Are You Wasting Your Life?

Judas simply could not understand Mary’s ridiculous decision. During dinner she had just taken a jar of expensive perfume and dumped it on Jesus’ feet! That perfume was worth almost a year’s wages. What a waste! Just think what could have been done with that money. Judas said, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”

But helping the poor wasn’t really Judas’ concern. “He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and being in charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6). Judas was Judas’ concern. John 12 shows Mary and Judas in stark contrast. One “wasted” her costly perfume on Jesus’ feet. The other stole from Jesus’ moneybag.

What was motivating them? Gain. They both pursued the treasure they believed would make them happy. To Mary, Jesus was the Pearl of Great Price, far more precious than money. To Judas, thirty pieces of silver was a fair price for the Pearl.

Once again the Bible beautifully illustrates Christian Hedonism. We pour out our love, our time, our energy, our money, and in other words, our worship, on what we treasure most. And when we see others worshiping what we consider less valuable, we view it as a waste. In Judas’ criticism of Mary we hear what the world thinks of those who give something precious to Jesus. Why this waste? Couldn’t your time or money or mind have been better spent?

To follow Jesus means sometimes choosing to lose what the world sees as gain. Jesus said, “Whoever loves his life loses it. And whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25). “Hating your life in this world” means foregoing worldly gain to have eternal gain.

The truth is that this kind of life is worship, not waste. Like Mary pouring out her perfume, a life of sacrificial love for Jesus shows how precious he really is. And it preaches to a bewildered world that Christ is gain and the real waste is gaining the world while losing your soul. One last encouraging thought from John 12.

Jesus put a thief in charge of his moneybag! And he knew exactly what he was doing! Isn’t that remarkable? Jesus showed us by example where not to put our trust. He himself said, “You cannot serve God and money” (Matt. 6:24). Jesus trusted his Father to provide everything he needed so he slept in peace, even knowing that Judas was embezzling.

Here’s the point: When we seek the kingdom first, everything we need will be provided. And our Father can easily out-give what any thief can steal. Isn’t that good news? We do not need to fear giving lavishly to Jesus. We do not need to fear losing what the world can steal. God will provide all we need. Because he is all we will ever really need.

So who is telling you that you are wasting your life? The world? Or Jesus? You eventually hear it from one or the other. Whose opinion influences you the most?

Coincidence or Divine?

I have come to believe that in life there are no coincidences. I often tell my wife of the massive amount of tiny minute, or big decisions that would have had to been made by just her parents in life, that would have brought us to meet. Trust me there are way too many to go into. But the fact remains, this goes for anyone. Look back at your life and think of what all occurred to bring you to where you're at now. Yes I'm sure many of us have had bad things happen, or have made bad decisions. But if only one of those decisions or events were changed just slightly, where would you be?

Now can you look back at all of your life and just say that it was all chance?  Alanis Morissette’s album Jagged Little Pill debuted in 1995, just as the first wave of Millennials was crashing into America’s high schools. Her music became one of the soundtracks for these critical years for many of us, not chosen, or even necessarily positive, but unavoidable. Her distinctive voice, catchy tunes, and conspicuous distress aired nonstop on the radio and at the mall. Her biggest song was “Ironic.” And it’s proved to be her most enduring, still playing almost two decades later, having reached a kind of classic status. If you’ve been in public at all in the last twenty years, you’ve likely heard it.

In “Ironic,” Morissette, once crowned “the queen of alt-rock angst,” plays the part, it seems, of the observant but powerless nihilist, noting how “life has a funny way of sneaking up on you when you think everything’s okay.” It’s not just a clever and humorous celebration of irony, but it subtly begs the deeper question as it personifies “life.” At worst, it’s just a playful lament of life’s endless torrent of troubles, but at best it’s suggestive of something personal behind it all. Someone. It only takes a few lines to catch the gist of “Ironic.” "A traffic jam when you’re already late, A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break, It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, It’s meeting the man of my dreams, and then meeting his beautiful wife." We’ll leave the debate to the critics as to whether Morissette really understands what irony is in its strict sense, or whether what she’s really lamenting is bad timing. But however that goes, the song’s wild popularity, and sticking power, is owing not just to the mesmerizing tune and her riveting mezzo-soprano, but to the fact that we all can relate to what seem like profound ironies in our lives.

For those suppressing the innate knowledge of a Creator, noting the humor in the ironies is one small way of straining for some silver lining in the disappointments that come our way. But in the end, there’s no meaning to it for the nihilist. Making light of the irony, or the bad timing, is just one place to step your foot near the harrowing cliff of meaningless, right before sliding off. But for the Christian, life’s ironies are pregnant with meaning. They aren’t just humorously coincidental and then ultimately empty. They are profoundly personal. They are pinpricks in the veil, little reminders that every moment and every detail are known and ordained by a personal God, who’s in and beneath all the minutia, working all things, even and especially life’s most tragic ironies, for our everlasting good (Romans 8:28). Life’s ironies, whether advantageous or dreadful, make us freshly aware that our existence isn’t random, that everything coming our way has been lovingly sorted for our good, and that there is a greater goal, and deeper joy, than our comfort in the moment.

It’s not just the big details that are from the divine hand, but the small as well; “from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36). Even the things which otherwise would seem most left to chance, like the roll of the dice: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” (Proverbs 16:33). It is our God, personal and loving, the Father of Jesus, “who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses” (Psalm 135:7). He’s the one behind the ironies and everything else. When a tree falls in the woods, and no human’s there, he’s still onsite in all his sovereign sway. And “not one [sparrow] will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matthew 10:29). If there is a God in heaven, there is no such thing as a mere coincidence, not even in the smallest affairs of life.

For the Christian, the seeming ironies of life, whether they make us smirk, grimace, or weep, are not random, but the fingerprints of God, majestic mementos that the Absolute who rules the universe, down to every detail, is also Personal. And that he is loving toward us who are in his Son. Often we call them providences when we spot the fingerprints. It is the best of all worlds, when the one to whom we’re joined by faith is both sovereign and good. Morissette hints at one point how suggestive life’s ironies can be. She asks, “A little too ironic?” and answers, “Yeah, I really do think.” Whether she would say more or not, the song contains no further clues. But at least it may make us wonder. Whether she will admit to it or not, she knows deep down that life’s many ironies are too evocative to be explained away every time with chance and coincidence.

Isn’t it providential, don’t you think?

Wounded By A Friend

"I thought we were friends." The pain behind those words can overshadow years of life, love, and memories. All the good times fade to black when a friendship is betrayed. Investment, down the drain. Vulnerability, restrained. Trust shattered. Love questioned. Friends hurt friends. It’s inevitable because every friend is a sinner, and sinners gon’ sin against one another and hurt one another, intentionally or unintentionally. Either way, it’s always harder to recover from the pain inflicted by a friend. The pain of conviction that comes through the godly rebuke of a friend who speaks truth in love is a real gift (Proverbs 27:6). But what if you’re the one sinned against, and you’re hurt because of unkind words, betrayal, or manipulation by a person you consider a friend? How do you address it with your friend, and how do you move past the pain and toward reconciliation?

In the midst of your hurt, trust that God is working in your relationship to grow you both in the grace and knowledge of Christ: “Trust in him at all times, O people” (Psalm 62:8). It is one’s glory (or beauty) to overlook an offense (Proverbs 19:11). This requires prudence, patience, maturity, and wisdom. Overlooking an offense adorns the gospel and is a loving response that demonstrates we are indeed Christ’s disciples (John 13:35).

In the Disney film Frozen, (can you tell I have a little girl); Elsa abandoned caution and prudence, giving up her good-girl persona to unleash her cold fury on the town of Arendelle. Her actions negatively affected everyone and everything around her. In our flesh, we’re tempted to unleash our pent-up, frozen fury on our friend rather than trust our Lord. Wisdom does not “let it go” like an ice queen. Instead, it dies to self, showing constraint and turning the hurt over to Jesus, who most identifies with us in our pain and who meets us in our times of need.

One caveat: overlooking an offense is not a license to use silence as a weapon, or to harbor ill feelings that will come back to haunt the relationship later. Instead, it is having a clear conscience before God that this hurt is not at a level that it needs to be addressed (at least not right now), but a resolve to “forgive and forget.” It is much better to win your friend than to win an argument. Sometimes you can’t just overlook an offense. If your first thought is “they need to be told,” this may be your self-righteousness talking and not the Spirit. Our goal must be reconciliation born from love.
However, we will find legitimate times and occasions when we need to address a hurt. We can attempt to right the wrong, but remember that vengeance is the Lord’s and he will repay (Romans 12:19). So this is not a call to lash out and fight back. This is a loving call to biblical rebuke.

In Jesus’s teaching on sin, he says to his disciples, “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” (Luke 17:3–4) To rebuke is to reason frankly with your neighbor (Leviticus 19:17), to tell him his fault (Matthew 18:15), with a spirit of gentleness (Galatians 6:1) in hopes that your friend would repent. But Jesus’s teaching goes much further by saying that we may be hurt again, and we must be ready to forgive every time. Forgiveness may seem almost impossible if we forget Christ. He has “forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us” (Colossians 2:13–14). When we were in open rebellion against him, he died for us (Romans 5:8). Even now, as ones whose sins have been nailed to the cross with Christ, and whose lives have been raised with Christ, “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

If you have been hurt by a friend, pour out your heart to them in prayer for wisdom, for forgiveness, for reconciliation (Psalm 62:8). Here are some prayer points that may help you deal with hurt with wisdom and grace: Pray for God to search your wounded heart (Psalm 139:23). Were you hurt because your sin was exposed? Were you overly sensitive to something that was said? Were you tired? Is what you were hurt by a pattern from your friend or a first-time offense?

Pray for the grace to think about what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, praiseworthy in yourself and in your friend (Philippians 4:8). Pray for discernment: does God want you to overlook or address the offense? If you must address the offense, pray that you would be honest and gracious with your friend about the way you were hurt, and that your friend would respond with humility.

Pray that you would love your friend at all times, even the difficult ones, and that you would be able to “live in harmony with one another” (Romans 12:16).

It’s worth it to overlook an offense if you can, and to trust God is working in you and your friend’s heart, to pray for wisdom, love, and reconciliation, to rebuke gently, and to be ready to forgive. Christ teaches “greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). He then calls his disciples his friends (John 15:14–15), and shortly thereafter he literally died for his friends.

If Jesus could make such a radical, loving sacrifice for his friends, friends who would doubt and deny him, surely we can work to restore our broken friendships. Godly friendships are a witness to the world. In them, we put our love for Christ and for one another on display.

Your Pain Will Not Define You

Pain is real, it is hard, and it is guaranteed to us in this life. Our Lord himself wrestled in anguish (Luke 22:44), sighed in sorrow (Mark 7:34), and wept in grief (John 11:35).

Some of these pains have wounded us so deeply that the healing is still underway. It will take time for the balm of comfort to soothe our sores, the bandages of truth to seal us back together, and the medicine of faith to restore us to health. We desperately want to be healed, and are in the process of daily receiving it. But we may also face another kind of long-lingering wound — the kind that puts us on the other side of the same question Jesus asked the invalid at Bethesda: “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6). And to our own amazement, we may discover in honesty that our answer is not yet a wholehearted and expectant Yes. Perhaps our wounds have become so entangled with the identity we now claim that surrendering them would require also surrendering who we mistakenly believe ourselves to be.

Our enemy longs to steal, kill, and destroy our true identity in Christ by convincing us our pain will always define our past, disparage our present, and darken our future. By turning our eyes continually to our mistakes and our suffering, the great deceiver aims to imprison us with remorseful pity, assumed limitations, and downright despair. He tells us our wounds will mark us forever with no hope of being healed. And as these pains usurp the throne of power and authority in our lives meant for God alone, we may begin to find our identity more in our own suffering than in the One who suffered for us.

Our society urges us to identify ourselves by whatever we perceive with our eyes and feel with our flesh; even when that identity misconstrues reality and ignores the definitions written by the very Author of Life (Acts 3:15). But when we look up from our visible, temporary circumstances to our invisible, eternal Creator, we see who we were truly created to be in relation to him. And we are not our pain. You may have had a friend desert you, but you are not deserted. You may have had a spouse abandon you, but you are not abandoned. You may have failed, but you are not a failure. You may have never known your father, but you are not fatherless. Life may be crushing, but you are not crushed. The only way to take back our true, God-given identity, with unshakable confidence, is to look to the One who gives us our identity in the first place.

For those of us who are in Christ Jesus, we can be sure that because he is love, we are loved. Because he is the King, we are heirs to the kingdom.
Because he is merciful, we are shown mercy.
Because he is the Defender, we are defended.
Because he is a good Father, we are children of God.
Because he is freedom, we are free.
Because he is always with us, we are always with him.
Because he holds all things together, we are held together in him.
And because he calls us his own, we are his.

With eyes unveiled by Jesus, we turn from the dark portrait painted by the father of lies (John 8:44) to behold the glory of the Lord, placing our faith and hope in the promise that we are being transformed into his very image (2 Corinthians 3:18). Only then will we earnestly desire to be healed. In this world, we will grieve, but not as those without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We will be sorrowful, but we are not without reason to rejoice (2 Corinthians 6:10). We will have trials of many kinds (James 1:2), but we can always take heart, because he has overcome the world (John 16:33). Even today, as we lie before the One who alone can heal us, he offers us the same invitation he offered the man at Bethesda, to let go of our identity as invalids, get up from the paralysis of our pain, roll up the mat of hopeless defeat, and walk forward into our true identity as new creations in Christ.

When we look to the pain of our wounds, we see ourselves as wounded. But when we look to the pain of the cross, we see the wounds of Jesus (Isaiah 53:5), by which our Healer tells us that we are forever healed in him.

When Trust Is All That's Left

Fifteen-year-old Nadia Naira Masih is a committed Christian. Her normal practice when she lived at home was to pray and read her Bible early every morning. Although her parents haven't seen her since February 2001, they assume that she continues this practice in the home of her captor. A Muslim named Maqsood Ahmed abducted Nadia. Maqsood's mother, then a friend of Nadia's family, helped lure Nadia out of her home, where she was forced into a car with Maqsood, two of his brothers, and a friend who were all armed with automatic weapons. She has not been seen since then.

The abduction of young girls is rare in Pakistan, but it is common for Pakistani police to look the other way when crimes are committed against Christians, especially when offered a bribe. This is allegedly the situation in Nadia's kidnapping, and local police have been slow to pursue the case.
A certificate was delivered to Nadia's home saying she had married Maqsood. The certificate explained, by virtue of her marriage, Nadia had officially converted from her Christian faith to Islam. Nadia is only a teenager, however. Facing anger and loss, Nadia's parents still don't say anything against Maqsood. Instead, they trust that God is powerful enough to do what is needed to bring Nadia back.

Trust is something someone can never fully understand until it is all someone has. Nadia's parents know what it is to trust. They do not necessarily trust that Nadia will indeed one day return. Instead, they have full confidence that God is able to bring her back safely. The difference is enormous. If they were to trust in a particular outcome, their trust could be shaken if it did not come to pass. But they are choosing to place their trust in God's unfailing power and ability to bring it to pass. If God in his wisdom decides not to permit her return, they will trust him all the more.

We can learn a lot about why we can trust God from the story of Job. In the midst of great trouble, Job had to trust the Lord. I can only imagine the fear he experienced as one horrible event happened after another. If you remember the story of Job, then you know that he lost everything. And by “everything,” I mean everything that was of any importance to him. Job lost everything. At the end of his story, as he repents and sings great praise to God, Job proclaims, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). Job suffered greatly, and, I imagine, he was very confused. His friends didn’t do a good job of comforting him; Job even called them “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2). But Job turned to God and was convinced of the wisdom of God, even in the midst of great pain and confusion.

We get a glimpse of Job’s view of God when he says, “His wisdom is profound, his power is vast. Who has resisted him and come out unscathed?” (Job 9:4 NIV), and, “With God are wisdom and might; he has counsel and understanding” (Job 12:13). Job isn’t thinking about how he feels at the moment or even his current circumstances, though there is no problem with considering those things. Instead, Job realizes that in order to minister to his own heart he must remember the character of God, who God is, and why he can be trusted. Job doesn’t ignore his pain, but he does remember his King. And what did God do? He restored Job and his fortunes. He gave him twice as much livestock as he had previously possessed and gave him more children: seven sons and three daughters. Job was restored to his family and friends.

God doesn’t do anything in his sovereign will that isn’t both wise and loving. If God is for you, who can be against you? We don’t trust God simply because someone tells us to. We trust God because he is God. He is holy and awesome and righteous in every way. We can trust God because we don’t serve a God who is only sovereign and wise. He is also infinitely loving. Do you trust God only so far, depending on the outcome? Or do you trust him despite any outcome?

Floated Across The Heart

"Grandma, look at what I found!" The young North Korean girl was so excited. She was holding something she had never seen before. The grandmother looked at it with her failing eyes but could not make out the details. So she called the girl's mother. "Please come tell me what this child has found."

The elderly woman's daughter entered the room and took the item from her mother's wrinkled hand. Her daughter began to read the words printed on the well-constructed plastic balloon. "The Lord Jesus loves you. Your brothers and sisters have not forgotten you. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." The grandmother exclaimed, "It's Scripture! They've sent us Bible verses on a balloon! Please keep reading."

The plastic balloon held words of encouragement for the three generations of North Koreans. It contained a message from Christians in the West and over six hundred Bible verses taking the reader from the creation, to the cross, to the second coming of Jesus Christ. In the last decade, over one hundred thousand of these "Scripture balloons" have been floated into North Korea.

The ministry at The Voice of the Martyrs found a unique way to reach these oppressed people with the Word of God and the gospel. It says in Psalm 19:1- The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 

Like the balloons in this story, God longs to float encouraging Scriptures across our minds and hearts just when we need them most. However, he cannot bring to mind Scriptures that were never there in the first place. Ironically, though we live in a free society, we often act as if we were in a restricted nation like North Korea without access to God's Word.

Our Bible reading is sporadic and seldom; as if we did not have a copy of Scripture at all. Perhaps it is time to ask God to "float" his Word across the borders of your closed mind. Carve time in your schedule for Bible reading each day, and ask him to renew a desire for his Word.

Our Soul, Our Treasure

It was Sunday, and the congregation of Grace Sonmin Church in Dushanbe Tajikistan, had gathered for their weekly worship service. Even though their country was now free from oppressive Communist rule, radical Muslims still blatantly opposed the church. The oppression had simply changed hands from one terrorist authority to another.

Just as the visiting pastor wrapped up his sermon, a loud explosion in the back of the church rumbled the building. In one moment, the believers went from worshiping God to frantically running for their lives. They tried to flee into the hallway, but another bomb exploded along their escape route. Bodies and blood were strewn everywhere in the church that was once called "sanctuary."

An elderly woman lay on the floor, unable to move. The Bible she had been studying moments ago in a worship service fell next to her, stained with her blood. It was opened to a page where she had circled three verses sometime before the attack on the church. "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed."(2 Corinthians 4:7-9)

The radical Muslims considered the innocent people expendable for the sake of their cause. But believers' deaths gleamed like jewels as a testimony to God's faithfulness. The enemy may have broken the elderly woman's body, her "jar of clay"; but her inner treasure was revealed as her spirit ascended to heaven a few days after the attack. That is the great purpose behind why we are called jars of clay. It is to show the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us (2 Corinthians 4:7). We are weak, we are frail, we are lame; and yet, we are chosen. We are loved. “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:28).

Our only boast is in Jesus our Lord who is for us our wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption. He is our perfect righteousness, who not only meets us in our weakness, but covers our every sin and deformity by his blood. We are more aware than ever before that death may come unexpectedly at the hands of our enemy. Yet you do not have to fear death. We can walk confidently, not in our ability but in the ability of our Savior. We can walk confidently not in our strength, but in his. It is good to be a jar of clay.

After all, the worst our enemy can do to us is to kill our mortal bodies. Your physical body is not the real "you." Be comforted today, knowing the treasure of your soul cannot be touched.