Who am I?

The Apostle Paul asked the believers in Corinth two searching questions: “And what do you have that you did not receive?  But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7)

As I read these words I was arrested again by the thought that everything I have, I have received; everything I possess has been given to me. I did not earn it. I do not deserve it. Everything I have that may be considered good or valuable is a gift that has been handed to me by God.

I must walk in humbleness and meekness. I must adorn myself with the attitude of an orphaned child who has just been adopted by the king. I am blessed beyond all comprehension.

Such thoughts radically change your understanding of who you are. As I pondered these two questions several things became clear about who I am as a person.

1. I am not defined by what I don’t have, but by what I do have.

We have become a society that defines a person by what they are after, not by what they already possess. People are labeled according to their ability to acquire, not by their ability to appreciate.

How backwards! If you conclude that you don’t have anything, then I can assure you that things are not what you need most. You don’t need to fill your hands, you need to let God fill your heart.

2. I am defined not by what I have achieved, but by what I have received.

Too often people find that at the top of the ladder of success there is only an empty room. The promises of “just one more sale” or “just one more award” or “just one more degree” or “just one more victory” are empty. They cannot deliver. I discover who I am not by chasing something I must catch in order to be happy, but by being captured by the One who is pursuing me in order to bring me joy.

3. I am defined not by what I possess, but by who (or what) possesses me.

One of the most pernicious lies of our time is “He who dies with the most toys wins.”  The fact is that he who dies with the most toys still dies. But it is not always things that people long to possess. Some of us lust after intangibles like increased leisure time, family harmony, or just a quiet walk in the woods. We’ve determined that our lives become successful only if we have the things we want. If I long for more time in the boat on the lake, but can’t have it, my life is miserable. If I am able to order my life so that I can fish all I want then my life is meaningful.

What we forget, however, is that more often than not we are possessed by our possessions. As P.T. Forsythe so wisely said, “The first duty of every soul is not to gain it’s freedom, but to choose its master.”

What possesses you? What dominates your thinking? To what does your mind drift in unguarded moments? To what do you sacrifice your free time?

4. I am defined not by what I hold, but by how I hold it.

How I hold on to the things God places in my life says more about who I am than how many things I hold. Is it a white-knuckle grip you have upon the things in your life? Erwin Luzter has well said that “Money is loaned, not owned”!

Do you hold the things in your life knowing they are His or as if they are yours? What would God have to do to wrench some of His things from your hands and put them into someone else’s?

5. I am defined not so much by what I ask for, but by what I give thanks for.

It is true that the Scriptures say “You have not because you ask not.” We should not be ashamed to bring our requests to God. Yet, Jesus’ identified gratitude as an attitude that marks out the true believer from the phony (Luke 17:11-19).

I urge you, make a little time to take stock of who you are and what you’ve got. Where did you get it? From whom did it come to you? How do you hold it? Or does it hold you? How could you discern the correct answer to the previous question? How does the “stuff” in your life lay bare your basic attitudes toward life?

Now, ponder again those two powerful questions:  “What do you have that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”

Such a view of yourself and the stuff entrusted to you is quite counter-cultural, isn’t it? Over the next week, see if you can identify ways the world preaches its message to the contrary. Ask God what concrete, specific steps you might take to re-think and re-arrange your life according to His value system.

New Resources: Titus

Over on the “Resources” page I have just posted the audio and print resources of a nine part series through the book of Titus. The theme for the study is “Truth Shining Through Transformed Lives.”

I pray that God will use these not only in your own life, but as you serve and minister at your local church.

The Logic of Love

“We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

Being loved precedes and enables being loving.

Thus we love best not when we try harder, but when we rest more deeply.

Where is the Wisdom?

“Few pursuits of the human heart predate our search for wisdom.  The tempter was confident that, even in a perfect world, his seductions would find an ear once the woman saw ‘that the tree was desirable to make one wise’ (Gen. 3:6).  The record of our rebel race since that time reveals discoveries of knowledge and technology that are nothing short of breathtaking.  Yet, T.S. Eliot still rightly asks:  ‘Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?  Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’

At the dawn of the nuclear age, General Omar Bradley rightly observed, ‘Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.  If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.’  The exponential growth of technological knowledge since that day has rendered us neither wiser nor godlier.  We have, however, lost something priceless, something that no amount of mere information can regain for us.

Now, more than ever, we must know wisdom and no better starting point for doing so can be found than the Book of Proverbs.  From its pages, God promises to set us on ‘The path of life’ (Prov. 15:24) and to rescue us from ‘the way of death’ (14:12; 16:25).” (Proverbs: A Mentor Commentary, p.11)

Sovereingty & Responsibility

“Man’s steps are ordained by the Lord, How then can man understand his way?” (Proverbs 20:24)

“Ultimately, we are not directors, but followers.  The first line of the proverb is a repeat from Psalm 37:23.  There, Solomon’s father used it in a context of blessing.  Solomon repeats it here, as he contemplates the mystery of man’s freewill and God’s sovereignty.  Here, as in the multiplied centuries of both Jewish and Christian theology, the two strains of truth are not reducible to the smallness of man’s understanding.  In the end, God’s sovereignty must win out, though Scripture squarely puts responsibility upon us to choose the Lord’s way.  Solomon has probed this mystery before (Prov. 16:1, 3, 9; 19:21).  The word translated ‘Man’s’ is distinct from the word used for ‘man’ in line two.  The first word is used in distinction from the second to describe man at his strongest and wisest.[i]  The very highest of human insight, strength, wisdom and capability cannot ever search out completely the mystery of God’s will and way with him.

The second line echoes this mystery in the form of a question: ‘How then can man understand his way?’  This is man, ordinary man — you and me, tangled in our frailties and faults.  What hope do we have of ever tracing out God’s way for us?  Ultimately, we cannot.  This can never become a copout, though, for it is the path of wisdom to understand one’s way (Prov. 14:8).  Yet, in the end we must confess: ‘I know, O Lord, that a man’s way is not in himself; Nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps’ (Jer. 10:23).  Indeed, ‘The mind of man plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps’ (Prov. 16:9).  Ultimately, our only hope lies in the fear of the Lord: ‘Who is the man who fears the Lord?  He will instruct him in the way he should choose’ (Ps. 25:12; cf. Prov. 3:5-6).

This second line should not be read as expressing despair, but doxology.  Though a sense of hopelessness can come to the one dependent upon his own resources, to the one shut up to the sovereign grace and providence of God, such surrender is the glad joy of worship.  ‘With Thy counsel Thou wilt guide me, And afterward receive me into glory’ (Ps. 73:24).  The so-called problem of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will always ends in either the folly of overemphasizing one over the other or in the doxology of holding both as absolute and non-competing truths of God’s Word, whose interrelationship cannot be fully traced out by finite, human minds.  Let us take the path of surrender, obedience and worship rather than self-reliance, arrogance and dogmatism.” (pp.454-455, Proverbs: A Mentor Commentary)