Just Rest

Last week I was on a spiritual retreat at the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove. In talking with the others there, I was struck by the fact that many of us work until we drop, and we don’t actually rest until it is forced on us by the breakdown of our mental, physical, or spiritual health. It doesn’t matter whether we’re in some form of full-time ministry or not. From a CPA to an Air Force chaplain to a retired pastor, we were asking ourselves, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” We all seem to think we are too important and too busy to rest.

It also hit me that we don’t really know what spiritual rest is. We use our vacation time for visiting family, frantic trips to tourist destinations, or accomplishing projects we’ve put on the back burner. There’s nothing wrong with those things, but they aren’t restful. Even working in a ministry that has a fairly generous vacation policy, I find myself rationing out my days for the least interruption to work and the most efficient use of my time.

After a busy season of ministry, Jesus told His disciples, “‘Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while,’ for many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat” (Mark 6:31 ESV). Physical rest and leisure were on His agenda (though the crowds interrupted their plans). Luke reports that Jesus “would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:15). If Jesus needed regular retreats, don’t we? We can all recite Matthew 11:28: “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” and yet we don’t actually take the time to get away with Him. A daily quiet time and weekly worship service is not enough to give rest to our souls.

There has been a movement to restore the concept of sabbaticals to the church, and that’s a good thing. However, even in churches where that does not seem possible, I would contend that pastors still need to schedule a regular time of spiritual renewal at least every year. Even if it is just one week away from the church and without any interruptions, they need to come away and rest and seek spiritual renewal. And I think all of us could benefit from making that a part of our annual routines.

As I’m about halfway through my sabbatical, I think the lesson I most need to learn is to just rest. On the first week of my sabbatical, someone asked me why it was being called a sabbatical and whether I was working on a project. I felt guilty that the honest answer is, “No, it’s a sabbatical because the office is not supposed to be contacting me during this time.” However, the scriptural basis for the sabbatical is the Sabbath rest. It’s the academic world that has co-opted the term to make it mean something else.

Though my inclination is to keep busy doing things, I hear God saying to me, “Just relax and enjoy. Life is not about productivity and accomplishments.” [Ironically, that came to my attention soon after reading a quote from a minister who said that “God ministers His Word to us... exclusively through the Scripture,” which I think is a gross oversimplification.] He gave us the Sabbath to set apart time for Him. It’s not meant to be a day of planning, preparation, and productivity, but of rest. “On the seventh day He rested,” and so can we. We can build the regular rhythm of rest into our weeks and months and years.

It’s okay to stop and rest and listen for a while. As Jesus told Martha, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:41-42). Spiritual food is more important than physical nourishment. We need both, but we may not feel the spiritual hunger nearly as quickly as we notice our empty stomachs.

My thought for today comes from Jonny Diaz’s song, Just Breathe: “Let your weary spirit rest. Lay down what’s good and find what’s best.” Regardless of how much good we are accomplishing or how many people we are pleasing, we need to stop and rest and seek God’s best. We might be surprised by what we hear from Him.

“Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16b).

“Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you” (Psalm 116:7).

© 2018 Dawn Rutan. Photo by Dawn Rutan: Camp Dixie, Fayetteville, N.C.

Thoughts on Thoughts

On a recent read through Philippians, I happened to notice how often Paul refers to the way we think.

1:9-10 (ESV)- “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”

2:2, 5- “Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind... Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.”

3:10, 13- “That I may know Him... But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.”

3:15- “Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.”

3:19- “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.”

4:8-9- “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

The way that we think is important to God, and what we think about depends largely on what we put into our minds. When Paul wrote these words, I’m sure he could never have imagined the wide variety and instantly accessible media we have today. From where I’m sitting by a lake right now, I can access the world through my phone. We have a constant temptation to use our time and brains for unprofitable things.

That’s one of the things that I’ve been convicted of lately. As I’ve been on sabbatical, I’ve had much more limited access to television than usual. I haven’t really missed it, because I’ve had other things to keep me occupied. But I know when I return to my usual schedule I will have to be careful not to get back into the same old habits. It’s just so easy to turn on the TV for background noise while I am doing other things like reading or writing. What I’ve realized though is how distracting it actually is to try to multitask. As others have pointed out, we can’t really multitask. All we can do is switch our attention rapidly from one thing to another.

While it seems like a harmless habit, there is very little on TV that qualifies under Paul’s admonition to think about things that are true, honorable, pure, lovely, etc. Even when we try to filter what we watch, there is a lot that is unworthy of our attention. I don’t want to get legalistic about it, but I know I need to set some boundaries on how I use my time and attention. I tend to go through phases of cutting things out then letting them creep back in over time. I am being reminded that God usually speaks in a still, small voice, and I’m not likely to hear Him if I’m constantly bombarded with other voices and media.

Even my “quiet times” can be fragmented by trying to do too many different things. I don’t often read an entire book of the Bible in one sitting, so it’s not surprising that I hadn’t previously noted Paul’s repeated comments on thoughts before. In particular I saw the contrast between 3:19 and 4:8-9, setting our minds on earthly things or on eternal things. Paul makes the same parallel in Romans 8:5, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” So then, why do we who have the Spirit choose to set our minds on earthly things so often? That’s a question that we may prefer to avoid unless we really want to make changes in our lives. I can see why some people will go so far as to get rid of their television. I’m not ready to take that step, but I will seriously consider what I can do to reduce the amount of “earthly input” I’m getting as compared to spiritual input.

Something to think about!

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (3:8).

© 2018 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com.

Made for More

One of the books I bought for my sabbatical is Made for More: An Invitation to Life in God’s Image, by Hannah Anderson. The following are several quotes that caught my attention.

64-65- But faith teaches us that we will never be more truly ourselves than as we are conformed to God’s nature through Christ. Faith teaches us to forgo a superficial authenticity in order to find a deeper, more authentic sense of self. Faith teaches us that we are made to reflect the heart of God... He is calling you to faith. Faith to believe that He made you to be so much more than your momentary desires. Faith to believe that He made you to be more than your brokenness, more than your sin. Faith to believe that authenticity means faithfulness to the deepest part of His nature. Faith to believe that you were made for glory.

93- One of the most powerful things about grace is that it gives us a vision for who we could be. In the midst of our brokenness, it gives us hope. When God extends Himself to us, He is not so much expressing a belief in our ability to change, but in His ability to change us. He is confirming that we are not beyond redemption; we are not lost causes. If He was willing to sacrifice Himself for us, He must have a plan to make us more than we presently are. He must have a plan to bring us to glory.

120- Ultimately working imago dei [in the image of God] means understanding that all work is sacred, all ground, holy; not because of what the task is but because of who we are imaging. [Footnote:] Sometimes, in response to those who dismiss mundane work as unimportant, we respond by elevating the task or specific calling. The danger of this is that it simply shifts the reference point from one type of work to another. Work is holy, not because of what it accomplishes or whether we value the result, but because of who it images—God Himself.

153- I suspect that most of us feel the same way that little Velveteen Rabbit did. When it comes to finding identity imago dei, we long to be Real—to finally be who we were made to be—but that process often takes much longer and hurts much more than we could have ever predicted. Even as we understand that our identity comes from God, even as we begin to pursue relationship with Him and others, even as we submit to the life He has ordained for us, we must still actually live that life. We must endure its bumps and scrapes, its joys and sorrows, its victories and defeats.

155- You can wait in hope and patience because God is actively pursuing your transformation... Your being made like Him will happen because He promises it. And so you can trust Him. You can take hope. And because you have hope, you can continue on. You can persevere. You can keep going because this work is His work and He will do it.

157- As God transforms you to be more like Him, as your heart mirrors His more perfectly, you can expect two different things: (1) You should experience the ability to increasingly live as you were created to live and (2) You should also feel deeper pain when you do not. And it is this very pain that confirms that you are in the process of changing. This pain helps you remember that you are no longer the person you once were. Even on our worst days, then, even on those days when you feel so out of sorts that you hardly know yourself, you must remember that this discomfort, these growing pains assure that you are made for more.

166- We must find identity in the one thing that remains the same. We must find identity in the Great I Am.

Thought provoking and well worth reading.

Made for More © 2014 Hannah Anderson, Moody Publishers. Image courtesy of Amazon.com.

In the Desert

Recently I’ve been watching my DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In one episode, Data meets Spock and comments on the fact that Spock has spent his life trying to suppress his human side and the emotions that go with that, while Data has been trying to become more human and wishes to experience emotions. I’d have to say I would usually agree with Spock on this one. In my experience, emotions most often represent a loss of control and are usually undesirable. That’s one of the reasons that I find depression hard to cope with. I don’t like feeling out of control, like I could start crying at all kinds of inconvenient times.

I just came across these comments in A Praying Life, by Paul E. Miller (57-58):

“In fact, God wanted me depressed about myself and encouraged about his Son. The gospel uses my weakness as the door to God’s grace. That is how grace works... John Landsburg [Landsberg], a sixteenth-century Catholic monk, summarized this well in his classic A Letter from Jesus Christ....

‘...In fact I don’t want you to rely on your own strength and abilities and plans, but to distrust them and to distrust yourself; and to trust me and no one and nothing else. As long as you rely entirely on yourself, you are bound to come to grief. You still have a most important lesson to learn: your own strength will no more help you to stand upright than propping yourself on a broken reed. You must not despair of me. You may hope and trust in me absolutely. My mercy is infinite.’”

It is an uncomfortable truth that God doesn’t want us to be stronger, but weaker. He doesn’t need us strong enough to do His work, but weak enough to let Him do His work for us and through us. I heard a radio spot on Judges 6 where Gideon is told, “Go in the strength you have,” not in the strength he didn’t have. In the next chapter, God intentionally weakened the army down to 300 men so that He alone would get the credit. In 2 Corinthians 11:30 and 12:9-10, Paul boasts in his own weaknesses because they display God’s strength.

Our culture values the strong, independent, assertive, and self-controlled. God values the poor, meek, thirsty, and sorrowful who know they need His strength (Matthew 5:3-12). The strong don’t really need God. The weak know they can’t live without Him.

Even though I’ve contended with depression most of my life, I hate when it flairs up and leaves me feeling weak and vulnerable. My pride kicks in and says, “You aren’t supposed to feel this way. You should be able to hold it together. You can’t let others know you still have this struggle.” This is an arid place to dwell.

Miller draws on the many stories of the desert in Scripture:

“The hardest part of being in the desert is that there is no way out. You don’t know when it will end. There is no relief in sight... The still, dry air of the desert brings the sense of helplessness that is so crucial to the spirit of prayer. You come face-to-face with your inability to live, to have joy, to do anything of lasting worth... The desert becomes a window to the heart of God. He finally gets your attention because he’s the only game in town... The best gift of the desert is God’s presence” (184-185).

Life can often feel like a desert—empty, lonely, fruitless. But God takes pleasure in making the desert bloom, bringing life to lifelessness. That is a reason for hope and perseverance.

“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing” (Isaiah 35:1-2 ESV).

© 2018 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com.

In the Light

I’ve been thinking about sin lately, and I’m not the only one. It so “happens” that the sermon at our church this week was on 1 Corinthians 10:1-13. Just a few days ago, Desiring God posted this article by Garrett Kell, If They Fell,So Can You, which is well worth reading.

What factors may cause us to give in to temptation?

• We don’t recognize something as sin, such as the more subtle sins of pride, gossip, or envy.
• We may have adopted the world’s standards in regards to sexuality, relationships, and money.
• We let ourselves become vulnerable through fatigue, stress, and busyness.
• We have slacked off in pursuing God through Scripture, prayer, and worship.
• We have become relationally isolated from fellow believers.
• We keep our sin secret due to fear and shame.
• We feel unique because we can’t see the sins that others struggle with.
• We judge our private sins to be less of a problem than someone else’s visible sin.

The solution to all of those is abiding in community with the Body of Christ to keep one another accountable. Together we pursue God and bring truth to light—the truth about God and about ourselves.

Another recent article by Jared Wilson on The Gospel Coalition quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:

“He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!”

Wilson goes on to say, “I know people are mean, I know people are judgmental, I know people act weird and get messy and cause problems and are really inefficient for the ways we normally like to do church—but if we believe in the gospel, we don’t have a choice any longer to live in the dark. How about we stop being shocked to find sinners among the ‘pious’ and start shocking the fearful with grace?”

I wonder what the church would look like if this were the common experience? I’ve seen it happen on a small scale among a few friends, and it always makes me long for more. It’s hard to live in true Christian community if we’re all hiding secrets from one another. Dare we risk walking in the light?

“But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7 ESV).

© 2018 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com.

Unhidden

Every now and then I wish that the Protestant church had not abandoned the sacrament of confession. While I understand that that was a byproduct of acknowledging the priesthood of all believers, I think that for many Christians today it has become the “priesthood of no believers” or perhaps the “priesthood of me.” No, we don’t require a priest to serve as an intermediary between us and God, but there is something sacred that happens in fellowship when one believer is able to remind another based on Scripture, “God has forgiven you and He loves you.” Those words draw us closer to one another and to God as we look toward the cross of Jesus Christ.

Certainly there were abuses in the Catholic Church in the use of the confessional, penance, and the selling of indulgences. And there were those like Martin Luther who felt so burdened by his own sinfulness that he spent excessive amounts of time trying to remember and confess every sin that might possibly separate him from God. He hadn’t yet learned the freedom of grace and mercy in Christ. Those abuses and errors required correction and the Reformation was greatly needed. Unfortunately, I think many modern Christians may have taken things too far. There are many who see no need for the local church at all. They believe they can live out their faith without any input from anyone else. They refuse to accept that gathering together is a spiritual discipline that is necessary not only for their own growth in sanctification, but also for the growth of others. We are all weakened when some try to go it alone.

Specifically as it relates to confession, participating in close fellowship with others provides opportunity for accountability, encouragement, and reminders of the truth of God’s Word. I know there have been times when I’ve needed someone keeping me accountable for my actions, not so that they could enforce penance but so that I remember that there is someone who cares whether I stand or fall. (There is such a thing as beneficial shame that provides an extra incentive to endure.) There have also been times when I’ve needed such a person but I’ve opted not to find someone, and that is always a recipe for failure sooner or later.

Accountability to another person also serves as a reminder of the seriousness of sin. Without accountability, we can easily dismiss or rationalize our pet sins. With accountability, we see more of the eternal and relational consequences of sin, but also the abundance of grace that comes through Jesus’s death on the cross.

James wrote, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (5:16 ESV). Yet that seems to be the last thing many of us would choose to do. Confessing to one another is a way of agreeing with God that sin matters, grace abounds, God’s love endures, and we matter to Him and to one another.

Charles E. Moore wrote in Called to Community: The Life Jesus Wants for His People:

“Confession means far more than unloading one’s problems on someone else or striving for personal betterment. We bare our souls before our brothers and sisters for the sake of building up the body of Christ. Only by sharing life to this degree can we show the world that Jesus really does have the power to forgive sins, set burdened people free, and restore broken relationships.”

Paul David Tripp wrote:

“Confession shouldn’t be this scary thing we do our best to avoid. Sin, weakness, and failure shouldn’t be the constant elephant in the room that we all know is there but can’t (or won’t) talk about… It should be liberating, not understood as a moment of personal and relational loss. Our confession should be propelled by deep appreciation and gratitude toward God, who has made it possible for us to no longer fear being exposed.”

Olan Stubbs put it this way:

“Sometimes being honest with another person eye to eye about our sin forces us to be more honest with ourselves about our sin and ultimately more honest with the Lord… Whether it’s a small group, or an accountability group, or some other arrangement, we all need the help of other Christians in the church to assess, call out, and rebuke our sins, and to encourage us in holy living. Take advantage of the great gift God has given in providing not only forgiveness (Romans 8:1) and sin-killing power (Romans 8:4) by faith, but also other believers (Romans 12:5–8) to whom we can confess our sins and have them speak truth and grace back to us.”

I challenge all of us, myself included, to consider how we can better facilitate true community through the vulnerability of confession.

“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).

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On a related note, Sam Storms had a couple recent blog posts that are worth reading on the importance of church membership:

http://www.samstorms.com/enjoying-god-blog/post/10-things-you-should-know-about-church-membership

http://www.samstorms.com/enjoying-god-blog/post/why-do-people-object-to-the-concept-of-membership-in-a-local-church

© 2018 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com.

It Is Written

The following is some theological speculation that I’ve been mulling over in recent months. I don’t claim to have a corner on truth, but this just helps me to make sense of some parts of Scripture…

I’ve come to think of this life as being a book in God’s hand. I’m sure the metaphor breaks down at some points as all metaphors do. Psalm 139:16 (ESV) says, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” If all our days were already written, then the book is completed and the end is sure. This should be a reason for peace and trust in the Author. Should we still pray? Yes, because that is method God has ordained for us to interact with Him. As many have said, prayer doesn’t change God, it changes us. Prayer affirms our faith and shapes our understanding of God’s greater plans.

Jesus is referred to as the “Word made flesh” (John 1:14) and the “Author of life” (Acts 3:15). The Author chose to enter His own story for the good of His people. He provided the necessary solution to the problem of sin. Only the Author could resurrect His own character.

Time, from Creation to the Second Coming, is contained within the book. God is outside of time. “Do not overlook this one fact, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). We see time as a fixed construct, passing by second by second, but God sees all of time in His hand.

The choices we will make are already known to God, but not to us as the characters in the book. Because we are created by God with certain characteristics, we fulfill the plot that God has already written. (Perhaps our free will is not so free as we may think.) Some characters are written with evil intentions. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth’” (Romans 9:17). But as Paul points out in Romans 9, such people are still responsible for their actions and will be judged accordingly.

The image of a completed book also helps clarify some of the conflicting views on death. If a character dies in a realistic novel, you don’t expect them to reappear in a later chapter as either a ghost or a real person. (I won’t get into other types of fiction.) Let’s say the character dies and comes out of the book into the hand of the Author. If the book contains time and God is outside of time, where or when is that character from the perspective of those still in the book? His body in the book is dead. He may or may not be conscious of being in God’s presence, depending on how you understand Scripture. (N.T. Wright interprets Revelation 6:9 to say that the dead are awaiting the resurrection under the altar of God, which presents some interesting images.) But think about this, if the character is consciously with God, do you think he’s going to be asking to get back into the book to see how the rest of someone’s story was written or to try to change it? Perhaps this explains how Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus at the Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3). They were written back in for a few paragraphs.

At the conclusion of the book, all the characters will be brought outside its pages to face the final Judgment. And my interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15 is that immortality will be granted to those who have put their faith in Christ while the rest will cease to exist, as characters whose roles in the book have ended and as pages burnt to ashes in the fire. I imagine the book has enough pages to keep a fire going for quite some time. The fire may be eternal even when the book is gone. And maybe the marriage supper of the Lamb is a cookout, since Jesus seemed to like fires on the beach (John 21:9).

When we move into eternal life in the new heavens and new earth (2 Peter 3:12-13), it will be as if we’re moving from a two-dimensional world into a three-dimensional one, out of the book and into reality. What we’ve experienced here is but a shadow of what is to come (Col. 2:17, Heb. 10:1), and just a dim reflection in the mirror compared to what we will one day see (1 Cor. 13:12). That makes me even more anxious to see that new world. But until that day, we might as well enjoy the story as it continues to be revealed to us.

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now… Come further up, come further in!” –C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

© 2018 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com.