Risk Is Right: Better To Lose Your Life Than Waste It

Every once in a while I like to let people know what I'm reading.  If you are ever around when I am teaching, you'll probably have already heard about this book as I (like most pastors and preachers) often infuse what God is teaching me into my preaching and teaching.

Risk Is Right (click the title to purchase this on Amazon or you can get it free at www.desiringgod.org) is a short book - only 51 pages - that challenges the reader to live a risk-filled life for God.  Notice here that I didn't say a foolish life for the sake of risk or for an adrenaline rush.  Risking for God is very different than risking to impress self, others, or risking for a "high".

Piper challenges the reader to look at a variety of biblical models of risk like Esther, Paul, and Joab.
These characters saw that safety was not always the best option and that trusting in God for good things, for God-honoring things is right.

One of my favorite points of the books is that life is inherently risk-filled.  I love this notion because it presses us to think differently about risk.  The question is less about IF we risk and more so FOR WHOM will we risk.  Life is going to have risk, so let's at least make our risk worth something.

A deeper thought that arises out of this book and some of my own reflecting afterward is this: for the Christian all risk for God is worthy because in the end, we are guaranteed Heaven.  If we risk and fail, so we fail.  If we risk and are embarrassed, so be it.  But in the worst of all options we risk and lose our lives for Christ.  And the result?  We are eternity with Christ forever.  And so those doing things like planting churches in places like Turkey and Afghanistan - are they fools for Christ?  Perhaps, but then they are in the company of the Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 4:10).

Risk is right if the goal is to honor and find joy in Christ.
This is a short and challenging read.  I recommend it.

- tC

Not Emotion, Not Cognition, but Affections

(Photo by dream designs - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

(Photo by Luigi Diamanti - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Let's flip around the perspective from our last blog post.  In the last post we talked about how God loves us even though He has no need for us, and how this love is the deepest and truest form of love because it is not about manipulation or an exchange based on insecurity.

What about our love toward God?  How should we love God?  You will hear people talk about 'head' vs. 'heart' knowledge.  This language, however helpful, should be used cautiously because people often think of the head as the center of thinking and the heart as the center of emotion.  In the biblical language, the heart was not the emotional center as much as "the center for both physical and emotional-intellectual-moral activities" (see Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology).  The Hebrew word for heart speaks actually less to the 'heart' and more to 'the guts' - that part inside you that is the center of who you are and where you will find your deepest convictions.

So we are, ultimately, to love God out of this - our heart, our guts, our center.  The implications are many. While obedience for obedience sake does get us to do the right things, we should be clear that when we obey just to obey, we are missing out on the fact that God's goodness and grace toward us should be the motivating factor.  If my wife Jenny is being loved by me, from time-to-time, even when I don't feel loving, most people would say, "That's life and part of being married", and I would agree.  But if my love for her is based solely or mostly on obedience to our marriage vows, no one would say that yes, that is deep and meaningful love.

And so it is with God.  We should be moving toward a place where our deepest heart-soul desire is to love God and we should be finding that we are operating out of a felt and experienced love for Him.  When you ask me why I read the Bible, I should be able to say, "Because in it I find love and guidance and ultimately, I find God, and this brings me the deepest sense of joy."  Jonathan Edwards dealt with this concept many years ago when he spoke about religious affections.

So I close by asking - what are the affections of your heart toward God?  May we find our love for Him growing and thus find ourselves operating out of how His love impacts us deep within.

- tC   

God Has No Need For Me

(Photo by Stuart Miles - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Ponder this truth: God doesn't need me...or you...or anyone for that matter.  While this is probably disheartening at first and perhaps even scary, this truth is the ultimate sign of love.  How?  Let's look into it.

So much of the love we experience on earth is based on an exchange of affection - you love me, and I'll love you back.  If we're honest, we know this to be true even in some of our closest relationships.  Unfortunately, the kind of relationship where a person gives his or her all regardless of what is given back - those are very rare indeed.  Perhaps a parent to a child is the closest we get to this, or the sacrificial love we see of an elderly couple where one of the spouses gives full care to a debilitated spouse.

However, if God doesn't NEED us, there are a few invigorating and freeing realities.

1. Do we really want to serve a 'needy' God?
A powerful God?  A sovereign God?  An omnipresent God?  Yes.  But a God who is needy?  Honestly, not many of us crave to be around a needy person, let alone a God who is needy.

2. If God does not need us, it must mean something else, because the Bible clearly communicates that God desires to be in relationship with us.  God does not need us - He wants us.  He desires us because we were made by and for Him.  He desires to pour out His love on us and as we receive it and glorify Him, He is filled with joy that we are living as He intended, reveling in Him and glorifying Him as we know and reflect Him.

3. If God doesn't need me, but He still wants me, then the direction, the insight, the denial of certain things, the guidelines from Scripture - all of these are for us that we might live most fully, honor Him most fully, and in turn, find that these two things (living fully and honoring Him) are not different truths world's apart, but instead they function together in a symbiotic relationship.  Life is most full and most human when we are most fully honor and love God.

He doesn't need us.  He wants us.  And in this there is freedom and joy.
- tC