Category Archives: Soul

Theological or exegetical think-pieces relating to Christian spirituality.

Between Youth and Old Age

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In the span of three days I’ve seen the span of life. From ‘senior-highers’ to seniors, I have been able to travel the path of promise and mortality through the faces of a youth group on Friday night and a senior’s centre on Sunday afternoon.

On Friday, the bustling talk stumbled easily from the bible to Batman and bear attacks. Teenagers can talk a lot to cover up what is going on inside of them, or they can not talk and stay covered that way too.

But sometimes you can see the portal to their souls open up. You see lives filled with promise, hope and ambition. You also see real cares and real fears in search of true security and not the the platitudes they so often see from the adult world.

If someone takes the time to walk through key biblical texts with teens they are extremely smart and have an apprehension of large, significant truths. Youth group should be fun since it’s youth in a group. But if it is biblically thoughtful and faithful, it will also open those spiritual portals into young hearts.

At the other end of the spectrum is the senior’s home and a Sunday afternoon service. As the old hymns sound out in the foyer, the seniors hum and mouth the words or just sway to the melody. Truths long held are refreshed in their memories as they hear those old lyrics. When the request goes out for favourite hymns, the call-back is not only for Christmas traditionals, it’s for ‘the Old Rugged Cross’.

A simple message from a Gospel is offered. There can be no assumptions here. With all religious stripes in attendance, the urgency of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ clearly and succinctly is as needed as ever. So with wit and wisdom a short text is expounded. The seniors are stirred in their faith, if Christ is their own. Others shuffle off before the message is done. Some show their inattention intentionally. Others are inattentive because they can’t help being so.

After the service the children that have attended are star attractions. Each senior has questions for the kids. They also have their own stories to share of when they were that age, or what their own grandchildren are up to. Some seniors are forgotten. Others are just separated from loved ones.

Discussing biblical themes opens up those portals of the soul in seniors too. One widow shared about her time as a missionary in India and all the hours her husband spent trying to keep an old Jeep running. They shared the gospel there. And then again later on in Ontario in parish ministry. She told me her husband studied at Knox College in Toronto. I mentioned the significance of  D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ visit to Knox College library where he discovered the writings of BB Warfield. The widow had read Lloyd-Jones and we talked together about the great need for revival in our land. And finally she said that to see revival, we need praying Christians. What a simple and wise description of a disciple of Jesus: ‘a praying Christian’. 

So in both of these ministries, the youth group and the senior’s centre, I went to serve, but as usual, I was the one who was blessed. God reminded me of the vigour and enthusiasm of new faith and fresh effort from the youth. But I was also reminded of the seasoned perspective which persevering faith brings. It keeps the main things where they’re supposed to be. Faith in Christ, appeals to God to act for his glory, and finishing well— these are the lessons which I learned from aged saints.

If you are between youth and old age, consider your own need to have your blind-spots exposed and your soul to be expanded. Minister to young and old and enjoy their ministry to you. Remember, we are all interconnected. As Paul said, “the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Cor 12. 22).

Always Picking Up the Lighter End

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Cowboys, farmers, oil workers or anyone who lifts heavy stuff knows what I’m talking about.

There is that guy who is always picking up the lighter end, leaving the heavier end for you.

Whether its the branding pot or the portable genset some guys always manage to get the lighter end of things.

With Easter now passed, but Jesus still risen, it is helpful to see that [Tweet “Jesus has given his followers the lighter end of things”].

Charles Spurgeon looked at the example of Simon of Cyrene who was conscripted to carry Jesus’ cross on the way to Golgotha. Spurgeon said that Simon’s example applies to us whom Jesus summoned to “take up your cross and follow me”:

Do not forget…that you bear this cross in partnership. It is the opinion of some that Simon only carried one end of the cross, and not the whole of it. That is very possible; Christ may have carried the heavier part, against the transverse beam, and Simon may have borne the lighter end. Certainly it is so with you; you do but carry the light end of the cross, Christ bore the heavier end. (Morning and Evening).

Now in Spurgeon’s example of Simon, he is applying it to Christian believers. He is talking about sanctification, not salvation. There is no sense in which a person can contribute to their salvation. There is not even a bit of ‘light lifting’ that a sinner can offer in order to partner with Jesus to save himself. As the old hymn put it:

Jesus paid it all, 

All to him I owe,

Sin has left a crimson stain,

He washed it white as snow.

 

But for the follower, who belongs to Jesus, and who is called to suffer with Christ, their suffering is described as cross-bearing (Matt 16.24, Luke 14.27).

Sometimes we can make a really big deal of our sufferings, going on and on about how bad we have it.  As Paul said, however, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor 4.17).

Even in our ‘crosses’ Jesus is carrying the load. Even our ‘lifting’ is only possible because of his grace.

Yet his grace allows us to always be picking up the lighter end.

 

Look in the Mirror

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But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing (James 1.22-25)

When there is only a cursory attention paid to God’s interpretation of things, then you will not remember God’s interpretation of things. The result is that you will be completely out of step with how to interpret things.

  • You can’t see life right.
  • You can’t see people right.
  • You can’t see your feelings right.
  • You can’t see your purpose right.
  • You forget what you are like, without Christ.

You forget. Because you are not taking care to look closely into the mirror. You are so unlike a teenager on Friday night— you’re not looking to see how things really look.

You can only know that through the mirror of the Word of God.

But when you do look intently at the Word, you find that it is gives clarity to you.

And when you get a clear view of yourself and all of life in this mirror, then you can have liberty.  The word becomes this law or principle of liberty. You are confident, because you have seen the way things really are in the Word. You are at liberty because you know what is true, what is not.

God promises that persevering in the Word in this way makes your “Word-ward” life lived in an outward way. This is evidence of grace. It is evidence of God’s blessing upon you. That is James’ beatitude here. “You will be ‘blessed’ in your doing’.

There is a blog run by a group of Australian Anglicans called the Sola Panel. It is a wordplay on the fact that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for God’s glory alone.  All of those ‘alones’ in Latin are the ‘Solas’. So they call it the Sola Panel.

But isn’t that what Christians do? They look into the Sola Panel of God’s Word and what do they see?  The blinding radiance of the Glory of God!

The heat, and brilliance and power and energy of God the Son is emblazoned before our eyes in the Word of God, the Scriptures, this great reflective mirror.

And when we gaze at it, something miraculous happens. We become a mirror. We become a reflector of the glory of God. And we join in the church with so many other reflectors so that we may cover the earth with Word of God, written, as Paul says, “not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.(2 Cor 3.3).

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2Cor3.18)

The Christian lives like a walking IPad with a constant streaming of God’s Word for all to see and read.

As Spurgeon said of John Bunyan, “this man is a living Bible! Prick him anywhere—his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is full of the Word of God. I commend his example to you, beloved.”

So if we are confused by how things appear in our world, all it takes is another look in the mirror –the mirror of God’s Word.

7 Questions to Ask Your Anger

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If you were to take yourself aside and ask yourself  about your anger, what would you say? Based on James 1.19-21, these are a series of questions for you to ask yourself— ask your anger.

  1. First, think for yourself if you are growing in being attentive, quickly attuned and aware of others in what they say verbally and non-verbally?
  2. Second, think for yourself if you are growing in holding back your first instinct to speak, being careful, considered, thoughtful, and poignant in what you say?  Paul Tripp says, in his excellent book War of Words, “God is at work, taking people who instinctively speak for themselves and transforming them into people who effectively speak for him.” Are you being quick to speak for yourself?
  3. Third, Think for yourself if you are resisting and fighting against being irritable and impatient. Or are you easily angered, because you are always angry, just good at hiding it?
  4. Fourth, Ask your spouse, family member or close friend whether you are changing for the good in these ways. Or are you stagnating. Ask your co-workers or extended family members if they see change.
  5. Fifth. Will you yield to God today, and in that biblical way of Jer 4, Hos 10 ask Him to  ‘break up your fallow ground’ which is to ask God to grant you to repent of your hardness?
  6. Sixth, will make today a turning point away from  filthiness and rampant wickedness? Your tax fraud. Your pre-marital sex. Your drug use.  Your fantasizing. Your filthy mouth.
  7. Seventh, will you make today, a turning point, toward the Word of God, toward the Word heard together in this gathering, toward the Word shared together in these relationships, toward the Word confessed together in your local church?