Once upon a time there were two grains of wheat lying on the floor of a warm and cozy barn. But one day, the farmer came in and told them, “I want to take you out of this comfortable barn and plant you in the earth. I’m going to place you in the cold ground and cover you with soil. It will be dark, and you will die. But I promise that you will multiply and become very fruitful.”

The first grain of wheat turned down the suggestion. “No way!” he said. “Count me out. I like my comfort, and I don’t want to die.” But the second one, after carefully considering the pain and discomfort of dying, decided the promise of a future harvest was worth the sacrifice. So the farmer took him outside and planted him in the ground, while allowing the first grain of wheat to remain inside the barn.

A few days later, a small green sprout appeared over where the seed had been planted. Then it grew and became a tall stalk of wheat that produced one hundred more grains. For the next forty years, the farmer planted all the seeds that had originated from that first grain of wheat, and year after year, the harvest multiplied. However, the grain of wheat that stayed in the barn remained there by itself, never multiplying–but he was very comfortable.

Which grain of wheat are you? Are you playing it safe, or have you let Christ plant you in the world? The only way you’ll ever become useful and fruitful in God’s kingdom is to abandon your own selfish desires, get out of your comfort zone, and serve the Lord by serving others.

Cognitive dissonance, the study of psychology tells us, is the internal tension that results when our experience doesn’t match our professed beliefs and values. It is that sense of unease when we encounter something that contradicts what we have held to be true. We often experience this tension in the course of academic training as we learn new ideas. But perhaps dissonance is felt most acutely when it occurs in the realm of faith commitments. How is it that my spouse has left me if marriage is God’s ideal? How is it that prayers seemingly go unanswered if I have been so faithful to pray? How do I reconcile my personal or the global experience of suffering with a view of a good and loving God?

 Now those who have never experienced (or noticed) cognitive dissonance as a reality in their own lives might be quick to offer all kinds of explanations for those who don’t find it quite as easy to reconcile the gaps between beliefs and experience: We have drifted away from our moral center. We have not studied enough, or prayed enough. Perhaps we have not understood right teaching. And surely there are times when all of these explanations may be true.

 But is it always so easy to explain dissonance away? I asked this question anew when I looked at the questions of John the Baptist. The gospels portray John with all the intensity and moral outrage of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Malachi—zealous prophets from the days of ancient Israel prone to weeping and crying out with zeal and tenacity. The courageous cousin of Jesus preached repentance resolutely, and even baptized Jesus in preparation for his own earthly ministry as the Jewish Messiah. He stood against the immorality and hypocrisy of those who were religious and political leaders. John was resolute in his ministry as the forerunner to the Messiah. Even as his own disciples came undone and complained that the crowds who once clamored to see him were now flocking to Jesus, John stood clear in his calling: “You yourselves bear me witness, that I have said, ‘I am not the Messiah,’ but ‘I have been sent before him'” (John 3:26-28).

 Yet all of this background creates a dramatic contrast once John was imprisoned. His resolve was shaken. Both Matthew and Luke’s gospels record his dissonance: “Now when John in prison heard of the works of Jesus, he sent word by his disciples, and said to him, ‘Are you the expected one, or shall we look for someone else?'” (Matthew 11:3; Luke 7:20)  His question belies his own ‘gap’ between the reality he envisioned and his current reality in a cold prison cell. If Jesus is the Messiah, John must have wondered, why am I sitting in this jail?  The Messiah John proclaimed would “thoroughly clear his threshing floor” and “burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12). The Messiah was coming to rid Israel—and indeed the world—of evil. Yet in John’s day to day existence in his lonely prison cell, evil had won the day. “Are you the expected one, or shall we look for someone else?”

 John’s dissonance is not unlike the gaps we often fall into between what we believe and what we experience. Yet the suffering that results from the gaps, according to author Scott Cairns, “[These also] can become illuminating moments in which we see our lives in the context of a terrifying, abysmal emptiness, moments when all of our comfortable assumptions are shown to be false, or misleading, or at least incomplete.”(1) The gap between what we, like John, believe about the nature and ministry of the Messiah and the reality of a Jesus who is free from our comfortable assumptions often creates unbearable dissonance.

 Jesus acknowledged that his ministry would be disruptive, and even be misunderstood. In responding to John’s doubts, Jesus said, “Blessed is the one who keeps from stumbling over me” (Matthew 11:6). Surely, the gaps between what we believe and what we experience often cause us to stumble and fall. Yet, as Cairns suggests, might mining those gaps also illuminate new paths of discovery from Jesus’s own life and ministry? The gaps we experience often hold the treasure of new insight and the beauty of a more faithful devotion if we are willing to let go of our “comfortable assumptions” and dig deep, where what is precious and most valuable is often found in the deepest places of dissonance.  

 Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

 (1) Scott Cairns, The End of Suffering (Brewster MA: Paraclete Press, 2009), 8.

Morning   “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”   Revelation 22:17

 Jesus says, “take freely.” He wants no payment or preparation. He seeks no

recommendation from our virtuous emotions. If you have no good feelings, if you

be but willing, you are invited; therefore come! You have no belief and no

repentance,–come to him, and he will give them to you. Come just as you are,

and take “Freely,” without money and without price. He gives himself to needy

ones. The drinking fountains at the corners of our streets are valuable

institutions; and we can hardly imagine any one so foolish as to feel for his

purse, when he stands before one of them, and to cry, “I cannot drink because I

have not five pounds in my pocket.” However poor the man is, there is the

fountain,  and just as he is he may drink of it. Thirsty passengers, as they go by,

whether they are dressed in fustian or in broadcloth, do not look for any

warrant for drinking; its being there is their warrant for taking its water

freely. The liberality of some good friends has put the refreshing crystal there

and we take it, and ask no questions. Perhaps the only persons who need go

thirsty through the street where there is a drinking fountain, are the fine

ladies and gentlemen who are in their carriages. They are very thirsty, but

cannot think of being so vulgar as to get out to drink. It would demean them,

they think, to drink at a common drinking fountain: so they ride by with parched

lips.  Oh, how many there are who are rich in their own good works and cannot

therefore come to Christ! “I will not be saved,” they say, “in the same way as

the harlot or the swearer.” What! go to heaven in the same way as a chimney

sweep. Is there no pathway to glory but the path which led the thief there? I

will not be saved that way. Such proud boasters must remain without the living

water; but, “Whosoever will, let him TAKE THE WATER OF LIFE FREELY.”

 

Evening   “Remove far from me vanity and lies.”    Proverbs 30:8   

“O my God, be not far from me.”   Psalm 38:21

 Here we have two great lessons–what to deprecate and what to supplicate. The

happiest state of a Christian is the holiest state. As there is the most heat

nearest to the sun, so there is the most happiness nearest to Christ. No

Christian enjoys comfort when his eyes are fixed on vanity–he finds no

satisfaction unless his soul is quickened in the ways of God. The world may win

happiness elsewhere, but he cannot. I do not blame ungodly men for rushing to

their pleasures. Why should I? Let them have their fill. That is all they have

to enjoy. A converted wife who despaired of her husband was always very kind to

him, for she said, “I fear that this is the only world in which he will be

happy,  and therefore I have made up my mind to make him as happy as I can in it.”

Christians must seek their delights in a higher sphere than the insipid

frivolities or sinful enjoyments of the world. Vain pursuits are dangerous to

renewed souls. We have heard of a philosopher who, while he looked up to the

stars, fell into a pit; but how deeply do they fall who look down. Their fall is

fatal. No Christian is safe when his soul is slothful, and his God is far from

him. Every Christian is always safe as to the great matter of his standing in

Christ, but he is not safe as regards his experience in holiness, and communion

with Jesus in this life. Satan does not often attack a Christian who is living

 near to God. It is when the Christian departs from his God, becomes spiritually

starved, and endeavours to feed on vanities, that the devil discovers his

vantage hour. He may sometimes stand foot to foot with the child of God who is

active in his Master’s service, but the battle is generally short: he who slips

as he goes down into the Valley of Humiliation, every time he takes a false step

invites Apollyon to assail him. O for grace to walk humbly with our God!

 

. . . Who saved us and called us to a holy calling.   2 Timothy 1:9 

 The apostle uses the perfect tense and says, “who saved us.” Believers in Christ Jesus are saved. They are not looked upon as people who are in a hopeful state and may ultimately be saved, but they are already saved. Salvation is not a blessing to be enjoyed upon our dying bed and to be sung of in a future state above, but a matter to be obtained, received, promised, and enjoyed now.

The Christian is perfectly saved in God’s purpose; God has ordained him to salvation, and that purpose is complete. He is saved also as to the price that has been paid for him: “It is finished” was the cry of the Savior before He died. The believer is also perfectly saved in His covenant Head, for as he fell in Adam, so he lives in Christ.

This complete salvation is accompanied by a holy calling. Those whom the Savior saved upon the cross are in due time effectually called by the power of God the Holy Spirit to holiness: They leave their sins; they endeavor to be like Christ; they choose holiness, not out of any compulsion, but from the power of a new nature, which leads them to rejoice in holiness just as naturally as when previously they delighted in sin. God neither chose them nor called them because they were holy, but He called them that they might be holy, and holiness is the beauty produced by His workmanship in them.

The excellencies that we see in a believer are as much the work of God as the Atonement itself. In this way the fullness of the grace of God is beautifully displayed. Salvation must be of grace, because the Lord is the author of it: And what motive but grace could move Him to save the guilty? Salvation must be of grace because the Lord works in such a manner that our righteousness is forever excluded. Such is the believer’s privilege—a present salvation; such is the evidence that he is called to it—a holy life.

Family Reading Plan    Isaiah 44    Revelation 14