Chapter 1
Chapter 1 Temptation and Goodness by Jen Pollock Michel if e is sixteen and I am fifteen. We're in the bedroom of a stranger's apartment with the lights off. The couple we've come with has paired off in the other bedroom. At some point, my boyfriend reaches over me, fumbling to open the drawer of the nightstand beside us. He closes it, holds a small foil-wrapped package in the palm of his hand. There is a single suspended moment of indecision.
And then there 1s not.
I was raised in church, knelt beside my mother at the age of six to ask Jesus to live in my heart. There was little I didn't know about Jesus, at least as I thought then, and there was nothing I openly rejected. I'd believed in Jesus my whole life: believed that he was God in the flesh, believed that he died on the cross for my sins, believed that he was raised from the dead—lI even believed that he was coming again.
At fifteen, I didn't mind believing in Jesus, didn't even mind most of the Sunday mornings my parents drug me out of bed early for church. I just didn't want Jesus ruining my fun or restricting my freedoms. I was like the prodigal son in Luke
15—-simply looking for a good time. I planned, of course, to come "home" at some point. I knew I'd need to make sincere
Temptation and Goodness bs} apologies and promises to God when I did. But I was postponing that repentance for a later date: after thirty maybe, when life would find me behind the wheel of a minivan. Following Jesus was like paying the mortgage—and having a lawn to mow.
For a year, my boyfriend and I played married. Ironically, we also used to entertain long theological conversations about the state of our souls. He, too, had been raised in the church, and -neither of us had any hesitation about the sinfulness of our behavior. Still, we lingered over this question: Were we—or were we not—Christians? My favorite verse as a child was Ephesians 2:8:
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God." I counted on pardon and felt sure that however much I tested God's steadfast and abounding love, it would never break under me.
It might have continued on like that except that I discovered this to be true of God: he is a loving shepherd seeking the stray.
For one, I was surrounded by people who loved Jesus in very real ways. Their sincerity was a foil to my hypocrisy. Aside from my parents, there was my Sunday school teacher: a single woman whose lessons were her life. She radiated a joy deeper than anything I recognized from my Saturday nights. There was a friend from church, a girl one year older than me, who attended a different high school. She read her Bible during the week as if the words of God really mattered, and she pursued a holiness—an otherness—that I found myself admiring. These examples of faith stirred longing in me—for something more solid, more stable than the sand beneath my feet.
If you know the story of Saul on the road to Damascus in the book of Acts—this fire-breathing man with arrest warrants for Christians in his hand, this man who met the blazing spectacle of the risen Jesus one ordinary afternoon—then you might not be surprised when IJ tell you that I also met Jesus when I least expected to. I was sixteen when I heard his voice at summer camp, asking me three questions: What do you want? Where are you headed? Will you follow?
I don't remember indecision then, only the urgency of yes.
6 THEJESUS | WISHI KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL
THe Jesus | WisH | KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL This story of mine is now thirty years old, and there's a lot I've left out: the breakup, the rebuilding, how my new friendship with Jesus filled all the lonely places. In truth, it's not a story about sex as much as it is about surrender. It's a story about temptation, and it's a story about trust. It's.a story about coming home to a Father—and finding him good.
I think of one of the oldest stories in the Bible, found in Genesis. It's the story of our human parents, Adam and Eve, and recounts the day they mistrusted God. God had, of course, lavished all of his best gifts on these children of his, and there was nothing they lacked, even if there was one thing he had forbidden them. "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis
2:16-17). We can't be exactly sure why God would cordon off this one tree, but it does confront Adam and Eve with two very important questions, especially as the serpent cast suspicion on God's motives. Is God good? Can God be trusted?
In the midst of their temptation, they had to decide what they believed about God's nature and where they would find life's purpose.
At fifteen, I wish I'd had better answers to these questions.
At fifteen, I thought of God as stingy, as always standing in the way of a good time. I knew that he was God—and that being
God, he expected to be obeyed. But I thought surrendering myself to him meant signing up for a life I didn't really want, a life that would always look like the cheap knockoff version of the better life everyone else would be living. It's not hard to see why Adam and Eve—and every human since—has been grabbing for the things God forbids. We just aren't convinced that he's good. We think of his commands as prohibitions and punishments instead of invitations to /ife.
I had all the wrong ideas about following Christ at fifteen, but when I finally decided to follow him, I began believing in his goodness. I risked that I'd find my best life in him. Let me tell you, friends: it's the surest bet I've ever placed.
Temptation and Goodness
It seems crazy that we'd find it so hard to believe in God's goodness, given that the one Bible verse we are all supposed to have memorized—the one Bible verse most widely known—is a verse about God's generous giving. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son" (John 3:16a). I wish ''d grasped what this meant for the apostle Paul, who saw the cross of Christ as a display of God's goodness and generosity, his grace toward his
'people. "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"
(Romans 8:32). Paul wanted his readers to stare long and hard at the self-sacrifice of God. He wanted us to see the innocent GodMan, who allowed himself to be beaten, tortured, and executed for the sake of love. He wanted us to doubt our doubts about God and then ask, Does that look like stinginess to you?
If God is stingy, then life will always require the stealing that took place in the garden. If God is stingy, we can't count on him to give us what we need, to lead us into the good life.
We'll have to take it for ourselves. But if God is good, if God is generous, if God is so lavish in love that he'd suffer torture for our sakes, we can lean into trusting his direction for our lives, lean into knowing that every "no" has a purpose and leads us toward life in Christ.
In the words of a song I sang as a child, we can "trust and obey."!
THE Jesus | WANT You To KNow The word gospel means good news, and that's what I want to leave with you. You might think you Jose your life in order to follow Jesus, but let me assure you: in the end, you ultimately find it. At fifteen, I started to understand what Paul meant in Philippians 3, when he said that everything was loss compared to knowing Christ.
I wonder if you, if I, can't start trying to trust that God's Word is good, that God's plans are good, that God's providence
1. John H. Sammis and Daniel B. Towner, "Trust and Obey" (Public Domain, 1887), https://hymnary.org/text/when_we_walk_with_the_lord.
& THE JESUS! WISH | KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL
is good. In the words of the psalmist who speaks to God, "You are good and do good; teach me your statutes" (Psalm 119:68). I think faith—obedient faith—hangs on this promise, and that's what I want to see formed in you.
Can I give you just one (lifelong) assignment? It's extraordinarily easy and difficult at the very same time. It's simply this: to try learning the height, the depth, the width, and the length of God's love "that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God"
(Ephesians 3:19b). If he truly is perfectly, generously good, why would we not follow?
DEVOTIONAL QUESTIONS
Read Romans 8:31—32.
This passage contains three characteristics about God.
What are they?
The author of chapter 1 describes how she came to understand God's goodness. Consider a time when you were tempted to question his goodness.
What are some obvious and not-so-obvious ways in which God has been good and generous to you? wc tate DE) 30.
Dil) b cb anes Lila & Oe eee SURRENDER (verb): To release control completely. To give in to the power of another.
What this means for you: Christ calls you to sur- ) render—to give him complete control of your life.
You can let go of the reins. You can rest. You can : trust God is good. et pe ER Rc Pe ea Fs eas Seale et ee
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