Six Steps to a Happy Life
Walking with God is what we were made for. But once we are secure in Christ, how do we do it? Here are six tips for walking well.
1. Be Humble
View people with respect. If you have what they don’t, remember how you got it. It was given to you. Why do you boast like it wasn’t?
2. Tell the Truth
Speech is a marvelous ability. It is beautified by truth-telling. Always be honest, no matter what you think will happen if you do.
3. Care for People
Help them. Seek their good. Protect life and help it flourish. Stand for justice.
4. Plan Good Things
Think ahead. Make plans. It is the glory of the intellect. Hatch plots for good stuff and see what happens.
5. Plant Your Feet
Fickle winds and waves will always try to knock you off course. Stand firm and make every step sure.
6. Tell the Truth More
Tell the truth about people. Honor them with what you say. Be reality’s hype man.
7. (Bonus!) Make Peace
Help people live in harmony. Especially those who call God Father.
Good tips, eh? I got them from an Old Book.
There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies,
and one who sows discord among brothers.
- Proverbs 6:16-19
How to have a Great Sunday
Sunday is called the Lord’s Day, and the Lord’s Day is the most important day of the week. But it doesn’t always seem like that, does it? Here are some tips for great Sundays ahead.
Know what you’re getting into
Sunday is the first day of the week. Every Sunday is a new beginning, and at the beginning of the beginning, we celebrate him who is “the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18). Jesus conquered sin and death, and we have church to celebrate. It’s a spiritual party. This is what the early church did. This is what the apostles did. This is the way.
Bring your burdens
Don’t try to put a good face on Sunday morning by leaving your burdens behind. Bring them! Bring them all. The Lord knows your path; trust him to provide just what you need in the gathering. Talk to others as well, and ask for prayer. In all things come ready to unload your burdens to Christ at the throne of grace. Cast your Sunday cares upon him, for he cares for you.
Expect something
Sunday is about getting stuff from God. Are you surprised by that? Did you think it was the other way around? Yes, we give God praise and worship and glory and honor when we gather. But Sunday is really about what we get, not what we give. The bountiful Spirit is at work in word, prayer and sacrament when we get together on Sundays. He uses these means of grace to give us the grace and mercy and love and power we need. So show up with expectations.
Treat it as the main event of the day
In the highly-scheduled West, Sunday can be just another day to do things. Let’s be honest, sometimes we like getting church over with and out of the way so we can do what we really want. But it should be just the opposite. Church is the main event on Sunday; it’s all the other stuff that we need to get out of the way. Then we can really enjoy the celebration and rest in Christ all day long. So finish what you need to finish before Sunday. Get up, get ready, get expectant, and get to church, and watch yourself grow for years to come.
If you don’t know, now you know
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Proverbs 1:7
We don’t really know anything until we know it in light of the smothering reality of God’s existence. It’s only notions, or foggy conceptions, before the fear of God enters in and sits upon the throne of thought. Apart from him we can know nothing. We can be aware of things, but we can’t have any real conception of their meaning. Not without him who gives meaning to all.
Knowledge is more than storing facts in your brain. True knowledge is experience, the experience of truth. And no truth—not the smallest bit of genuine learning—can be tasted or seen without the fear of God. The fear of God is the pool into which we must immerse everything in order to make real, living knowledge.
Does God terrify you? Are you scared to be his enemy? This is the beginning. After we find safety in the finished work of God’s Son, we become scared to run away from him. I trust the God I fear, says the Christian, and I fear the God I trust. My Heavenly Father is the living God, and the living God is my Heavenly Father. This is the beginning, middle, and end of all knowing and doing, and it is hidden for us in Christ.
Fuel 🔥
“[We] cast lots for the wood offering.” Nehemiah 10:34
The animals are prepared, the priests are ready, and the altar is waiting. But we need something else before we begin. What are we missing? Fire. To bring the bulls and the goats, or the wine and the grain, is a good duty. But someone has to bring the wood, and that doesn’t seem so special. In times old the Gibeonites brought it (Josh 9:27). Now they cast lots for it.
Fire needs fuel. The Lord Jesus gave himself as fuel for God’s judgment on our sin. Just as Abraham laid the firewood on Isaac’s back as they walked to the mountain, so the Lord Jesus brought the judgment wood to the hill when he carried his own tree. He was the vessel of fire and satisfaction, “who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God” (Hebrews 9:14).
The Spirit ignites the fires of God upon the free offering. We need that fire to be living sacrifices to our Heavenly Father. We have our doctrine squared away; we are walking in his ways. But where is the power? Maybe we’re holding our hearts back from God, not really trusting him. When we entrust ourselves to our kind and faithful Creator, the winds of his Spirit will fan the spark of Christ’s love in our hearts, and our lives will become brilliant for God.
Be Not Afraid
“Remember [those] who wanted to make me afraid.” Nehemiah 6:14
The fear of God is a grace to be treasured and celebrated wherever it is found. When we do this, we stand against the tide of the world around us. But when we take our stand, we must perch our doctrinal momentum upon the rock of Christ rather than lean it entirely against the error. In other words, we need a biblically balanced understanding of fear. We, in our zeal for the fear of God, may forget that fearfulness is severely sinful. It reveals a puny trust in God, and that is most certainly not what the Bible means when it says Fear God.
People who don’t fear God are filled with a great many fears of their own. They don’t know this, but if they got the fear of God it would set itself against the others and swallow them up like the staff of Moses among the magicians of Egypt. These kinds of fears are evil. Did you know that the evil one tempts you with fear? In fact, it’s one of his chief techniques. What set the wills of Adam and Eve in motion toward the fruit? Was it not a temptation to fear missing out on something that God was keeping from them? You may be sure that the temptation in the Garden was fear before it was desire.
The thousand temptations you face today are not a random barrage of unrelated fiery darts. Satan is strategic, and he places his temptations strategically in line. He sways us off balance with fear and then swoops in from an another side, tempting us to sinful desire, or anger, or bitterness. This is how the powers of evil try to splinter the armies of God, even as Morgoth set his wiles against the first inhabitants of Middle Earth “by fear and lies.” And the two always go together: the lie feeds the fear, and the fear sets us up for the knockout.
Friend, is it possible that fear could be governing you? Fear of what people will think of you. Fear of missing out on things God won’t let you have because he doesn’t really want you to be happy. Earthly fears about safety and comfort. Even the fear of displeasing God can be perverted and tormented into a paralyzing and evil fear for a conscientious Christian. Let’s defy this kind of fear. It’s a main weapon of the enemy of our souls, and a great fuel to the sin within us. Snuggle into a real sense of God’s love for you in the gospel and fear will meet its match, for “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).
A good kind of shame
“I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us.” Ezra 8:22
Ezra boasted about his God to King Artaxerxes. When it was time for the people to set out on the long journey home, the boast was put to the test. What enemies might they encounter on the way? Would it not be safer to go with a royal escort? Undoubtedly it would be more dangerous to do so! For it would put God’s name in jeopardy in the courts of Babylon, and such a thing is never to be ventured.
It would not be a bad thing to see more of this kind of shame among Christians. Are we even apprehensive, never mind ashamed, to rely on human means before the mighty promises of God? Many ministries are not, it seems, ashamed to do so. This passage isn’t about the question of physical defense as such; it’s about the heart-posture of the Christian. Do we defy all earthly odds when there’s a clear promise of God on our side? That’s the time to open your eyes wide and watch for the miraculous hand of the living God to appear.
God’s runners
“So the couriers went from city to city through the country…but they laughed them to scorn and mocked them.” 2 Chronicles 30:1
The Passover was to be celebrated once again in Jerusalem. This most sacred feast had been sorely neglected, but God offered his mercy to the people if they would but humble themselves and return to him. In order to spread the word as quickly as possible, Hezekiah sent his couriers, or runners, to and fro, from city to city.
They told everyone the good news of the Feast and of God’s favor. A few listened, but most hardened their hearts and mocked the royal messengers. This kind of response to free grace is the history of God’s prophets, and apostles, and of the Son of the King himself, when he went about telling the good news of redemption at hand.
We are God’s runners now. The church is filling the planet with the sound of happy news from Jerusalem above. How the people treat us is not our business; we tell everyone the news that God’s free mercy is at hand, and that he is ready to receive everyone who returns to him through the slain Lamb. The Feast is ready; you must only take your seat there with Christ. Today is the day of celebration.
A camel, a gnat, and a preacher walk into a garden
Charles Spurgeon once preached a sermon called “Supposing Him To Be The Gardener.” It was a play off words from the text of John 20:15. Let us hear from the preacher:
You know the “him” to whom we refer, the ever-blessed Son of God, whom Mary Magdalene in our text mistook for the gardener. We will for once follow a saint in her mistaken track; and yet we shall find ourselves going in a right way. She was mistaken when she fell into “supposing him to be the gardener”; but if we are under his Spirit’s teaching we shall not make a mistake if now we indulge ourselves in a quiet meditation upon our ever-blessed Lord, “supposing him to be the gardener.”
It seems a dangerous thing to tamper with God’s word like that. Stick to the meaning of the text, buddy! The literal eyes of grammatical historians and historical grammaticians blaze with fire at the unspeakable indecency of the Spurgeon.
And yet, his sermon was owned by the Spirit. I defy any believer to read it without experiencing deep affection for Christ. Some of Spurgeon’s regular congregants said that, prior to this occasion, they didn’t really know what eloquence was. But how could it be, if he handled the text so carelessly? Because the mighty Spirit owned the Christ-bearing discourse in spite of its apparent unfaithfulness to the text.
Spurgeon was faithful to the whole text of the Bible in what he preached, and it hit with Holy Spirit power. It is better to place our emphasis upon the right doctrine, even if taken from the “wrong text,” than to insist too much upon any lesser matter, though exposited according to every modern standard of Calvie dispy excellence. Get us to Jesus as fast as you can preacher. Let your exposition be painstaking, but for the love of all things good and decent, let there be no more of this straining out exegetical gnats and swallowing doctrinal camels.
Do yourself a favor and suppose Christ to be the gardener with Heavy C here.
Do it God’s way
“Because you relied on the Lord, he gave them into your hand.” 2 Chronicles 16:8
King Asa was victorious early on, but his latter reign was more disappointing than third wave charismatic prophecies. The reason for this was that he ceased to rely on God. Instead, he looked for help elsewhere, in Syria (v 7) and in physicians (v 12). The prophet Hanani offered the king severe rebuke, along with gems of encouragement to return his trust to the Lord (most famously, verse 9).
The word to Asa is the word we all need to hear: do it God’s way. Asa conquered impossible odds time and again by simple trust in God. This is also how we do valiantly for Christ, by relying on him, instead of looking for help elsewhere. How do we rely on him? By trusting his word and doing it. We must place our feet upon his paths and we must venture all upon the promises.
God’s ways secure God’s help. They are not magic spells to bind his power; they are expressions of trust and hope in him, which he loves. It seems smarter to trust in the strong kings of Syria, but you must not do so. We walk straight forward by faith. In church, in life, in work, in play, do it God’s way. May you be filled with the knowledge of his will and rely on the Lord in all things today!
Storybook world
“What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?” Luke 13:18
The Lord who made the world entered the world, and when he walked through it, he interpreted the world with flawless exegesis. He could preach expository sermons upon the winds and the waves, the beasts and the birds, and all the growing things. We have some of these things preserved in Living Memory in the Book, but I expect that the apostles enjoyed lordly gems of this sort on a regular basis when they walked with the God-Man.
It seems like his favorite theme to illustrate by way of nature is the kingdom of God. He saw the kingdom in the creature. He was right to do so because he embedded pictures of the kingdom in the creature when he the Creator created the creature. Maybe we can become more godly if we begin to see our world with the magnificent vision with which the Lord Jesus Christ saw everything. From mustard seeds to mushy dough, with the words of Christ dwelling richly in our hearts, perhaps we too can begin to exposit the wonderful world around us. For the world is a book in which we walk with the great Author.