Explaining the gospel has always been a struggle for me, especially as I have taught at various and sundry after-school Bible clubs, Good News Clubs, VBS and 5-Day Clubs, and so on. Somehow, I want to understand the truths of the gospel message so clearly that I can translate them to kids in a way that they will be able to grasp. Of course, I know that it is the work of the Spirit in their hearts that will awaken them to their sin and need for salvation. At the same time, I do not want to be slack in any way and just give the "pat answers" so that I can feel better. As Steve and I have delved further into Calvinism and I begin to see how this system helps me organize and understand the gospel truths that I already know, explanations to kids have been easier and I feel like I am actually sharing the truth...and not some nebulous concept.But, I still get hung up on the whole believe/receive thing. What exactly is that? I know that believing is ultimately trusting someone, and in this case, trusting that Christ is the Son of God and that his sacrifice on the cross is sufficient in atoning for my sin. But receiving? So many times, the line is "Just receive Jesus as your Savior," or "I received Jesus when I was eight," or something like that. How do you really understand what that is? How do you explain that to somebody else?I was listening to a really great sermon by Piper last night and he helped me:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes . . .” Four observations about this believing.
First, it means that not everybody will benefit from what Jesus came to do. But “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The rest will perish—and not have eternal life.
Second, the word itself means to embrace something as true; and when it’s a person, it means to trust them to be what they are and do what they say.
Third, John 1:11-12 shows that another word John has in mind to explain believeis receive. “[Jesus] came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” So receiving Jesus and believing Jesus explain each other.
Fourth, if we ask, “Receive him as what?” the answer would be, “Receive him as what he is.” For example, in John 6:35, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” So here believing means coming to Jesus and receiving him as the food and drink that satisfies our souls. That’s one of the reasons I talk about receiving him as our Treasure (Matthew 13:44). And this is why faith is so transforming.
Aha! Something tangible. Something explainable.
If you haven't listened to Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul yet, you should carve out about an hour from your day and do it. As a die-hard C.S. Lewis fan, I was amazed and encouraged by Piper's masterful treatment of the life and spiritual experience of Lewis. One part of the message particularly struck me and that was "the perils of introspection." It's a long quote, but I think it's worth reading.
"Lewis’s experience in the pursuit of Joy and the mistakes hemade has had a huge effect on the way I think about the assurance of salvation in relationship to introspection and self-examination. What he discovered is that the effort to know the experience of Joy by looking at Joy is self-defeating. He wrote, “I saw that all my waitings and watchings for Joy, all my vain hopes to find some mental content on which I could, so to speak, lay my finger and say, ‘This is it,’ had been a futile attempt contemplate the enjoyed.” 41 It can’t be done, for the moment we step outside ourselves to contemplate our enjoying, we are no longer enjoying, but contemplating. The implication of this for knowing that we are believing God by trying to look at our believing is enormous.
This is our dilemma . . . as thinkers we are cut off from what we think about; as tasting, touching, willing, loving, hating, we do not clearly understand. The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think. You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyze the nature of humor while roaring with laughter. But when else can you really know these things? 42
You cannot hope and also think about hoping at the same moment; for in hope we look to hope’s object and we interrupt this by (so to speak) turning around to look at the hope itself. . . . Introspection is in one respect misleading. In introspection we try to look inside ourselves and see what is going on. But nearly everything that was going on a moment before is stopped by the very act of our turning to look at it. Unfortunately this does not mean that introspection finds nothing. On the contrary, it finds precisely what is left behind by the suspension of all our normal activities; and what is left behind is mainly mental images and physical sensations. The great error is to mistake this mere sediment or track or by product for the activities themselves. 43
What this has meant for me is, first, that I see now that the pursuit of Joy must always be indirect—focusing not on the experience but the object to be enjoyed. And, second, I see that faith in Jesus, in its most authentic experience is suspended when it is being analyzed to see if its real. Which means this analysis always ends in discouragement. When we are trusting Christ most authentically, we are not thinking about trusting, but about Christ. When we step out of the moment to examine it, we cease what we were doing, and therefore cannot see it. My counsel for strugglers therefore is relentlessly: Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus in his word. And pray for eyes to see."
Bam. Here was something that applied so thoroughly to me, especially lately. How often do I spend more time thinking about if I'm loving Steve enough and in the right way and if I'm being a good wife and what makes a good wife than focusing on Steve or just on living my life? How often do I evaluate how I feel about doing the dishes and the laundry and convincing myself not to feel bad about it instead of just doing the chores? And even more importantly, how many times do I declare my spiritual life a failure because I insist on focusing on how I'm doing spiritually instead of looking to Jesus?Convicting? Yes. Encouraging? Definitely.
I have been reading sections of Psalm 119 this past week and have been amazed by how frequently the psalmist asks God to give him a desire for His word, to show Himself, to give him understanding, etc. The psalmist is not approaching the Lord and His word with a conjured up spirituality, as if he has to be emotionally prepped. He is earnestly dependent on the Lord for even the desire to love His precepts. This was convicting to me. How often do I deem it necessary in my prideful flesh to be "ready" for God...to be mentally psyched to "meditate"? And when it doesn't feel like it's "working," I get frustrated and depressed. In reality, the desire to know God and love His word is just as much a gift of His grace aseverything else in my life. Reading through Romans, especially chapters 9-11, have brought home again the doctrine of election and the reminder that there is nothing that I have done to deserve or accomplish any means of grace. It is all a gracious gift from a loving God...for His purpose and to His glory.Then I read this interesting quote from Packer's Knowing God:
We are, perhaps, orthodox evangelicals. We can state the gospel clearly, and can smell unsound doctrine a mile away. If anyone asks us how men may know God, we can at once produce the right formulae - that we come to know God through Jesus Christ the Lord, in virtue of His cross and mediation, on the basis of His word of promise, by the power of the Holy Spirit, via a personal exercise of faith. Yet, the gaiety, goodness, and unfettered spirit which are the marks of those who have known God are rare among us - rarer, perhaps, than they are in some other Christian circles where, by comparison, evangelical truth is less clearly and fully known.
How true! We can become so wrapped up in facts and methods and routines that the true delight of knowing God is diminished. True, we do need the disciplines of daily study in the Word and time in prayer, but these are the means to an end - it's about knowing God, not just saying that I haven't missed a day of Bible reading in a month. Dependence on God for the knowledge of Him and the desire to know and enjoy Him will hopefully do away with the, as Packer says, "dried-up stoicism" of being a Good Christian Girl, and will replace it with "joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Peter 1:8).Like the psalmist, I'm praying for this in my own life and in the lives of others.
