All of My Days

I just turned 60 in April. This morning I ran across the following thoughts I typed at age 50. Interesting how, after 10 years, I've absorbed the encouragement into my life, but would not have remembered when or where I learned it. In the hope it might be encouraging to you too, I am posting it:

There is something I’ve been struggling with for quite some time.  At the age of 50 and looking back, I feel like I have made so many bad choices and have so many regrets.  I think when I accepted the Lord at age 22, I thought following Him would help me make good choices and I wouldn’t have to live with a lot of painful regrets.  But now here I am at 50 and sometimes the memories of it all just about suffocate me.  I would still like to think this isn’t necessary.  But I’m writing this with the strong suspicion that my problem is “common to man.”  Since we are sinners, it is probably inevitable that as the years go by we almost can’t help but accumulate a realization that we’ve taken too many wrong turns and then have to suffer the painful consequences we’ve earned and inflicted on others.

This is all, of course, acknowledged while at the same time being deeply grateful to the Lord for more blessing than I could have ever dreamed.  In spite of all my foolishness, I find myself “compassed about with blessing.”  I can’t argue at all that I am anything but enormously blessed today.  My years have been blessed with a wonderful family, with many really, really special Christian people, with good jobs with great people, with all these times when the Lord has taught and showed me, and all the times He has met me in the way with some little cordial of kindness that gave me strength to carry on.

But with all that acknowledged, still, there are these awful regrets, bad decisions, mis-guided choices, etc., etc.  What do I do with this ugly little monster that follows me around and relentlessly tries to steal the joy of all my blessing?

The Lord showed me something this week that really, really helps me.  It is found in Psalm 139:16:

All the days ordained for me
       were written in Your book
       before one of them came to be.

“All of the days,”  “before one of them came to be.”  They were “written in Your book.”

Every one of my days was ordained by God(!).  That includes the days when I was making bad choices.  In fact it even stretches back to before I was saved.  Talk about bad choices!  But even if God had to weave my bad decisions into the tapestry, still He has always had me securely in His eternal wise control.  Somehow, He knew He had to let me make those bad choices.  Somehow they either served to teach me something or get me some place where He could teach me.  Whatever was going on, it all adds up to His glory.  Of course, I’m still accountable for my bad choices. I still have to live with their consequences. I’m still sorry for how they’ve hurt other people. I still want to learn from them and make better choices.  But it is so encouraging to be able to kind of “sweep” my past “under the rug” of God’s goodness.  Somehow, in that light, the memories still hurt, but not in the depressing, joy-stealing way they have for so long.  Hmmmm.  The joy of the Lord is my strength(!).  That really, really helps.  “All of the days …”

He is so good.  How does any one live without Him?  Maybe I’m weird in that I’m always asking these questions, wrestling with these thoughts.  I guess whether I am or not, I do wrestle with them.  Whether or not I’m weird, I can say without a doubt that God is faithful.  He said, “Ask, and it shall  given you …”  “Call unto Me and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things you know not.”  One of the joys of my life is these times when the Lord shows me these things that not only answer my question but also encourage me so much.

Thank you, Lord.  You are so good.  Do help me make better choices.   But most of all, help me to see You, to love You, to trust You, and to let You be my joy.  You’re awesome.

I Thessalonians 4:3 – “Your Wish Is …”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

³For this is the will of God, your sanctification …

I’ve been studying this passage all the way down to verse 8. As a unit of course it is addressing the issue of sexual purity, but I’d like to pause at the gate, so to speak, and record some thoughts about these first few words. And I don’t believe my thoughts at all extraneous to a proper understanding of the whole passage. Here’s what I’m thinking:

“The will of God” – what kind of images do those words conjure in your mind? As a Christian cliché, of course, we can all act like the words are a warm fuzzy, talk about it, preach about it, sing about it. But I think to too many people, the real truth is that the words invoke thoughts of harsh rules, of God’s sternness. Even at the head of a passage about sexual purity, it’s easy to see it as, “Okay, now God’s going to lay down the law. Everybody straighten up. No more fun.” “The will of God” – ultimately He’s the great “Cosmic Kill-Joy.” I strongly suspect from listening to and observing other people and from tracing the progress of my own spiritual growth, that this underlying attitude is a huge part of why so many even Christian people give so little attention to the Word and invest so little of their hearts in actually knowing God. Hopefully I can explain what I mean.

What is this verse really talking about? The Greek word for “will” here is a noun form of the verb thelo, which fundamentally means “to desire.” There is another Greek word boulomai which is a very close synonym to thelo, but means fundamentally “to purpose.” Even in English, the two thoughts significantly overlap. If I “desire” something, or wish it, that very easily spills into “purposing” or resolving that I will do it. On the other hand, the normal reason I “purpose” to do something is because in some way I “desire” or wish it. So the two concepts significantly overlap. However, even in English, they do not mean exactly the same thing. I can “desire” something, but for whatever reason, choose not to pursue it. On the other hand, I can resolve to do something, even though I personally may not find it desirable. (That of course happens all the time at work!) So, although intimately related, there is a difference between “desiring” and “purposing,” and I hope to show that understanding the difference is integrally important to our relationship with God.

Now, I need to (quickly) inject here the acknowledgment that I am on very thin ice. If a person does any amount of research on their own on these two words, thelo and boulomai, “desire” and “purpose,” they’ll find a good deal of what is written which would say they are essentially synonyms, that there is no difference in meaning. I beg to differ even though I’m reminded of John Eadie’s words, “Interpretations are generally false in proportion to their ingenuity.” I have been watching the two words for nearly 40 years and, in every occurrence I have ever observed, if you let the two words retain their distinctive meaning, the passages would make perfect sense, in fact even better sense. And so, deeply aware of John Eadie’s warning, I remain convinced what I’m saying is true – though very similar and possessing considerable overlap, the words are different.

“So what?” you ask. Well, the phrase “the will of God” in the Bible invariably is the word thelo, and so could be translated, “the desire of God.” When the word occurs in the Bible, whatever He’s talking about, He hasn’t necessarily “purposed” anything. It is expressing His desire, like when Paul told Timothy the Lord “wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (I Tim 2:4). It is expressing His desire, not necessarily His purpose. What we’re talking about with the “will” of God is actually understanding His heart. As a person who has been captivated by His grace and love, when I hear the “desire” of God, I immediately want to know what it is and I’ve already embraced it, whatever it is, because I love Him. This is relationship stuff. I would like to suggest, the idea of “the will of God” being a stern list of all the harsh do’s and don’ts comes from a heart that isn’t loving Him. When we’re in love, it isn’t hard to say, “Your wish is my command.”

I’d like to reinforce this with some more word study. One verse that really demonstrates this is Hebrews 10:7, which is a NT quote based on Psalm 40:8. In the NT it says, “Then I said, ‘Here am I … I have come to do Your will.’” The “will” here is a thelo noun. This of course is Jesus speaking, and He is telling the Father that He has come to do His will. What He is saying is that He has come to do what the Father desires. Again, it is a “Your wish is my command” sort of expression.

This is even more apparent looking at the verse in its Hebrew original in Psalms. There it says, “I desire to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.” “Will” in Hebrew is the word ratzon and actually means “pleasure, delight, favor.” Jesus is saying to the Father, “I desire to do whatever pleases and even delights You.” And what is even more interesting is that the word translated “desire” itself speaks of delight. Jesus is saying, “I delight to do Your will.” It is the Hebrew word kafatz, which, as a verb, means “to delight in, to be pleased with, to desire.” And it even goes a little deeper than that. TWOT says, “In the case of kafatz, the object solicits favor by its own intrinsic qualities. The subject is easily attracted to it because it is desirable … [the word] means ‘to experience emotional delight.’” Jesus is saying He Himself sees the Father’s will – what the Father desires and delights in – as something very desirable and delightful to Him! The verse could be translated, “I delight to do whatever delights You.”

I hope by this point, anyone reading this can see that what is going on here is an intense love relationship. This is not the expression of a groveling servant bowing to the commands of His harsh, demanding king. The people who know their God find in Him an ever growing love relationship and, the more and more we see how good and wise He is, the more we realize that whatever He has planned, whatever He wishes of us, is not only good, but actually desirable and even delightful! We delight to do His will. We delight to do what delights Him. As it says in Psalms 1:2 of the godly man, “His delight is in the Law of the Lord.”

Back to our passage in I Thessalonians, Paul announces, “This is the will of God for you …” As he goes on to explain exactly what that is, will we hear it groveling or will we hear it with hearts wide open, eager  and even delighted to hear whatever it is that our good, loving God wishes of us?

Once again, it is all about relationship. Grace sets us free to fall into the arms of this wonderful Savior God and King. Grace means life is simply not about some list of rules we must bow to. Grace means it is about knowing the heart of my Lover and actually finding delight in whatever He desires, conforming my life to what I know He wishes. Love means His wish is our command – and we’re happy about it!