem that is so comprehensive, so deep, so essentially human that it is almost impossible for us to recognize. The problem is that we can’t see God. Part of the problem is that God is a Spirit, so we can’t physically see him. Another part of the problem is that our sin makes us morally unfit to look on God. But in our spiritual blindness as sinners, we also do not see God in the sense that we do not recognize the glory of his grace and power operating in, around, and through us all the time.

Yet the Light bursts into our darkness. God addresses our blindness by sending his one and only Son to earth. In seeing him, you see the Father. If you know him, you know the Father. The Old Testament records times when God made himself visible to human eyes, but Christ’s appearance is the culminating event.

The bottom line is this: The problem is not that God is not here or that he is inactive; the problem is that we don’t see him. Our perspective on life is often tragically godless. We miss the one thing worth seeing, the glory of the ever-present God. When this happens, our lives are not built on the foundation of God’s glory, which was intended to give our lives a starting point and a destination, a reason to get up and the strength to go on. Every aspect of my existence was meant to be filled with the glory of God. Everything I think, every decision I make, every word I speak was meant to be shaped by a humble acknowledgement of his claim on my life. I was created to live for his glory.

As we’ve seen, every human life pursues some kind of glory. If it is not the glory of God, it will be some kind of earthbound pseudo-glory. It may be money and possessions or acceptance and respect. It could be achievement and success or intellectual prowess and philosophical acumen. Perhaps it is the power to control people, the affection of a certain person, or a certain standard of living. At the root of many difficulties and disasters is the pursuit of the wrong glory.

The incarnation gets right to the heart of this struggle because it confronts people with the one thing that can make a lasting difference, the glory of God. The revelation of God in his awesome glory is the only thing that exposes the utter emptiness of all the other glories we crave. If you understand the incarnation this way, you have already learned much about your calling. Personal ministry is not just about confronting people with principles, theology, or solutions. It confronts people with the God who is active and glorious in his grace and truth, and who has a rightful claim to our lives. Only as our hearts are transformed by this glory will the principles of Scripture make any sense to us.

Grace and Truth

John doesn’t simply explain the goal of the incarnation, but its character as well. He says that the glory revealed on earth was full of “grace and truth.” Jesus incarnated the ultimate marriage of grace and truth. In his life, death, and resurrection, we come to understand the grace of God. God sends his own Son, as the second Adam, to face the full range of temptations in a fallen world. He does so to keep the Law on our behalf, thereby satisfying God’s requirement for life. He willingly offers up himself as the perfect sacrificial Lamb, so that the penalty of sin is fully paid. He rises from the tomb, purchasing new life for all who trust in him.

Since the central character of the great story of Scripture is Christ, a central theme of the story is grace. It must be a central theme of our personal ministry, biblical counseling, and discipleship as well. We point people to a God who not only sets the goal for their lives, but who enables them to do what they have never done before. His grace results in reconciliation, restoration, and peace. The impossibility of sinners becoming godly becomes possible through his grace.

By his grace parents can pursue rebellious teenagers with patient, persevering love. By his grace a wife can put away bitter memories and fully forgive her husband. By his grace people can exit the prisons of depression, anxiety, and compulsion to live in hope-filled freedom. By his grace those bound by lust, greed, fear, or vengeance can live in the purity and courage of faith.

Biblical personal ministry must not be reduced to a set of principles to live by. Its central focus is the Redeemer who rescues people from the power of sin and progressively eradicates its presence from their lives. We are simply agents of this grace. Our goal is to help people understand it and follow where it leads while they wait for their Redeemer’s return.

The glory revealed in Christ’s incarnation was full of truth as well. This is the second great theme of the story of Scripture. Sin not only makes us helpless rebels and idolaters, it also reduces us to fools. We tend to love lies, to be self-deluded, to be the strongest believers of our own empty arguments. We are susceptible to the Enemy’s tricks and temptations. We live for what is already in a state of decay and ignore what will remain forever. We tend to hide, ignore, or be blind to our own sin, while we are obsessively focused on the sins of others. To paraphrase Proverbs 14:12, the way that seems right to us is the way of death. If grace addresses the moral results of the Fall (our rebellion and inability) then truth addresses the noetic effects of the Fall, sin’s impact on how we think about life and interpret it.

In Christ, the truth of God takes on flesh. Jesus is the ultimate exposition of how God intends people to think and live. In his life and teaching, he confronts our foolishness with true wisdom. He calls us to a way of life that is the opposite of where our sinful instincts lead us. Who would naturally choose to live for what cannot be seen, to do good to someone who has mistreated you, or to believe that there is greater blessing in giving than receiving? The fact that these things seem radical and paradoxical demonstrates how far we have drifted from the truth. Personal ministry must offer people truth that destroys their old ways of thinking about themselves, relationships, circumstances, suffering, and God. The foolish things people do are rooted in a worldview riddled with foolishness. Our problem is not just wrong behavior and its results, but the thoughts that produced it.

We offer people a whole new way of making sense out of life—a worldview in which God is central, where unseen things are of the highest value, and where eternity is what makes sense of the present moment. In confronting people with truth, we confront them with Christ. This is quite radical, for it says that truth, in its most basic form, is not a system, a theology, or a philosophy. It is a person whose name is Jesus. Living a godly life means trusting him, following him, and living like him. Personal ministry weaves the threads of grace and truth through every part of a person’s life. In that it is truly incarnational, because grace and truth will always lead people to Christ.

A New Agenda

The incarnation is not just an event; it also establishes an agenda, a set of plans to accomplish a goal. God’s agenda is for the church to be an incarnational community on earth, so that our very presence would reveal his grace and truth-laden glory.

Just before his arrest, Christ prayed for his disciples and those who would believe as a result of their ministry (all of us). In the middle of the prayer, Jesus says,

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20–23)

This is a remarkable prayer for a unity comparable only to the Trinity. Jesus prays that his followers would be characterized by such deep love that the community of faith would be as unified as he is with the Father. His prayer also reveals the purpose of this unity. Relationships within the community of faith are meant to reveal the person and work of Christ to a watching world. This unity has a greater goal than enjoyable friendships. The goal is for the world to see and know Christ.

Christ sets the bar so high! We are called to achieve a quality of unity that can only be compared to his relationship with the Father. Before you get discouraged, think of Christ and his disciples. On one side of the room is Matthew, the tax collector, a Jew who collected Roman taxes from his own people. Tax collectors were despised as turncoats and Roman sympathizers.

Across the room sat Simon the Zealot. The Zealots were the conservative extremists of their day, much like the radical militia and terrorists of our world. The Zealots were convinced that the Roman government would only be overthrown by violence, and they were ready to provide it. There was no one a Zealot hated more than a tax collector.

Christ’s purpose for Matthew and Simon was that their relationship display such an amazing unity and love that the surrounding world would take notice—and in so doing, see Christ. Does this seem completely unrealistic? Isn’t it enough that Simon and Matthew sit in the same room without coming to blows? For Christ this is not enough. Christ’s prayer tells us that he has provided what is necessary for his people to be truly one. In his prayer he makes a statement of redemptive fact. He says, “Father, I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” (v. 22). Do you hear the echo of John 1 in these words? Jesus is saying, “Father, do you remember the glory I revealed on earth as I took on flesh and blood? I have placed that same glory on your children so that they can continue to reveal that glory on earth.”

God’s agenda is glory received and glory given so that glory would continue to be incarnated on earth. Maybe the best way to think of the incarnation is as an ongoing event: God made known, no longer in the physical presence of Christ, but in the glory of his work through his people as we live incarnationally.

Incarnation helps us understand the purpose and character of personal ministry. People are changed by seeing Christ in new ways, ways that reveal the bankruptcy of their own agendas and the emptiness of the glories they seek. Their most important encounter is not with the counselor, but with Christ. We are there to set up that encounter. As they see him and the emptiness of their own ways, they begin to hope that things can be different. God has placed his glory on us so that our lives and ministry would reveal him on earth. In this way, incarnation for us is a life agenda.

A Focused Calling

The incarnation is also a call. Paul defines this call for us in 2 Corinthians 5:14–6:2.

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. For he says,

“In the time of my favor I heard you,

and in the day of salvation I helped you.”

I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.

What should we do to be part of God’s work in the lives of others? Paul uses the word ambassadors to define what it means to live incarnationally.

The job of an ambassador is to represent someone or something. Everything he does and says must intentionally represent a leader who is not physically present. His calling is not limited to forty hours a week, to certain state events, or to times of international crisis. He is always the king’s representative. He stands in the place of the king (or the government of his country) wherever he is, whatever he is doing. His relationships are not primarily driven by his own happiness. He decides to go places and do things because they will help him to faithfully represent the king. Thus the work of an ambassador is incarnational. His actions, character, and words embody the king who is not present.

Paul says that God has called us all to function as his ambassadors. Our lives do not belong to us for our own fulfillment. The primary issue is, “How can I best represent the King in this place, with this particular person?” This is not a part-time calling; it is a lifestyle. When an ambassador assumes his responsibilities, his life ceases to be his own. Everything he says and does has import because of the king he represents. Anything less is an affront to the king and a denial of the ambassadorial calling.

What is God calling you to in your marriage? To be an ambassador. What is God calling you to as a parent? To be an ambassador. What is God calling you to regarding your friends and neighbors? To be an ambassador. What is God calling you to at work and in leisure? To be an ambassador. We represent God’s purposes to the people he places in our lives. This is much broader than a commitment to formal ministry occupying a portion of our schedule. It acknowledges that our lives belong to the King.

But this is where we get ourselves into trouble. We don’t really want to live as ambassadors. We would rather live as mini-kings. We know what we like and the people we want to be with. We know the kind of house we’d like to own and the car we want to drive. Without even recognizing it, we quickly fall into a “my desire, my will, and my way” lifestyle, where the things we say and do are driven by the cravings of our own hearts. If we were honest, we would have to confess that the central prayer of our hearts is “my kingdom come.”

Imagine what a marriage becomes when two mini-kings are required to share time and space. Underneath the vows, both persons are driven by their own cravings and expectations. What they really want is for the other to make them happy, and as long as he or she does so, they remain committed to the marriage. Now imagine how these mini-kings approach parenting. What they really long for is pre-sanctified, self-parenting children. They find the daily service and sacrifice of godly parenting to be a huge imposition. This is why Christ said that to be his disciples we must die to ourselves. No one can serve two masters. Ambassadors must die to their own kingship to properly represent the one true King.

It is so easy to slip back into the “my will be done” kingdom. I travel between forty and forty-five weekends a year. I usually fly out on Friday morning and return early Saturday evening. Because of this, I look forward to the weekends when I actually wake up in my own bed. During one of those rare weekends, no one was around on a Saturday afternoon. My mind went to something I am rarely able to do: watch college football. I poured myself a big, cold Diet Coke, collected my favorite munchies, and went downstairs to the family room. I found the remote control and was about to sit down when out of the bathroom came my then sixteen-year-old son—with bright green hair!

He had used a dye on his hair called “Manic Panic,” which made his hair look like shredded green plastic wrap. It had the look of one of those cheap, plastic, tabletop Christmas trees. He came out of the bathroom, saw me standing there and said, “Well, what do you think?” What do I think? What do I think!! What I thought was, Get the ornaments, Christmas tree boy! In a second, my emotional temperature changed. My mind was racing as he stood before me with his head cocked. “Well, don’t you have anything to say?” he asked. I simply could not stop looking at his hair, and the more I looked, the more personal it felt.

You see, I was home that weekend to speak in a local church. They were concluding a biblical study on the family and they had asked me to come and bring my whole family. I was imagining the scene. They would march us down to the first row—Luella, me, our three other children, and Christmas tree boy! Who’s going to listen to anything I say? I thought. I wanted to say to him, “Don’t you have a clue what I do? Do you have no idea whatsoever why I am here this weekend? Do you just sit around and think of ways to drive me crazy?” A huge war was going on in my heart. What I did and said next would be determined by which king I chose to follow.

As it turned out, what my son had done was not personal. He had not said to himself, Dad’s home this weekend. I know what I’ll do. I’ll dye my hair an outrageous green color, hide in the bathroom, and jump out just when he sits down to relax. It’ll be great! It only felt that way because his appearance disrupted my plan. But it was not an accident that we were both in the room. Our meeting had been planned by the King. He wanted me to represent him to my son that afternoon. With a struggle going on within me, I asked my son to sit down, and we talked. As I sought to understand the motivation behind the green head, I soon realized that it was not directed at me, nor was it an act of teenage rebellion. It was just the result of teenage brain cramp! It seemed like the cool thing to do at the time. In fact, he got up the next morning, looked in the mirror, and had an “Oh no, what have I done?” moment. He immediately shaved his head, only to discover that his scalp was green, too!

Why are we so good at turning moments of ministry into moments of anger? Why are we so adept at personalizing what is not personal? Why does it seem that people, things, and situations are in our way? Why do we seldom go through a day without some experience of conflict? The answer to all of these questions is that we think of our lives as our own, and we are more committed to the purposes of our own kingdom than we are to God’s. We need to recognize that the people in our way have been sent to us by a wise and sovereign King. He never gets a wrong address and always chooses just the right moment to expose our hearts and realign them to his.

The Work of an Ambassador

Living a representative lifestyle can be summarized by three points of focus. As an ambassador, I will represent:

1. The message of the King. An ambassador is always asking, “What does my Lord want to communicate to this person in this situation? What truths should shape my response? What goals should motivate me?”

2. The methods of the King. Here I will ask, “How does the Lord bring change in me and in others? How did he respond to people here on earth? What responses are consistent with the goals and resources of the gospel?”

3. The character of the King. Here I ask, “Why does the Lord do what he does? How can I faithfully represent the character that motivates his redemptive work? What motives in my own heart could hinder what the Lord wants to do in this situation?”

How could this tri-fold focus change the way you respond to your friends, your family, or your coworkers? We have been sent by the King. We must turn our backs on the claustrophobic confines of our own mini-kingdoms and open ourselves up to the grandeur of the Kingdom of God and the glory of representing him.

The message, methods, and character of the King permeate the pages of Scripture. As we read the Bible, we hear his message over and over again. (See Matt. 5–7 or Luke 15–18.) We are repeatedly confronted with his methods. (See John 3:1–21; 4:1–26; Luke 9:18–27; 10:25–37.) And Scripture is filled with the beauty of his character. (See Phil. 2:1–12; Eph. 4:29–5:2; 1 Peter 2:23.) Being an ambassador means following the example of the Wonderful Counselor in our words and responses, wherever and with whomever we are.

An Appeal for the Heart

Second Corinthians 5 brings our ambassadorial calling into sharper focus. In verse 20 Paul says, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” An appeal is an argument or a plea. God is using you to appeal for something in the life of another. Certainly, this has an evangelistic application, yet Paul is writing to Christians and saying, “Be reconciled to God.” Something more than evangelism is also in view here.

Look back at verse 15: “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” What is the purpose of the cross? Paul would say that it is not just an eternity in heaven, but also the recapturing of people’s hearts to serve God alone. Our sin causes us to be incredibly self-absorbed, reducing us to idolatrous worshipers of self. Christ died to break the back of our self-absorbed idolatry.

The focus of Christ’s work is to deliver us from our bondage to ourselves! This is our most subtle, yet most foundational form of idolatry. And when Paul says, “Be reconciled to God,” he is echoing James’s call to “draw near to God.” Why do believers need to be reconciled to God? Because as long as sin indwells us, we will tend to wander away from the worship of the Lord to serve ourselves.

Here, once more, God is intent on owning our hearts unchallenged. He is not content with theological knowledge or participation in church programs. He will settle for nothing less than the core of your being, the real you. His goal is that our lives would be shaped by our worship of him and nothing else. He has sent us as his ambassadors to make his appeal for peoples’ hearts.

Love, Know, Speak, Do

How to live as an ambassador is the focus of the rest of this book. We will examine four ways to function as God’s instruments of change in another person’s life.

Suppose God opens your eyes to a harvest of bad fruit in a friend’s life. Perhaps it is a conflict in her marriage, a broken relationship, fears that are dominating her life, or a paralyzing discouragement. This struggling person reveals these things and asks for your help. Whatever the circumstances, your goal should be that God would use you to produce a harvest of good fruit in your friend, even though she may remain in the exact same situation with the exact same people.

However, one of the things you will quickly discover is that when most people seek change, they seldom have the heart in view. They want change in their circumstances, change in the other person, or change in their emotions. They think that if “things” would change, they would be better off. But when the focus is put only on the outward circumstances, the solutions are seldom more than temporary and superficial. Certainly, it is true that elements in a situation often need to change, but you cannot stop there. Your goal must be to lead your friend to a deeper, fuller view of change. Your goal is to help her to examine her heart and to see the importance of change at that level.

So, as you seek to help your friend, there are two things to hold onto. First, whatever you do must have the goal of heart change. Second, whatever you do must follow the example of the Wonderful Counselor. I want to introduce a model of personal ministry that takes both things seriously. It gets its shape from the way Christ brings about change in our lives, and it gets its direction from the biblical call to heart change. Four words represent four aspects of a personal ministry relationship, four ways to serve as an ambassador in someone’s life. The words are Love, Know, Speak and Do. (See Figure 6.1.)

These words do not represent a four-step process. They are not phases of a personal ministry relationship, as if you start at the first (Love) and push people through until the last (Do). They are simply four important elements of biblical ministry. Although there is some logic to the order, you will be doing all of these things simultaneously as you seek to be the Lord’s ambassador. Let’s look at each element separately.

Love

Love highlights the importance of relationships in the process of change. Theologians call this a covenantal model of change. God comes and makes a covenant with us. He commits himself to be our God and he takes us as his people. In the context of this relationship, he accomplishes his work of making us like him. As we understand the way God works in our own lives, we realize that relationship to him is not a luxury, but a necessity. It is the only context in which the lifelong process of change can take place. In the same way, we are called to build strong relationships with others. God’s purpose is that these relationships would be workrooms in which his work of change can thrive.

Know

Know has to do with really getting acquainted with the people God sends our way. When you assume that you know someone, you won’t ask the critical questions you need to ask to get below the surface. We tend to think we know people because we know facts about them (who their spouse is, where they work, some likes and dislikes, their children, etc.), but we really don’t know them.

Knowing a person means knowing the heart. When you say you are getting to know someone better, it’s not that you are gaining a more intimate understanding of her kneecap! You mean that you know more about her beliefs and goals, her hopes and dreams, her values and desires. If you know your friend, you will be able to predict what she will think and how she will feel in a given situation. Friendship is the connection of hearts.

Hebrews 4:14–16 teaches us that Christ entered our world and lived here for thirty-three years. He faced everything we face so that we could know that he understands our struggle. So the Know function is very important, whether it involves asking good questions within a friendship or gathering data in a more formal counseling setting. The goal is to get below the surface. As you do, you can help your friend know herself more accurately and desire the deeper heart change that is God’s goal.

Speak

Speak involves bringing God’s truth to bear on this person in this situation. To do this you need to ask, “What does God want this person to see that she doesn’t see? How can I help her see it?” The Gospels are full of brilliant examples of the way Christ helped people to see the truth. Through stories and questions, he broke through their spiritual blindness and helped them see who they were and the glory of what he could do for them.

Speaking the truth in love does not mean making grand pronouncements. It means helping your friend to see her life clearly. For lasting change to take place, your friend must see herself in the mirror of God’s Word. She also needs to see God and the resources for change that he has provided in Christ.

Finally, you must help your friend Do something with what she learns—to apply the insights God has given to her daily life and relationships. Insight alone is not change; it’s only the beginning. Insights about who we are, who God is, and what he has given us in Christ must be applied to the practical, specific realities of life. God calls your friend not just to be a hearer of his Word, but to be an active doer of it as well. As Christ’s ambassador, you are called to help your friend respond in personal ways to this call.

One more thing needs to be said about the Love-Know-Speak-Do model of personal ministry. This is not just an aspect of the formal ministry of the local church, but a lifestyle to which God has called each of us. This lifestyle will work in the formal counseling office as well as in informal conversations with a struggling Christian friend. This ministry model can be easily adapted to whatever opportunities God gives you to function as one of his ambassadors of change.

‣ Love

Know

Speak

Do

Building Relationships by Entering Their World

It was one of those moments that a teacher couldn’t buy for a million dollars. I was teaching a counseling course required of all third year seminary students in the pastoral track. The class tended to be populated by guys who thought that if they preached well-honed theological sermons, their congregations wouldn’t need any personal ministry. They saw my course as a pointless addition to an overcrowded schedule. This didn’t make for a lively learning environment.

The first year I taught the course, I jumped right into the material without trying to demonstrate its importance. It was a long, hard semester. The next year, I decided to begin each class with true pastoral horror stories until the class cried “uncle.” I told story after story of late night emergencies and relational catastrophes that were scattered throughout my ministry as pastor. I kept it up until it was clear that the students were convinced that they needed what I was about to teach.

In the middle of one of my graphic anecdotes, something happened that I will never forget. An exasperated future pastor threw up his hand and blurted out, “All right, we know we are going to have these projects in our churches. Just tell us what to do with them so we can get back to the work of the ministry!” A hush covered the room. In his frustration, this man had verbalized the attitude of many pastors toward the world of biblical counseling, discipleship, and personal ministry. I knew this was a golden teaching moment and I wanted to be a good steward. I asked him to repeat the word he had used for people in difficulty. In hesitating embarrassment, he mumbled, “Projects,” as the other seminarians snickered in their seats.

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