Enlightened Brokenness

Have you ever suffered a broken heart? I’m not talking about minor disappointments, which are uncomfortable enough; I’m talking about the kind of grief that crushes your spirit, the kind that no matter what else you think of is always accompanying you, the kind you feel physically in your chest, the kind that makes you genuinely understand why it’s called a “broken heart.” If you have, I daresay you know you have and that you might be wondering what good could have possibly come out of it.

Perhaps you’re living with a broken heart right now and are struggling to see any redeeming quality of your plight. There are many ways to find beauty in the midst of brokenness, for it is often the schoolroom that God uses to teach us truths that would otherwise be difficult for us to learn. So today I’d like to invite you to consider what I believe is one blessing of experiencing this kind of brokenness, namely a deeper understanding of and gratitude for the love of God. Let’s think about it . . .

If you’ve been in a true gospel-preaching church for any length of time, you’ve likely heard mentioned Jesus’ love in enduring the lethally potent wrath of God in our place. We know that Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice for us, thus showing us the deepest love. But how often do we really think about the Father’s sacrifice?

We think of God the Father as the One who poured out the wrath, but do we picture Him as purely vengeful and devoid of love in this act? No, He showed His love for us in what He did, just like Jesus did, you might be thinking. And this is true. After all, one of the most famous verses in the Bible tells us that God loved us so much that He gave up His only Son for us (John 3:16).

But what about His love for His Son? Did the Father cease loving Jesus when He poured out His wrath on Him? Their perfect fellowship and intimacy was broken for a time, yes, but did God stop loving His Son? Somehow, I don’t think so. And if He didn’t, what do you think that means He experienced when He willingly separated Himself from His Son and poured out the full extent of His wrath upon Him? Do you think it might have been something akin to a broken heart?

Of course, we must be careful when we try to apply our own finite emotions and experiences to the transcendent, infinite God; we must avoid making Him in our image. But we are made in His image and thus can understand, to an extent, His character. We also know that He reveals Himself in His Word through anthropomorphisms (i.e. the use of human-like descriptions to describe a non-human, e.g. “the arm of the Lord” or “the sun smiled on the earth”). So I don’t think it is too far a stretch to presume that Jesus’ suffering was as painful for His Father as it was for Him (to say nothing of the fact that they are, after all, the same Being).

In our human experience, it seems that most true cases of broken heart relate in some way to the fracturing of intimacy with another being, to the loss of relationship whether through death or through a parting of ways, either physically or emotionally, or sometimes both. So if God’s love is so much more perfect and complete than ours, does it not stand to reason that the fracturing of intimacy within the Trinity would produce a pain so much more profound than ours?

If we accept, then, that God’s heart was broken at the Cross, next we come to another realization—that in doing what He did willingly, He chose to let His heart be broken—for us. He chose to endure the pain of inflicting undeserved pain on His own beloved. The weight of separation was felt by the Father just as it was by the Son, and this weight not only was willingly born but was willingly initiated.

So when we experience a broken heart, we get what I believe is a small taste of the pain God must have felt.  Instead of mere cognitive understanding of what God suffered, we’re granted experiential understanding; we get a personal glimpse into the agony and an inkling of the soul-crushing distress.  

And when we realize that God voluntarily subjected Himself to that kind of pain for us—people who were ungrateful, selfish, rebellious creatures—we cannot help but be moved to worship and praise the One who loved us that much and to be comforted in realizing that He knows firsthand what it feels like to be in pain. However much you are hurting, He chose to bear that much and more in loving you.

So in the middle of a brokenhearted season, when goodness seems absent, take the opportunity to ponder the matchless love of God that demonstrates itself in His willingness to suffer pain on our behalf. If your heart is broken today, or if it will be one day in the future, rest in this: in all the many ways God may be using your brokenness to shape and grow you, it just might be that among them is enlightening you with deeper understanding of the depth of His love. 

To read the Arabic translation of this post, click here.

لقراءة الترجمة العربية لهذا المنشور إضغط هنا.

Lessons from Literature: How to Be Your True Self (The Lady’s Confession)

It has been fairly exactly a year since we last explored a lesson from a literary classic. In truth, I was stunned when I realized it had been that long! So let us end the drought by looking at a nineteenth-century Scottish author who inspired C. S. Lewis and whose books have been re-popularized in recent years through Michael Phillips’s editorial work. His name is George MacDonald, and he possesses that Austen-esque intuition into the human condition with the added potency spiritual astuteness.  

Having known of him for some time, it wasn’t until a few months ago, when a friend let me borrow one of his trilogies republished under the new title The Curate of Glaston, that I became acquainted with his work first-hand. I’m reading the last of the three novels currently, and MacDonald’s work so far has proved to be the kind that leaves me almost speechless from the sheer volume of truth it contains.

Sometimes, the only thing I can think to say, on repeat, is, “It’s just so good.” So good, in fact, that I could probably write a dozen “Lessons from Literature” posts just from the two novels I’ve already read. But let’s just start with one, shall we?

In previous posts in this series, we’ve seen truths expressed through the characters’ actions and some through the author’s commentary. MacDonald’s writings are full of both. In reading them we can learn much, both from what his characters do, say, and think and from his direct addresses to his audience. In this post, we’ll look at two passages of direct address that shed light on a central theme—namely, being fully ourselves.

We live in a culture that is preoccupied—even obsessed—with individuality, being confident in who we are, not being intimidated into hiding our “true selves.” But no one seems to think much about how we actually know who our true selves are. Do we get to define what makes us “us”?

If we listened to our culture, we would hear it say, “Absolutely! You define your own destiny. You can be whoever you want to be.” And in some small way, that is true insofar as we have been given the ability to make choices that have consequences that, in turn, can shape our circumstances and even our attitudes, mindsets, and personal contexts out of which we evaluate and respond to others. But is any of that what creates our core identity?

MacDonald doesn’t think so. He declares in The Lady’s Confession (originally titled Paul Faber, Surgeon), “Only in the unfolding of the Christ in every man or woman can the individuality, his or her genuine personality, the flower of his nature, be developed and perfected in its own distinct loveliness” (p. 193). Read that sentence again—slowly—and let it sink in. It’s message is in direct conflict with what our society’s impression of Christianity is, but it’s in complete agreement with God’s Word.

Society often has the idea that becoming a Christian involves joining a community that strips you of the “freedom to be yourself” and makes you a cookie-cutter person following a set of rules. The world doesn’t understand that while we do, in a sense, lose ourselves when we follow Christ (Matthew 16:24, Galatians 2:20), we are only losing the worst part of us—our identity as sinners, our selfish desires, and pride—so that the best part of us—our God-given personalities, talents, and gifts—can actually flourish as our identity becomes children of God. 

Instead of the reality being that following Christ squashes a person’s individuality, the exact opposite is true—we can never truly be ourselves outside of a relationship with Jesus Christ. Why? Because God is the One who created us in His own image and, therefore, designed every part of who we are (Genesis 1:27, Psalm 139:14).

When we speak of our “fallen human nature,” there is no comma between “fallen” and “human.” The two words are not adjectives both equally describing “nature.” Instead, “fallen” describes “human.” In other words, Adam and Eve were perfectly themselves before they rebelled against God (and event we call The Fall); they were completely whole, fully human as God had designed them. But after their rebellion they were not complete. Their human nature was broken and flawed, and they were not able to be fully themselves.

As their descendants, we are born with the same problem, the same fractured nature. That’s why it is only when we let God inform us through His Word and His Spirit (who lives within us when we become God’s children) that we can know who we really are and live accordingly. And it is only then that we will find personal satisfaction and fulfillment.

A related truth that is counter to the world’s message is that our individuality is not best displayed in being self-sufficient. Especially in America, we’re all about “picking ourselves up” and taking pride in our personal independence. But is that the mark of a truly successful life? Will that bring satisfaction?

Again, MacDonald doesn’t think so. He explains through his character Thomas Wingfold’s words: “He is not the greatest man who is most independent, but he who thirsts most after a conscious harmony with every element and portion of the mighty whole, and who demands from every region its influences to perfect his individuality. […] The finest and strongest is that which to live must breathe essential life, self-willed life, God himself” (p. 112). The “mighty whole” he speaks of is God, the One in whom is the fullness of life, indeed, who is the origin of life itself. It is only in recognizing our need for something—or Someone—outside of and far greater than ourselves and in finding that need met in God that we become strong and can become most fully ourselves.

As Jesus (i.e. God) Himself said, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. […] These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:4-5, 11, ESV). True, enduring growth, flourishing, and joy can only come through Jesus.

We have a Creator who has designed us specifically, masterfully, and caringly, and He calls us to Himself so that in bearing fruit and becoming more like Christ we finally can be our true selves in order to display His glory and further His kingdom. He has made us who we are, and He uses who we are to bring glory to His Name. What a beautiful, encouraging, humbling truth to absorb!

Source: MacDonald, George (Phillips, Michael, ed.) The Curate of Glaston. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1986.

Thankful for the Journey

Teleportation. If I could have any superpower, that’s what it would be.  Being a history-lover, I used to say time travel, but fifteen years of living twelve hours away from first family and then friends has solidly changed my answer.

Physical distance is just so hard, partly because so much is required to overcome it--time, money, health, transportation. And when those things are lacking, it means missing birthdays, funerals, weddings, children being born and growing up, in-person conversations, and hugs. Even when time and money are available, they are necessarily spent in the process of traveling from one point to another. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just snap our fingers and be 600 miles away—or rather, 600 miles near? Think of all we could gain.

But I wonder, too, what we would lose. If teleportation was among our abilities, there would be no more full-day-long car rides, no commutes, no waiting in airports. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? But that also means there would be no playing road games, no daydreaming as the clouds roll by, no watching the scenery gradually change from flatlands to rolling hills to mountains, no time to sit and be alone with your thoughts—or a good book—for hours on end. 

Travel has a way of slowing us down, even as we’re speeding down the highway or soaring through the air. The craziness of life gets put on hold for thirty minutes or thirteen hours, and we have a chance to breathe, to reflect, to ponder. If there was no need to travel, everything would be more nonstop than it already is. There would be no pause, no perspective, no journey. And I daresay we wouldn’t be as appreciative of what’s at the end of the road—whether it be family, friends, or favorite places—if it didn’t cost us something to get to them.

Life without travel might sound nice (by travel, I mean the necessary movement to get from one place to another, not the process of exploring the world), but life without journey certainly would not be.

On a much deeper level, the same could be said for our spiritual lives. If you’re like me, the older you get, the more you wish we could just skip the expense of the time and discipline and cost that goes into the process of our sanctification, i.e. of God’s making us more like Jesus. Sometimes it seems it would be wonderful if we could just snap our fingers and be in our perfected state, like we will be when we leave this earth and enter the tangible presence of Jesus.

But just as with teleportation, if this were possible we would lose so much. There would be no more leaning on Jesus for daily strength to fight our besetting sin, no more sense of victory when by God’s grace we overcome the temptations of this world, no more watching the scenery of our personal, spiritual landscape change from mounds of clay to a beautifully formed vessel, no more urgent need to plead daily with God in prayer.

As physical journeys, whether great or small, give us a deeper perspective on the value of relationships and time, our spiritual journey gives us a deeper perspective on the value of the most important relationship we’ll ever have—that with the living God—and the timing that is always perfect—His.

So next time I leave work so mentally exhausted that I don’t want to go through the relatively short commute home or the next time I have to drive over 600 miles just to see dear friends, I’ll try not to wish I could teleport and be done with it. Instead, I’ll try to be thankful for the journey with all of the blessings it brings. And I’ll be reminded to be thankful for the more meaningful journey that I am on with Christ Jesus, for, although it can be tiring and uncomfortable at times, it will all be worth it in the end, and I will love Him all the more for the journey He so tenderly leads me through. 

Are you on a journey with Him? And if you are, have you thanked Him lately?

A Child’s Faith

For the past several years, I’ve followed some sort of reading plan that takes me through the entire Bible each year. Whether chronologically or with a mix of Old and New Testament passages, these plans are wonderful at providing a game-plan to ingest the entire Bible in 365 days, something that is beneficial in the life of discipleship. But after a few years of Bible intake at this pace, I found myself growing tired of soaring across the grand narrative of Scripture and began longing to nestle into passages at a slower pace.

Don’t get me wrong—reading the Bible in its entirety is something I think every Christian should do. It gives us a better understanding of the big picture, helps us grow in wisdom, and gives us a fuller understanding of who God is. So if you haven’t read every word of the Bible yet, I highly encourage you to do so. Sometimes, though, it’s easy to get used to breezing through large chunks of Scripture and to forget to really digest what is written. That’s why this year I’m taking a different route in my daily time in the Word.

After I trusted in Jesus for salvation when I was seven years old, my parents encouraged me to start taking notes during the sermons in church. So with my VeggieTales journal, colored ink pens, and less-than-accurate spelling, I began to listen closely to my pastor as he preached each Sunday, to learn how to follow a sermon’s structure, and to write down the main points, references to Scripture, and other ideas that stood out to me.

Now, almost twenty years later, I’m on my seventeenth journal. My ink is generally black and my spelling has improved, but I still use the skills that my parents cultivated in me to be able to follow the conceptual progression of a sermon (something that, incidentally, also came in handy in college classes) and to listen not only to the pastor but to the Holy Spirit, recording those truths that God impresses on my heart through the vehicle of a man’s exposition of His Word.

I still have my first journal; I have all of them, in fact, and it is to them I have returned this year to guide my devotions. Starting with that VeggieTales journal, I take one sermon each day and read the chapter from which its passage was taken. Usually, I’ll make myself read it slowly, oftentimes more than once. I don’t want to speed through and be done, which I am so prone to do. Instead, I want to milk that chapter for all it’s worth and to pick out a particular verse or phrase to think on throughout the day. After I’ve gleaned truth from the Word itself, I’ll skim through my notes from the sermon on that passage.

While I’ve been doing so, I’ve been reminded of the beauty of a child’s faith. So many of the things that I find written in my seven- and eight-year-old handwriting are things that seem so elementary to me now. But I realized one day that these notes most likely reflect the moment that I first encountered these truths. Truths such as, “The church should proclaim a message about Jesus”; “We don’t know the needs of a lot of people, but God does”; “We can sin by doing bad. We can sin by knowing to do right and not doing it also”; “God is a God of justice”; “Holiness is defined by God”; and “The Lord’s faithfulness never fails.”

As followers of Christ, it can become so easy to forget where we’ve come from, to have our eyes glaze over at ideas that are “obvious” to us years into our walk with Christ. But for each of us, there was a moment when we first learned foundational concepts of the faith. And in that moment, those concepts were fresh and exciting; they brought light-bulb moments invigorating our relationship with our Creator and Savior.

In all honesty, there’s no reason these truths shouldn’t still be exciting and encouraging, but too often we become stale in our faith. We lose the child-like wonder we had at the moment of our rebirth and in the early days of our growth. That’s one reason I have come to be thankful for the practice of note-taking. As a young believer, I had no idea that what I was writing down would one day encourage my soul and remind me of the certainty of the Rock that is my foundation.

Perhaps you trusted Christ later in life, though, and do not have journals from childhood. Remember that all of us believers were once children in Christ, whether we were reborn at eight or eighty. In my case, my spiritual childhood happened to coincide with my physical one, but for many the season of needing “spiritual milk” (see 1 Peter 2:2, 1 Corinthians 3:2, and Hebrews 5:12) comes in their physical 20s, 30s, 60s, or later.

Whenever your spiritual childhood occurred, I hope you have some written record from that time, whether it be a prayer journal, sermon notes, Bible study notes, or something else that you can revisit to remind yourself of the precious foundational concepts on which God has built your faith. And if you don’t have anything like that or if you are just now in your spiritual childhood, let me challenge and encourage you to start taking sermon notes, start writing down things that jump out at you from Scripture, start journaling your journey of faith—because one day when you need a jump start in your walk with Christ, God just might use what younger-you wrote down to refresh your soul in Christ. 

To read the Arabic translation of this post, click here.

.لقراءة الترجمة العربية لهذا المنشور إضغط هنا

The Call to Return

Last time, we looked at a passage in Jeremiah as an example of what truths are just waiting to be found in the lesser-well-known portions of Scripture. We saw a vivid illustration of how the Israelites committed a two-fold evil by turning away from God and by trying to replace Him with lesser things of their own making. But the story doesn’t end there.  This week, let’s take a look at the passage following last time’s verse to see what happened after God confronted the people about their sin.

In the rest of Jeremiah 2 through Jeremiah 3:5, God continues to detail how His people have done wrong and explains the punishment they deserve. But in Jeremiah 3:12, God reveals that He is not only a God of holiness and justice . . .

“Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD.

I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD;

I will not be angry forever.” (ESV)

And again, in verse 14:

                “Return, O faithless children, declares the LORD,

                                for I am your master;”

In verse 12, we see that God is merciful. Once His people have strayed, they are not without hope. They are not doomed to suffer the wrath of God forever. He shows them the way out as He lovingly calls them to return to Him. But He doesn’t only offer to withhold His wrath; He offers to provide something as well—healing.

We see this in verse 22 as God calls His people to return for a third time:

“Return, O faithless sons;

                                I will heal your faithlessness.”

He promises that if they return to Him, He will take the very betrayal they have engaged in and heal it, restoring their lives from the destruction it has left in its wake. He will take them from being faithless sons to being faithful ones.

Notice that the call to “return” implies prior existence in a place that has since been left. In other words, God is not calling the people to enter His family; they are already part of His family. He is calling them to return to the fold. The parallel scenario in our New Testament age, then, is with the Church, i.e. those who have already become part of the family of God by believing in Jesus Christ for their salvation.

There is vital encouragement here for those of us who are in Christ. Why? Because these verses show us that it is possible for a believer to stray. That doesn’t sound like a positive thing, you might be thinking. Well, the straying isn’t, but for those of us followers of Christ with perfectionist, rule-following tendencies, the ongoing struggle with sin in the Christian life can be not only disheartening but downright defeating.

The more we fail to completely put to death the sin we struggle with, the more we begin to doubt whether we’re even saved. We know in our head that it is God’s grace alone that saves us, but we also know in our head that we are called to holiness and called to a transformation that makes us more and more like Christ. So when we do or think things that are pointedly not like Christ, we fail to see the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives, and we begin to question whether He lives within us at all.

I truly believe that is why God included the details about so many of His followers straying—Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, just to name a few—and indeed, even these verses in Jeremiah. He knew we would need reassuring that falling into sin as a believer does not mean we are not believers and that it does not mean we have no hope of forgiveness and grace.

(Of course, we also want to avoid false assurance, i.e. believing that we’re saved when we’re really not, but there are other markers to look for in one’s life to help determine if we are truly saved. What I’m speaking to here is the phenomenon that occurs when true believers begin to doubt their salvation because they can’t seem to keep from falling to temptation in their lives.)

What these verses remind us is that the merciful God who saves us does not cease to be merciful after He saves us. Our salvation, after all, is not dependent on any merit on our part but on the gift of Jesus’ perfect record to replace our own record of wrongs. It is dependent not on who we are or what we have done, currently do, or ever will do; it’s dependent on who God is and what He has already done, is doing, and will do.

This reminder, as we see it in Jeremiah, is so needed, especially in today’s church culture, which often can hinder people from being honest about their struggles and doubts. Admittedly, our pride often keeps us from expressing concerns as well (heaven forbid we tarnish our “Christian image” by admitting weakening faith or questioning of our salvation). But I pray that the church becomes a true community, reflective of the family that it is, where people can be open and honest in their moments of crippled faith and can find encouragement from brothers and sisters who will point them back to passages in the Bible such as this one.

If you find yourself wearying under the relentless attacks of your Enemy, who delights in planting seeds of doubt in your hear t and mind, I pray that you have a brother or sister in Christ to lean on for strength—or rather, one that will help you lean on the strength of Christ and on the Truth of God’s Word. I pray that you cling to verses like the ones we’ve looked at today that proclaim the truth of God’s kindness. And if you are straying, I pray you will heed God’s loving, merciful call to return and, in doing so, will rest confident in the assurance that you are His and that He will never let you go.

To read the Arabic translation of this post, click here.

.لقراءة الترجمة العربية لهذا المنشور إضغط هنا

Off the Beaten Path

For those of us who have read the Bible for any number of years, it can become easy to move through passages with glazed eyes. We stay on the beaten path, making our way through chapter after chapter that we’ve read dozens of times before. Sometimes, though, we’ll be reading and will notice something that until then we’ve never really noticed. Most of the time when there are parts of Scripture that jump out at me like that, instead of being whole passages, it’s single verses or even phrases, and usually their jumping out at me is an indication that I need to pause and pull out the magnifying glass (figuratively speaking, that is).

Today, I’d like to walk through examining one such passage in the hopes that the next time you have a “huh, I’ve never noticed that before” moment, you won’t just pass it by as a novelty but will follow the trail that it opens up to you. So where are we headed? To Jeremiah 2:13. Let’s take a look:

“for my people have committed two evils:

they have forsaken me,

the fountain of living waters,

and hewed out cisterns for themselves,

broken cisterns that can hold no water.”  (ESV)

It’s a pretty basic study practice, when reading the Bible, to pay attention to lists. When things are clearly set forth in a group or numbered in some way, it helps us easily identify something to pay attention to or dig into more deeply. In this verse, right at the outset, God spells out that there are two specific ways in which His people, the Israelites, have done wrong. That is the flag that caught my attention in this verse, so let’s step off the beaten path of familiarity and see where this trail leads.

Having come across this initial statement, we should next ask what those two ways are and look to the text for the answer.  As a side note, one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever been given for studying the Bible is always to ask questions of the text and get the answers from the text. We should let the Bible speak for itself before we turn to commentaries or study guides. While those tools are not necessarily bad, they aren’t the living Word of God; the Bible is.  Okay, stepping off the soap box now and back on the trail. . . .

We’ve asked the question, “what are the two evils that God’s people have committed,” and we find as we read that the answer is immediately following. First, they have forsaken God. Okay, that’s pretty obviously a bad thing to do if you’re God’s chosen people.  But secondly, they have . . . “hewed out cisterns for themselves”? What is that supposed to mean? And why is that evil?

Again, we want to go back to the text. In the middle section of the verse, where God identifies the first evil, He gives a descriptive phrase about Himself—“the fountain of living waters.” So we see that the God the Israelites have forsaken is one who supplies not just something that is necessary to sustain life (water) but something that actually gives life (living water).

Here would be a good time to look up other places in the Bible where living water is referenced (think Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4). This can be done using a tool called a concordance that lists all the words in the Bible and gives the reference for every time each word is used. But for now, let’s just stick with what’s in this verse.

Once we see that God has established the water metaphor, we can better understand what the second evil actually means. The Israelites have turned away from a fountain of living water and have made a cistern instead. That is, instead of stopping at rejecting God, they go a step further and try to replace Him with things of their own making. Their souls clearly need living water, but they turn away from the One who can provide it and try to fill the void with other supplies.

This is a profoundly weighty example of “adding insult to injury.” It’s essentially saying to God, “I don’t acknowledge anything you’ve done for me; I don’t want what you have to give or to follow your lead, and on top of that I think this other thing is better than you are.” Not exactly the right thing to say to the Supreme Being that created you.

But there is more to be gleaned here. What else should we ask? How about the difference between a fountain and a cistern? A fountain is something that puts forth water, but a cistern is only something to hold water. It has to be refilled; it doesn’t supply itself.

So on top of rejecting God, the One who has chosen them out of all the people on the earth and has made available to them this living water of eternal life, they try to get their spiritual fill from something they make themselves that isn’t self-sufficient, much less able to supply anything. But it gets worse. If we keep reading we see that those cisterns they’ve made are broken ones that can’t even hold water! Basically, the replacements (“cisterns”) can’t even do their own job much less do what God does.

Now that we’ve dug into this verse some, asking questions of it to discover the meaning and to better understand the weightiness of what it is saying, we can take the step of applying it to ourselves. It’s easy to read about the Israelites’ rebellion and think how foolish they were. After all God had done for them, how could they turn on Him?

Aren’t we all prone to the same rebellion, though? We may not worship statues of our own making at high places around our city like they were doing, but we all have spat in God’s face and said, whether subconsciously or explicitly, that we want our own plan instead of His. We say we don’t need Him, but we turn around and reveal that we do by seeking fulfillment and satisfaction from other people or things. In doing so, we commit not just one evil, but two.

When we read passages like this one, then, we can use them as prompts to examine our own hearts, to recognize our own tendency to wander and to ask God for help, to marvel at God’s relentless grace, and to praise Him for the power He possesses by which He can give us eternal life through Jesus Christ. And that’s just from one verse.

I hope this example has given you the challenge and encouragement you need to go exploring in God’s Word. For when we step off the beaten path of what we know or are familiar with and follow the trails of discovery, we begin to tap the reservoirs of truth and spiritual blessings that are in the pages of Scripture for us to find. 

To read the Arabic translation of this post, click here.

لقراءة الترجمة العربية لهذا المنشور إضغط هنا.

Reading in the New Year

I’m not much for making New Year’s resolutions, but as a general, perennial goal, I usually set out to read more of the unread books on my bookshelves.  Perhaps you’re an avid reader yourself, sharing my tendency to buy books faster than they can be read. Or maybe you’re a reluctant reader, only picking up a book if you absolutely have to.

Whatever the case, it remains true that what we read profoundly shapes us as individuals. As students at Student Leadership University (SLU) are told, “In five years, you will be the same person you are today except for the places you go, the people you meet, and the books you read.” Reading helps strengthen our brains, expand our horizons, cultivate our imaginations, and develop our abilities to reason logically. It gives us the opportunity to learn what we don’t know and to be reminded of what we do. It helps us write better, speak better, and think better.  

So wherever you fall on the spectrum of readers, I hope your appreciation for reading will grow in 2018 and that you’ll challenge yourself to read more frequently, more intentionally, and more deeply this year. One 2018 Reading Challenge I’ve seen does an excellent job of guiding numerous levels of readers through a varied and interesting literary journey. But maybe you’re not up for sticking to a specific reading plan. So here are some general principles and ideas I’ve gleaned from this particular challenge, from mentors, and from life experience that can help in your quest to become a stronger reader.

Read actively.

There are several things that you can do to deepen your experience with a book and to maximize the mental benefits of reading. Perhaps the most helpful is to read with a pen in hand both to underline meaningful passages and to make notes in the margins. Yes, it’s okay to write in your books. It’s actually incredibly beneficial when it comes to comprehension and critical thinking development.

Do you strongly agree or disagree with the author? Write so in the margin. Do you have a question? Ask it with your pen. Does a particular point bring some other point to mind? Jot it down. In the absence of printed headings in chapters, can you discern an arrangement of content? Add the headings yourself for ease of future reference.

By interacting with both the text and the author, you are entering into a dialogue where you become an active participant instead of a passive sponge. And while, at first, it might seem that this practice is only suited to nonfiction, I’ve started marking my fiction books as well—particularly classic novels—for they provide just as much (if not more) opportunity to internalize profound lessons about human nature and about God.

Another habit to form when you read is to keep a vocabulary journal. My communication professor in college challenged my class of freshmen to do this, and while I have not been completely consistent in carrying it out, I do have a notebook filled with several scores of words. Essentially, this practice involves writing down words that you do not recognize or would not be able to define should someone ask you, looking them up in a dictionary, and writing the definition(s) with the word. To take it to the next level, you can write the sentence from the book you’re reading in which the word is used, both to provide context and to remind yourself where you originally encountered the word.

While you might think learning vocabulary words is the stuff of elementary school, there is nothing childish about intentionally expanding the scope of your language. Language is a gift; there is beauty in using precise and vivid words, and reading is perhaps the best way to bolster your arsenal of vocabulary. Doing this, of course, necessitates reading books that might contain vocabulary unfamiliar to you, which brings me to the next principle…

Read robustly.

Even those who enjoy reading might shy away from books that present a challenge—say, books over four hundred pages or those on a topic of little to no personal interest. But just as with a muscle, your reading habits must be exercised and stretched if they are to grow stronger.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting reading only books that are dull or that require you to read a paragraph three or four times before you can comprehend what it says, but I am encouraging you to read some books of that sort. Work up to them. If you’ve never read a book more than 200 pages, try reading a 300-page one before you pick up a 600-page one. If you’re not used to reading nineteenth-century language, pick a shorter book for your first exposure to it.

Some are quick to dismiss a book because the author’s writing style is different from what they are used to or what they prefer, or because the vocabulary and syntax are outdated or actually ancient. I’d encourage you not to let that attitude hinder you from experiencing the richness that is hidden in books such as these. Not all nuggets of truth are lying on the surface; like diamonds, sometimes the best things have to be worked for.  

Read variedly.

Closely tied to the previous principle is this one. Basically, change it up. Yes, you should read books that challenge you, but you also should read books that are quick, easy reads or are on topics you enjoy. Reading variedly also involves reading different genres of books, though—biographies, classic novels, theological treatises, commentaries, plays, screenplays, poetry, modern fiction, histories, memoirs, and the list goes on…

People generally gravitate toward either fiction or nonfiction, but being a well-rounded reader requires a selection that contains both. An entirely separate post could be written on the merits of fiction and those of non-fiction, but for now, I’ll simply say that as our bodies need a balanced diet of food, so our minds need a balanced diet of books. A mix of narrative and non-narrative (which isn’t necessarily a one-to-one correlation with fiction and non-fiction, by the way), gives us that balanced diet and helps us exercise different parts of our intellect.

Read physically.

I’ll try to refrain from getting on a soap-box here, but it’s so important to read a physical, tangible book on at least a semi-regular basis. Study upon study has been done on digital reading versus reading a printed book, and while there are varying conclusions as to which is “better,” it’s pretty conclusive that they are different. As this article explains, reading e-books and reading printed books engage different parts of our brains, and although it’s not necessarily bad to read from a screen, it is certainly depriving ourselves to give up paper reading altogether, because we can lose the ability to “deep read,” i.e. to enter into a text and absorb it fully.

Read diligently.

Finally, finish. However long it takes you, finish whatever books you start. Obviously, the exception to this would be if a book is so vulgar that it would be unwholesome or cause you to sin. But otherwise, don’t give up. Diligence will be most difficult when you’re practicing reading robustly, but the reward of completing a challenge is worth it. Plus, there’s the added benefit of cultivating the practice of finishing what you start in life in general.  Admittedly, there are several books on my shelves that I haven’t finished yet—key word: yet. But I certainly plan to finish them just as I try to follow through with other projects I begin.

There are, no doubt, other principles that can aid in our development of good reading habits, but I hope the above will give you a good start and encourage you to take baby steps forward from wherever you currently find yourself. If you decide you’d like to broaden your exposure and would like some recommendations, I’d be happy to suggest some titles. I’d also love to hear from you—what are some habits you’ve formed when it comes to reading? What ideas do you have for becoming a better reader this year?

As we ring in the new year, let’s read it in too. Let’s have fun in the world of books, grow our minds, and explore the gifts of language, story, and reason that God has given us.

Happy Reading!