It Is Well

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Thankful

Joseph Rhea post:  Gratitude Is Hard to Do

Gratitude should fill the Christian’s life (1 Thess. 5:18; Acts 2:46-47), especially with Thanksgiving on the horizon. So why am I so prone to ingratitude? Genuine gratitude seems elusive.

We live in maybe the most prosperous country in certainly the most prosperous era yet of all time. And as people bought back into relationship with God by the merit of Jesus Christ, Christians should be even more thankful than anyone else. Besides, gratitude is fun! As G. K. Chesterton says, “Thanks are the highest form of thought, and gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." We miss out on so much when we fail to live gratefully.

I think there are three big reasons why gratitude can seem so hard to find.

1. Gratitude requires making more of the good we have than the good we don’t.

If you’re like me, you tend to dwell on what you’d like to have. I’d love to own a house. I’d like to have a permanent job. A book deal, maybe? I’m always looking to the next thing, the bigger or better thing. Wishing isn’t necessarily wrong. But wishing does necessarily preclude gratitude, because by definition I can’t be grateful for something I don’t have. And if wishing is all I do, I’ll never be grateful.

Gratitude requires moving my eyes from the things I don’t have to the things I do have. It means saying there is good, real good, in this car. In this job or this home. I have to say, in one sense, “This is enough.”

Gratitude celebrates blessings received. As long as we’re consumed with blessings we haven’t received, we’ll never possess it.

2. Our society cultivates ingratitude.

As if we couldn’t be ungrateful enough on our own, ingratitude may be the yeast that makes American culture rise. Advertising persuades us that this thing will satisfy that need we didn’t know we had 30 seconds ago. HGTV shows us how beautiful our homes could be if we only had $50,000 and a professional crew. Political radio—doesn’t matter the party—says we cannot rest until this agenda is met and those people are thrown out of Washington.

“If only” is the prayer behind ingratitude, and it’s everywhere.

Let's try a simple thought experiment. Pick an area of your life you talk about with your friends: your job, your salary, your body, your family. Then imagine one of your friends saying something like, “Guys, I want you to know that I’m really happy with the salary at this job.” Or, “I actually love the way my stomach looks right now.”

If you’re like me, you may have thought: Wow, she sounds a little full of herself. Or maybe, Let’s see how long he can whitewash this thing before we hear how he really feels.

Our culture assumes that normal people operate with a consistent level of discontentment. We think that “real” equals “dissatisfied.” We definitely don’t want to live with a Botox spirituality that papers over real problems with a smile. But we don’t want to steer so far from that ditch that we fall into its opposite. Our society’s gravitational pull is already toward ingratitude.

3. Ingratitude elevates desire for a creature over desire for the Creator.

We desire food, shelter, friendship, health, happiness. These appetites may lead us into sin, but God made us with them, and they’re good at root (see Ps. 104:14-15).

However, God also gave us an appetite so unique it has its own category: the desire to see and savor his infinite, eternal presence. Ecclesiastes describes it as God “put[ting] eternity into man’s heart” (3:11); Augustine captures it with the line, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” We all hunger for God.

More often than not, ingratitude comes when we try to satisfy this hunger for God with blatantly sinful desires or too much of our basic needs. Somewhere in our hearts, maybe on a level we’re not consciously aware of, we convince ourselves that whatever created thing we lack—health, popularity, pleasure—will satisfy us if we can get just a little more of it. 

But as Christians, we know that our satisfaction can only be found in God. Our creaturely appetites will be fulfilled in the new creation; but for now, Christ suffices in abundance or need, plenty or want, life or death (Phil. 4:11-13).

Gratitude is elusive because we’re easily duped into thinking that an eternal hunger can be satisfied with temporal things.

Cultivating Gratitude

With these three reasons for ingratitude in mind, here are some thoughts about how to cultivate gratitude this Thanksgiving season.

1. Raise your ingratitude-sensing antennae.

Start sensitizing yourself to ingratitude, in your own heart and around you. Complaints about a job or a spouse or a body part. Fantasies of a bigger house, a bigger bank account, a different political climate. Being aware of ingratitude-messages will help you deal with the root problem.

2. Cultivate contentment in Jesus.

Jesus Christ is the one and only key to human happiness. As God incarnate, he provides our ultimate satisfaction; as our atonement and mediator, he alone makes it possible for us to have the communion with God that brings ultimate satisfaction (Ps. 16:11).

Cultivating that relationship with God through Jesus builds contentment in our hearts. Preaching the gospel to ourselves, meditating on the Word, worshiping God through prayer and song—all these open our hearts to the divine fount where we find satisfaction. Tasting and seeing God’s goodness leads to gratitude.

3. Supplant ingratitude with thanksgiving.

Botox spirituality misses that gratitude grows out from the inside. Ingratitude, like any sin, is a lion that grows when we feed it and shrivels when we don’t.

Once we catch the messages of ingratitude around us and inside us, we can start supplanting ungrateful thoughts with prayers of thanks. Sure, our 2003 Ford Escape isn’t sexy; but it’s given us 150,000 miles of reliable service with barely a repair needed. Yes, my job will end in seven months; but it’s been a wonderful experience and kept our family fed for the last two years.

I don’t practice a Sabbath, but a rhythm of remembrance and worship seems like a great way to cultivate gratitude. Israelite festivals marked major occasions—both yearly rhythms like the harvest and also national turning points—with prayer and the celebration of God’s actions. Building times of identifying and celebrating blessing into our weeks, months, and years could help open our eyes to see and celebrate God’s goodness. Thanksgiving this week is a great time to start.

Derivative of the Supremacy of Jesus

Jonathan Parnell post:  The Local Church and the Supremacy of Christ

Membership in your local church is one of the most important things about you.

The local church is the greatest, most profound collective of which any human could be a part. Your family, your career, your nationality — these all pale in comparison to what it means to be a member of a local church. And of course, this doesn’t make any sense unless we understand what the local church actually is.

There is a lot we could say at this point, and there are many good definitions out there, but in hopes of keeping it basic, here’s one way to put it:

The local church is a community of Christians who live as the on-the-ground expression of the supremacy of Jesus by advancing his gospel in distance and depth.

Now, there are three important parts of this statement that especially highlight the unparalleled role of the local church. But foundational to the whole thing is the supremacy of Jesus, and before moving to the other pieces, this is worthy of our focus. The most basic part of this basic definition is that the local church is the on-the-ground expression of the supremacy of Jesus. What does that mean? And how so?

1. Jesus is supreme.

The centrality of the local church is derivative of the supremacy of Jesus. If it weren’t for him and who he is, the local church would simply be an affinity club, something conjured up by our own devices and sustained for our own false sense of hope. But Jesus is who he is, and he’s behind this thing. Jesus is the one who has all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18), the one before whom everyone will bow (Philippians 2:9–11), the one who reigns among a cascade of endless praise (Revelation 5:9–14).

Everything that is, or could be, for as long as it will ever be, is entirely pointing to Jesus — the eternal Son of God, the radiance of God’s glory, the exact imprint of God’s nature, the second person of the holy Trinity through whom all things were made, the one who became God with us, God in human flesh, the God-man, the last Adam, the offspring of Abraham, the lion of Judah, the prophet like Moses, the root of Jesse, the descendant of David, the suffering servant, the hope of Israel, the Savior of the world.

This is Jesus, and he is the great end. He is the one we are meant to see, to know, to treasure. Through our tears and triumphs, our pain and pleasures, our losses and loves, Jesus stands at the end of the road offering himself to us, inviting us to behold his worth and cherish his sufficiency.

And fact is, this is fact.

It isn’t ancient mythology or theological well-wishing. Jesus is real and everything the Bible says about him is true. And so we must ask: How is his reality felt?

2. Jesus expresses his supremacy.

If Jesus is really reigning, is that reign actually operative? What does it even do? In order for the reign of Jesus to transcend the mere climax of a good story, it must have a tangible expression in the real world. What is the force of his supremacy felt here?

Answer: his church.

It is no accident that immediately after Peter confesses the identity of Jesus — “You are the Christ, the son of the living God!” (Matthew 16:16) — Jesus makes a statement about the church. He says, first, “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (verse 17), and then, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (verse 18). Both parts of this statement are related to the supremacy of Jesus, making the church its exposé. The first part is about the church’s beginnings; the second part is about the church’s sustenance.

The church exists because God has designed it to be. It’s not according to “flesh and blood” creativity, but to God’s eternal purpose that he has realized in Jesus (Ephesians 3:11). This is God’s prerogative, in other words, and the purpose is to say something about himself by letting the church say something about Jesus. It is Jesus who stands as the fulcrum of a new nation, having created in himself “one new man” (Ephesians 2:15). And there’s the key: He’s the one creating, not us. We would all still be in darkness had it not been for the mission of God — Jesus having been sent, and his Spirit opening our eyes.

But not only that, the only reason the church lasts is because the Father, who put all things under the feet of Jesus, gave Jesus to the church (Psalm 110:1; Hebrews 1:13; Ephesians 1:22–23). Jesus gave his life for the church, but he also nourishes and cherishes her (Ephesians 5:29), which makes her holy and invincible. The head of the church is the ruler of the universe, which makes for pretty good auspices under which to have our being.

Everything about the church — her beginnings, her ongoing life, and her destiny — is owing to God alone, who laid out the script of world history in eternity past, the Father and Son agreeing in the Spirit’s fellowship to share their communion by creating, redeeming, and creating anew, all with the Son at the center (2 Timothy 1:9; Ephesians 1:4; 1 Peter 1:20; Revelation 13:8).

3. This expression is on the ground.

“On the ground” is another way to accent the local nature of how Jesus expresses his supremacy. Without doubt, there is the one holy, universal, and apostolic church — “all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:2). But then there is the myriad of her local expressions spread out across different times and places.

The time-and-place element has always been important, even long before interstate freeways and information highways have shrunk our modern landscape and discombobulated our sense of geographical belonging. Place matters, as the Book of Acts shows us, because it reminds us that the work of Christ isn’t an ideological movement for abstract, amorphous peoples, but that it’s the good news proclaimed to people who are surrounded by the concreteness of somewhere, some place.

It is glorious that Jesus became God with us — with us here on this earth as the God-man. And then there’s a whole extra layer of wonder in that he is God with us here in the particulars — here on the same road I drive to work everyday, when I get stuck at that same light, by that same gas station. The supremacy of Jesus is expressed not just in the church invisible, but here, in the touchable, smellable, hearable pell-mell of this planet — and he does it by touchable, smellable, hearable assemblies of people worshiping him, serving one another, and making him known.

And no matter how insignificant it may sometimes feel, our being part of that, our participation in that fellowship, is one of the most important things about our lives.

Pictures of Christ

Steven Dilla at 843 Acres post:  3 Characteristics of Christ in Luke 5

3 Pictures of Christ in Luke 5 | by Steven Dilla

1. Christ as a Master Worth Following

As Simon Peter responded to Jesus’ command to lower his nets after a night of fruitless fishing, he called Jesus, “master.” It’s likely he was obeying out of respect, and Simon Peter must have been wondering what kind of master Jesus was. The masters of the world lorded their power over people like Simon Peter; he was a mere fisherman, dependent on what he pulled from the water for the well-being of his life. After a miraculous catch, Simon Peter fell in awe at the Master’s feet. The sovereignty and generosity Jesus had shown was something Simon Peter joyfully pursued with all his heart, mind, and strength. (Luke 5.1-11)

2. Christ as the Lord and Healer of Our Greatest Pain

Later, Jesus gave clean skin to a leper and strong legs to a paralytic; but he wasn’t satisfied with just physical healing. Jesus knew there were many then, and now, that he would not stand in front of to touch and heal, so he drew our attention to something greater. “Your sins are forgiven,” he said to the paralytic. Jesus taught it is sin that separates men and women from God. It is only in the healing of our deepest pain, which we cannot heal apart from Christ, that Jesus shows himself as true Lord and Healer. (Luke 5.12-26)

3. Christ as Friends of Sinners 

Tax collectors were notoriously corrupt. Eating at Levi’s table is the equivalent of sipping wine from Bernie Madoff’s cellar——it’s offensive to even think of an upright person partaking in the fruit of corruption. Jesus wasn’t there to enjoy exquisite food and drink, he was there to give himself as a friend. Jesus befriends sinners to his own detriment, giving up his reputation as the elite scorn him and offering his life as sinners reject him. Jesus is the living example that there is no greater love than a man laying down his life, even while we were yet sinners. (Luke 5.27-39)

None were left the same, all had been touched by grace. Instead of unapproachable power, Simon Peter found blessing. Instead of a God removed from the pain of life, the sick found intimacy and healing. Instead of judgment that precludes relationship, Levi found sacrifice that allowed for embrace. Christ shows himself as our greatest provider, the solution to our deepest problem, and loving friend who lays down all to live in relationship with us.

Gospel Centered

1. To be gospel-centered is first to do everything you do in reliance on blood-bought grace and promises.
2. To be gospel-centered is to do everything you do with a view of displaying the all-satisfying grace of God.
3. To be gospel-centered is to live so that you show the glory of God,treasuring above all things the One through whom grace comes.

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Watch the entire sermon, Gospel-Centered History and Gospel-Centered Living.

Running Back to Your Promises

Blessings Like Wine Pouring off the Mountains

Amos 9

11-12 “But also on that Judgment Day I will restore David’s house that has fallen to pieces. I’ll repair the holes in the roof, replace the broken windows, fix it up like new. David’s people will be strong again and seize what’s left of enemy Edom, plus everyone else under my sovereign judgment.” God’s Decree. He will do this.

13-15 “Yes indeed, it won’t be long now.” God’s Decree.

“Things are going to happen so fast your head will swim, one thing fast on the heels of the other. You won’t be able to keep up. Everything will be happening at once—and everywhere you look, blessings! Blessings like wine pouring off the mountains and hills. I’ll make everything right again for my people Israel:

“They’ll rebuild their ruined cities.
They’ll plant vineyards and drink good wine.
They’ll work their gardens and eat fresh vegetables.
And I’ll plant them, plant them on their own land.
They’ll never again be uprooted from the land I’ve given them.”
God, your God, says so.