From time to time I find things that have the freshness of heaven on them. In this hour in America our hearts are pressed to keep our life in tune with God's. I trust you will find this teaching helpful in this hour!
Pleasures Forevermore
“Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give
me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and
steal and profane the name of my God.”
So the wisdom of Agur,
found in Proverbs 30, reminds us. Though sin knows no tax brackets — the poor
can be greedy and the rich envious — peculiar circumstances tend to produce
peculiar temptations. Agur fears that should God lead him into poverty, he might
be tempted to steal and thus profane the name of God. He fears in turn that
should God lead him into great riches, he might forget God. He asks God to
protect him, through His providence, from both temptations.
Many of us, oddly, are in
both categories, at least in some sense. In a culture driven by
dissatisfaction, we can all at least feel poor. The Joneses
stay always ahead of us, pushing us onward. A rocky economy feeds our economic
insecurities, and we are tempted, if not to steal, at least to cut some moral
corners. Virtue and integrity can be expensive, and we can always buy them back
when better times come. On the other hand, we are not the 99 percent but are in
the 99th percentile. That is, by world historical standards, compared to all
the people who ever lived on this planet, even if we are among the most poor in
America, each of us is in the top one percent in terms of comforts, luxury,
ease and wealth. Our poor are wealthier than kings of old.
There is no shame in being
poor. There is no guilt in being wealthy. There is, however, shame in stealing
and guilt in failing to give thanks.
A God-centered life, then,
is not found in feeding a constant craving for more, better, newer. Neither,
however, is it found in embracing an ascetic aesthetic, eschewing the good
gifts of God. He is the giver of every good gift, both contentment in abasement
and a shiny new car. He is not impressed with our piety if we accept the former
but turn up our nose at the latter, thinking ourselves too pure for such crass blessings.
The issue, then, isn’t the
size of our bank accounts or the square footage of our homes. The issue is the
perspective of our hearts. A God-centered life is one that gives thanks in all
His providences. It was one of the wealthiest men of ancient antiquity who
spoke these wisest of words: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).
The issue isn’t in what we
have but in what we want. What do we long for? What do we daydream about? How
do we measure ourselves and the success or failure of our efforts? Who do we
look up to, and what is it about them that we admire? The broader culture is
obsessed with the rich and the famous. Tabloids at the grocery store, tabloid
television, Internet gossip sites — these all feed our insatiable desire to
know what they are like, how they live.
The evangelical world, as
is so often the case, has its own version of the cultural phenomenon. We have
rock-star preachers, Lollapalooza-like conferences and concerts, and, as well,
Internet sites complete with all the latest gossip on who is hot, who is not,
and the reasons why.
We, however, are in the
world but are not to be of the world. We are called to aspire for not just
something better but the one needful thing. We are called, in living a
God-centered life, to seek God’s kingdom, to pursue God’s righteousness.
We are blessed to be shown
the way to the one thing that will satisfy. A God-centered life, in the end,
isn’t self-denying. It, instead, is how we find ourselves. Jesus said we would
find our lives in losing them. Augustine said our hearts are restless until
they find their rest in Him. And John Piper reminds us that God is most
glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. The glory of the
contentment, the blessing of the car, is not found in the contentment nor in
the car, but in the Giver of these good gifts.
Our calling is to look
through every good gift to the One giving it. He is the goodness in which the
gifts live and move and have their being. He gives Himself. This is the path of
life. Our end is that we would be in His presence, that we would rejoice to be
there. His promise is not only that we will find pleasures at His right hand,
but that we will find them forevermore (Ps. 16).
Whether grasping for more
or turning up our noses at what He has given, we miss Him. The Lord blesses us
and He keeps us. The Lord makes His face to shine upon us and He is gracious to
us. The Lord lifts up His countenance upon us and gives us peace, now and
forevermore (Num. 6:24–26).
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