Tag: Love

Why Be Thankful

Published on by dpatrickcollinsLeave a comment

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV)

We are a very pragmatic and result-oriented generation. Nearly everywhere we turn, we are being told what to do in order to achieve the desired results in life: eat this food and you will lose weight; do this exercise and you will have amazing abs. Adopt this discipline and you will succeed. Practice this meditation technique and you will have peace. Everything we do is to an end. It is easy for us, therefore, to approach the Christian life that way.

But I do not think God is into us doing things to achieve results. He is rather the answer to all the results we seek, and therefore the end to all our efforts to achieve them.

I have spent the past couple of weeks going through the book of Romans with my wife, and the thing that strikes me is how little our personal effort plays in salvation. That it is truly by faith alone, and faith – as defined by the book of Romans – is our recognition the gift of salvation is not by works. We do not achieve salvation by human effort; it is a gift freely given.

And salvation is not just a future eternal state. It includes all that God desires to do in our lives. It is the abundant life Jesus promises, the victorious life over sin and death God always intended for us. It is the successful life. The successful life, then, is not achieved by human effort. We do not do in order to achieve the results we desire. We rest and believe.

This does not me we sit idle, of course. But it does mean our activity in life is confined to doing only what the Spirit of God in us is doing. The word picture here is like a home improvement expert coming into your home to remodel after several failed attempts by you to remodel it yourself. At that point, you no longer are trying to remodel your home. You are learning to get out of the way and let the expert do his best work, assisting when called upon. This is the Christian life. We are not trying to rebuild our own life. We are learning to allow God to rebuild it for us.

And this is why we really can be thankful in all circumstances. We are not trying to be thankful in order to make things happen. We are thankful because God has sent the best Home Improvement Expert in all creation into our lives, and He is already at work. He may be kept from doing all he wishes from time to time If we are getting in his way or preventing him from remodeling some of the rooms, but even here he is at work, teaching us to yield to him, teaching us how to make more space that he might be the one to do it.

Thankfulness stems not from a frantic impulse to make things happen; it stems from the recognition he has come and he has things under control. This is why we can be thankful. And the remodeling work he is doing is beautiful. In every moment, whether there is a lost of dust on the floor or not, he is doing a beautiful work.

Photo by ASR Design Studio on Unsplash

The Science of Grace

Published on by dpatrickcollins1 Comment

No matter who you are, before you judge the wickedness of others, you had better remember this: you are also without excuse, for you too are guilty of the same kind of things! [and so] you condemn yourself.

Romans 2:1-2 (TPT)

It has been a long time since I realized the gospel is beautiful. It is like a Christmas present from a friend I am sure I have deeply offended. Except that the friend is God Himself, and the offense is not imagined but real. But he has sent me a Christmas gift anyway, the most extravagant gift I could imagine.

There is however a science to all of this, and my lack of understanding of the precision involved in the science of grace is what has prevented me from seeing how beautiful it is.

God is the author of all we see in nature, and one of the things we see in nature is a God whose way of dealing with the world is precise and, if I may use the term, unforgiving. Gravity, for example, does not care if you have good reason to step off a cliff. Neither does a hot stove if you touch it. The consequence of these things are unyielding, and the same is true when we violate the principles of God’s moral law.

The apostle Paul declares in the very passage I have quoted, “We know God’s judgment falls upon those who practice [any form of wickedness].” So we cannot escape the consequence of sin any more than we can escape the consequence of stepping off a cliff or touching a hot stove. It is science. We may not like it and think it is unkind of God to have created the world this way if we wish, but in the end it does not matter. It is how the world is. (And between us and God, God probably gets to decide how his world should be.)

Now because of the Cross, we are no longer under the law. But I mention the precise and unforgiving nature of God’s law because God’s grace is equally precise and, in a way, equally unforgiving. Not unforgiving in the sense God is withholding forgiveness, of course, but in the sense that there are precise rules that govern his grace. For example, God’s grace must be received as a gift. If you attempt to earn it, you will fail to open it. And if you prevent others from opening it, you will prevent yourself from opening it, also. Religious performance and judgment will deny you the grace God has otherwise freely made available to you.

We may think Jesus going to the Cross was God’s way of saying he no longer cares about sin – or anything for that matter. That God is not really a rule-follower after all. But this idea is really a reflection of our modern age, not God. We think nothing really matters and God feels the same way. But the Cross demonstrates the very opposite of this. It is evidence God cares so much about sin that he sent his only Son to die in our place. It was an exchange in conformance with his precise and unforgiving nature – unforgiving in the sense sin had to be punished. As Romans puts it, “There was only one possible way for God to give away his righteousness and still be true to both his justice and his mercy—to offer up his own Son.”

I mention this because if we think the Cross is about God not caring about stuff, we will think he does not really care about religious striving or judgment either. In fact, we will think God really does not care about much of anything that we do, that the main take-away of the Cross is that he loves us and is not too concerned with what we with our lives. And so we spend our days stepping off cliffs of judgment or touching hot stoves of religious striving, wondering why our lives are filled with so much pain, not reflecting the fullness of all he has promised. Of course he still loves us, but by our actions and attitude, we are alienating ourselves from his grace.1

But once we understand the precise nature of God’s grace, we are able to see his gift for the beautiful thing it is. It is, after all, a gift. But more than that, it is an invitation to leave the heaviness and destruction of a life of stepping off cliffs and touching stoves, and instead to step into a life of Christmas presents every day, not only for us but for everyone. It opens up all sorts of possibilities, for we are truly blameless before him. And if he has not spared his own Son, will he not now give us all things?2

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

  1. Galatians 5 ↩︎
  2. Romans 8:32 ↩︎

Making Sense of Suffering

Published on by dpatrickcollinsLeave a comment

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire —may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

1 Peter 1:6-7 (NIV)

Our church has begun a series on suffering and it has gotten me thinking about the tension that lies at the heart of the Christian faith. On one hand, God is profoundly good, a goodness we see in Scripture and experience every day. On the other, we are called to suffer. By “called” I mean that suffering, for a variety of reasons, is expected. But how exactly does God’s profound goodness factor into suffering?

The difficulty many have with God is the presence of suffering in the world. That if there were a God, he certainly would not allow this to happen. But this assumes God is the way we think he should be. It also assumes his goodness is the way we think it is. Sure, if God is all-powerful, then he must be the type of God who allows us to suffer. But whether we conclude he is good or not because of this depends on whether we define his goodness based on his willingness or unwillingness to allow us to suffer. Scripture makes clear God’s goodness is not defined in this way.

Our difficulty with God when it comes to suffering, rather, is our own conception of him. If we have been raised on a strict diet of being told God is good and he does not want us to suffer, we are understandably going to have difficulty when we do. We are going to think something strange is happening to us. We are going to think it should not be happening, and that God is not who he says he is. We are going to be inclined to a crisis of faith.

But there is really no cause for a crisis of faith if we turn to scripture, because in scripture we see from cover to cover a God, though profoundly good, willing to allow suffering. It isn’t as if the Word of God portrays God as a God unwilling to allow any form of suffering, and we now find ourselves coming to terms with a world full of it. The opposite is actually true: the Word of God shows God to be very willing to allow suffering, something that reflects the world we find ourselves in. Our difficulty with suffering then is our own ideas about God that neither agree with scripture or the world around us.

But how can God be both good and allow suffering? Again, the answer is that God’s goodness is not defined by his willingness or unwillingness to allow us to suffer. It is defined by something far more profound. To put it simply, God’s goodness is defined equally by his holiness. And it is God’s holiness that makes God willing to allow suffering. God did not create the world and then, looking down one day, say, “Something is missing. I know: suffering!” No, the Word of God is clear that all the suffering we see today came through sin. So suffering is clearly not something God desires, but it is something he allows on the basis of his holiness.

It is really important we understand this. When we object to God’s goodness on the basis of suffering, we are imagining a God willing to go to any length to prevent it. We are imagining a God willing to restrict our free will in order to prevent the consequence of sin, which is suffering, or a God willing to allow us to exercise our free will without consequence. In short, we are imagining a God who is either controlling or not holy. But God’s way of dealing with sin was to allow humanity to exercise the full range of free will and also experience the full consequence of sin. God was willing to allow sin to come through Adam and death through sin, resulting in the world we now see today.

And God is now in the process of delivering us not only from suffering but its root cause, which is sin, through Jesus Christ and his work on the Cross. Yes, even now, God could snap his finger and deliver us all from it instantly. But for a variety of reasons, he has chosen to deliver us progressively. He has chosen to keep us in the world, though we are no longer of it, experiencing his goodness in a variety of ways as we are transformed by him, being conformed to the image of His Son. And his reasons for doing so – though I have no space to go into it now – are all good.

Photo by Johnny McClung on Unsplash

The Selfish Revivalist

Published on by dpatrickcollins2 Comments

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

John 10:10 (NIV)

About five years ago, I was on lunch break about to cross the street to pick up some food when I had a life-changing moment with the Holy Spirit. He said to me, “You have spent your whole life trying to show me how much you love me. But what if I spend the rest of your life showing you how much I love you?” Given my unsuccessful efforts to demonstrate to God how much I loved him for most of my life, I said yes. And in that moment, a selfish revivalist was born.

I say “selfish revivalist” because my goal from that moment onward was, well, giving Jesus every opportunity to make good on his offer. I abandoned my efforts to be a good Christian and please him. Instead, my object in life became giving him every opportunity to please me. Or, I should say, bless me. My goal was to pursue a life of abundant blessing. I reoriented my life around one objective: the blessed life.

All of this sounds so selfish, especially coming from my traditionally religious background. I had been taught the purpose of the religious life was to serve God, to live a life of such great sacrifice that he takes notice of us and rewards us, either now or in the life to come. But the well-kept secret of the Christian life is that, first of all, we really cannot please God in this way, at least not by our service. If we set out with the objective to please God by our service, we will fail.1 This is what the apostle Paul is telling us more than anything in the seventh chapter of Romans. Sowing to the flesh is not merely sinning; it is also striving to please God by our actions. Such efforts will end in a life where we are constantly striving and never managing to measure up to an impossible standard.

Secondly, God has chosen to please us.2 It took me a long time to realize the Cross was not an IOU placed upon my life but rather the most extravagant expression of God’s willingness to bless me freely. We can know this for sure because we did not deserve any of it. If God wanted us to demonstrate how much we love him, he could have done nothing and given us the chance to do so. Instead, he chose to go to the Cross and die for us while we were yet sinners.

And having died for us, God has chosen to shower us with blessings.3 It is his way of demonstrating love, and also his way of empowering us to do the very things that please him. Because we cannot do what God requires on our own. It is not a matter of trying harder. It is a matter of being dead in our old nature, and needing to be raised to life with him. It is a matter of God’s Spirit doing in us what the flesh could never do. In other words, for us to live as God has created us and called us to live, he must bless us.

Besides, it is impossible to pursue a life of being blessed by God and remaining selfish for long. Granted, if I think being blessed is asking for things that I might spend them on my sinful desires,4 then that would be selfish. But God does not answer such prayers. Instead, he brings us into a life of true blessing, one where our sinful desires are purified and true life is made manifest. He heals us, restores us, and empowers us. We have peace to overcome every storm. We experience his unfathomable love and encounter his beauty. He satisfies our every desire not with sinful things, but with good things, that our youth may be renewed.5 As he does, all we do for him flows not from a place of religious compulsion and fear of never doing enough, but from a place of genuine gratitude and passion, overflowing with the love and power God gives.

This day, do not shrink back from his willingness to bless you because you think you are being selfish. Such selfishness is likely the very way God has ordained that you step into all he has for you, for your sake and for the sake of the world around you.

Photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash

  1. Romans 7:14-20 ↩︎
  2. Ephesians 1:3-7 ↩︎
  3. Romans 8:3-4 ↩︎
  4. James 4:3 ↩︎
  5. Psalm 103:5 ↩︎

The Shock of Answered Prayer

Published on by dpatrickcollinsLeave a comment

Then Elisha said, “Hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the LORD: Tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria.’ ”

2 Kings 7:1 (NKJV)

I have recently experienced an answer to prayer so spectacular in its precision and breadth it has left me a bit shocked. And by shocked I mean not quite able to take it the fullness of what has just happened. It reminds me of a moment about fifteen years ago when, after seven years of intractable financial difficulties and with no financial prospects, my situation suddenly and miraculously changed, and remained changed despite all odds, even through the worst economic recession in recent history.

Or the time my late wife and I somehow managed to purchase a condo in the impossible housing market in San Clemente with horrible credit and at a time investors were crowding out all homeowners with cash offers thousands of dollars above asking price.

Or the time I called out to God to show me his supernatural power based on hunger alone, having no experience with his supernatural power and not even knowing if that were possible, and I suddenly found myself in the midst of one of the more significant revivals in modern history, overcome by the miraculous power of God.

The opening passage of scripture above represents such a moment. Samaria had been under siege and in the midst of a famine, presumably for a long time. Because when the prophet Elisha prophesied its end, one of the king’s officers could not believe it. It was way beyond possible in his mind. Siege and famine were the permanent reality and could not be changed, not even by God.

But God is able to do what no man or woman can do. He is not limited by space or time because he is the author of both. He is capable of sovereignly orchestrating an answer to your prayer well in advance of you asking, for he knows the end from the beginning, even he who is writing it. And his dramatic answers to prayer are a reminder to us all. Whatever hopeless situation you think is permanent and unchangeable in your life is an illusion. It is an opportunity for God to show up in a dramatic way, if we but dare to step into it with childlike faith.

I will be honest with you: such a decision on our part requires great courage, especially if you have ever experienced disappointment in the past. But when we choose hope, we are aligning ourselves with the true nature of things, for God is the God of hope, with whom all things are possible. This is true whether God’s answer to your prayer is sudden or delayed. And our patient expectation of the good in a world otherwise devoid of hope is who we really are.

Besides, we will be filled with hope and faith in God’s ability to do impossible things for all eternity. Why not start now?

Photo by Nathan Bingle on Unsplash