Gladness in weakness

My friend, a new mom of a precious baby boy, was worrying. She'd heard that cell phones transmitted dangerous radioactivity and here she'd been checking her messages and Facebook timeline on her smartphone every time she sat down to nurse the baby, sometimes five or six times a day! What had she done to him? What sort of damage had she incurred, however innocently?

We attempted to soothe her stress with the truth that if not via radioactivity there will yet be some other way she would fail her son. "We are all doomed to ruin our kids," I told her and I meant it as an encouragement. In fact, I placed my hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye and told her what I wished I'd known as a young mom: "You are not enough and you never will be."

It's something I'd always secretly suspected in those years of juggling a baby on my hips and toddlers at my feet. I mean, I knew in my heart of hearts that no matter what standard chosen to evaluate my effectiveness as a mom I'd failed it to some degree or another. On any given day I'd forget to brush their teeth, or I didn't feel like reading Good Night Moon (for the hundredth-plus time in a given day). I yelled, I spanked, I lost my temper, I used T.V. as a babysitter, I skipped baths some nights and don't even talk to me about crafts. Pick your definition of a good mom and I couldn't live up to it, not with any degree of consistency or excellence.

Well meaning friends and parenting books would tell me that this was the most important job I could do and not only that but I was the best mom for the job, why else would God give me to these children? Neither assertion brought much hope. Knowing this was the most important job I could do and seeing my persistent and overwhelming failure carried an extra weight of guilt and despair. I can't even do the one most important job I've been given to do!

And if I'm the best woman for the job? Well then God either has a twisted sense of humor or rather low standards for what my kids need and what I can give.

So I spent many years caught in the same frenzy of fear and worry as my friend. I tried so hard and failed so miserably. Many a night I cried myself to sleep as I confessed my frustration and my failure. "I can't do this. I can't!," I would sob, "Please, oh, please, God, if You hear me, can You not make this easier so I can do it and do it well?!!"

It was during one of these late night sob sessions that I sensed the Spirit saying to me (not audibly, mind you, but as a sort of remembering): "Lisa, Lisa, do not despise those areas of your life that make you desperate for Me. Do not reject what keeps you at the foot of the cross pleading for mercy."

It was an echo of 2 Corinthians 12:9 in which the apostle Paul declares that he will boast--and boast gladly--about his weaknesses because it is then that the power of Christ rests on him with His sufficient grace. Glad? About weakness? In fact, not only that but Paul goes on to say that he is content in weakness and in hardship and in persecution because when he is weak he is strong. How? Because the Lord's grace is sufficient in weakness.

As I contrasted Paul's gladness with my late night grief I was slowly-oh-so-slowly beginning to understand grace. Grace tells me that in my weakness I am strong because I will know the strength of my Savior in ways I could not when caught in the cycle of self effort and determined moralism. Grace says that good mom or bad mom I cannot earn or lose the favor granted me through Christ. Grace sets me free from my try-harder, do-more, be-good exertions. Grace is unmerited approval based on the righteousness of Christ not mine! Grace shows me I am not enough, I never will be, and that's okay because the Lord is sufficient. Glory to God, grace shouts that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus! None!

See, I knew I needed grace to save me as a young girl wanting desperately to love and belong to Jesus. But grace now? As an adult? A mom? I'd paid lipservice to grace but I lived as if it were all up to me--directly opposite to what grace really is. Grace says I can't; Jesus is and can and will and does.

Maybe, like me, you worry and wail over your insufficiencies and inadequacies and outright wrongs. The grace of the Lord Jesus is sufficient! Confess, repent, and rest in the Lord's promise to be faithful and just to forgive. And here's the deal: there's grace for yesterday's failures and sins for those who repent and believe, yes and amen, but there's also grace for today's failures and sins. Like Paul, be glad for the weakness that drives you to desperation before the throne of grace. Our God is gracious and merciful!

Hear me: you are not the mom of your kids because you have what it takes or because you are the best one for the job. Go ahead and lay down that burden of expectation and condemnation. Rather, you're the mom of your kids because the Lord has something to teach you about Himself and about His sufficiency and about true sanctification. Your mothering is not about you nor even really ultimately about your kids. I do not mean to imply that what we do as moms carries no significance. Yes, of course, absolutely we are the primary influences in our children's lives, particularly in those important early years. But influential does not mean determinative. Finally, ultimately, motherhood, as well as the whole of the believer's life, is about the Lord, His sufficiency, His grace, His salvation, His glory.

I am not enough to be sure, but, glory to God, His grace is sufficient.

Forever 52

Appearance is a big issue for young women. From preschool onward, there's an unspoken rule that the prettiest, best dressed, and coolest girl moves to the top of the pecking order. This rule “tells girls that how you look is more important than how you feel. More that that, it tells them that how you look is how you feel as well as who you are.” ¹

But if you think this is something women outgrow when they reach middle age, think again. There are nearly 500 Forever 21 stores, but you've probably never heard of Forever 52. Why not? Because it doesn't exist in a culture where “... girls are now simultaneously getting older younger and staying younger older. It also explains why the identical midriff-baring crop top is sold to eight-year-olds, eighteen-year-olds, and forty-eight-year-olds. The phases of our lives have become strangely blurred as girls try to look like adult women and adult women primp and preen and work out like crazy in order to look like girls.”² In the world's eyes, beauty and youth are a woman's “currency and power”³, which is why women pay big bucks to go under the knife to turn back the clock.

Can you relate?

I certainly can. I feel it on those days when I can't cover the gray hairs by changing my part or squeeze into that old pair of jeans I'm not willing to give away just yet. I felt more than just a pang when I was traded in for a younger version. And if I'm honest, the root desire for "admiration and worship and men's good opinion"⁴ lurks in my heart. The world gladly offers thousands of ways to fulfill this longing, but it's a false bill of goods. You may have tried some of them as have I, but our love for lesser things, ourselves included, will leave us high and dry. We were meant for something better, and this is where the gospel comes in.

Our identity is in Christ. We don't have to fear growing older or the changes that will inevitably come our way. We've been freed from bartering for our worth with the world's bankrupt currency. We don't need to live for ourselves but for Him who died and was raised for our sake. (2. Cor. 5:14-17).  The face and form God has given each of us are to display His grace, no longer objects of self-worship or self-loathing. When we look in the mirror, we may not see the women who looked back at us 10, 20, or 30 years ago, but may we find the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit that is precious in God's sight. (1. Pet. 3:4). 

This is good news, sisters. Let's believe it. Let's teach it to our daughters, granddaughters, and the young women in our lives.

1. Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Peggy Orenstein, HarperCollins, 2011, pg. 183.

2. Ibid. pg. 139.

3. Ibid. pg. 138.

4. Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell, IndyPublish.com, pg. 538.

Fighting for Your Girl's Heart

Note: This is part of the Fight Like a Girl Series. Other posts are found under the series tag.

I was in 9th grade the first time I ever used the word love to describe my feelings for a boy. By the time I got married 11 years later, I'd used it in at least that many relationships. I didn't protect my heart.  What I gave to my husband on our wedding day was a battered and bruised heart with several pieces irretrievably lost.

My girl is in 9th grade this year. Thankfully, mercifully, she has shown no interest in boys. Her daddy is still the man of her life. Her mama prays it will remain so for a long while yet. I want to protect her heart as long as I possibly can, yet I am as powerless to guard her heart as I was to guard my own.

The heart is deceitful above all things,
    and desperately sick;
    who can understand it?

~Jeremiah 17:9

Matters of the heart go far beyond romance. For the believer, our hearts are an indication of our trust in the Lord and our obedience to Him. As parents, we must constantly point out this truth to our children, helping them to understand that outward behavior is an indicator of our heart's condition.

...we must not simply parent behavior. We're not just controlling decisions and seeking to make sure that the child goes where we want him to go to do what we want him to do. God has called us to a higher agenda. We want to know the heart of our teenager, to help him see his heart as it really is, and to be used of God to help produce a heart ruled by nothing else but God and his truth.

~Paul David Tripp
Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens (p. 89)

How do we help our girl see the true nature of her heart? First, gently remind her that she is a sinner (Psalm 51:5, Romans 3:23). In Uncompromising: A Heart Claimed By a Radical Love, Hannah Farver sets forth this truth in language every teenage girl can understand: "If it were not for the fact that I have lied, hated others, smart-mouthed my parents, and disobeyed my God, there would have been no reason for the Cross." (p. 47).

In pointing out what her actions and attitudes reveal about her heart, we must also reassure her of God's grace. Remind her of Romans 5:6-8. Offer these words as a prayer for her and encourage her to pray them for herself:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.*

The truth is, our heart struggles won't be over in this lifetime. Yet God's Word says that for those who pray and make supplication with thanksgiving, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)

Keep Fighting:

~Ask your girl to tell you 3 things she's passionate about and why. Have her think about how much time she devotes to these passions. Is she pursuing them to the glory of God? Read 1 Corinthians 10:31 and discuss how she might pursue these passions differently. Consider discussing your own passions as well.

~Read Hosea 1 - 3 together. God commanded Hosea to do an incredibly hard thing in loving Gomer, yet Hosea did it because he loved God enough to obey.  "Real love is not fueled by emotions but by a constant desire for the good of the beloved." (Uncompromising, p. 36)  How was Hosea's love for Gomer for her good? Ask your girl to consider the male/female relationships around her. Do they exhibit this desire for good? Finally, bring it back to the Gospel by reminding your girl that no matter how low we sink, God loved us enough to buy us back and redeem us.


*"Come Thy Fount of Every Blessing", lyrics by Robert Robinson

Our A Se God

Aseity is an old word and an uncommon one, even in lists of God's attributes, where you’ll more often find self-existence, self-sufficiency, self-containment, independence, or solitariness used to describe this characteristic of God. But these words don't all mean exactly the same thing, at least as I understand them. I prefer to to use aseity, because it describes this particular perfection of God more precisely than any one of the other words, and includes within it everything they mean and more.

Aseity comes from the Latin a se, meaning “from or by oneself.” To say that God is a se tells us that he exists wholly "from himself." There is nothing else that causes God to exist; rather, he exists uncaused, "by the necessity of His own Being," to quote Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology. In other words, he is eternally self-sustained and he can't not exist. Our God, scripture tells us, "has life in himself”(John 5:26).

The first scriptural evidence of God's aseity is found at the very beginning of the Bible: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Creation, we’re told, has a beginning: "In the beginning" when God created. But not so with God. He was there before the beginning, when there was nothing but him, existing eternally in all his perfection from himself and by himself.

Since God's attributes exist as a unified whole (the doctrine of divine simplicity), his aseity extends to them all. Everything that God is comes from himself. 

God's love, for instance, is a se love. It is independent, and not compelled or drawn from him by anything within the object of his love (See Deuteronomy 7:7-8.). What’s more, because God exists from eternity as the Trinity, he did not need to create to give expression to his love. His love is eternally expressed fully and perfectly between the three persons of his being. God’s love comes from himself and is complete within himself.

God's knowledge is also from himself and complete within himself. He never acquires knowledge from another source. Even what he knows about creation, he knows from himself. He does not depend on creation, even creation foreseen, for his knowledge of it; but rather, he knows everything about creation because he knows what he is able to do, what he has done, and what he plans to do.

God's aseity applies to his will, too, both in its planning and in its accomplishment. In the context of God's plan for the salvation of both Jews and Gentiles, Paul asks the rhetorical question, "Who has been his counselor?" (Romans 11:34). The answer is no one! God formed his plan independently. In Ephesians 1, we read that it is God himself who "works all things according to the counsel of his will." The execution of his will does not depend on anything outside himself, including the libertarian choices of his creatures.

That God is a se means he needs nothing from us. He does not need our worship; he does not need our love; he does not need our help. He is not, Paul says, "served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). A God who "has life in himself" doesn't depend on us for anything; rather, out of his self-sustained life he gives us life—and everything else we need.

How different from us our a se God is! He needs nothing from us; we need everything from him. He derives nothing from anyone or anything, but our very life, and everything we have, we derive from him. It's in him "we live and move and have our being" (Act 17:28), but he lives "from himself." In this, and everything else, God is in a class by himself.

The doctrine of divine aseity, says J. I. Packer, "stands as a bulwark against" the thought that God is like us. 

[E]ndless mistakes result from supposing that the conditions, bounds, and limits of our own finite existence apply to God. ... In our life of faith, we easily impoverish ourselves by embracing an idea of God that is too limited and small.... It is vital for spiritual health to believe that God is great, and grasping the truth of his aseity is the first step on the road to doing this.

And grasping the truth of God's aseity demands that we respond to it. Here's my incomplete list of ways to do this.

We can

• consider God's greatness as seen in his aseity and let our hearts sing.
• think about God's aseity and worship him, telling him how great he is because he is the source of everything and needs nothing.
• thank God for giving us our dependent lives from his independent life. And while we're at it, we can thank him for giving us, from himself, everything else we have.
• thank God for loving us with his a se love, for loving us, not by compulsion, but freely, "from himself."
• stifle any thought that we are helping God out or giving him something he needs when we serve or give or worship.
• be confident that God will keep his promises to us, since he does not depend on anything outside himself to carry out his will.
• remember that our spiritual lives are sustained by life from Jesus who has "life in himself." He gives us eternal life, and we will never perish. We can let his aseity give us assurance.
• teach our children and grandchildren about God’s aseity. It’s not necessary to use the word and we don’t have to explain it all, but we can start by asking, “Where does God come from?”

What would you add to this list? What are other appropriate responses to this doctrine?

Bonus questions for die-hard theology buffs: In the open-theist's system, is God a se? In the Molinistic system? Why or why not?

One Trick Pony

Whenever I’m walking a friend through a trial -- or walking through a trial myself -- I tend to say the same things over and over.

God knew this was coming.

This is part of his plan.

He’s sovereign over this trial and has a purpose for it.

This trial is in your life for your good and God’s glory.

I worry that I sound like a broken record, but whether it’s a marriage that’s exploding or just the hot water heater, I have nothing else to offer. God’s sovereignty is it. In my advice and writing, I’m very much a one trick pony.

It’s tempting to think I need to come up with something else. Surely there’s advice that’s more clever, something more sophisticated that will give women three concrete steps they can take to fix the problem. But even though it’s nothing very fancy, it’s the best I or anyone else can offer.

When we go through trials, both big and small, it’s easy to get bogged down in a cycle of self-recrimination and regret. “If only I had seen this coming. If I had just realized ahead of time,” we say over and over (and over) again. This is especially hard if we realize that our own sin led to our difficulties.

Realizing the consequences our sin has wrought is important; it’s one of the most effective means to drive us towards repentance. We have to be on guard, though, that we’re not letting repentance turn into self-chastisement.

What’s the difference? Repentance allows us to look to Christ and his forgiveness. Self-chastisement causes us to look to ourselves, as if we can somehow pay for our sin with our own regret. “I’ll just go over here in the corner and beat myself up,” we say, “because I’m not sure Christ’s death on the cross was quite enough to satisfy this particular sin.”

Focusing on God’s sovereignty also keeps our eyes on the only true solution. Remembering that God saw this coming (even the part of it that we fouled up) and knows exactly how it’s going to end allows us to rest in the present. However dire things look in the moment, we can trust God himself, who “knows the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10) and will lead us through.

Most importantly, this is the pattern of the Bible. God wants us to put our trust in him, not in explanations. Job was never given a reason for his trials, he was just given more of God himself. Habakkuk was given a reason, but was told that the reason would not fit our human notions of justice. In the end, both men realized they had to trust God for the results.

And that's what we should do as well.