The Servant King

From various things which I read over Easter:

Attitude to Serve - The Correctional Leader's Calling

I believe the purpose of a leader is to better the lives of his followers. Leaders should always ask what would deliver happiness to his followers and lead them to it. As correctional leaders, we serve our followers, the community, and a social cause...

Once we set our minds on our vision, getting there is non-negotiable. Though some might become faint-hearted before reaching the destination, we need to place the larger cause above our self-interests.

- Chua Chin Kiat, The Making of Captains of Lives

To have a fulfilling life you have to make promises

To have a fulfilling life you have to make promises. You have to surrender some freedom of choice to taste a higher freedom, the freedom that comes after you've settled on a direction, chained yourself to a cause and enlarged your capacities...

If you're going to commit to something for decades or life as it should have, as Martin Luther King once put it, three qualities. First, length. You should be able to flourish in it for a long time. Second, breadth. You should touch a lot of people. Third, height. It should pull your gaze upward and put you in contact with transcendent truth...

Most of all, the things you commit yourself to should satisfy your yearning for righteousness...

The people who look at life through a moral lens inverse the normal logic of life. Normally when we're making the big decisions we try to follow a straightforward cost-benefit logic. Does this meet my needs? Does this work for me? Am I getting more out of this than I put in?

But people who adopt the moral lens are looking for ways to forget themselves, surrender themselves, to throw themselves into something without counting the cost. They understand, if only by instinct, that their true joy is found on the distant side of unselfishness, not on this side.

People who use the moral lens don't ask, what do I want from life. They ask: What is life asking of me? What problems are out there in my specific circumstances that I am well positioned to address.

People who see through a moral lens don't ask: How big is my impact? They ask, can I do this work the way it should be done. Dorothy Sayers once wrote that if you try to serve the community with your work you will end up distorting your work. You'll be angling for applause. You'll be thinking the world owes you something. But if you just try to serve the work - if you just do your specific craft the way it should be done - you'll end up serving the community even more.

- David Brooks, University of Pennsylvania's Baccalaureate Address to the Class of 2016

A Vision for Our Hearts

Jesus Christ comes to do something much deeper than any social revolutionary has ever done or ever been able to do. He has come to actually change our whole hearts. To change our natures. The Bible shows us that God has a wonderful vision for His world. We have all rejected that vision and yet, even after that rejection, God in His amazing mercy and love continues to pursue us...

So, go ahead and give to Caesar what is Caesar's but then give to God what is God's and remember you belong to God, all of you.

- Mark Dever, God and Politics

Christ's Example of Humility

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

- Philippians 2:1-11 (ESV)

From heaven You came, helpless babe
Entered our world, Your glory veiled
Not to be served, but to serve
And give Your life, that we might live

This is our God, the Servant King
He calls us now to follow Him
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to the Servant King

The Gate of the Year

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way." So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.

God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.

Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life's stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God's thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.

- Minnie Louise Haskins, God Knows

Future Grace

Every turning from God - for anything - presumes a kind of autonomy or independence that is the essence of pride. Turning from God assumes that one knows better than God. Thus pride lies at the root of every turning from God. It is the root of every act of distrust toward God. Or, more accurately, pride is not so much the root as it is the essence of unbelief, and its remedy is faith in future grace.

- John Piper, Future Grace

"But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God." - Acts 20:24 (ESV)

So difficult, and yet so simple.

Order of Worship

"When [the wise men] saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh." - Matthew 2:10-11 (ESV)

1. Revelation
2. Rejoicing
3. Response/Offering

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." - Romans 12:1-2 (ESV)

Theatre of God's Glory

God is the God of all creation. He is the God of Monday mornings as well as Sunday mornings. Humanity was made in the image of God to reflect His glory in His world. In the gospel we are restored to our true humanity. We are renewed so that we can again reflect God's glory in God's world. The Reformation affirmation of everyday life is an invitation to see the whole earth as the theatre of God's glory and to see our whole lives as opportunities to reflect that glory.

- Michael Reeves and Tim Chester, What Difference Does God Make on Monday Mornings?

Wait Upon The LORD

"Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint." - Isaiah 40:28-31 (ESV)

In God's Time

Nehemiah 1 - Now it happened in the month of Chislev (Nov-Dec)...

"Now I was cupbearer to the king." - Nehemiah 1:11b (ESV)

Nehemiah 2 - In the month of Nisan (Mar-Apr)...

"And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me." - Nehemiah 2:8 (ESV)

God opens millions of flowers without forcing the buds. It reminds us not to force anything, for things happen in the right time.

For Such A Time As This

"Blessed be the LORD, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the LORD that is in Jerusalem, and who extended to me his steadfast love before the king and his counsellors, and before all the king's mighty officers. I took courage, for the hand of the LORD my God was on me, and I gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me." - Ezra 7:27-28 (ESV)

"Now I was cupbearer to the king." - Nehemiah 1:11b (ESV)

"Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, "Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"" - Esther 4:13-14 (ESV)

Pray and Wait

God has a good and holy purpose for these periods of silence. He wants to test our faith that we might see for ourselves just how weak and dependent we are on him for all good things. His goal is nothing less than to heighten our spiritual sensitivities in order to draw us into more intimate fellowship and faithful obedience with him.

Prayer goes unanswered because God knows our needs far better than we understand our desires.

Your loving Father knows what you need before you ask him, therefore... ask him!? Jesus wants us to see that prayer is more about changing us than it is about either informing God or moving him to action.

As a sacrifice of time and energy that could have been used for other things, prayer is an act of worship, one by which our hearts are exercised in faith, not merely in religious ritual. "Ask," Jesus tells us, "just ask." Why? Because true prayer cultivates humility. It requires us to acknowledge our helplessness. We ask because Jesus told us to ask. We ask because all that is good comes from God, not from our own efforts.

As we build a lifestyle of prayer, this regular acknowledgment of God's fatherly provision is infinitely more valuable than anything else we may receive. The main thing is not that in the future we might get what we pray for. The main thing is that in the present, as we pray, our greatest need is already being met. That need is the transforming work of God in our hearts, with prayer itself as one of God's appointed means of meeting that need. When Jesus promised a "reward" for those who pray in secret (Matthew 6:6), perhaps this refining work of God in our hearts is at least partly what he had in mind.

The Spirit prays for us because our knowledge is incomplete. Matthew Henry writes, "We are short-sighted... like foolish children, that are ready to cry for fruit before it is ripe and fit for them."

One of my young daughters loves to eat pears, but she does not know how to tell when they are ripe. As a result, she will often grab a hard, green pear off the kitchen counter, take one bite, and leave the rest behind, claiming "it is too hard."

We often do the same. We want the fruit God is preparing for our future, but we want it now, before it is ripe. We do this because we are ignorant of what is best for us and, therefore, don't know how to pray as we should.

But the Spirit prays according to perfect knowledge. He prays with "groanings too deep for words." The Spirit pleads on our behalf in longings that are verbally inexpressible. This is his silent prayer ministry.

- Paul Tautges, Brass Heavens: Reasons for Unanswered Prayer

Trust and Obey

"Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness" - and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." - James 2:21-24 (ESV)

"By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named." He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back." - Hebrews 11:17-19 (ESV)

But we never can prove
The delights of His love
Until all on the altar we lay
For the favour He shows
And the joy He bestows
Are for them who will trust and obey

Trust and obey
For there's no other way
To be happy in Jesus
But to trust and obey

Justification by Works of the Law

"For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law." - Romans 3:28 (ESV)

"You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." - James 2:24 (ESV)

Justification by faith apart from works of the law is not the same as justification by faith apart from works, let alone justification by faith alone. If it were so, Scripture would say so. As it is, Scripture says that we are justified by works (not of the law) and not by faith alone.

In other words, we are justified by faith, just not by faith alone.

"For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead." - James 2:26 (ESV)