Personal Application
PERSONAL APPLICATION
í. The cali of Jesús is a bountiful invitation to trust and to live in the freedom of His love. How might you live in light of this truth today?
2. What is it about a surrendered heart that draws people to Christ? Have you experienced this?
WHO OWNS YOUR HEART?
Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good ñame in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
PROVERBS 3:3-6
n Daniel Goleman's excellent book Emotional Intelligence, he writes about Gary and Mary Jean Chauncey, who battled the swirling waters of the river into which the Amtrak train they were on had plummeted. With every bit of energy they had, both fought desperately to save the life of their young daughter Andrea, who had cerebral palsy and was bound to a wheelchair. Somehow they managed to push her out into the arms of rescuers, but sadly, they themselves drowned.
Some would like to explain such heroism as evolution's imprint—we humans behave this way by virtue of evolutionary design for the survival of our progeny.
One is hard-pressed not to ask, Why did the healthier preserve the weaker and not themselves ? But even the author was unable to explain it all in mere
Darwinian terms. He added that "only a potent love" 1 could explain such an act.
Indeed, describing this noble act, Goleman points out that such emotionally charged moments do not give birth to impulse in a vacuum, but rather it is the outworking of a commitment to certain valúes and truths already made in one's life. I believe Goleman is right in this sense. What is most obvious in the love and commitment of these parents to their young one is that passionate commitments never stand alone; they stand on the foundation of a worldview.
In another story, you may recall the chess victory of the Computer "Deep Blue" over the world Champion Gary Kasparov, which caused many to compare the similarities of machines and humans. Yale professor David Gelernter disagreed.
He explained: "The idea that Deep Blue has a mind is absurd. How can an object
that wants nothing, fears nothing, enjoys nothing, needs nothing, and cares about nothing have a mind? It can win at chess, but not because it wants to. It isn't happy when it wins or sad when it loses. What are its [post]-match plans if it beats Kasparov? Is it hoping to take Deep Pink out for a night on the town?"
Gelernter continúes: "The gap between the human and the surrogate is permanent and will never be closed. Machines will continué to make life easier, healthier, richer, and more puzzling. And humans will continué to care, ultimately, about the same things they always have: about themselves, about one another, and many of them, about God."
Is this not a unique capacity God has put within us—the capacity to feel and to know others intimately? From the selfless sacrifice of loving parents to our own personal thought lives, we recognize that this ability is one aspect of the insurmountable differences between hnmans and machines— and between the Christian worldview and naturalism.
In the words of the psalmist David, we have been made "a little lower than the angels" (Psalm 8:5). Life, feeling, and thought are God's gifts to us. And where we follow God's thoughts, we feel and act in the highest measure. Moreover, our commitment to God is first and foremost a thing of the heart.
Scripture beckons us: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." Nobody understood this better than the man who wrote those words, Solomon. If you look at the book of Proverbs, you'll find the word
"heart" again and again. Solomon talked about the heart because he lost his heart to many women. But he urges us, "My son, give me your heart" (Proverbs
23:26). This is because our entire spiritual journey and the threads that God wants to pulí together will be determined by who owns our hearts.
My question to you today is, Who owns your heart? To whom does your heart belong? How will you know the answer to the question? It is what Solomon said:
"In all your ways submit to him." It is the path you choose, the decisions you make, the way you live. If you do not acknowledge God, your heart belongs to something or someone other than to Him.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. In what way is the Christian worldview different from naturalism?
2. Why are our hearts' commitments so life-defining?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. Consider memorizing Proverbs 3:3-6 or placing these words where you can see them often.
2. How would you answer the question "Who owns your heart?" Allow this question to direct your steps today.
DISPARATE THREADS
"Because I live, you also will live."
JOHN 14:19
orne years ago, I was visiting a place known for making the best wedding saris in the world. They were the producers of saris rich in gold and silver threads, resplendent with an array of colors. With such intricacy of product, I expected to see some elabórate system of machines that would boggle the mind in production. But this image could not have been further from the real scene.
Each sari was made individually by a father-and-son team. The father sat above the son on a platform, surrounded by several spools of thread that he would gather into his fingers. The son had only one task. At a nod from his father, he would move the shuttle from one side to the other and back again. This would then be repeated for hundreds of hours, until a magnificent pattern began to emerge.
The son certainly had the easier task. He was only to move at the father's nod.
But making use of these efforts, the father was working to an artful end. All along, he had the design in his mind and was bringing the right threads together.
The more I reflect on my own life and study the lives of others, I am fascinated to see the design God has for each one of us individually, if we would only respond. All through our days, little reminders show the threads that God has woven into our lives.
Allow me to share a story from my own experience. As one searching for meaning in the throes of a turbulent adolescence, I found myself on a hospital bed from an attempted suicide. It was there that I was read John 14:19, and my attention was fully captured by what Jesús said to His disciples: "Because I live, ye shall live also." I turned my life over to Christ that day, committing my pains, struggles, and pursuits to His able hands.
Almost thirty years to the day after this decisión, my wife and I were in India and decided to visit my grandmother's grave. With the help of a gardener we walked through the accumulated weeds and rubble until we found the stone marking her grave. With his bucket of water and a small brush, the gardener cleared off the years of caked-on dirt. To our utter surprise, under her ñame, a verse gradually appeared. My wife clasped my hand and said, "Look at the verse!" It read: "Because I live, ye shall live also."
If an ordinary weaver can create out of a collection of colored threads a garment that will beautify the face, can the Grand Weaver not have a design in mind for you, a design that will adorn you, as He uses your life to fashion you, using all the threads He has within His reach? A purposeful design emerges when the Father weaves a pattern from what to us may often seem disparate threads.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. What does the father alone see in his work as a weaver?
2. What did Jesús mean when He told His disciples, "Because I live, you also will live"?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
í. What has the Grand Weaver done in your life to reveal His handiwork and design?
2. We are reminded that God is at work in places of beauty as well as pain. Who needs God's touch today, and how might you reach out?
THE HUNGERING SPIRIT
Jesús declared, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."
JOHN 6:35
have pondered long and hard the question of why people turn to God. I remember a woman from Romanía telling me that she was raised in a staunchly atheistic environment. The family members were not allowed to even mention the ñame of God in their household, lest they be overheard and their entire education denied. After she carne to the United States, I happened to be her patient when I was recovering from back surgery. When I had the privilege of praying with her one day, she said as she wiped away her tears, "Deep in my heart I have always believed there was a God. I just didn't know how to ñnd
Him."
This sentiment is repeated scores of times. I had the great privilege of meeting with two very key people in an avowedly atheistic country. After I finished praying, one of them said, "I have never prayed in my entire life, and I have never heard anyone else pray. This is a first for me. Thank you for teaching me how to pray." It was obvious that even spiritual hungers that have been suppressed for an entire lifetime are in evidence in a situation where there is possible fulfillment.
Although I agree that the problem of pain may be one of the greatest challenges to faith in God, I daré suggest that it is the problem of pleasure that more often drives us to think of spiritual things. Sexuality, greed, fame, and momentary thrills are actually the most precarious attractions in the world. Pain forces us to accept our finitude. It can breed cynicism, weariness, and fatigue in just living.
Pain sends us in search of a greater power. Introspection, superstition, ceremony, and vows can all come as a result of pain.
But disappointment in pleasure is a completely different thing. While pain can
often be seen as a means to a greater end, pleasure is seen as an end in itself.
And when pleasure has run its course, a sense of despondency can creep into one's soul that may often lead to self-destruction. Pain can often be temporary, but disappointment in pleasure gives rise to emptiness —not just for a moment, but for life. There can seem to be no reason to life, no preconfigured purpose, if even pleasure brings no lasting fulfillment.
The intertwining of pain with pleasure is at the root of the human dilemma and at the core of the hungering spirit. People in pain may look for comfort and explanations. People disappointed in pleasure look for purpose. In our boredom, we may search for an escape in the strange or the distorted, while God has revealed Himself in the person of Jesús Christ.
Only in the Judeo-Christian worldview is every person understood to be created in God's image, for God Himself is a person. Likewise, each person has relational priorities that are implicitly built in, not by nature bnt by God's design.
Consider the tragedy of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan some years ago.
Even in that stoic culture, where community rises above everything else, each one who wept was grieving the loss of loved ones: they were not grieving just for the total loss of life but also for their personal loss. This is real. It is not imaginary. We stand before the individual graves of the ones we love more often than we stand before a graveyard in general.
But there is more. Personhood transcends mere DNA. There is essential worth to each person. In Christianity, the essence of each and every person, the individual reality of each life, is sacred. It is sacred because intrinsic valué has been given to us by our Creator, who has revealed Himself in the starry skies and upon a nail-scarred cross.
The more I reflect on my own life and interact with others, I am fascinated to see the design God has for each one of us individually, if we would only respond.
The truth is that I have known people who in the peak of their success have turned to God, and I have known others, drowning in pain and defeat, who seek
God for an answer. Either extreme leaves haunting questions. God alone knows how we will respond to either.
God has created us for His purpose, and relationship and worship are built into this design. God alone can weave a pattern from the diverse strands of our lives
—whether suffering, success, joy, or heartache—and fashion a magnificent
design. Perhaps today, if you will stop and reflect on it, you will see that He is seeking your hungering spirit.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. What does it mean to be made in God's image, and what does the Christian worldview uniquely say about personhood?
2. For what purpose did God create us? How does praying for people open their hearts to God's purpose for them?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
1. The problem of pain and the problem of pleasure both present distinct challenges to surrendering our hearts to God. What obstacles have you experienced or witnessed in others? Are these still obstacles to trusting God's love and grace?
2. Have you prayed with someone who wouldn't identify as a Christian and seen a similar response? Pray for an opportunity to reach out with God's love in this way.
THE MOST DIFFICULT
O UESTIONS
Now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now
I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 C ORINTHIAN S 13:12-13
Out of the scores of letters I have received over the years, one in particular stands out. The writer simply asked why God made it so difficult to believe in Him. He noted that if he loved somebody and had infinite power, he would use that power to show himself more obviously. He wondered, Why has God made it so difficult to see His presence and His plan?
It is a powerful question that is both felt and intellectual at the same time. One might say, "Why is God so hidden?" The question ultimately gains momentum and parks itself in our hearts' genuine search for meaning, belonging, and relationship to our own Creator.
I recall the restlessness and turning point of my own life. I had come to believe that life had no meaning. Nothing seemed to connect. As you've read, when still in my teens I found myself lying in a hospital bed after an attempted suicide. The struggle for answers when met by despair led me along that tragic path. But there in my hospital room the Scriptures were brought and read to me. For the first time I engaged the direct answers of God to my seeking heart. The profound realization of the news that God could be known personally drew me, with sincerity and determination, to plumb the depths of that claim. With a simple prayer of trust, in that moment, the change from a desperate heart to one that found the fullness of meaning became a reality for me.
The immediate change was in the new way I saw God's handiwork. The marvel of discovering even splendor in the ordinary was the work of God in my heart.
Over a period of time, I was able to study, pursue, and understand how to respond to more intricate questions of the mind.
That divine encounter of coming to know Him brought meaning and made answers reachable. I believe God intervenes in each of our lives. He speaks to us in different ways and at different times so that we may know that He is the Author of our very personalities; that His answers are both propositional and relational (and sometimes in reverse order); that His presence stills the storms of the heart.
Oddly enough, in history the most questioning and the resistant became God's mouthpieces to skeptics. Consider Peter, Paul, and Thomas—just to ñame a few.
They questioned, they wrestled, they challenged. But once convinced, they spoke and wrote and persuaded people in the most difficult of circumstances.
That is why they willingly paid the ultimate price, even as they sought God's power and presence in those "dark nights of the soul."
In the end, in the face of difñcult questions, the answers that are given and received must be both felt and real, with the firm knowledge that God is nearer than one might think. Yes, the Scriptures reveal, as many can attest, that this assurance of His nearness sometimes comes at a cost, as in any relationship of love and commitment. But God desires that we know Him and that He is not distant from us. He is grander than any wondrous sight we may behold and the answer to every heart's deepest question.
The final consummation of that glimpse is yet future. I firmly believe as the apostle Paul declared: "Eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him"
(1 Corinthians 2:9 nasb). Then we shall see, not darkly, but face-to-face. That is when the soul will feel the ultimate touch, and the silence will be one of knowing with awesome wonder. The only thing we would want hidden is how blind we were.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
í. God has revealed Himself through His Word, through Jesús Christ, His Spirit in the life of the church, and even His created world. Is God hidden?
2. What does it mean to say that God's answers are both propositional and
relational?
PERSONAL APPLICATION
í. If God seems hidden from you personally, is there someone who can pray for you? How might you rest in God's presence today? (Consider reading Psalms 23 and 139.) 2. Spend time reflecting on the truth that God is the answer to your heart's deepest question. Where or to whom might you turn to seek answers to your questions?
THE THROES OF WONDER
How many are your works. Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number—living things both large and small. . .. May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works—he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke.
PSALM 104:24-25, 31-32
have had the privilege of crisscrossing this globe over four decades and seeing much of the world. I have frequently been asked about my favorite city or what food I enjoy the most. The latter is easier to answer than the former because, while cities have attractions for different reasons, the palate is often influenced by one's land of birth.
Strangely, I have never been asked about my favorite site. I am not sure I could pick a single spectacle, but I know one experience that would be in the running as the most emotionally moving moment for me. On a brilliantly sunny day, my colleague and I were driven from Cape Town to very near land's end in South
Africa: Cape Point. There we stood at the edge of térra firma and watched as the waters of the calmer Atlantic and the restless Indian Ocean collided into one massive torrent of fluid strength, the power of the current almost visible to the naked eye. That body of water has been the graveyard of many mariners trying to navigate their way around the globe. The endless horizon, the borderless blue and turquoise of the mighty waters, and the frothy white tips of the crashing waves as they collided against each other—this scene from the world's end seemed just to overwhelm us with a stupendous sense of awe.
Yes, I have seen the Taj Mahal and many of the other so-called wonders of the world. But this was sheer enchantment, not made by human hand! Whether it was because we were not expecting such a banquet for the eyes, or whether it was that we needed refreshment after a busy day, I would not even venture to analyze. All I know is that it affected both of us in the same way.
For seemingly unexplainable reasons, my eyes filled with tears. I was in the throes of enjoying the wonder and the vastness of creation. I felt at once both dwarfed and elevated—dwarfed because my entire stature as a human being seemed so diminished compared to this display of beauty and power before me, but elevated because I could revel in this glorious sight—while the land and water combined could not exult in their own beauty or share in any delight.
But then a strange, unexpected sensation took hold of us, and we both did something that neither of us had ever done before. We walked back a few steps, found a sharp stone, and scratched the ñames of our wives onto the surface of a massive piece of rock. We realized that in a matter of days the writing would be erased, but the thought and act spoke volumes. We had been in the throes of wonder and it just seemed incomplete that we could not enjoy it with the ones dearest to us and express something from the overflow.
Questions of personal choice—"What is your favorite destination?"—are relatively easy to answer. After all, one is answering from his or her own context and delights. But then there emerge questions such as "How can I know God exists?" or "Why is there evil in this world?" The answers cali for some universal implication. Such questions are indicative of the struggles of many skeptics as well as believers and reveal that the deepest questions can span both the mind and the heart.
Questioning is the way of humanity. We will always ask, debate, challenge, and search. And yet there is an immense difference between a worldview that is not able to answer every question to complete satisfaction and one with answers that are consistently contradictory. There is an even greater difference between answers that contain paradoxes and those that are systemically irreconcilable.
Once again, the Christian faith stands out as unique in this test, both as a system of thought and in the answers it provides. Christianity does not promise that you will have every question fully answered to your satisfaction before you die, but the answers it gives are consistently consistent. There may be paradoxes within Christian teaching and belief, but they are not irreconcilable.
I often put it this way: God has put enough into this world to make faith in Him a most reasonable thing. But He has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason alone. Faith and reason must always work together in that
plausible blend.
Deep within every human heart throbs the undying hope that somebody or something will bring both an explanation of what life is all about and a way to retain the wonder. Yet if we would but pause and first ponder what we already see in this world of wonder, we might get a brief taste of the wonder that may be poured into us as well.
The connecting of faith and reason is the wonderful journey of the soul. When one's thinking is set aright again and when the flesh has its shackles broken, the mind and body come under God's liberating and fulfilling plan. Then we see as He designed us to see. When we come to know our Creator, the questioning is not for doubting but for putting it all together and marveling at His wonders.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. What do you think compels us to etch the ñames of those we love in stone?
How does this impulse relate to the act of worship and being made in God's image?
2. Contrary to what the naturalist or atheist may say, why is it impossible to live by sheer reason alone?