Choosing what we want most over what we want now

Nearly six thousand students recently gathered for a mass worship event at Mississippi State University this month. In September 2023, five thousand students attended a mass worship service at Auburn University’s Neville Arena, and two hundred were spontaneously baptized. The event sparked a movement called “Unite US.” Over two thousand salvations and more than eight hundred baptisms have taken place at its events on American campuses over the last year.

We should rejoice at such good news at a time when pro-Palestinian protests and “woke” ideology continue to embroil many schools.

“We have such a need for love”

Charles Dickens famously wrote, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” He could have been reading today’s news:

• Yahya Sinwar’s death was “a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world,” but Hezbollah and Iran vowed to escalate their war against Israel.
• Migrant crossings have plunged at the US–Mexico border, but the border crisis has led to an explosion in forced prostitution of immigrants in the US.
• The Economist calls America’s economy “bigger and better than ever,” but an aging population, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the “rewiring of the global economy” threaten our future.

The juxtaposition of good news and bad, of pleasure and pain, illustrates C. S. Lewis’s observation: “Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

Here’s our cultural dilemma: since secularized people see these “inns” as, in the words of George Clooney, “the only thing I know to exist,” they “mistake them for home.” According to Henri Nouwen, this fallacy is “the source of much of the suffering in our contemporary society”:

We have such a need for love that we often expect from our fellow human beings something that only God can give, and then we quickly end up being angry, resentful, lustful, and sometimes even violent. As soon as the first commandment is no longer truly the first, our society moves to the edge of self-destruction.

The way off this “edge” is both countercultural and deeply transformative.

“Walk by faith, not by sight”

God uses suffering to show us that this world is neither our home nor a reliable source of happiness. He does this because, as C. S. Lewis noted in The Problem of Pain, “God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in him.” He therefore must remove false sources of happiness so we will turn to the only one that is true.

I have experienced this principle personally. So long as I can trust in any source of happiness but God, I tend to do so. This is because I want to be my own god (Genesis 3:5), to exercise my “will to power” to attain the happiness I long to experience. I don’t want to give up control of my life to a God whose idea of happiness may be different than mine. Nor do I want to pay a price for happiness that seems greater than the reward it brings.

But this is only because I so often forget who I am and who God is. I forget that my mind is finite while his is omniscient and that my desires are sinful while his are holy. I forget that the God who “is” love (1 John 4:8) loves me more than I can love myself and that he can only want what is my absolute best. And I forget that the cost of trusting and serving him is always less than the benefit to me and to his kingdom.

In such times, I must choose what I want most—to love and please my Father—over what I want now. I must choose to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

“Rebels who must lay down our arms”

Such obedience is not only vital to our happiness—it is also the only path to knowing God fully and making him known to the world. One of my mentors encouraged me to “stay faithful to the last word you heard from God and open to the next.” Scripture illustrates the wisdom of his words:

• Abraham followed God’s call “not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8), and God used him to establish the Jewish nation.
• The disciples obeyed Jesus’ command to “stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49), and they soon experienced the Pentecost miracle that sparked the Church and changed the world (Acts 2).
• Paul followed God’s “Macedonian call” (Acts 16:6–10) and brought the gospel to the Western world.
• John was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10), and he met the risen Christ and received the book of Revelation.

If you and I want to experience the abundant life of Christ in this world (John 10:10) and the praise and reward of God in the next (Matthew 25:23), if we would know Christ and make him known in ways that transform our souls and our society, we must agree with Lewis:

“We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved; we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms.”

The more holistic our submission to our Lord, the more we become like our holy Lord (Romans 8:29) as he continues his earthly ministry through us. Then, no matter the challenges we face, we discover that “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (v. 37).

“The work for which I am best fitted”

Let’s close with an example.

Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky (1831–1906) was born in Lithuania. He went to Germany for rabbinic studies, where he became a Christian. He then emigrated to America, trained for the priesthood, and in 1859 was sent by the Episcopal Church to China. He spent 1862 to 1875 translating the Bible into Mandarin. Two years later, he began translating the Scriptures into Wenli (the classical Chinese style of writing).

He developed Parkinson’s disease, became largely paralyzed, and spent the rest of his life completing his Wenli Bible, the last two thousand pages of which he typed with the one finger that he could still move. Four years before his death he said, “I have sat in this chair for over twenty years. It seemed very hard at first. But God knew best. He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted.”

Will you do the work for which you are “best fitted” today?

Monday news to know:

• Netanyahu says he is undeterred after reported drone attack on his home
• 3 killed and 8 injured by gunfire following a Mississippi school’s football game
• Multiple people killed after helicopter crashes into radio tower in Houston
• Cuba restores power to one-fifth of population after nationwide blackouts
• On this day in 1959: Guggenheim Museum opens in New York City

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.” —Martin Luther King Jr.

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Last year, the FDA approved the first nonprescription daily oral contraceptive. Now the Biden administration is proposing a rule that would make over-the-counter birth control and condoms free for the first time.

In 1960, the FDA approved the first birth control pill, enabling women to have sex with less fear of an unwanted pregnancy. This was an early step in the so-called “sexual revolution.” Others followed:

• In 1962, Helen Gurley Brown’s book Sex and the Single Girl encouraged single women to be sexually active.
• Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique (1963) argued that women should find identity and meaning in their lives apart from their husbands and children.
• The legalization of abortion in 1973 further enabled women to have sex without having to raise unwanted children.
• Abortion pills are now widely available as well and are used in more than 60 percent of all abortions.

The first sexual revolution separated sex from marriage. The second sexual revolution is now separating sex from people. The plague of pornography and virtual reality porn is making it easier than ever for people to divorce sex from a physical relationship with others.

As we noted yesterday, medical and technological innovations continue to lower barriers to immorality that have existed for generations. We could try to erect new barriers, such as enacting laws that limit the availability of abortion and installing pornography blockers on our devices. These would be helpful, of course, but human efforts cannot truly change human hearts.

Rick Warren was right: “I want to change my circumstances. God wants to change me.”

How?

“The first godless culture in human history”

English writer Paul Kingsnorth recently published a brilliant analysis explaining how “modernity has descended into a spiritual void.” After charting the path that led us here, he writes that we now “live in a culture without faith.” He explains:

We believe in nothing. Most significantly, we are now even ceasing to believe in the ideas which arose to replace all the religions in the age of “Enlightenment.” Reason, progress, liberalism, freedom of speech, democracy, the enlightened rational individual, the scientific process as a means of determining truth: everywhere, these “secular” beliefs which were supposed to replace religion worldwide are either under fire or have already fallen too.

Accordingly, he notes, “We are perhaps the first godless culture in human history.” He adds, “Religious cosmologies have differed vastly across time and space, but no society has ever existed without one.”

Nonetheless, Kingsnorth offers hope:

Despite it all, we should be of good cheer. For the Void is, by its nature, a time-limited phenomenon. Precisely because it is empty, it cannot last. The Void is a phase; it is the place you come to after the end of a culture, and after the end of a theology. The challenge now is not to mourn, to cling or to look back. We are not in charge of this thing, after all. The challenge is for us to think about what comes next—and how to live in, through, and with it.

I agree that our “post-truth” culture cannot sustain itself. It is contradictory at its core: to claim there is no such thing as absolute truth is to make an absolute truth claim. And humans cannot live without truth and truths. We need speed limits and laws against murder and encouragement to treasure children and the aged. We need a compass to navigate by; the darker the storm, the more urgent the guidance.

“God will change us because he loves us”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. claimed, “Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.” He was right: humans are both frail and finite. “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more” (Psalm 103:15–16)

It is therefore only logical to submit to God’s divine authority in every dimension of life:

• If God is our Creator, we must be his creatures, subject to his lordship.
• If he is omnipotent and we are not, his power must exceed ours.
• If he is omniscient and we are not, his wisdom must exceed ours.
• If he is omnibenevolent and we are not, his love and compassion must exceed ours.

As a result, the “inner spiritual transformation” we require is found not in anything we can do but in the living Lord Jesus who alone can save our souls and transform our lives. Tullian Tchividjian observed, “Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because he loves us.”

When we submit our lives to the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and spend meaningful time in worship, prayer, Bible study, solitude, meditation, and other spiritual disciplines, we position ourselves to meet Jesus. He then changes us to be like himself (Romans 8:29) and we bear “much fruit” (John 15:5) as he works in us as his body in the world (1 Corinthians 12:27). (For more on God’s transforming and empowering grace, please see my new website article, “Why the Boston Celtics are under ‘zero pressure’ to repeat.”)

“To love God and live for him is heaven”

Paul testified: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). If we make his choice, we can have his experience. And when Jesus is living in us as fully as he lived in his earthly body, we experience his presence in ways that transform our lives and our world.

Frederick Buechner wrote:

“You do not love God and live for him so that you will go to heaven. Whichever side of the grave you happen to be talking about, to love God and live for him is heaven.”

Will you be in “heaven” today?

Wednesday news to know:

• Five family members shot to death in home outside Seattle
• Blinken in Israel in last big ceasefire push before US election
• Israel says it killed Nasrallah’s heir apparent
• Arkansas may have vast lithium reserves, researchers say
• On this day in 1983: Beirut barracks blown up

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“Without absolutes revealed from without by God himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about matters, justice, and right and wrong, issued from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers.” —John Owen

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