Psalm 62: For God alone my soul waits in silence | from him comes my salvation. 2 He alone is my rock and my salvation, | my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken. 3 How long will all of you attack a man | to batter him, like a leaning wall, a tottering fence? 4 They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. | They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse. 5 For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, | for my hope is from him. 6 He only is my rock and my salvation, | my fortress; I shall not be shaken. 7 On God rests my salvation and my glory; | my mighty rock, my refuge is God. 8 Trust in him at all times, O people; | pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. 9 Those of low estate are but a breath; | those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; | they are together lighter than a breath. 10 Put no trust in extortion; | set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, set not your heart on them. 11 Once God has spoken; | twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, 12 and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love. For you will render to a man according to his work.

Guest Post: Lisa Carter

The COVID-19 crisis has shaken the world, and now we wait. Some of us wait for the day in the Fall when we feel safe to send our children to school. We wait to return to our jobs, if we still have one. Some wait for a stimulus or unemployment check. Others of us are waiting to gather with loved ones and families and our church family. We wait for the freedom to visit our favorite restaurants, coffee shops, and businesses. We wait for the services and interventions for our special needs children. We wait for surgeries or dental or medical appointments that are not deemed essential right now.

Others of us wait for test results. We wait for family members to recover. We wait to grieve the loss of a loved one within our community. We wait and wonder how many more will get the virus. How many more will die? How long the quarantine will last? We wait. Waiting is never easy.  As Tom Petty sang, “waiting is the hardest part.”

It’s not our habit to wait. We are a culture of immediacy.  With all our technological advancements, we’ve become a less patient people. Coupled with our Do-It-Yourself fixer-upper mentality, we find it hard to wait and depend on anyone or anything outside of our own control.

Spiritual Waiting

Spiritually, it’s also hard to wait. Dr. Larry Crabb writes, “It is not our habit to wait on a hidden God who is somehow working a masterful plan to bring glory to Himself.” 

Even with plenty of things to keep us distracted, waiting can still be a scary and painful process. Yet, waiting is actually good for us all. To miss the goodness of waiting is to miss what waiting does to refine and grow us. There is always purpose in waiting. Abraham and Sarah waited 75 years for their promised son. Israel waited 420 years for deliverance from Egypt, then another 40 years before they could enter the Promised Land. God’s people waited generation after generation for the Messiah, and the church now awaits Christ’s return.

The question “How Long?” is a question that hovers over many of the Psalms.

In the waiting, here’s the key question: what does it look like to wait in a way that makes us a participant in what God is doing rather than someone who struggles against the wait and His purposes in it?

After all, we can be assured, as John Piper recently shared, that “the same sovereignty that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn’t, is the very sovereignty that sustains the soul in it.” God could stop this pandemic at any time, but in His mysterious wisdom chooses to let us wait for His purposes. So how do we wait well?

A Biblical Resource for our Waiting

I believe that Psalm 62 can be an encouragement to us in the waiting.

This is a psalm attributed to David. Some scholars think that David wrote this psalm in the middle of facing the rebellion of his son, Absalom, though it’s not certain. Whatever the case, throughout his entire life David seemed to face formidable enemies whether it be Goliath, his own mentor Saul, his own son Absalom, the Philistines, and especially temptations from his own flesh and the sin within. 

We cannot relate to many of the experiences David faced but we do have an enemy we are fighting right now as a nation. It’s an “invisible enemy” as people in our government have called it. Our enemy is COVID-19 which is life-threatening and threatening our very way of life, but we also face the enemies of our doubts and fears that attack our minds. 

What does David do when he is surrounded by enemies as expressed in this psalm?  He does something so counter-intuitive to us as modern Americans. He stops. He ceases action. He goes silent. He waits.

David’s Waiting

Right in the midst of all that is going on around him David begins with a calm composure and a silent waiting based on submission to his God (vs. 1: “For God alone my soul waits in silence”). He doesn’t grumble or complain or scheme but waits on the only source of hope that he knows. He says his waiting is in God alone. 

Charles Spurgeon describes this kind of waiting as a possession of the soul until deliverance comes. He says to wait on God is worship.  To wait in this posture is to give up the notion that we can do anything to save ourselves. It requires a kind of faith that nothing can shake us.

How could David silently wait instead of taking action or fretting, grumbling or complaining when enemies were upon him? And how do we sit and wait in submissive silence for deliverance in the midst of a global pandemic? To find the answer in this psalm, we must ask ourselves two questions:

Who do we Trust?

We wait quietly because of our trust in the One we wait upon.  We can wait assuredly upon God because He is our rock (vs. 2, 6), our salvation (vs. 2, 6), our fortress (vs. 2, 6), our refuge (vs. 7, 8).  He is all powerful (vs. 11) and possesses steadfast love (vs. 11).

We put our trust in Him because He alone is our greatest hope and the only perfectly trustworthy one.  Our ultimate hope in the waiting is not in our own plans, our googled information, our government, our medical experts, our economists, or even our first responders as important as these institutions and people may be. Our hope is in our Sovereign Loving God and it ought to be Him that we wait upon for our salvation and deliverance. He alone is the only one who can deliver from us from any enemy.

This leads us to another question that begs to be asked: are we waiting for everything to go back to the way things were?  Are we waiting for health, ease, comfort, and peace?  What are we waiting for?

What do we wait for? What do we hope for?

There is something at the end of our waiting. Most people feel that waiting is meaningless without an end result. Right now, we wait for an end to a global pandemic.

Yet, as we look to the counsel of Scripture, it appears that the process of waiting is as important as the end result to God.

As Paul Tripp puts it, “waiting is not about what you get at the end; it’s about what you become as you wait.” Or, as Jade Mazarin writes: “Something actually happens while nothing is happening. God uses waiting to change us.”

From the whole counsel of God’s Word, we know God’s ultimate purpose is that God be enjoyed and glorified in and through us. Paul writes: “It is my eager expectation and hope that…Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20)

Waiting is a tool of God to shape and mold and refine us into vessels of His mercy if we submit to Him through the process. We exist for God’s glory, not our own comfort and ease. Paul Tripp writes, “The whole redemptive story is written for one purpose and one purpose alone: the glory of the king.” Tripp believes that the reason that waiting is so hard is “because we tie our hearts to other glories.”

In Psalm 62, David points out man’s attachment to the glories of riches and power. God often strips us of our glories in our seasons of waiting. Waiting requires us to surrender to His glory.

Since we live in a fallen and broken world, it is inevitable that we wait. You will often find yourself in a “season of waiting”. In the waiting, will you build bigger and more solid bridges of trust in God? Will you surrender more fully to a Sovereign God who continues to possess perfect steadfast love even in the midst of a global pandemic?

Will you use your season of waiting to trust more fully in God alone? 

There are voices in the larger evangelical world that are finding the silver lining, and even celebrating, the shift of American Christianity en masse to online worship services. Attractional church growth guru, Carey Nieuhwhof, has claimed, with much enthusiasm, that “church growth” spiked 300% last month as people began sitting on couches and around kitchen tables on Sunday mornings.

I’m highly skeptical.

In my mind, any fruitful metric of “church growth” which is exclusively tied to digital content ceases to have much legitimacy. Neiuhwhof champions the idea that online worship removes the obstacles to church attendance because “church” is simply a click away and therefore “digital church has a much lower barrier to participation”.  The problem is that “participation” of online worship lowers the bar to such an extent as to beg the question of whether this “church” is attracting consumers (to digital content) or raising up worshipers (of the Triune God).

As Mike Frost writes, “If you’re winning people to a ten or fifteen minute viewing of a prepackaged worship and teaching experience, devoid of community, mission, correction, reconciliation or justice, you’re not growing the church. You’re fostering religious consumers.”

Online Worship ≠ Church

We already live in a cultural moment where a person kayaks on the river or takes a run on the beach on a Sunday morning and posts a picture to Instagram with #church. Evangelicalism’s long confused love affair with its muddled ecclesiology seems to be at a potential tipping point during the coronavirus crisis. Tim Challies asks, “If we all stream our services, will anyone ever come back?” The fact that this is now a question reveals evangelicalism’s shaky foundation: the church’s orientation has been inverted with man at the center, as churches bend over backwards to “attract new customers” with exciting content, quick fixes for felt needs, and instant community.

You might notice from the outset that TWC has labeled its online hiatus an “online worship experience”.  No mention is made of the word “church”. Because what we are trying to simulate during these days is just that – a simulation of the real thing. We would be wise not to confuse the simulation with the real thing or believe that the simulation could ever replace the actual.

A church that worships the Triune God recognizes that humanity was made for relational connection (God is Father, Son, & Holy Spirit).  Disciples who follow the Incarnate One are meant to incarnate truth and grace in a community of real relationships. An individualized, fuzzy spirituality devoid of the body of Christ is not a recipe for church but for navel-gazing “experience-ism”, an increasingly common and cheap substitute for church in our particular moment in time.

Participation or Consumption?

From sizing up my own “participation” of online worship and hearing about the experiences of others, the axiom “the medium is the message” seems dangerously close to reality. On our TV or computers, we are accustomed to short bursts of engagement thru constantly searching for (entertaining or educational) content that suits our fancy. Our attention is minimal and the engagement is impersonal. We can hide behind a screen where we are never fully known. We pause the service as kids or pets or more exciting content (perhaps on a second device?) interrupt our disengaged participation again and again.

Sure, wearing pajamas to “church” seems like a cool idea until you filter this participation thru the prophet Isaiah’s weighty encounter with the holiness of Yahweh (in Isaiah 6) or meditate on the beloved disciple John falling down “as though dead” before the glory of God in his magnificent vision of God (Rev. 1:17).

I, for one, won’t be celebrating our pivot to online worship services but practicing lament as the body of Christ grieves a significant loss.

*****

See also: During a time of disorientation and canceled gatherings, what might God be teaching the Church during COVID-19? Leaning into these few, precious opportunities could prove immensely fruitful: “Opportunities for the Church during its Online Hiatus”.

Online church is not church.

Let’s get that straight from the get-go. (We’ll delve deeper into that reality with the next post “The Dark Side for the Church during its Online Hiatus”.) 

Yet even in the hardest of times, God is a God who habitually brings life out of death, light out of darkness, and triumph and strength out of times of conflict and weakness. So what could be the positive effects on the church during its online hiatus due to COVID-19?

PUTTING FAITH BACK INTO THE FAMILY

The church is meant to play a secondary role in the spiritual nurture and intentional discipleship of our children and students. The priority of the family in faith formation is a long-standing God-ordained way the faith is passed to the next generation.

In Israel, families practiced the daily recitation of the Shema (Shema  שְׁמַ֖ע is derived from the first word “hear” of Deut. 6:4-9). The Shema begins with the confession of Yahweh alone being their God and Israel being a monotheistic people:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Deut. 6:4

The Shema proceeds to the central commandment to love Yahweh. (“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” Deut. 6:5.)

Yet, quite noticeably, the context of this instruction to love Yahweh occurs not in the Tabernacle, nor in the future-built Temple, nor in the Holy City of Jerusalem but in the midst of family life. (Read Deut. 6:6-9!)

No mention is made of the priests. No mention of a sanctuary. No mention of Sunday school or youth group.

Faithful Israelites are given a holy and solemn charge: “You shall teach them [God’s words/commandments] diligently to your children.” Where? “In your house.” When? “When you lie down and when you rise.” The command implicitly charges Israel’s fathers and mothers: you need to get equipped to be the primary teachers of the faith to your children.

Not surprisingly, in the New Testament, God charges leaders in the church, including pastors and teachers, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12). Pastors and teachers are called to equip; the saints (meaning all Christians, including fathers and mothers) are called to carry out “the work of ministry”.  

If you feel ill-equipped in the discipleship of your child, then you should beat down the door of the teachers and pastors of your church so they can disciple you in the faith until you are equipped for this life-defining work. Christian parents need to get well-acquainted with the Bible (reading the Word), sound Christian doctrine (knowledge of the Word), and spiritual practices (the rhythms & habits that nurture faith) to pass on the faith onto their children. 

As COVID-19 strips away the gathered church, faith has an opportunity to flourish in its God-ordained setting – in the context of the family.[1]

Key Question: Are the spiritual rhythms and habits you are currently practicing during COVID-19 able to sustain, by the grace of God, your child’s faith into adulthood? 

EXCHANGING CONSUMER CHRISTIANITY FOR SIMPLER VERSIONS OF CHURCH

I love what Brett McCracken writes: “In the COVID-19 quarantine, the clunky, unpolished computer-church experience will decidedly not be the easiest or most comfortable option for how people spend their Sundays. It will be a countercultural choice. And that’s a good thing.” 

Even in our denomination, one of the largest churches in ECO (with a paid media team) has experienced technical problems during COVID-19 that resulted in many people not being able to participate in its Sunday morning worship.

During COVID-19, we have to remember that the Christian faith is predominantly thriving in places on our planet (like Africa & Latin America) that are most removed from the consumer-driven metrics that characterize the western church. Could it be that the simple biblical gospel does not need to be adorned by electric guitars and fast-paced activities for children and youth? 

Key Question: Are you being a consumer or a worshiper during COVID-19? What can you learn about the simplicity of the faith during these days of quarantine?

Giving “UNTO GOD” rather than for (consumer) SERVICES-RENDERED

Many churches have been scrambling to piece together emergency budgets and dramatically cut costs during a downshift of congregational giving as church services have moved online.

Will the coronavirus teach the American church that giving, first and foremost, is a God-centered activity that honors God rather than being a horizontal, transactional activity that gives for “services rendered”?  If our giving is in proportion to “how happy I am with my church” or “how wonderful the music is” or “how good the preacher performs”, then we have succumbed to a very human-centered transaction in our giving. 

Ironically, as the church moves online, online giving has the potential to depict  something beautiful about the nature of giving itself.  Whether the person is present (or not) in worship during a given weekend or whether the church is meeting face-to-face (or not) during the coronavirus, giving is primarily meant to be an expression of our worship of God.  Primarily, congregational giving is to be found on the Godward side of life, with a God-centered direction in its basic orientation.  

Key Question: Is my giving “unto the Lord” or for (consumer) “services rendered”?

A Word of Hope

The coronavirus is shaking up our world in enormous ways. Wouldn’t it be great if the church could emerge from this shake-up with more resolute father and mothers convinced of the necessity to teach the faith in the home? If the church began to be filled with Christians less beholden to and less impressed with the consumer-driven circumference of the faith and more fixed upon the Jesus as the center of the faith?  

There are positive possibilities for the church. Let those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, lean into a Jesus-centered, family-nurtured, simple gospel that awakens our hearts and prepares our souls to journey through even the hardest of times in our world.

*****

[1] As a church, TWC is providing a “Living Room Liturgy” that, quite honestly, might be more important during these days for your family than the actual online service because fathers and mothers can “incarnate” the faith in a discussion based on actual knowledge of your own children’s faith needs. You can pray with and over your children. Even the simple action of seeing mom or dad opening their Bibles intentionally at home can leave long-lasting impressions on children for the rest of their lives.

Note: “Living Room Liturgy” is found on the “Online Worship Experience” on the TWC website.

IDEA #1: Download TWC’s HOLY WEEK DEVOTION. Walk with Jesus through the final days of his earthly life. Be guided through Holy Week by daily Scriptures and meditative questions.

IDEA #2: John Piper’s NPR interview on suffering and the sovereignty of God after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that killed 250,000 people is one of the best pastoral responses to the problem of suffering that I’ve heard. As the coronavirus continues to grow, Christians should equip themselves now to answer this thorny theological problem that plagues both believers and non-believers alike.

NPR Interview after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

John Piper, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God

Download

IDEA #3: Watch and listen to what my friend, Dr. Kevin DeYoung, calls “one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard”. R.C. Sproul’s sermon on “The Curse Motif of the Atonement” at the Together for the Gospel conference in 2008 helps you meditate on the weighty truth of Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’”.

“Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.”

This is one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite theologians. Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew a thing or two about living in solemn times, spending his last days in a Nazi concentration camp before his death for trying to “drive a spoke into the wheel” of Hitler’s cruel regime.

When I arrived in Equatorial Guinea, I remember a Brazilian missionary telling me, “If you don’t learn to laugh, you’ll end up crying.” The trials and travails of living in Central Africa called forth not only the harder edges of your character (courage, grit, resiliency) but also the softer edges, particularly the ability to laugh. On the face of it, Africa, which often sits on the hot-seat of human suffering, would not seem poised to be a place of joviality and laughter. Yet visitors to Sub-Saharan Africa are consistently caught off-guard and taken aback by the joviality and laughter of its peoples, diverse as they are. 

We Floridians are peculiar people, too. We often have a birds-eye view of the most devastating effects of hurricanes, yet, at the same time, we have an ability to make endless jokes and devastatingly funny memes while the cone of uncertainty barrels its way towards our houses and communities.

What gives?

Of course, I raise the question because our nation is now mimicking the response of Floridians to hurricanes, as my social media feed bounces back and forth between absolute seriousness and light-hearted humor in response to the novel coronavirus.

What gives? 

Maybe humor is truly cathartic. It seems like humor is acting like a gigantic stress-reliever in the midst of our collective anxiety. 

Maybe humor soothes our fears.  If we can laugh at something, then perhaps we are freed from living in its shackles or in its debilitating prison of fear.

Maybe humor is hopeful, which communicates a certain type of defiance in the midst of our trials and sufferings.

From time to time, I’ve reflected on my own pilgrimage with humor. I feel like I returned at 24 years of age, after a year in Central Africa, a genuinely more jovial person. Yet, I undoubtedly saw more extreme poverty and kept my heart closer to human suffering during that year than ever before in my life.

What I do know is this: the range of our human emotions is a gift from God. 

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. ~ Proverbs 17:22

Even in laughter the heart may ache,
    and the end of joy may be grief.~ Proverbs 14:13

A happy heart makes the face cheerful,
    but heartache crushes the spirit. ~ Proverbs 15:13

All the days of the oppressed are wretched,
    but the cheerful heart has a continual feast. ~ Prov. 15:15

The Counsel of Jesus for Anxiety (Matthew 6:25-34)

The following is a highly redacted blog based on Sunday’s sermon on March 22, 2020

The date was September 13, 1541 – dangerous and chaotic times for a Protestant Reformer. After an exiled absence of three and a half long years from the city of Geneva, John Calvin resumed his pastorate by opening up the Scriptures – picking up in exactly the place he had left off in the book of Psalms – before being exiled.

For Calvin, it was bold statement that no matter the times, no matter the trials, no matter the challenging exile and persecution that he faced, the expositional preaching of the Word of God verse-by-verse would be the foundation of his ministry.  Why?  Calvin was convinced that people needed a verse-by-verse exposition of the Word of God for their faith, to face the trying times in which they lived, and for their own spiritual growth & building up in the gospel of Christ.

Since early December, our church has been journeying through a verse-by-verse exposition of the Sermon on the Mount. For our text, we picked up yesterday -- not in exactly the same place  -- but in the same sermon of Jesus in Matthew 6:25-34.

Consider the following:

Anxiety disorders are now the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 18% of the population every year – 40 million adults.

Recent studies have shown that Anxiety disorders affect 25.1% of children between 13 and 18 years of age.

It is estimated that 15% of the adult US population will experience a depression at some point in their lifetime.

Depression is the leading cause of suicide about every 12 minutes; over 41,000 people every year commit suicide in the U.S. alone.

As Soren Kirkegaard put it, “No grand inquisitor has in readiness such terrible tortures as anxiety.”  Max Lucado pinpoints accurately the challenge facing all of us during the coronavirus: “Feed your fears and your faith will starve. Feed your faith, and your fears will starve.”  Friends, what are you feeding on during the coronavirus?  Are you feeding your fears or are you feeding your faith? 

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commands us three times against anxiety:

Vs. 25:  Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life.

Vs. 31: Therefore, do not be anxious.

Vs. 34: Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow.

In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus gives us practical counsel for overcoming anxiety; beginning at the end of the passage and working backwards through the passage, let’s delve into three ideas from the text:

1.    Overcome worry by a relentlessly enjoying TODAY (vs. 34).

Vs. 34: Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

WORRY arises in your life when MENTALLY you are PARKED in the WRONG TIME ZONE. 

Friends, imaginary burdens are the toughest burdens to carry.  If you are trying to carry the imaginary and impossible burdens of tomorrow, that is a weight you can never bear. In fact, the energy and mental exertion that comes into your life when you try to carry tomorrow’s imaginary burdens only serve to diminish your strength for today. Anxiety often tries to carry “imaginary burdens” — burdens that do not yet exist because they have not yet arisen in time!

As George McDonald wrote:  “No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today, that the weight is more than a man can bear.”

So it’s a paradox: you think your worry is helping yourself tomorrow, but what you are really doing is crushing yourself today. You may need to practice a mantra based on vs. 34: “Sufficient for the day…sufficient for the day…sufficient for the day” whenever your mind begins to worry or your heart begins to beat with anxiety.

2.    Overcome worry by relentlessly pursing RIGHTEOUSNESS (vs. 31-33).

Worry arises in your life when you love the wrong things in the wrong order. It’s that simple.  Human beings were designed by the Creator to prioritize certain pursuits as central to our lives.

So if a human being is running off the track designed by God – with priorities and pursuits that are out of whack – don’t you think that driving a train off a cliff or barreling a train into a forest would produce worry and anxiety for the conductor?

The pivotal question that Jesus is setting up for you to ponder is this:  Are you primarily concerned about “seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness”? Or, you concerned primarily about secondary concerns in life? 

Our lives get off track when we begin to say things like “I can have it all,” or “I can be double-minded in my pursuits”, as if we alone are capable of living a “super-human” life without boundaries or rightly ordered priorities and pursuits.

Worry arises in your life when you love the wrong things in the wrong order.

3.    Overcome worry by relentlessly resting in God’s Sovereign Care (vs. 25-30).

Worry arises in your life is when you rely on the WRONG TYPE of CARE and CONTROL – namely YOURS. Worry is a control issue.  Worry is a trust issue.  

Worry comes down to this: “I am the only one that I trust.” That’s what you are saying to God when you worry.  “God I don’t trust you, I must be in control.” “God, I don’t have any desire to release control to you.”  Worry is a control issue and a trust issue; and, therefore, it’s a heart issue.

Jesus makes a classic rabbinic argument, arguing from the lesser (birds, lilies of the field) to the greater (to human beings made in the image of God, the crown of the creation). Jesus asks rhetorically: “Are you not of more value than they?” (vs. 26).

Can you ponder the lower parts of creation and learn to rest in God’s sovereign care over your life?  God longs for you to live a worry-free, anxious-free life.  Learn to rest in God’s sovereign care for your life and see the worry and anxiety begin to evaporate from your life.