A long overdue update

It’s been awhile since I’ve written. Tonight is quiet and lovely here in Florida—warm with just enough humidity and the ubiquitous sound of fountains. It’s been more than six months now in this world of books and papers and crazy life, and I can’t say it hasn’t change me deeply. But not deeply enough. So many realizations are burgeoning and I’m only beginning to set out on this pilgrimage, but I can see ways He is teaching, equipping, strengthening, humbling me. So many things I thought I knew and begin to see now I only began to glimpse.

One thing I asked God to teach me as I contemplated the move, as I drove across and down the states with the brother, as I settled into a new life and met new people—I asked that He would teach me love: what it really meant and how to do it. He’s still teaching me, and I pray He never ceases. But like the red blur of poppy fields more strained-after than captured, realizations have dawned along this path.

~ For one, I’ve realized far more deeply than ever before how it isn’t really my pathway at all. I’m not a loner headed out on the adventure of a lifetime; hundreds more have been given sealed orders and march out under the same flag.

~ I stand beside brothers and sisters varied in their personalities and backgrounds, habits and vision, and there is not one of them from which I do not have something to learn.

~ I can’t pick the lessons God plots for me. There are only two options: I can shut myself off or I can stay open and humble to see His work—oftentimes through those I most struggle to love.

~ Living examples of Christ are to be found in the unexpected places perhaps more than the expected places because our conception of love always needs to be stretched, and those I don’t think I could possibly learn anything from are sometimes the ones who hold the biggest lessons for me.

~ People who don’t seem to be anything special are often those who have a conception of themselves closest to reality.

~ Each of us is exactly where God wants us in our realization of this grace and its implications, and the opposite of critical thinking is the pursuit to aid one another in a deeper realization of the wild gospel.

~ Just like the next person, I can do absolutely nothing without His Spirit. That’s how this union thing works. If I am to live as a new creation, if I am to experience any of the deliverance and freedom won through Christ then I must also be one with Him.

~ That last (along with Socinianism and a hundred other things) is not something I can entirely wrap my mind around.

~ If I ever think I’m done repenting or forgiving I’m wrong. And I usually end up hurting someone else before I realize just how wrong.

~ Building community means living community, and that’s slightly less glamorous.

~ Loving people takes a whole lot of dirt and grit, and you must have a vision but it’s deadly to stop there. The ideal community doesn’t exist because people are so darn messy. I’m messy.

~ For every time I think someone else deserves worse than they get, ultimately, I’m the one unjustly blessed by God and it’s gross ingratitude to forget that for an instant.

~ Loving people takes unbelievable amounts of time—time that could be used for something else—like the bottle of perfume broken over Jesus’ feet. The least I can do is to constantly give up myself and my priorities in a million inconvenient moments.

~ People know if they’re less important than my list.

~ Costly love means putting myself on the line, and I usually underestimate what that actually means.

~ People live forever. That’s beginning, finally, to sink in.

~ The purpose of missions is the glory of God—not my own sense of challenge.

~ If want to carry the gospel to people, it must be out of nothing more than gratitude and compassion. Gratitude for the hope I’ve been given and compassion for those who know of no such thing.

~ I’m expendable for the sake of this vision.

Yes, this life is far wilder than I’d dreamed, but it’s also painfully ordinary. Yet that’s how God planned it, and that’s how He lived among us, in the everyday and the uncomfortable and the sacrificial and the bloody.

Who do I think I am that the gospel ought to cost me nothing?

My blood ancestors died for the sake of the gospel, and am I more righteous than they, that I can live this Christian life with joy and escape unscathed? I think not.

The less I’m dying the less I actually get it. He provides material for the daily sacrifice. He’s my Father, and like Hebrews 12 says, He’s about the process of changing me, and if these past months have taught me anything, it’s that I never stop needing that change. Except I often forget that, and His mercy works sanctification in me whether I like it or not.

The other thing I forget is how powerless I actually am. How much I need His Spirit in my life to quicken and to convict. Without His restraining power I’d be lost. Think Dante’s Inferno. I really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things half as much as I think I do. Except that He inexplicably set His love upon me. That means it’s not about me at all—that this life is no longer mine.

Yet the wonder of it all isn’t me becoming something I’m not, but something I already am. I’m justified in the sight of God, and sanctification is the process of the Christ’s righteousness becoming a reality in my life.

Yes, there are the college moments. And what’s more, they’re legit. Like the time I studied church history till 5am with a friend, slept till 8, then took a 3 hour final. Our assessment after that one was that if man had never fallen we wouldn’t have heresy, and if we didn’t have heresy we wouldn’t have church councils, and if we didn’t have church councils we wouldn’t have to take church history (which is only a slight exaggeration). And now I’ve inexplicably landed in Church History II (Church since the Reformation) but the terror of the lay exam hasn’t set in yet. (This classmate has pretty much nailed the unique experience of RBC finals).

And the time my roommate and I locked ourselves out of the apartment and debated if it would be more polite to knock on doors and ask for a ride to get a key or to wait several hours and ask for money to walk somewhere and get something to eat—we were starving.

Oh yes, and meeting the wife of the president of Ligonier for the first time in my hippie clothes on an inauspicious Saturday morning.

Filling a girls' apartment with giant palm fronts and successfully pranking an apartment of six guys without help from any of them.

Immoderate consumption of popcorn and coffee goes without saying.

There’s lots of laughter here at RBC, lots of crazy times, surprise parties, inside jokes (most of them twice as funny because they’re just too nerdy and theological to take seriously). Let me promise you, Calvinists are anything but dull! 

But this isn’t the heart of it.

The heart of it is a God-Man who died, a Father who sent, a Spirit who empowered, a God who inexplicably loved. This ought not to be, yet it is—and that’s why we’re here.

Because the revelation of this love contains shallows where the lamb may wade and deeps where the elephant may swim.*

Because the smallest child can grasp the essence of the gospel, yet wise men spend lifetimes in the pursuit of one aspect of the character and the love of this wondrous God.

Because we’re called to teach the nations all that God has commanded and we can’t do this if we ourselves don’t know.

Because a trembling, awestruck fear of the Lord leads to wisdom. Because this God is also our Father.

Because we are united to this God in Christ.

Because this God comes to dwell among us through the Holy Spirit.

We are returning to Eden, to unbroken fellowship, to a hope of eternal glory.

And we won’t arrive on this side of eternity, but we will not fail to see all God’s Word come true.

“Evangelism is for everyone, all the time, not just for special services. Yet evangelism requires preaching, baptism, and instruction in everything Christ taught and commanded. This does not happen through extraordinary ministries but through the church’s ordinary ministry. . . The Reformers saw conversion as a lifelong process of growing and deepening repentance and faith in Christ. . . The most important thing to keep our eye on is not religious experience itself, but the faithful ministry of God’s means of grace.”

–Michael Horton

*John Owen