Some days we are able to follow Jesus’ advice in Matthew 6:34 – “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Other days we feel overwhelmed by our responsibilities, and on some days, we feel like we’re carrying all the problems of the world. Whether it’s something in a sermon, on the news, a book we’ve read, the multitude of notifications on our phones and other devices, or something in our own conscience, we feel that the world needs more than we have to give.
In the linked article, author Kevin DeYoung writes that “most Christians hear these urgent calls to do more (or feel them internally already) and learn to live with a low-level guilt that comes from not doing enough. We know we can always pray more and give more and evangelize more, so we get used to living in a state of mild disappointment with ourselves.” He shares some thoughts on how to relieve this anxiety and focus on what we need to focus on. After all, even Jesus “did not try to do it all. And yet, he did everything God asked him to do.”
(Estimated reading time 7 minutes)
I discovered this through fellow blogger Barbara Harper, who posts a weekly list of good reads on Saturday.
Yesterday I re-posted a story of King Jehoiakim’s attempts to destroy the prophet Jeremiah’s words with fire, as recorded in Jeremiah 36:20-25 (which survived). I decided to share it again based on two events: 1) a comment I saw on Facebook yesterday lamenting that owning a Bible could be made illegal, and 2) Facebook’s reminder to me in “Memories” that two years ago to the day I had posted this:
“To any religious person who is dismayed at “their side” being shut down by social media: Name one of Gods accomplishments that required Twitter or Facebook. The Holy Spirit is the original (and best) social network. Listen to Him. Post to Him. Wait for Him. The Answer lies there. He remains online for eternity and He has a plan.”
Resistance to spreading God’s word is as old as time. Consider the Old Testament story of Elijah, who prophesied during the reign of Israel’s evil king Ahab and his wife Jezebel. According to Who’s Who in the Bible, “Jezebel devoted herself to bringing the worship of Baal and his consort Asherah to Israel. She employed 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophetesses of Asherah (1 Kings 18:19), and persecuted the prophets of the Lord, including Elijah (1 Kings 19:1-9).”[1] Many prophets were killed.
Elijah despaired, as written in 1 Kings 19:10 – “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”
Apostles also struggled to stay strong, including Paul. When he was frustrated at resistance and lack of progress in Corinth, “the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.”[2]
When Paul needed an example to encourage others to persist, he used Elijah’s story in Romans 11:2 – “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? ‘Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.’ But what is God’s reply to him? ‘I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’”
Therefore, our hope is not in social networks where we can share God’s message, or in the benevolence of the programmers of algorithms that choose who sees what we post, or in the regulators and legislators who monitor the public square, or in the founding political documents that give us rights. But:
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” – Isaiah 55:10-11
Social networks, algorithms, regulators and government are not our enemy, but our enemy is the one who tries to convince us we need these things more than we need the God who made them and who made us all. His word will accomplish its purpose, and we have Elijah’s and Paul’s words and actions as evidence.
God’s word withstands the fire. Always.
[1] Gardner, Paul D., editor. The Complete Who’s Who in the Bible. (1995) [2] Acts 18:9-10
On January 15, 1929, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia. A leader in the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 60’s, he is the only non-president to have a national holiday in his name, celebrated on the 3rd Monday of every January. During this holiday, many will cite positives and negatives from King’s life and legacy, and here I will focus on one, specific positive.
His father and maternal grandfather had both been pastors of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and he carried this religious heritage into his own studies and activism. In pastor Tim Keller’s book “Making Sense of God” he writes that the strength of King’s arguments comes from his knowledge “that human rights have no power if they are simply created by a majority or imposed by judicial fiat. They have power only if they are really ‘there,’ existing on their own, dependent only on the fact that the wronged person before you making the claim against you is a human being.”[1]
King applied the teaching that “God created man in His own image” from Genesis 1:26-27 to argue that this image gives every person: “a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him a dignity. And we must never forget this as a nation: there are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God.”[2]
In one of my favorite quotes from King, he cites the American institutions of democracy and its founding documents, but knows that even these must be rooted in religious truth to be effective: “One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”[3]
Keller continues in his chapter titled “A Justice That Does Not Create Oppressors” that “Martin Luther King Jr. did not ask white America to make African Americans free to pursue rational self-interest, their own individual definitions of a fulfilling life. Rather, quoting Amos 5:24, he called them to not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”[4] God provides, and demands, more than “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
While His justice and righteousness will only be made fully manifest in eternity, when we bring a bit of it into this world, we provide something available no other way to our neighbors, communities and beyond. We should not be satisfied with anything less.
[1] Keller, Timothy. Making Sense of God (2016). P. 199. [2] From a sermon King preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia on July 4, 1965. Cited in Making Sense of God, P. 199. [3] From “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, dated April 16, 1963. [4] From King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, DC on August 28, 1963. Cited in Making Sense of God, P. 199.
Although highly allergic to cats, I love the two we have, but sometimes wonder if it’s worth the trouble. This past Saturday night, one of the cats, named Misty, was up crying much of the night, waking us up regularly. Eventually, I realized she must have been upset about her litter. The store was out of the “usual,” so I tried to get away with a replacement, even though I know how finicky cats are. Sure enough, once I changed it to what I had left of the usual stuff (kept in reserve in case of finicky cat trouble), she stopped complaining.
Why am I telling you this? Because what happened next reminded me that God is concerned about even the most minor details of our lives, and about every living creature He has made. Sunday morning my reading schedule began with Psalm 8, which includes this:
“You have given [man] dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.”- Psalm 8:6-8
Misty, an indoor cat who may feel like she’s trapped in the ark.
Under the mandate given in Genesis, mankind is supposed to take care of whatever God has given us – the earth and everything in it. My study Bible helpfully noted that this includes pets, which reminded me of Misty’s crying! I thought maybe our cats were worth the trouble after all, but God wasn’t finished making the point.
Also on my reading schedule was Genesis 7, which includes: “And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.” – Genesis 7:24
During the flood, Noah and his family were flooded in the ark for 150 days with two of each kind of animal (but seven of each kind of clean animal, because provision was made not only for the survival of Noah’s family, but also provision for continued worship of God). After the 150 days, they had to wait months longer for the waters to recede and the land to dry before coming out of the ark. Noah’s family took care of an ark full of animals for more than 150 days. They probably lost a lot of sleep! As for me, I only have two cats and get to leave the house. I also have allergy medicine to make it more tolerable.
Looking back at Psalm 8, the last verse declares: “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
This Lord is the same one who brought Noah, his family, and those animals through the flood. He also cares about my family and even my pets. In seemingly small acts like taking care of pets God has given us, we can declare the majesty of God’s name! In whatever influence we have, big or small, God wants us to participate faithfully in the work started at creation, with the authority He has given us.
In addition to perhaps cats, what else might we be allergic to? Sin is not just a list of things we shouldn’t do, but it is our allergy to God’s dominion over the world and the way we each should have dominion over it and under him. We’re too often allergic to loving this world the way he did on the cross, yet we claim to hope for a world where that sacrificial love governs 100% of all actions.
Our Lord wants nothing more than to greet us in Paradise and say “‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.’”[1] He literally died to make such a greeting possible. Therefore, consider what creatures or people our Sovereign God has delegated to each of us. What tasks or roles? Jobs or ministries? Do some of those things irritate and annoy us, as if we were allergic?
In aggregate, the church’s role is to have dominion over His entire creation, but not in the way the world would, exploiting everything for our own benefit and casting aside what doesn’t seem useful, but as a servant would. Like a God who abhors all our sin as if He were allergic but decided to cover our sin with His own precious blood. The same blood that covers us so that, like a compassionate Father, our Lord can gently say on a Sunday morning after a bad night of interrupted sleep:
“Be thankful you aren’t stuck in an ark for 150 days with thousands of animals.”
On January 6, 1956, a group of American missionaries made first contact with a local tribe in Ecuador, trying to reach them with the gospel. Two days later, on this date, January 8, 1956, five of those missionaries – Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint and Roger Youderian – were speared to death by the very Auca tribe they spent years preparing to minister to. But their story was not over.
Jim Elliot and others had been ministering to the Quichua people in Ecuador since 1952, with many coming to faith in Jesus. However, the nearby Aucas (now called Waodoni) were known to kill any outsiders that entered their area, including Quichua and also oil workers at a site nearby. Jim “knew the only way to stop the Aucas from killing was to tell them about Jesus”[1] and came up with a plan to reach them. Working with Nate Saint, a missionary supply pilot, they spent months trying to safely build goodwill with the Waodoni by lowering supplies to them from a plane and speaking friendly Waodoni phrases from a loudspeaker.
On January 6th, they talked to a Waodoni called George, thinking they had gained some trust and they set up a later meeting. George, however, lied to them about his intentions, and ten members of the tribe were ready in ambush with spears on January 8th. The unarmed missionaries had no chance.
Jim Elliot
Seeking vengeance or giving up might have been a reasonable response for the other missionaries, but in a miraculous example of forgiveness, persistent faith, and a heart for the lost, Elisabeth and Valerie Elliot (Jim’s wife and young daughter), and Rachel Saint (Nate’s sister) learned the local language and moved into the jungle to live with the Waodoni in 1958. Elisabeth wrote about serving those who killed her husband: “The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering. And out of the deepest waters and the hottest fires have come the deepest things I know about God.” Today, the Waodoni are a friendly tribe and many are professing Christians. Missionaries, including members of the Saint family, still live among them today. Elisabeth died in 2015 at the age of 88, after a long career as missionary, author, speaker, and radio host.
Jim’s Apparent Failure is God’s Victory In life, Jim Elliot was sometimes frustrated by his effort, once writing: “No fruit yet. Why is it that I’m so unproductive? I cannot recall leading more than one or two into the kingdom. Surely this is not the manifestation of the power of the Resurrection. I feel as Rachel, ‘Give me children, or else I die.’”[2] While attending Wheaton College in Illinois in the 1940’s, Jim developed a desire to preach the gospel, including taking the train to Chicago and talking about Jesus with people at the train station, but with little response.
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
– Jim Elliot
But in death, Jim was used by God to inspire many other missionaries, including his own family, through whom God’s love for the lost went out and bore more eternal fruit than Jim may have ever imagined. His story is a reminder that faithfulness is the Christian’s objective, and God provides the fruit.
Jim wrote what has become a familiar quote to many: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” In Paradise, Jim, those affected by his ministry, and all other believers, will forever praise God for His steadfast love through the centuries. Nothing we do for God now can look foolish from that perspective. We have so much to gain that we cannot lose.
Soli Deo Gloria
Learn More: This story was dramatized in the 2005 film End of the Spear and in the 2002 documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor. A website dedicated to Elisabeth Elliot’s life (https://elisabethelliot.org/) has more on this amazing history of God’s work.
