Stop Trying to Stop Sinning, Part 1

What if the best thing you could do for your Christian life is to stop trying not to sin? What if your efforts to stop sinning are at best a waste of your time and at worst actually hurting your spiritual life?

While in high school, I worked at a pharmaceutical retail store similar to Walgreen's. My boss, an older Christian man with a charismatic personality, had a favorite question that he asked me repeatedly. I am sure he asked me this question at least once or twice a week. "Brad" he would say to get my attention. "Do you love Him?"

I knew he was referring to Jesus. I would answer affirmatively, slightly embarrassed at his forwardness. He would press further. "But do you really love Him?"

The All-Satisfying Face of God

"You fill their womb with treasure; they are satisfied with children, and they leave their abundance to their infants.
As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness."
Psalm 17:14-15

My kids and I have started a new morning ritual this school year. Every day, as we make our way to their school, one of them reads a Psalm aloud. After the Psalm, there is a moment of silence and then a prayer. That quiet moment between the psalmist's prayer and our own is one of the most tangibly (and yet intangible) holy moments of my day. The Lord has spoken prayers into our hearts, and as the truck engine rattles and hums its doxology, we silently prepare our hearts to respond in kind. By May, we will have traversed our way through the streets, through the school year, and through the Psalter with our prayers for mercy, justice, and jubilation over both.

Last week, Noah read Psalm 17 for us. I have probably read this Psalm numerous times, but it took my 10-year-old son reading these verses about children for me to more deeply understand what this prayer means. It is a prayer about satisfaction.

Here Comes the Sun

"Here comes the sun.
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's alright." - George Harrison

I could never live in the state of Washington. It rains too much. Or so I've heard.

Every so often I wake up with this feeling that something is missing, like the means to get up and start the day is still tucked away somewhere under the bed covers. Eventually I slug my way over to a window and realize that I was wrong. My absent enthusiasm is not hidden under sheets but behind thick, dark clouds. It's a dank, dismal morning with no visible sunrise.

Mission

"Make a table of acacia wood - two cubits long, a cubit wide and a cubit and a half high. Overlay it with pure gold and make a gold molding around it."
Exodus 25:23-24

Honestly, it's one of those parts of the Bible that is really easy to skip over. When the Lord wants you to build something, He can be painfully explicit in the building plans: use this much of this material on this part of this thing which is to be this size - no more, no less. And so on and so forth. I realize that, tedious as it appears, this is still God's Word, so I sort of feel guilty if I skip over it. My typical solution? Speed reading.

But when I recently encountered the passage in Exodus in which God gives building instructions for His tabernacle, I wasn't bored. I was actually a little jealous.

Come and See

"And I still haven't found what I'm looking for."
U2

"God looks down from heaven on the children of man
To see if there are any who understand, who seek after God."
Psalm 53:2

There is this scene in the early chapters of the gospel of John where Jesus has one of His first encounters with a couple of His future disciples. Up until this point, these two men have been disciples of John the Baptist. But when Jesus shows up and John begins to call Him "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," the disciples can't help being drawn to this mysterious figure.

After one such comment by John as Jesus passed by, these two disciples begin to trail Jesus, following Him from a distance to get a better understanding of this holy stranger. Jesus is aware of their presence, and He turns and asks them a simple, yet very revealing question: "What is it you are seeking?"

The Lotus of Pleasure

The trees around them all their food produce:
Lotus the name: divine, nectareous juice!
(Thence call'd Lo'ophagi); which whose tastes,
Insatiate riots in the sweet repasts,
Nor other home, nor other care intends,
But quits his house, his country, and his friends.
- The Odyssey, Homer

We need a new car.

Well, need is a strong word. But here, you be the judge. On our 2000 Dodge Grand Caravan, there is a huge crack in the windshield. The CD player is broken. Right turning signal doesn't work. Driver and passenger side windows do not roll down. (The passenger side window is kept up by two sticks lodged at the base. That's right, sticks.) The tag light is out (I know because I recently got pulled over for that one). Now the passenger side door interior is falling off the metal frame when you open the door. My patient wife has driven this van for about 9 years, and we claim to hold on to vehicles until they fall apart. Well, it's falling apart.

The Music Inside

The rain beat heavily on the windshield, my wipers wiping furiously as I sped down the highway. The wind blew with even greater fury as small leafy branches flew across my path, ripped from the strong arms of their trees and carried helplessly now by the will of the storm.

Inside my truck, I was driven by another will. I was on a mission.

I had just dropped off my children in the safety of my parents' home where they were staying the night. The task now before me was to pick up dinner and a movie before my wife returned home from work. On the other side of this storm was a Friday night stay-at-home date: hot wings and The King's Speech. Meanwhile, there was only the torrent of wind and rain and highway.