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A Picture of Hope in the Evening Sky

It rained this evening. Though now a few days into autumn, it was a quintessential summer’s evening rain. The sun, a rich and wizened yellow, was sinking on the horizon in front of me as I drove. The glowing road in front of me was splotched with water from the heavy raindrops dripping from the sky in an unhurried manner. The light grey clouds around the sun shone with a golden hue as the last of the sun’s beams caught their wisped edges. As I gazed at the picturesque scene before me, I could not help but be filled with hope. I was driving toward it. I was traveling headlong into the hope before me.

Behind me, consuming the entire horizon, was a blackened mass of a storm. There were no distinguishable clouds but the darkness seemed to be reaching over my head, reaching far enough, if it might, to obscure the light in front of me. Ominous, as a word, would be a suitable description. It threatened to overwhelm and overtake me if I were to make even the slightest of turns away from the light ahead.

My mind, simple though it is, worked out the rough analogy. I am headed out of the darkness of my past into the beautiful light of my future, a future that is beautiful solely by the grace of God which has rescued me from that looming darkness of my past. It was a basic truth, and perhaps an incomplete picture, but my soul reaped encouragement from this natural occurrence in the sky.

And as I let my mind dwell on this thought, I saw it. There, smack in the middle of the coal sky behind me, was the near vertical line of a rainbow. I don’t know how I had not already seen it. It was clearly there, not the brightest of rainbows, but blatant against its blackened canvas. O how true it is that the faithfulness of God has been constantly there in the middle all the darkness of my past. What a glorious assurance this is, that though indeed the past is ever behind me, seeking to cast despair over my head and doubt into my sight, there is yet a hope into which I am headed and an enduring faithfulness over where I have been. It is only because God has been sovereign and faithful in my past that I am able to continue running toward the light of my future in Christ. And so I look at but do not linger on the past behind me, in order to see God’s faithfulness. And I seek to gaze unwaveringly on the hope set before me, that I may be strengthened to keep to this road I am now on.

Testimony

Each time our care group meets, someone in our group shares their testimony. I shared mine tonight, and since I had written it out ahead of time, I figured I might as well post it, seeing as how it might be awhile before I have time to write again. It's fairly short and lacking much detail, but here it is in its unaltered format:

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Several months ago, Nate asked me to share my testimony. I said no. I simply didn’t feel like it, I would have claimed at the time. I have thought about my response a lot since then, and I have come up with no good reason why I should not have then shared it. I was allowing, as I so often do, my present feelings to determine my view of my eternal condition. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe I was saved, or that my faith was not genuine; it was that my comprehension of the Gospel in that moment was lacking. That’s my testimony is really about: seeking a constant and complete understanding of the Gospel.

I was raised, like many, in a Christian home and accepted Christ at some point along the way. And also like many, it was not until several years later, when I was twelve, as I recall it, that I understood that believing in Jesus meant more than simply saying I believed in Jesus. I continued to follow after God throughout middle and high school. I grew in my love for the Savior and in my pursuit of God in His Word. Though it was always difficult for me to pick out one specific point in time when Christ turned my life around, there was no doubt in my mind that I had been saved from my sin through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. My testimony, as it relates to my actual conversion, is boring by comparative standards. But yet it is equally as amazing as any dramatic turn-around there ever was, because my dead soul was made alive by Christ.

Why then, I ask myself, should I, now well into my college years, have any reason to question my understanding of the Gospel? I’ve been doing this for years, I tell myself. I guess what I’m getting at here is that I’ve come to realize that discouragement and despair over sin and circumstances is not sufficient reason to question my grounding in the Gospel or the genuineness of my conversion. In fact these things should do the very opposite and push me ever deeper into the glorious Gospel which alone provides hope. Several months ago I was hesitant to share my testimony because my mind was full of doubts and fears. I feared sounding fake. I told myself, “nobody is going to believe a word of this… they know the kind of person I am. For that matter, I know the kind of person I am. Who am I kidding?”

Even now some remnants of those fears remain, but I’m learning to harness those fears into a reverence for what it really means to be a Christian. Many of you know, to varying degrees, that this past year has been difficult for me, to say the least. I say this not because I have been the victim of any great hardship or suffering, but because this past year, though I have reached the lowest points of my life so far, and I hope ever again, has been one in which God has revealed more to me than ever before. My faith a year ago was genuine, but it was riddled with sin, and I wasn’t growing. I did not understand how to live with the Gospel constantly in view. And as eventually that sin overwhelmed my life and drove me away from God, for the first time my eyes were opened to just how incredibly vulnerable and weak I am. To paraphrase Jerry Bridges: I am not, and have never been nor will be, so strong as to be above my need for God’s constant mercy. And though God was faithful not to let me go as deep into my sin as I might have, I was sobered by how quickly I fell from a spiritual place I would have at the time called “good” to a place that was without question, “bad.” I stopped attending church. I cut myself off from interaction with my friends. I did what I wanted without a thought for consequences. I had convinced myself I was doing what would ultimately make me happier, though it was painful for a time. But I was deceiving myself and nobody else. Eventually, God indeed was faithful to draw me back to Himself, reassuring me of His continual love for me as demonstrated at the cross as well as in every day of my life through manifestations of common grace.

And so I went from a prideful and self-interested faith to a sin-wrought lack of faith, and by the grace of God I am finally arriving at God’s intention for my faith – to believe in the Gospel not out of pride but with an appreciation for how far I can fall if left to my own devices; and to believe in the Gospel not on the basis of my current level of despair but with a knowledge of my unchanging standing before God as a result of the work of Christ. My conversion is simple – God crushed His Son to save me, a sinner. My testimony is not yet finished, but so far it is primarily defined by the overwhelming grace of God drawing me into an ever-deeper relationship with Him and an ever-deeper understanding of and appreciation for the Gospel.

I needed the Gospel today...

I needed to hear the Gospel today. Quite accurately, I need to hear the Gospel every day. But today I did hear it, and I listened to it. Had I listened to it yesterday, yesterday would have turned out far better than it did. It is beautifully reassuring that the Gospel reigns true over my life at all times because of the faith I have placed in it, through Christ; but there is a difference, I think, between believing the Gospel for salvation and listening to the Gospel on a daily basis.

See, I know the Gospel. I say that not out of pride but because, by the grace of God, knowledge of salvation has been revealed to me and I may boast in this because I had nothing to do with it. But what I sometimes have trouble grasping with the way I live my life is that the Gospel is not a one-time deal. I want to carefully explain this statement, because Christ’s death on the cross was once for all: all of my sins are forgiven because of it, past and future. But the importance of the Gospel on my life does not stop after first putting my faith in Christ’s work of salvation. The Gospel is an every-day deal.

I am, of course, not speaking from my own wisdom here, but on the excellent teaching of men like Martin Lloyd-Jones and C.J. Mahaney. They have written extensively on the importance of preaching the Gospel to yourself daily, and I have benefited immensely from this application not only to my sins but to my every day mundane moments.

These past few days have certainly been some during which it would have been of much interest to me to listen to the Gospel, to hear and see its truths and implications resounding throughout my life. In my despair and willing blindness, I refused to speak this truth to my soul, choosing rather to pursue lies and hollow ends. God’s continuing intention was for me to turn back to Him, to have me trust once again in the hope that has been so mercifully and freely offered to me through the Gospel. But I would neither speak nor listen.

Conveniently, God ordained another means. Actually, he sent news of the Gospel my way yesterday through a facebook message. A friend of mine sent me a link to this video. It was a short speech from a man named John Picarello, a member of the New York Fire Department, sharing a brief testimony of God’s faithfulness on 9/11/2001. And as I watched, John Picarello preached the Gospel to me.

Except I didn’t watch the video yesterday when it was sent to me. I looked at the link and passed over it. I did not watch it until this evening, in a last attempt to put off accounting homework. And oh what a difference it has made; the Gospel, I mean. Upon hearing it, the walls of self-reliance and despair I had reconstructed came crashing down once again. This particular presentation of the Gospel was not articulated any differently than I had heard it thousands of times before. But it was truth, and what I needed today was simple truth, not elaborate presentation and explanation.

I turned back to God’s Word, which I had been avoiding. Should I not have realized that something was very obviously wrong if I was going so far as to avoid the very Word of God? Anyway, a man named Isaiah chimed in alongside John Picarello. Check out the entirety of Isaiah 43. Here are few highlights:

“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you…”

“Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you…”

“I will say to the north, give up, and to the south, do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for glory, whom I formed and made.”

“I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior…”

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

“Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob; but you have been weary of me, O Israel! You have not brought me your sheep for burnt offerings, or honored me with your sacrifices… but you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities.”

“I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

What astounding truth this is, and what a necessary reminder! This Gospel, truly, has impact for every day and every moment of my life. I praise God that the Gospel has made me clean once for all and that the righteousness of Christ is secure over me, but I continue to praise God because the Gospel does not stop there – it may become ever more precious and meaningful to me as I learn to rely ever more wholly upon it. May I never tire of remembering what the Gospel has done for me, and moreso may I never turn my gaze away from what the Gospel can and will yet do for me!

God's Calculus Cameo

God made a guest appearance in my calculus class today. My professor was attempting to explain the concept of limits approaching infinity. If you have never taken a calculus class, then just pretend you know what this means. I would explain it to you if I had any grasp of the mathematical world. As far as I can discern, my professor is not a believer. But today he said something rather peculiarly God-glorifying. He gave the following example:

I recently saw a map of the universe. The map was oval-shaped, and it charted various galaxies and astronomical bodies in relation to each other. But this map really does us a great disservice – it shows only the universe within this oval shape. How many of you really believe there is a boundary to the universe? What happens if I go to the end of the universe and take another step? Apparently I expand the universe.

When he asked how many people in the class really believed that there was a boundary to the universe, not one hand was raised. Perhaps this is not shocking when you take time to think through it, but it is revealing. And it is beautiful: though we may not be able to wrap our minds fully around the idea of an infinite universe, it is still easier than believing in a finite universe. Today, I praised God as a classroom full of likely unbelievers unknowingly testified to God’s infinite nature. How may we say that something infinite has been created by something finite, or by nothing at all?

Rather, I concur with Ezra, and say to God: “You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you” (Nehemiah 9:6). Ah, not only has God created all of this infinity, but also He preserves it; “he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). And yet His hand sustains not only the infinite universe as a whole, but me individually.

I agree with David, and proclaim: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4). I love that I can read this passage and recognize that “mindful” is bit of an understatement. Yes, even that God is mindful of me is amazing – but how much moreso that He is merciful and gracious and just. He is not merely mindful of me – He sent His Son to die in my place.

And I believe God, when He says directly: “Ask me of things to come; will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands? I made the earth and created man on it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host” (Isaiah 45:11-12).

Thank You, God, for illustrating Your infinite nature to me today. Thank You for reminding me that You are present even at the lowest point of my day (calculus class), directing my gaze once again toward You. Thank You that all of creation testifies to the glory of Your name!