Why I Love/Hate To Nap

I have 2 kids - Hudson is 2 and Stella is 6.  Stella sleeps like a champ, and she has always slept like a champ.  We can walk into her room at night when she's asleep, put away clothes, and have a conversation at about 50% volume and she won't wake up.  Hudson is becoming a better sleeper but in the last six months or so, he's been waking up at around 5:00 a.m.  This, as you can imagine, after being up late catching up on things around the house or even just talking with my wife Jenny, can make for a tough morning when this little guy's first words to me are "Good sleep, daddy!" Yeah, good sleep for you at least...

 
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And thus a nap is a valued commodity.

And I love to nap...but also hate to nap.

I love to nap because I am often tired when haven't gotten enough sleep the night before and I had to get up with Hudson at 5:00 a.m.  I love to nap because it means that I have no responsibilities but to nap - Jenny is in charge of the kids for that time so I just have one job: get some sleep.  And to be candid I've always loved a good nap.

But more and more I am choosing to be very selective with napping, and here is why.
I hate the idea of losing time napping when there is work to be done for the Kingdom of God.
Now I know - I KNOW - that some people are going to read that and say, "But you need to take care of yourself."  I agree, and there are times when I choose to nap because, as New Testament scholar D.A. Carson says, "Sometimes the best thing you can do is sleep."  I agree - I know there are times when the best thing for me, for my family, and for the name of Christ is for me to be more well-rested for the next challenge.  Fair enough.

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But the question of why a nap is helpful/vital/a good choice - this is a question  that must be asked.

Here's how I see it - let's do the numbers:
I am 40 now.
Let's say that I live until I am 80.
40 years left x 365 days in a year x 24 hours in a day x 60 minutes in an hour  =
___________________________________________________

21,024,000 minutes left in my life.

So what is a little nap?
Maybe it's nothing.

But let's continue with the math

Let's say I don't sleep a full 8 hour a night but instead I sleep 6 hours a night:
40 years left x 365 days in a year x 6 hours of sleep a night x 60 minutes in an hour =
___________________________________________________

5,256,000 hours of sleep in my life.

I just lost about 25% of my life left in sleeping.

Sleep is necessary - I agree and I know how I function at a higher level when I sleep well.

But can  you see why napping to me - though I enjoy it and even at times feel I need it - feels like giving up valuable time that could be used to share the Gospel, to minister to others in need, to pray, to read God's Word, and the like?

Maybe you aren't a person who often naps, or maybe you don't even like to nap.
For me, napping is often a temptation to choose the easy over the eternally important.
And as I look back in history, few of the people who made a significant impact for Christ were known to be big nappers.

And so I close this post about napping by telling you I chose to write this instead of taking a nap.
If you're reading it, I hope it proves at least one thing - using our time to bless, challenge, and encourage others might just be worth giving up a nap.

- tC

The Gospel Isn't Good News...

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When you ask someone what 'the Gospel' is, some will tell you that it's a book in the Bible - maybe Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.  But while these are 'the Gospels', the Gospel is the good news (literally it means that - "good news") that Jesus Christ has died for sinner to offer us a way to restore our relationship with God in Heaven.

But here's the catch.
The Gospel isn't good news...unless there is bad news first.

If you came to me and gave me a handful of malaria pills and said, "You can thank me later", I probably wouldn't take them nor would I thank you.  I don't have any need for malaria pills.  I am not headed to a place in the world where malaria is a danger, and I don't live in a state in the U.S. where malaria is dangerous.

But if I was headed to a country in South America where malaria was a real danger, suddenly your gift takes on new meaning.

And so it it with the Gospel.

The Gospel - the Good News of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins - is not good news to a person who has no sin or who doesn't believe in sin in the first place.  So giving the Gospel to a person who sees no need for it will yield little response - maybe a "Thanks...I guess...".

Sin is necessary for the Gospel to be helpful, beautiful, and rescuing.  But the notion of sin is often alien to us today.  The idea that there is a holy and perfect God who has been offended by not just 'some people' but who has been offended BY ME AND BY YOU - that is something many people just don't believe.

This presses back to many questions but one falls on the desk and pulpit of the preacher.  Do people see a need for the Gospel in your preaching?  If they think they are doing quite well and just need a tweak here-and-there, that is exactly what they will look for in your preaching.  But if the full-counsel of God is communicated this will not be the case.  The full counsel of God will communicate not just stories of the Good Shepherd, but of the one who will return looking like this:

11 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. 13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in[d] blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
Revelation 19:11-16

   

The Gospel isn't good news if there is no such thing as sin or no such thing as a righteous and holy judge.

But the Gospel is good news for the world, because sin is real and if we are willing to be semi-objective we know that to be true.

The Gospel is good news indeed because sin is indeed real.

- tC

How Do I Know If I Am A Christian?

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Over the last few blog posts, I've been offering ideas that challenge the notion of what being a Christian looks like.  Again, my point is not to say that these things (such as going to church, serving the poor, reading your Bible) are anti-Christian, so much as to note that a person can do these things and still not truly be a Christian.  See my last post (20 Things That Don't Make You A Christian) by clicking HERE.

Today, we're going to give some thoughts on how to assess if a person truly is a Christian.  It's worth noting a few things as I start.

1. These ideas are best used when applied to our own lives first and foremost.  In Matthew 7:1-5, Jesus challenges His hearers to consider their own issues and lives before they start looking outward.
The following ideas should first be applied to ourselves.

2. Some might then argue, "Who am I to judge if someone else is a Christian?  Isn't that something only God can truly know?" Yes, in the end of it all, the spiritual state of a person can really only be known by that individual and by God, and so we proceed with caution and humility.  I would be very hesitant to speak too boldly to a person and say, "I know for a fact you are not a Christian."  I would much more likely say, "I love you enough to say I have some questions about where you are with God" or something along those lines.

However, Paul makes a bold and necessary statement in his writing to the church at Corinth when in 1 Corinthians 5:12 he says that is their job to judge those inside the church (click HERE to see the chapter).  Judging the behavior of those inside the church assumes that Paul has a sense of who is truly a part of the Body of Christ and who is not.  Paul goes on to say that God will judge those outside of the Body, but that believers are called to judge, correct, and help fellow believers in a different way than they do non-believers.

3.  In Galatians 5, Paul tells us that in the end the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love.  In 1 Corinthians 13, we read that without love, our actions amount to nothing.  So in all of this assessment of who might or might not be a Christian, the core has to be love.  And if it is done well, asking these kinds of questions is THE most loving thing a person can ever do.  What more loving action can a person take toward another but to help challenge, clarify, and give assurance that yes - in fact - a person does have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ?  In the end that is all that will truly matter.

Here are a few ways to help determine if you are or if another is truly a Christian.

1. A heart of repentance

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So what does that mean?  Well, when Jesus started His ministry, it began with this word, "Repent...".
(See Matthew 4:17).  John the Baptist - the fore-runner to Jesus - preached this same word and in much the same way (See Matthew 3:1-2).  The word repent is often interpreted as 'feeling bad about the bad things you've done'.  But this is not repentance.  Repentance is a turning-away-from.  Repentance is often described as turning the other way or turning 180-degrees in the opposite direction.

Fundamental to the Christian life is repentance.  It is not just feeling bad about having done some bad things, but instead is a heart's desire that is followed by action - however broken and frail - to change.  This kind of change is empowered by God (see Philippians 2:12-13) but don't miss that a person who is truly converted to Christ, truly born-again will show a heart of repentance.  Ezekiel 36 says that part of this new life in God is a new heart, a heart of flesh, a heart that desires to follow God's law.  And thus we logically conclude if a person has this new heart and falls short in following God's direction, he or she will be broken-hearted about it.  A heart of repentance is shown in a desire to do right and a soul-level distress when we fall short in this.

This doesn't mean a constant beating-up-of-one's-self, but in a world that too often wants to say, "Don't worry - it's ok", repentance says, "It is not ok, and so accepting God's grace and working with it, I move foward."  A heart of repentance - as it grows - hates sin more and more, and it despises what sin is and does to humans.

2. Affection for Jesus

When you get the Gospel, the Gospel gets you.

When I grasp my need for Christ as Savior, Lord, and as the One who will empower me daily through the Holy Spirit, my heart swells with gratitude and love for Him.  If I have no sense of affection for Jesus, it's hard to imagine that I am a Christian.   On a human level we understand this, don't we?  If a person gave his life for me in an act of heroism, but then my response was a luke-warm, "Oh, that's nice", wouldn't we say, "Man, I don't think that person really gets what was done for him!"  And so how much more on a cosmic level should this be true?

This is why you may hear preachers say that if a person just 'prayed the prayer' to get out of going to Hell and to get into Heaven, that person may not be truly converted.  Consider Hebrews 12 - that Jesus endured the Cross because of the joy set before Him, and that joy was rooted in a redeeming love that would save us.  When we get this, our affection for Jesus naturally grows.

I use the term affections purposefully because the word love today is so often misused.  Love can tend to be seen as an emotional response, and while affections do involve the emotions, I use this term to mean so much more.  The affections are deep, soul-felt realities, truths that we know deep inside (what Paul would say we [in Greek] 'epi-gnosco', we know it at a guttural-level).  This is why Paul prays this prayer for the church in Ephesus (click HERE for the chapter):

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family
in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches
of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit
in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell
in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded
in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to
know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may
be filled with all the fullness of God.         

      
His prayer here is about knowing God more deeply, even knowing (in a soul-level way) the love of Christ that is humanly beyond knowing fully.   If this doesn't resonate with us at all, we might find it worthwhile to examine our understanding of what the Gospel is and what it means to us.

3. The testimony of the Holy Spirit that we are children of God.

Romans 8:16 states is simply this way: "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God."  I used to work with woman years ago serving together with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in New England.  Her mother once told a group of us that when her daughter was young she would sometimes say that she knew something deep inside by saying, "Mom, I know it with my know-er."  Cute, but also perhaps theologically accurate.  For those who are born again (John 3) and who have the Holy Spirit (Acts 2), we have One who bears testimony within us that indeed we are children of God, adopted through the work of Christ on the Cross.

So how does one 'test' this?  Well, in accordance with the 2 other ideas shared above, the testimony of the Spirit should be a confirmation.  Is it possible to think that the Spirit is confirming your 'child of God' status when in fact you are not yet born again?  Certainly.  But if we combine all three of these tests, we are more likely to come to an accurate assessment of our spiritual state.  But don't miss that there is a mysterious kind of 'knowing with your know'er', or perhaps more accurately 'knowing with The Knower' that speaks to our spirit a confirmation of our status.  I encourage people to use this as a question for ourselves and for others - "Do I sense God's affirmation that I am redeemed and born again?" and "Do you sense God's affirmation that you are redeemed and born again?").

I close with this.
There will be wolves among the sheep.
There will be those who are misled into thinking they are born again when they are not.
But using these three tests can move us toward much greater assurance that we are indeed adopted children of God.

- tC