Life's Inanities and Ironies

  Humility when we must lean on others First Peter 5:7 is simple and sweeping: “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” Yet many of us find it harder to cast the care of being a burden than the care of the sickness itself. We never wanted to need help. We never wanted family or church to rearrange their lives around our weakness. Scripture does not shame the one who must receive. It shames the pride that refuses to receive. The early church held all things common so that none would lack (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35). Pure religion visits the fatherless and widows in their affliction (James 1:27). When we are the one in affliction, allowing the saints to fulfill that calling is part of our obedience. There is a holy humility in saying, “I cannot do this alone.” It is the same humility that lets the Spirit help our infirmities (Romans 8:26). It is the same humility that lets the body of Christ function. The Lord who cares for you has also placed people around you to be the ...

  The secret Paul learned in every state Paul wrote from prison, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound… I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:11-13). Contentment is not natural. It is learned. And it is often learned most deeply when sickness strips away every ability to “do.” First Thessalonians 5:16-18 commands us: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” Notice it does not say give thanks for the sickness as if it were good in itself, but in every thing. The circumstance is real; the thanksgiving is an act of faith that God remains sovereign and good. Job lost everything and still worshiped. Habakkuk, facing barren fields, still determined to rejoice in the Lord (Habakkuk 3:17-18). The believer who can no longer help anyone else is not exempt from these commands. In fact, ...

  What Scripture commands when we are sick and dependent James does not leave the sick believer to suffer in isolation. He gives clear instruction: “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (James 5:14-15). He continues, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (v. 16). Notice the direction of the command. The sick one is to call. Dependence is not failure; it is obedience. We are not designed to carry every burden alone. Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” There is a difference between the personal load each must carry (Galatians 6:5) and the crushing burden that requires the help of the body. When sickness makes us unable to help ourselves or others...

When we can no longer help ourselves There comes a day for many of us when the honest confession is this: I cannot help myself, and I certainly cannot help anyone else. Pride hates that admission. Scripture meets it with one of the most liberating truths in all the Bible. Paul pleaded three times for the thorn to be removed. The Lord’s answer was not healing, but this: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Paul then declared, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me… for when I am weak, then am I strong” (vv. 9-10). God is not limited by our inability. In fact, He often waits until our own strength is gone so that His power alone is seen. When we are reduced to the place where we cannot rise, cannot serve, cannot even pray as we used to, the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered (Romans 8:26). Our weakness becomes the ve...

 Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Word of God never pretends that the righteous will always walk in unbroken health. From Job on the ash heap to Paul with his thorn, from David on the bed of languishing to the saints James addresses, Scripture faces sickness head-on. It shows us both the outward man that perishes and the inward man that is renewed. It teaches us how to live when we can no longer help ourselves, let alone carry the load for others. These six posts draw from the whole counsel of God so that, whether we are the one lying weak or the one standing beside the bed, we may walk in faith, humility, and hope. The dichotomy of body and spirit that frees us from despair When sickness strikes and strength fails, the first truth we must settle is that we are not merely physical beings. Paul wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). The body m...

  So much has happened in the last few days, and I’m still trying to soak it all in. Thursday morning I sat with the heart surgeon at IU Methodist in Indianapolis. They told me they can help me. On the 26th of this month I will go in for double-bypass surgery. I am more than a little scared physically. Spiritually, I know I have nothing to fear. Convincing my mind of that truth is the hard part. If someone had told me even a couple of years ago that a man could feel genuine physical dread and yet rest in complete spiritual peace at the same time, I would have thought they were talking nonsense. But the closer I walk with the Lord, the more I see that the two can truly dwell in the same body. The outward man and the inward man are not the same thing. Scripture has been preparing us for this reality all along. Paul wrote, “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). The body can be breaking down whil...

There comes a moment in the life of every believer—sometimes gradually, sometimes with the sudden force of a diagnosis, a failing body, or the quiet recognition that the years have grown short—when the nearness of death can no longer be ignored. The end of this earthly pilgrimage is no longer a distant theological concept. It is imminent. The horizon of eternity has drawn close, and the soul must reckon with the unalterable truth that soon it will step from this life into the presence of the living God. This is not a subject for the faint of heart, nor for those who prefer the soft language of modern sentimentality. Scripture does not permit us to treat death as a gentle transition or a natural cycle of life. Death is an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26). It is the wages of sin (Romans 6:23). It is the great leveler that strips away every earthly pretense, every possession, every reputation, and every remaining ambition. Yet for the one who is in Christ, death has been stripped of its ultima...

  * (Hebrews 3:12–15) * The writer of Hebrews does not treat hardness of heart as a sudden event. He treats it as a progressive danger that can overtake even those who have already tasted the goodness of God. After quoting Psalm 95, he presses the warning home: “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.” (Hebrews 3:12–15) Notice the careful language. The danger is an “evil heart of unbelief.” The means by which it takes root is “the deceitfulness of sin.” The result is progressive hardening. And the only window of opportunity named is “To day.” Hardening rarely begins with open rebellion. It usually ...

  The final word of biblical adaptation is not nostalgia for what was, but expectancy for what God is yet to do. Isaiah 43:18-19 declares, “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” The temptation in every season of change is to keep looking backward—to the former health, the former ministry, the former security, the former relationships. The Lord commands the opposite. Stop remembering the former things as the measure of the present. Lift your eyes. God is not finished. He specializes in making ways in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Paul lived this truth. Philippians 3:13-14 records his settled method: “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Luke 9:62 adds t...

  The biographical examples of Scripture are not given merely for inspiration. They establish non-negotiable principles that every believer must apply when life changes. From the whole counsel of God we draw seven anchors that must not be moved. First , anchor yourself in the unchanging Word. Psalm 119:89 declares that forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven. When everything else shifts, the believer returns to the settled Word. Do not adapt your doctrine to the new season. Force the new season to submit to the doctrine already revealed. Second , refuse the counsel of the ungodly. Psalm 1 stands as a perpetual warning. The world offers endless strategies for coping. The fundamentalist rejects them all. Our help comes from the Lord which made heaven and earth (Psalm 121:2). Third , maintain the fear of the Lord. Many adapt by growing casual with holy things. Scripture warns through Nadab and Abihu, Achan, and Ananias and Sapphira that God is not mocked. Seasons of personal up...

  No New Testament figure endured more constant and varied change than the apostle Paul. He went from respected Pharisee to hunted Christian, from free preacher to chained prisoner, from successful church planter to shipwrecked castaway. Yet from a Roman prison he could write, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:11-13). Contentment is not natural. Paul says he “learned” it. It is a grace cultivated through repeated experiences of both abundance and need, always in dependence upon the strengthening Christ. The fundamentalist Christian must reject the world’s counterfeit versions of contentment—positive thinking, gratitude journals divorced from the cross, or the pursuit of “balance.” Biblical contentment is the...

  David was anointed king as a young man, yet he spent years living in caves, hunted like an animal by the very king he had served. The path from the sheepfold to the throne was not a straight line of promotion. It was a long, painful education in waiting upon God while every outward circumstance contradicted the promise. 1 Samuel 16 records the anointing. 1 Samuel 18 begins the jealousy of Saul. By chapter 22 David is in the cave of Adullam with every one that was in distress, in debt, or discontented. The man after God’s own heart adapted by refusing two clear opportunities to kill Saul and seize the kingdom by force. He would not stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s anointed. Adaptation for David meant protecting the integrity of his future throne by refusing to grasp it prematurely. The Psalms written during these years are the manual of godly waiting. Psalm 57, composed in the cave, begins, “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: ye...

  Moses’ life is divided by the Spirit of God into three distinct forty-year periods, each requiring a complete adaptation of identity, purpose, and dependence. Forty years as a prince in Egypt. Forty years as a shepherd in Midian. Forty years as the deliverer and lawgiver of Israel. At each transition the familiar was stripped away and a new man was required. Acts 7:22-23 tells us that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and in deeds. Yet when he attempted to deliver his people in the energy of the flesh, he failed, killed an Egyptian, and fled. The next forty years were spent on the backside of the desert, keeping the flock of his father-in-law. The man who once moved in royal courts now moved among sheep. The man who once spoke with authority now lived in obscurity. God was not wasting time. He was producing meekness. Numbers 12:3 records the result: “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth...

  The book of Job confronts every believer with the most severe form of adaptation imaginable: the sudden, comprehensive loss of nearly everything that makes life bearable, while the sufferer remains conscious that God Himself has permitted it. In a single day Job lost his oxen, his sheep, his camels, his servants, and all ten of his children. Then his own body was covered with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. His wife looked at him in the ashes and said, “Curse God, and die.” Job’s first recorded response remains the gold standard of godly adaptation under catastrophic loss: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). The Holy Spirit immediately adds, “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” This is not stoicism. This is worship. Job did not deny the pain. He did not pretend the losses were small. He simply refused to let the lo...

  Brothers and sisters, few lives in Scripture display more violent and rapid change than the life of Joseph. One day he is the favored son wearing a coat of many colours. The next he is stripped, thrown into a pit, and sold to Ishmaelite traders. One day he is steward of Potiphar’s entire house. The next he is falsely accused and cast into prison. One day he is forgotten by the butler. The next he stands before Pharaoh and is made ruler over all the land of Egypt. Genesis 50:20 is the theological key that unlocks every reversal: “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” The fundamentalist Christian must learn to read every sudden downturn through this lens. Men may mean it for evil. Circumstances may appear chaotic. But the sovereign God is never absent, never surprised, and never defeated. Joseph’s adaptation was not passive resignation. In Potiphar’s house he served with excellence. I...

  Beloved saints of the living God, the first great movement of biblical adaptation is not found in a crisis of health or a sudden loss of income. It is found in a quiet, devastating command that strips a man of every earthly security at once. Genesis 12:1 records the word of the Lord to Abram: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee.” No map was given. No timetable was supplied. No guarantee of comfort was offered. The call was absolute: leave the familiar, leave the family, leave the security of the known, and walk toward a land you have never seen. Abraham obeyed. Hebrews 11:8 states the matter with divine clarity: “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.” This is the purest form of adaptation the believer will ever face—adaptation by obedience alone. The modern evangelical world sof...

Because of some of my own life changes recently I felt it an imparitive to dig into scripture to find answers for myself and to share with those of you that read my blog. As you will read that I have found below God is in control always Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, we live in a world that is constantly shifting. Jobs end. Health fails. Relationships fracture. Homes are left behind. Seasons of abundance give way to lean years. The body that once ran freely now moves slowly. The familiar becomes strange, and the plans we carefully laid crumble under the weight of providence we did not choose. For the true believer who holds the inerrant Word of God as the sole and sufficient rule of faith and practice, these changes are not random, nor are they outside the sovereign hand of the Almighty. The question is never whether change will come—Scripture declares that it will—but how the child of God is to respond when it arrives. The complete counsel of God, from Genesis to Revelation, ...

*A Meditation on Revelation 6* The book of Revelation does not begin with the church’s comfort. It begins with the throne. And from that throne the Lamb of God, the only One found worthy, takes the scroll and begins to break its seals. What follows in chapter 6 is not a distant curiosity for prophecy conferences. It is the opening of the storm of God’s wrath—the measured, righteous, unstoppable judgment of a holy God upon a world that has rejected His Son. This is not the final outpouring. The bowls of wrath still wait. But the seals are the beginning. The sky darkens. The earth trembles. The proud are shaken. And the question that rises from every corner of creation is the same: “Who is able to stand?” (Revelation 6:17). The First Four Seals: The Horses Ride When the Lamb opens the first seal, a white horse goes forth. Its rider carries a bow and is given a crown. He conquers, and keeps conquering. Many have wanted this rider to be Christ. Yet the Lamb is still opening the seals; He i...

A Meditation on Romans 8:26–28 There are seasons in the Christian life when words fail us. Not merely the polished words of public prayer, not even the quiet words we once offered so easily in private. There comes a deeper silence—an aching, wordless place where the heart is so pressed that language itself seems to abandon us. We sit, or we kneel, or we simply lie still, and the only sound that rises is a sigh too heavy for syllables. In those moments the believer often feels most alone, most inadequate, most afraid that heaven itself has grown distant. Yet it is precisely into that silence that the Apostle Paul speaks one of the most comforting and profound truths in all of Scripture. “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the ...

  Zechariah 12–14 The final oracle of Zechariah lifts our eyes to the climactic Day of the Lord. Chapter 12 opens with the nations gathered against Jerusalem. The Lord makes Jerusalem a cup of trembling and a burdensome stone (12:2–3). In that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them (12:8). Then comes one of the most profound Messianic prophecies in all of Scripture: “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son” (12:10). The One who is pierced is the Lord Himself speaking in the first person. The New Testament applies this directly to the crucified Christ (John 19:37; Revelation 1:7). A fountain will be opened to the house of David for sin and for uncleanness (13:1). The shepherd will be smitten and th...

Zechariah 6:9–15 & 9:9–10 After the eight visions, the Lord gives Zechariah a symbolic act. He is to take silver and gold from certain returned exiles, make crowns, and set them on the head of Joshua the high priest (6:11). Then the prophetic word is spoken: “Behold the man whose name is The Branch; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord: Even he shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne: and the counsel of peace shall be between them both” (6:12–13). Here the two offices that had been carefully separated in Israel—king and priest—are united in one Person, the Branch. Only Jesus Christ fulfills this prophecy. He is the King who sits on David’s throne, and He is the great High Priest who ever lives to make intercession. The counsel of peace is between the two offices because they meet perfectly in Him. Later, in the first major oracle of t...

  Zechariah 5 The sixth and seventh visions shift the tone from comfort to cleansing judgment. Zechariah first sees a flying scroll, twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide—the exact dimensions of the holy place in the tabernacle and the porch of Solomon’s temple (5:1–2). This is the curse that goes forth over the face of the whole earth. On one side it is written against every thief; on the other against every one who swears falsely by the Lord’s name. The scroll enters the house of the sinner and consumes it, with the timber and the stones (5:3–4). God’s Word is not only a word of comfort; it is a word of judgment. The same holy standard that once rested in the sanctuary now flies forth as a curse against unrepentant sin. Theft and false swearing—sins against both neighbor and God—are singled out, yet they represent the whole of covenant-breaking wickedness. The seventh vision is even more vivid. An ephah (a large measuring basket) appears, and a woman sits in the midst of it. The...