Piper on our Fixation with Personal Comfort

These words from John Piper, written shortly after 9/11/01, are worthy of significant consideration:

There is a mindset in the prosperous West that we deserve pain-free, trouble-free existence. When life deals us the opposite, we have a right not only to blame somebody or some system and to feel sorry for ourselves, but also to devote most of our time to coping, so that we have no time or energy left over for serving others.

This mind-set gives a trajectory to life that is almost universal - namely, away from stress and toward comfort and safety and relief. Then within that very natural trajectory some people begin to think of ministry and find ways of serving God inside the boundaries set by the aims of self-protection. Then churches grow up in this mindset, and it never occurs to anyone in such a community of believers that choosing discomfort, stress, and danger might be the right thing - even the normal, biblical thing - to do. 

-- John Piper, The Roots of Endurance, 18

There is enough in those two paragraphs to chew on for days. It cuts right to the heart of many hot-button political and societal issues. But more to the point, it calls us to ask some tough questions about how we as believers and as churches live in the world.

Satan's game plan vs. God's game plan

"If Satan's basic game plan is pride, seeking to draw us into his life of arrogance, then God's basic game plan is humility, drawing us into the life of his Son. The Father can't think of anything better to give us than his Son."

-- Paul Miller, The Praying Life, 236

A Believer's Perspective

"[Believers] are encouraged to persevere, knowing that a great reward will be theirs on the day of salvation. Such perseverance is exhibited by living a godly life, living as good citizens, model slaves, gentle wives, and understanding husbands. When believers live in such a way, they indicate that they are placing their hope in God rather than in the joys and comforts of this world… those who hope and trust in God and in his future reward will have the strength to endure whatever comes their way in the present. When believers set their hope on the future, they reveal that their salvation comes from the cross of Christ."

-- Thomas Schreiner's commentary on 1 Peter, p 45

(I found this to be a helpful guide to understanding 1 Peter 3:8-12, which is a summary of the section beginning at 2:12).

American Suffering

A challenging quote included in the Sunday sermon on 1 Peter:

“Your call may not involve literally hanging on a cross, being jailed or being burned at the stake here in America. But there is a fight that is much more subtle and much more insidious in America because we live in a society where pride and materialism and recreation and prosperity and fitting in has slowly taken away the sharp edge in most professing Christian’s lives. We look around and we rarely see anyone denying themselves, taking up their Cross and following Jesus. Now don’t you find that odd, since in Luke 9:32, Jesus literally said that unless you did so, you are not a follower of His at all. But the reality is that we’re in a culture that is built on free will instead of God’s will and that is why we must be the freaks. And while that may not mean being called to martyr our lives, we must martyr our way of life. In other words, we are called, particularly here in the United States to put the selfish, self-centered, materialism and recreation-oriented ways of life to death and march to a different beat altogether”
-Quote From Jesus Freak a.k.a. Martyrs video

Elijah Part 1

When we first meet Elijah in 1 Kings 17, times are not good for prophets of the Lord. King Ahab has just been introduced as King and we are told right off that "did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him." (1 Kings 16:30) His wife Jezebel (who, it seems, really "wore the pants" in that household) only made matters worse. They worshiped Baal and erected altars and even a temple for this false god. Ahab was awarded the dubious distinction of doing "more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him." He was a bad guy.

So Elijah comes on the scene as God's man, and obediently proclaimed the Lord's word in predicting the severe drought that was to come, and then went and hid. The Lord directed him to hide near a brook and commanded ravens to feed him. Talk about being totally dependent upon the Lord — Elijah saw God's provision in a miraculous way during this period.

But life must have been difficult there all alone in the wilderness, being sustained only by God's gracious provision of a brook and food from ravens. No doubt there was still the nagging fear that he might be discovered by those who would kill him. So we can only imagine what Elijah must have been thinking as the brook - the one God had led him to - began to dry out as the drought worsened. Here he was, totally dependent upon God, who had provided for him in miraculous ways, and slowly but surely the creek ran dry. Where was God? What happened?

Sometimes, even when we have seen God working on our behalf, our circumstances begin to change and we wonder if God has forgotten us. Maybe we wonder if he's really all-loving and/or all-powerful after all. We wonder where he went. Maybe Elijah had these thoughts, but God was no doubt at work building his faith. After the creek totally dried up, God again spoke to Elijah and sent him somewhere else.

A last observation is that Elijah did not leave that creek before God directed him. Even as it was obviously running dry, Elijah did not take matters into his own hands to try to fix the situation. He probably did wonder what was going on, but ultimately he trusted in the Lord to take care of him, just as he had done through the ravens to that point. We can learn a lesson from Elijah here because I suspect that many of us are prone to want to "fix" tough circumstances quickly (after all we live in the "your way right away" culture). But Elijah demonstrated uncommon patience and trust in the face of a worsening situation. How would we respond in similar trials?

Well God was not done building Elijah's faith....