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A Loaded Term Mental illness. For many, that is a scary term. “You have a mental illness.” This statement borders on terrifying! It brings up many unsettling thoughts and complicated fears in our hearts and minds. This subject is further confused by the many differing opinions swirling around the internet. Moreover, in the post-Christian era in which we live, Christians may wonder if the advice they find is true, scientific, or Biblical? These are the common myths I have encountered. Myth #1: If I am diagnosed with a mental illness, I am doomed to live out the rest of my days here on earth in a miserable existence. Feeling hopeless and helpless is a feeling that we all have encountered at various times in our lives. This feeling or thought is the most painful part of all mental illness. The diagnosis seems like being stuck at the end of a dead-end street. The truth, however, is that mental illness attacks our ability to think clearly and to experience feelings accurately. When in the midst of hardship, a normal reaction is impatience and even a lack of being able to see past the pain. Mental illness, like many other afflictions, can endure longer than anticipated and inflict a great deal of pain. However, the reality is that, with proper care, recovery is possible and sustainable. Myth #2: Having a mental illness is a sign of a moral failure. Many Christians that have come to me for counseling live with the misperception that it must be sin that has caused a mental illness to occur, that it has arisen from unconfessed, undealt with sin in their (or another’s) life. In some cases, it is true that confession of sin is necessary in order to know true peace of mind and heart. In Psalm 32, David reflected on his experience of unconfessed sin with Bathsheba: For when I kept silent, bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. During a time of unconfessed sin, David was emotionally, physically, and spiritually miserable. He was a wreck! All the while he knew (by his own knowledge of the Scriptures, by the pricking of his conscience, by the convicting work of the Holy Spirit) that the root of his distress was unconfessed sin. In situations where a person is living in known sin, we do right to pray for and plead with them to forsake their sin and turn to God in faith and repentance. However, we do a vast disservice to a person suffering from mental illness by suggesting that sinful rebellion against God is the only possible reason for depression or anxiety. Many of the hardships we experience are a result of being fallen human beings living in a fallen world. The fall of man not only produced sin but also brokenness in all of creation: illness and death. We understand that we have a sinful nature and therefore even our best works are tainted by sin (Isa. 64:6). We know that we have actual sin: sins of omission and commission. As sinful human beings, we are sinful, but not everything that occurs in life is a direct result of actual sin. In every life situation, whether pleasant or painful, we have the opportunity for sinful rebellion against God (Isa. 45:9) or for childlike trust, humble obedience, and rejoicing in the God of our salvation (Hab. 3:17–18, Rom. 5: 3–4, 12:12). Myth #3: Mental illness is a sign of weakness. The prophet Elijah was powerfully used by God. In the face of fierce opposition and even threat of death, he delivered God’s message with clarity and authority. I suspect there would be no one stepping forward to accuse Elijah of being weak! Yet, after a tremendous victory at Mount Camel, he found himself discouraged and despairing of life and of future ministry. He was in the depths of a depressive episode (1 Kings 19). We live in bodies that are susceptible to many maladies. Given the wrong circumstances, broken bones and mental illnesses can happen and are both included in the list of afflictions that we may suffer in this life. In the case of a broken leg, we do not debate whether the femur should have been stronger; rather we provide care for the hurting part. Myth #4: If I encounter someone with a mental illness, I should keep my distance. All of us, having gone through cold and flu season (or through the COVID pandemic) are well conditioned to “keep your distance” from someone who could potentially pass on a life-threatening illness to ourselves or our family members. If you have worked in a healthcare setting, you well understand the need for “universal precautions” to protect from contagious diseases being passed on. Sadly, I have treated many people over the years who have felt like societal outcasts. Like the unclean lepers in the Bible, people seem to keep their distance from those with depression, anxiety, or any other mental health disorder. Perhaps the fear is contamination: If I get too close, I, too, might get ill. Perhaps the fear is awkwardness: I will not know what to say. Perhaps the fear is making a mistake: If I say the wrong thing, I might make the situation worse. In most cases, the worst mistake is to avoid the individual struggling with the mental illness; this communicates that they don’t matter, that they are not valued, and that they have no place in our lives or the life of our congregation. Another closely related mistake is to ignore the elephant in the room, to pretend to be completely oblivious to the illness. This communicates a lack of attunement to those hurting. To approach and to care for those in affliction is to act as the body of Christ was designed to function: one member valuing and caring for the other member (1 Cor. 12:18–27). As a psychologist, I do not have the knowledge or training to do heart surgery or to provide care for a broken leg. When someone is struggling with an illness, I am able to visit and to talk with them, to pray over and for them, to ask how I may be able to help them in time of need. In the same way, we are able to minister to those afflicted with a mental illness: visit, talk, pray, comfort, help. Myth #5: Ignoring a mental illness is the best way to make it go away. Those of us who have seen the comedy movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail will well remember the battle scene between King Arthur and the Black Knight. During the sword fight, King Arthur chops off the Black Knight’s left arm. The knight refuses defeat and tries to dismiss the wound as merely a scratch. After his right arm is severed, he attempts to convince King Arthur that this was only a “flesh wound.” While the ridiculousness of this scene may appear humorous, trying this strategy in real life will only produce tragic results! If you were experiencing chest pain and numbness in the left arm, ignoring the symptoms of a heart attack and hoping that the pain would go away could prove fatal! Waiting to treat the symptoms of an ailment, no matter how serious or seemingly insignificant, allows the distress to increase in magnitude. In the same way, attempting to ignore or to minimize the seriousness of a mental illness is usually a recipe for disaster. When symptoms of a mental illness surface, we do want to treat them seriously. Most often when people struggling with mental illness finally decide to reach out for help, they admit, I wish I had taken this step years ago rather than struggling with this pain for so long. Reaching out for help (whether you are a sufferer or a helper to someone suffering) is a difficult step to take. It is usually fraught with doubts: Am I making too much of this? What will others think of me? However, as my primary care physician’s office advised me when I called the doctor with a question about my health, It’s always better to have it checked out than to ignore it. What seems like a small issue now can turn into a big issue tomorrow. If you are concerned about your own mental health or the mental health of a loved one, talk about it! Reach out to family members, to your pastor or church elders/deacons, to your primary care physician, to a Christian mental health provider. Choose to surround yourself with other Christians who are willing to act compassionately, to guide biblically, and to support you through those dark times of life. Help and healing is possible! To approach and to care for those in affliction is to act as the body of Christ was designed to function: one member valuing and caring for the other member. Tom Karel is the coauthor with David Murray of A Christian's Guide to Mental Illness: Answers to 30 Common Questions.

My mother-in-law remembers walking down rough forest paths in the early morning light while carrying a water jar on her head to fill from the community well. Sometimes the mean girls would chase her away, and she would have to return later. Her stories about that time in her life help me relate to the Bible stories of women who went to draw water from wells: Hagar, Rebecca, Rachel, Zipporah, and the woman from Sychar in Samaria. Hagar Hagar was a foreigner and a slave. Pregnant with Ishmael as a surrogate and mistreated by Sarai, Abram’s wife, she fled into the desert (Genesis 16:1-6). There she was met by “the angel of the Lord,” who gave her a prophecy about Ishmael and a promise that God saw her misery (Genesis 16:7-12). Strengthened by this promise, she went back into servitude to Sarai and Abram. The account in Genesis does not indicate that anything about her circumstances changed, but through this experience her inner resolve was transformed. She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi (“well of the Living One who sees me”). – Genesis 16:13-14a Rebecca, Rachel, and Zipporah Rebecca, Rachel, and Zipporah each found their future husbands near wells. When Abraham’s servant was sent on a mission to find Isaac a wife, he met Rebekah as she came out to draw water from the well (Genesis 24). Her son Jacob met his future wife Rachel a generation later by that same well (Genesis 29). Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s palace in Egypt but fled after murdering an Egyptian. As a fugitive from justice, Moses met Zipporah at a well near Mount Sinai (Exodus 2:16-21). For these three women, the arduous daily chore of retrieving water from the well turned into something much more significant. God chose this mundane location as the place where these women’s lives would be forever changed. The Woman from Sychar in Samaria Centuries later, Jesus met a woman coming to fetch water in the heat of the day. She was avoiding her fellow citizens, possibly trying to limit the gossiping and taunts that typically came her way. She probably felt like a failure after five marriage covenants had collapsed, and she was living with a man to whom she was not married, something that would have been unthinkable in her culture. This woman was rejected by her own community – the Samaritans – who were, in turn, rejected by their Jewish neighbors. Jesus asked her, “Will you give me a drink?” With these simple words, Jesus broke through her defenses. He noticed her. He chose her to engage in conversation and to reveal to her his identity and mission. In speaking to her and asking for water, Jesus broke through cultural, religious, and racial barriers. “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” — John 4:10b In Jewish culture, “living water” meant pure flowing water from rainwater or from a natural stream. The ritual water that was used in Jewish religious rites for purification and cleansing had to be flowing; it could not be stagnant. This was the water that, through these God-directed rituals, restored relationships. As with the women in the Old Testament stories above, this woman was also offered profound life change. Jesus offered this rejected woman access to living water that could well up inside of her, cleansing, purifying, and healing her relationships. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” — John 4:13-14 Jesus chose her as His first herald to announce that He was the long-awaited Messiah. Through the interaction at the well, the woman who had been hiding from others in fear and rejection became the bearer of good tidings as the first in her community to meet the Messiah. Like Hagar, she met “the God who sees.” He sees those who are rejected; the strangers, the refugees, the hurting. He sees you. And he offers you new life. With His streams of living water flowing through us, we can also reach out to heal the broken relationships around us. Written by Wendy Halloun, Creative Communications Officer MENA, Biblica.

1. Eden was good, but not yet fully glorious. Eden was bright and beautiful, and we tend to think of it in terms of perfection. But rather than thinking of Eden in terms of perfection, we should think of it in terms of potential. Certainly, Eden was pure and pristine, ordered and filled, but the Eden we read about in Genesis 1 and 2 wasn’t yet everything God intended for his creation. It was unsullied but incomplete. From the very beginning, Eden was not meant to be static; it was headed somewhere. We could say there was an eschatology of Eden. God’s intentions for his creation have always been headed toward consummation, toward glory. 2. Eden was abundant, but it wasn’t yet expansive. Genesis 2:8 tells us that on the earth God created, “the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east.” He instructed Adam and Eve to, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen 1:28). Clearly there was an expansion project in the works. As Adam and Eve worked and kept the garden, and as they were fruitful and multiplied, Eden would grow beyond its current boundaries, and the glory of Adam and Eve’s royal rule would increase. 3. Eden was completely good, but it wasn’t completely secure. As good as the original Eden was, it was vulnerable to evil, deception, and even death. This becomes obvious when we consider that Satan inhabited the body of an ordinary serpent and brought death into the pristine garden. In Revelation 21, John takes care to assure us that this will not happen in the greater garden to come. It will be utterly secure. “Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life,” (Rev. 21:27). 4. Eden had a rhythm of work and then rest, but not yet unending rest. God did his work of creation, and then he rested. In his rest, God was setting before Adam something to look forward to when he accomplished his work of subduing the earth, exercising dominion over it, and filling it with image bearers. Had Adam faithfully finished the work, he and Eve and their offspring would have entered into a permanent Sabbath rest. 5. Adam and Eve were made in the image of God, but not yet as glorious as God intended. David wrote about the first man, “You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:5). Clearly Adam and Eve, having been made in God’s image had a measure of his glory. Had they obeyed, they would have been transformed from one degree of glory to another. “Transformed from one degree of glory to another” has always been and still remains God’s plan for those made in his image. Even now, as the Holy Spirit works in us, we are being changed from one degree of glory to another. But it is the fullest resurrection glory we anticipate the most. “We await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Phil 3:20–21). 6. Adam and Eve were naked, not yet robed in royal splendor. When we read in Genesis 2 that Adam and Eve were naked in Eden, it may initially seem to us to be a good or neutral thing. But Moses’ original readers would have recognized that something was lacking. These were royal representatives of the great king. And royal representatives in Scripture are always dressed in royal robes (think of Joseph’s coat of many colors, Jonathan’s robe given to David, the robe and ring given to the prodigal son). The report of their nakedness indicated a need for royal clothing which would have been given to them had they faithfully exercised dominion. But instead of being further clothed, Adam and Eve lost the original glory that covered them. This is what made their nakedness before God so unbearable that they sought to cover themselves up with fig leaves. 7. Adam and Eve enjoyed one-flesh intimacy, but their bond was vulnerable to brokenness. The love story in Eden began with Adam and Eve enjoying bone-of-my-bones, flesh-of-my-flesh intimacy. But the same two people who were naked and unashamed are, only a few verses later, trying to cover up their shame. The same husband who held out his hand to his wife to welcome her, exclaiming, “At last!” only a few verses later points the finger of blame in her direction, saying, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). This partnership that was intended to bless the world brought a curse upon the world. Ever since this first marriage went so terribly wrong, God has been working out his plan to present a perfected bride to the perfect groom. The day will come when the shadow of temporary human marriage will give way to the substance—the eternal, unbreakable, most intimate marriage between Christ and his bride. This will be the happiest marriage of all time. 8. Adam and Eve enjoyed God’s presence, but they were vulnerable to his presence in judgment. Adam and Eve experienced the joy of God’s presence with them in the garden before they sinned. But one aspect of his presence with them was the warning he gave them regarding the forbidden tree, “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’” (Gen. 2:17). When we read in Genesis 3:8 that Adam and Eve “heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,” it was not as though God was taking his regular leisurely afternoon stroll in the garden. This was judgment day, which for Adam and Eve meant that it was also eviction day. No longer could they live in the holy sanctuary of Eden in the presence of a holy God, because they had become unholy people. But God’s intention to dwell with a holy people in a holy land could not be thwarted by human sin. Instead, God began working out his plan to make it possible for sinners to be made clean and holy in order to live in his presence. The day is coming when, “He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Rev. 21:3). 9. Adam and Eve could have gained the knowledge of good and evil without eating from the forbidden tree. When we read about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:9), we might think that there must have been something essentially evil, even foreboding, about this tree. But it wasn’t forbidden because it was evil. Rather, it was evil because it was forbidden. God had put this tree in the garden to give Adam and Eve the opportunity to live out genuine faith and obedience. Adam and Eve could have used the wisdom God gave them through his word to judge the Serpent’s lies and rebellion against God as evil, while clinging to God’s goodness. Adam should have crushed the head of the evil serpent then and there. He should have squashed this rebellion rather than taking part in it. Had he done so, Adam and Eve would have been able to eat their fill of the tree of life, and enter into a heavenly life, without ever having to experience death. 10. Eden had the tree of life, but Adam and Eve were prohibited from eating from it. We’re not told specifically that Adam and Eve could not or did not eat of the tree of Life that was in the midst of the garden. But it would seem that the fruit of this tree was a feast for Adam and Eve would enjoy once they passed the test of obedience represented in the forbidden tree. Revelation 2:7 speaks of eating of the tree of life being granted to those who “overcome” or “conquer.” Clearly, Adam and Eve did not overcome temptation. They were meant to rule over creation but they couldn’t rule over their own appetites. Because of their disobedience they were barred from eating of the tree. Revelation 22 reveals that the opportunity for God’s people to eat of the tree of life is not gone forever. Instead, the tree of life is gloriously planted in the center of the greater garden to come. In Eden, the trees bore fruit in their season, which means once a year. But in the new and better Eden, the tree of life yields a new crop of fruit every month. In Eden, the tree of life grew in the midst of the garden. But in the new Eden, the tree of life grows on either side of the river. It seems to have multiplied and expanded, implying that everyone will have access to it; all will be welcome to eat their fill. And it’s not just the fruit that will feed us; the leaves of this tree will heal us. In fact, they will heal everything. Sometimes we hear the story of the Bible told as Creation-Fall-Redemption-Restoration. But as good as Eden was, we’re not merely headed back to Eden as it once was. The story of the Bible is Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation. We’re looking forward to a home that will be even better than Eden. God’s intention to dwell with a holy people in a holy land could not be thwarted by human sin. by: Nancy Guthrie this article is part of the 10 Things You Should Know series.

Those of us who love and have chosen to follow Jesus are called to continue the ministry that Jesus began when he was on the earth. The only way it is possible for fallible humans to do so is by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit working through us. Our steps need to be in cadence with His to see His Kingdom come, and to see Heaven invade Earth. Our heart needs to be full of His love. When we experience His love and reach out to serve others in that same power, we can continue the work that He began—and that so many believers have moved forward in centuries past. Our belief is critical, as is following after him. We can’t do so perfectly; neither could the disciples. When the disciples who literally followed Him every day for three years did not fully understand His mission and ministry, this is how He responded: John 14:11-12 (NIV) “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” “Works” in the Greek language means business, and “greater” means increase. God wants to have you be about His business and bring increase through your obedience. Jesus then goes on to say that when He leaves, He will send the Holy Spirit to be within and upon us, never to leave, so that we can continue His ministry. So what does it mean to continue the work that Jesus did among us? Jesus changed lives. He brought the good news of the gospel and the kingdom of God to all who would listen. He comforted the broken-hearted. He proclaimed freedom and liberty to spiritual prisoners. He brought restoration and increase to those who had been wronged and robbed, especially by the enemy. He brought joy for those who were mourning. He brought strength to the weak. He brought sight to the blind. He brought health to the sick. He brought the dead back to life. He crushed death, disease, and all the works of the devil under His heel. The most amazing thing about this is that He has called you to do these works, and even greater works! Jesus’ love for those around him was motivated by the love of the Father. Everything He did and said was saturated and soaked with God’s love. John 3:16-17 (NIV) “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” These verses are the beginning and the end of the gospel message, but they also point to one very important reminder: We work from God’s love, not for God’s love. We cannot add or subtract from His love, because his love for us has already been made perfect in the death and resurrection of his beloved Son. John 13:34-35 (NIV) “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Understand that when we move forward in love in the service of God’s Kingdom, the love of God within us destroys the works of the devil—both within our hearts and within the world around us. Read 1 Corinthians 13 to see what biblical love looks like. So how do we continue this work? How do we move forward in love? First, we need to receive His love. (We can’t give what we don’t have.) God has an upgrade for us today so that we can be a better receiver for His love. This upgrade not only allows us to see the never-ending heights, widths, lengths, and depths of His love (Ephesians 3:18); but it also allows us to let that love flow through us toward others. Pray that God will allow you to be a conduit for his love. Pray that the overflow of that love will move you to the point where there’s too much for you to contain – it will need to be released! Finally, pray for the eyes to see the opportunities for service that God is sending your way. May you be blessed as you bless others through the work you do as you continue the work that Jesus began. By Chase McCartney, Social Media Marketing Coordinator for Biblica.

Wisdom is a capacity of the mind that allows us to understand life from God’s perspective. Throughout the book of Proverbs, Solomon encourages us to “get wisdom” (Proverbs 4:5). He says those who get wisdom love life (see 19:8) that it’s better to get wisdom than gold (see 16:16), and hat those who get wisdom find life and receive favor from the Lord (see 8:32 – 35). Yet in Ecclesiastes 7:23–24 Solomon also makes clear that getting wisdom is a challenging process: “‘I am determined to be wise’ — but this was beyond me. Whatever exists is far off and most profound — who can discover it?” Fortunately, Scripture provides us instruction in this area. Here are four Biblical instructions for how to get wisdom: 1. Fear God Solomon says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (see Proverbs 9:10). But how should we fear God? Philipp Melanchthon, a collaborator of Martin Luther, discussed what it means to fear God by contrasting filial fear with servile fear. Filial fear is the type of respect and love a child has for a parent, a fear of offending the one they most adore and trust. In contrast, servile fear is the kind of fear that a prisoner has for his jailer or executioner. 2. Desire Wisdom The second step to getting wisdom is to desire it with all our heart. As Solomon says, we must “look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure” (Proverbs 2:4). 3. Pray for Wisdom As James tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you” (James 1:5). 4. Study God’s Word The fourth step in getting wisdom is studying and meditating on God’s Word (see Psalm 19:7). We shouldn’t rely merely on our own understanding, though, but lean on the wisdom and insight produced by Christians throughout the church’s history. PRACTICAL TAKEAWAY: To get wisdom we must fear God, study his Word, and prayerfully desire to understand life from God’s perspective. Devotional drawn from the NIV Lifehacks Bible ebook.

Pray with Hope, Patience, and Love When a friend or family member experiences mental illness, it can often be a time of great confusion. What’s happening? What should I do or say? What should I pray for? I want to give you some specific petitions to bring to God in prayer, but our attitude in prayer is as important as our words, so I want to encourage you to pray with hope, patience, and love. Pray with hope because we are praying to the God of hope (Rom. 15:13), the God who encourages us to believe in his power when we and the sufferer feel powerless. God can fully heal mental illness, or he can give varying degrees of improvement, or he can give help in managing the condition better. As Jesus said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). Pray with patience because changes for the better can take a long time, and we can easily give up praying when so little change is evident. Praying for someone with mental illness is more like a marathon than a sprint. It will develop your patience muscles more than most other spiritual exercises. Pray with love for the sufferer rather than with anger and frustration. Praying with love and for love will be reflected in your relationship with the person, which will not only be good for you but good for your loved one also. When God gives us the right spirit in prayer—the spirit of hope, patience, and love—that will usually result in the right petitions. Some examples include: “Give them acceptance of their need, especially their need for help.” Few people like to accept or admit they have mental illness. Whether it’s the imagined stigma, personal pride, misunderstanding of what mental illness is, or fear of the consequences of admitting it, most people, and most men especially, are reluctant to even consider they have a mental illness. Even when they get over this barrier, agreeing to seek outside help is an additional obstacle. We therefore want to pray that a suffering friend or family member would see their need, and especially accept that their need is so great they should seek help. “Give them a willingness to talk openly and honestly.” Another difficulty on the road to healing for our loved one is their unwillingness or inability to talk about what they are thinking and feeling. Again, in general, this is harder for men than women, but almost all of us struggle with this to some degree. We may be so confused, stressed, or down that we can’t even think straight, never mind talk straight. Or we may be afraid of sharing so openly and honestly. Or it just may never have been a practice in our culture or upbringing to talk about our inner life, our feelings, etc. However, being willing and able to talk about what we are going through is essential and a massive step on the road to healing. “Give them a holistic team of helpers.” Once a person admits their need and especially that they need help, who should they turn to? The doctor? The pastor? A counselor who is a Christian? A psychologist or a psychiatrist? A life coach? Depending on the severity of the condition, the answer may be “all of the above.” None of this will come together quickly, but over time we should pray for a team of helpers who will address the sufferer’s needs in a holistic way. Ideally our pastor will already have a team of Christian contacts with different professional skills that they can recommend to the person. Some of this may involve a bit of trial and error until the right people with the right skills are in place. But I would strongly encourage a team comprising a pastor, a doctor, and a counselor with Christian faith. This will result in a holistic package of care that will address the spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, and relational aspects of the person’s suffering. “Give them an increasing sense of personal responsibility.” Whether the sufferer brought his mental illness upon himself through bad decisions, or whether it was more genetic or circumstantial, recovery will always involve the person taking increasing responsibility for decisions and actions that will enable his recovery. This is often extremely difficult for a person with mental illness because they feel helpless, passive, weak, and may even have a degree of incapacity. That’s why we want to pray for an increasing sense of personal responsibility. This involves making good daily decisions about lifestyle such as sleep, exercise, diet, media intake, daily devotions, church attendance, fellowship, etc. “Give them patience.” Although sometimes mild to moderate mental illness can be significantly reduced in a few weeks with the right help, most times it takes many weeks—and even months—for “normal” to come into view. We live in a time and culture which expects instant results, and therefore the idea of waiting days, weeks, or months for major improvement is painfully difficult for most of us. So we want to pray that the person would be given patience while he waits for God to bless the various measures that are taken. One way to do this is to help the sufferer, and others like him, to look for and identify small improvements in various areas of life such as better sleep, more laughter, fewer panic attacks, shallower dips in mood, coping better with disappointments, etc. “Give them submission to your will, Lord.” Like all illnesses and disorders, mental illness, to some degree, may be part of our lives for a long time and even for the rest of our days. Perhaps it may be God’s will for us to suffer periodically with bouts of anxiety or depression. It may be our thorn in the flesh, an area of personal weakness through which God shows his strength (2 Cor. 12:7–10). If so, your loved one and others like him need help to bow to God’s sovereignty and accept his right to do what he wills with his own (Matt. 29:15). We want to fight for health and strength, but we also want to fight for humility and submission to God’s will. “Give them someone to serve.” When mental illness strikes, we can often become self-centered, thinking and talking only about ourselves. We get stuck inside our own heads and cannot see the needs of others around us. This is a vicious circle which only brings us further down. We will therefore want to pray that God would open the sufferer’s eyes to serve another person, which will not only help that person but will also help our loved one by getting him outside his own head and thinking about another, at least for a time. It will also give him a sense of worth and usefulness again . “Give them new skills.” As Paul outlines in 2 Corinthians 1:3–7, one of the reasons God brings pain and suffering into our lives is to train us to help others with similar afflictions. We learn more in the school of suffering than in any other school, and these lessons are not to be kept to ourselves but passed on to others. We therefore want to ask God to teach our loved one how to be a counselor and encourager of others who suffer with mental illness so that he can comfort others with the comfort with which he has been comforted by God. “Give them insight into their sin and their Savior.” There would be no mental illness if there was no sin. That’s not the same as saying that a person’s mental illness is a result of their own sin. It’s saying that our first parents’ sin is the ultimate cause of all mental illness in the world. Like physical illness, mental illness is part of God’s curse on humanity, a curse that God intended not just as a punishment for that first sin but as an ongoing education in the seriousness and awfulness of sin. Mental illness can therefore be a time of learning about how sin has wrought such havoc on us, disordering our bodies, minds, emotions, and souls. But just as mental illness also teaches us about sin, it also teaches us about our Savior who took on a frail and broken humanity like ours (although without sin) and experienced sufferings, such as the darkness of depression and the fear of anxiety (Matt. 27:46; Heb. 5:7), so that ultimately he could remove both the penalty and the consequences of sin. We would never choose mental or emotional darkness and terror, but he did so that he could both sympathize with us and save us. So we want to pray that God would use mental illness in the lives of his people to show them their wonderful Savior. “Give them a hope of heaven.” For the believer, mental illness can be like a little taste of hell on earth. As such, it can help us to see the horrors of the hell we have been saved from, as well as to long for the health and holiness of heaven, the place where all our diseases and disorders of mind, emotions, and soul will be immediately and fully healed upon entry—a healing our bodies will also fully participate in after the resurrection. Pray with hope because we are praying to the God of hope (Rom. 15:13), the God who encourages us to believe in his power when we, and the sufferer, feel powerless. David Murray is the coauthor together with Tom Karel Jr., of A Christian's Guide to Mental Illness: Answers to 30 Common Questions.

1. God is immanent because he is transcendent. The Lord is “God in the heavens above (transcendent) and on the earth beneath (immanent)” (Josh 2:11). But to understand God in full we must recognize that his drawing near to creation stems from his being distinct from creation. In other words, there is no deficiency in God that creation satisfies. The Lord doesn’t relate to this world because he lacks something within himself. No, God draws near out of the abundance of who he is. God’s transcendence distinguishes him from the created order and puts things in their right perspective. God does not come to us needy and wanting, but rather he comes to “revive the spirit of the lowly and the heart of the contrite” (Isa 57:15). It is the holy and righteous One above who restores the broken and needy below. 2. The Bible emphasizes God’s manifest presence, not only his omnipresence. There is a difference between saying “God is everywhere,” and saying “God is here.” The former is the default category for most Christians. We talk about God’s presence being inescapable and that he is “everywhere present” (Ps 139:5-12; 1 Kings 8:27). But it seems Scripture is more concerned with his presence manifest in relationship and redemption. And though these divine realities are certainly not at odds, the biblical story does turn on God’s being manifest with his people in Eden, the tabernacle/temple, the incarnation of Christ, and the new heaven and new earth. 3. The story of Scripture begins and ends with the presence of God. In the book of Genesis, Eden is the first couple’s home but, more importantly, it is God’s sanctuary—the garden temple where the Creator and his image-bearers relate (Gen 3:8). Fast forward to the end of our Bibles and we see a very similar picture but on a much larger scale. All of heaven has collided with the whole earth to make a perfect sanctuary for God to dwell with man (Rev 21:1-4). In the book of Revelation, Eden has returned and expanded into new heaven and new earth where all of God’s people enjoy his presence eternally. 4. Humanity’s mission and the presence of God are inseparable. God gave man and woman purpose. They are to “be fruitful and multiply” in order to “fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion” (Gen 1:28). Adam and Eve are to do this in Eden, the epicenter of God’s relational presence in creation. As the first couple’s family expands, so too will the garden’s borders and, with it, God’s presence. Likewise, God’s presence was to spread to the rest of the earth through Adam and Eve’s exercising dominion (Num 14:21; cf. Ps 72:19; Isa 11:9). 5. Sin undermines humanity’s mission and the experience of God’s presence. But there is a problem, isn’t there? Adam and Eve replace blessings for curses when they eat the forbidden fruit. These curses cut right to the heart of who they are and what they were made to do. For Eve, pain overwhelms the promise of a people. For Adam, perspiration and thorns will impede the promise of place. Sin hinders everything now, especially man’s experience of God’s presence. Because of their disobedience, Adam and Eve are now exiles; their mission is in shambles as they stand outside of Eden. The presence of God they once knew freely is no longer free. 6. God covenants to bring his presence back to his people. But in grace, God steps in to pay the price. To overcome man’s sin and ensure his purposes, the Creator becomes covenant Redeemer. Through his covenant promises, the Lord restores what Adam failed to do. God makes a people and a place through the covenant all the while keeping his promises to humanity. God does all of this so that he can be our God and we can be his people (Gen 17:7; Ex 6:7; 29:45, Rev 21:3, etc.). At the heart of the covenant, then, is a relationship—one that is decidedly on his terms. God enters into his creation to create a people and a place for his presence. And so the covenant is as the Lord declares at Sinai: “I will dwell among the people of Israel and be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them” (Ex 29:45-46). 7. The presence of God is the means and end of redemption. As evangelicals, we talk a lot about the presence of God but seldom look to the Bible to see what it is. When we do, we find that it is first and foremost a theme on which the story of Scripture hinges. If we read our Bibles though we begin to see a two-fold pattern. First, the Bible makes clear that the presence of God is a central goal in God’s redemptive mission. All of God’s work ends with the Lord dwelling with man. And second, the presence of God is, not only an objective, it is also the means by which the redemptive mission is fulfilled. God writes himself into his own story to bring salvation. To understand our Bibles and how it changes us, we need to know God’s presence. 8. The presence of God finds its greatest expression in Immanuel, God with us. God himself comes to save. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, entered human history to give his life as a ransom for many (Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45). In his grace, God buys us back in the most unimaginable way possible: God in Christ became a man, walked among humanity, and died for his people. In this merciful act, Christ reconciles us to himself and re-opens access to the Father so that those who were once exiled from his presence might again draw near to God (Heb 4:16; 7:19). 9. The purposes of the church are tied to the presence of God. The presence of God has massive implications for the way we understand the church (1 Cor 3:16-17; 2 Cor 6:14-7:1; Eph 2:13-22). The New Testament calls the church a temple for a reason. Through this image, we see that the community of Christ is—in this time of waiting on Christ’s return—the instrument the Lord uses to disseminate his presence to a lost and sinful world. Accordingly, the church has two clear purposes: 1) the church works within itself for the sanctification of its members to prepare God’s people for God’s present and future presence; and 2) the church works externally to share the gospel so that the lost may enjoy God’s presence now and forever as well. 10. To be a joyful Christian is to know God’s presence. If we are honest, many of us can think of God as our “magic genie” from time to time. We keep him on the shelf until troubles arise or there is something our neighbor has that we really want. The problem is, real relationships don’t work this way—especially with the triune God. The Lord over all will not be left on the shelf of anyone’s life. Instead, Scripture is clear that all of life—and, principally, the gospel life—is about being in God’s relational presence. This is why David proclaims, “In your presence there is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps 16:11). When we push all our peripheral issues to the periphery, this is all that is left, and all that really matters. Sin hinders everything now, especially man’s experience of God’s presence. by: J. Ryan Lister PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

The Descriptions Jesus Uses for Hell Jesus spoke of hell more than anyone else in the Bible. He referred to it as a place of “outer darkness” where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12). In other words, all the joys that we associate with light will be withdrawn, and all the fears that we associate with darkness will be multiplied. And the result will be an intensity of misery that makes a person grind his teeth in order to bear it. Jesus also refers to hell as a “fiery furnace” where law-breakers will be thrown at the end of the age when he returns. “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 13:41–42). He calls it “the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22), “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41), “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), “eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:46). This last description—“eternal punishment”—is especially heartrending and fearful because it is contrasted with “eternal life.” “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” In this contrast we hear the tragedy of loss as well as suffering and endlessness. Just as “eternal life” will be a never-ending experience of pleasure in God’s presence, so “eternal punishment” will be a neverending experience of misery under God’s wrath (John 3:36; 5:24). Hell Is Not a Mere Natural Consequence of Bad Choices The word wrath is important for understanding what Jesus meant by hell. Hell is not simply the natural consequence of rejecting God. Some people say this in order to reject the thought that God sends people there. They say that people send themselves there. That is true. People make choices that lead to hell. But it is not the whole truth. Jesus says these choices are really deserving of hell. “Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to [that is, guilty of, or deserving of] the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22). That is why he calls hell “punishment” (Matt. 25:46). It is not a mere self-imposed natural consequence (like cigarette smoking leading to lung cancer); it is the penalty of God’s wrath (like a judge sentencing a criminal to hard labor). The images Jesus uses of how people come to be in hell do not suggest natural consequence but the exercise of just wrath. For example, he pictures the servant of a master who has gone on a journey. The servant says, “My master is delayed,” and he “begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards.” Then Jesus says (referring to his own sudden second coming), “The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 24:48–51). This picture represents legitimate and holy rage followed by punishment. Jesus will “put” (θήσει) him with the hypocrites. Jesus told another story to illustrate his departure from the earth and his return in judgment. He said, “A nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and then return. . . . But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us’” (Luke 19:12, 14). When the nobleman returned in his kingly power to reward those who had trusted and honored him with their lives, he punished those who rejected his kingship: “As for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me” (Luke 19:27). Again the picture is not one of hell as a disease resulting from bad habits but of a king expressing holy wrath against those who rebuff his gracious rule. Fear Him Who Can Destroy Both Soul and Body in Hell This is why Jesus said, “Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). The fear he commands is not fear of hell as a natural consequence of bad habits, but of God as a holy judge who sentences guilty sinners to hell. This command to fear God as a holy judge seems discouraging at first. It seems as though following Jesus means leading a life of anxiety that God is angry with us and is ready to punish us at the slightest misstep. But that is not what Jesus calls us to experience as we follow him. It seems amazing to us, perhaps, that immediately following his warning to “fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell,” Jesus says something designed to give us deep peace and full confidence under God’s fatherly care. The very next sentence goes like this: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:29–31). In the same breath Jesus says, “Fear God who casts into hell” and “Do not fear because God is your Father who values you more than the sparrows and knows your smallest need.” In fact, the all-providing fatherly care of God is one of Jesus’s sweetest and most pervasive teachings: Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? . . . Therefore do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. (Matt. 6:26, 31–32) God Is to Be Feared, and God Is to Be Trusted How does Jesus mean for us to experience these two truths about God—he is to be feared, and he is to be trusted? It won’t do to simply say that “fear of God” means “reverence for God” rather than “being afraid of him.” That does not fit with the words, “Fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:5). Of course, it is true that we should reverence God, that is, stand in awe of his holiness and power and wisdom. But there is also a real fear of him that can coexist with sweet peace and trust in him. The key is that God himself is the one who removes his wrath from us. Our peace does not come from our removing the God of wrath from our thinking, but from his removing his wrath from us. He has done that by sending Jesus to die in our place so that, for everyone who believes in Jesus, God’s wrath is taken away. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus said, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up [on the cross to die], that whoever believes in him may have eternal life [not wrath]. . . . Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:14–15, 36). When Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34), he was experiencing the wrath of God’s abandonment in our place—for he had never done anything to deserve being forsaken by God. And when he said finally from the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30), he meant that the price of our salvation—our deliverance from God’s wrath and into all God’s blessings—had been paid in full. Jesus had said that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28), and now the full ransom was paid, and the work of absorbing and removing the wrath of God was finished. Now, he says, everyone who believes has everlasting fellowship with God and is fully assured that the wrath of the Judge is gone. “He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). Fearing Unbelief What then is left to fear? The answer is unbelief. For those who follow Jesus, fearing God means fearing the terrible prospect of not trusting the one who paid such a price for our peace. In other words, one of the means that God uses to keep us peacefully trusting in Jesus is the fear of what God would do to us if we did not believe. The reason we do not live in the discomfort of constant fear is because we believe. That is, we rest in the all-sufficient work of Jesus and in our Father’s sovereign care. But at those moments when unbelief tempts us, a holy fear rises and warns us what a foolish thing it would be to distrust the one who loved us and gave his Son to die for our anxiety-free joy. Hugging God’s Neck Takes Away Fear One illustration has helped me see how this experience works. When my oldest son Karsten was about eight years old, we went to visit a man who owned a huge dog. When we opened the door, the dog looked at my son almost eye to eye. That’s a fearful prospect for a little boy. But we were assured the dog was harmless and that he really liked children. After a while we sent Karsten to the car to get something we forgot. As he ran across the yard, the dog gave a deep growl and loped up behind him. The owner leaned out of the door and called to Karsten, “You better just walk; he doesn’t like it when people run away from him.” A huge dog that loves children but does not like people to run away from him is what God is like. If we will trust him and enjoy him and throw our arms around his strong neck, he will be everything we ever hoped for in a friend. But if we decide that there are other things we want more than him and turn to run away, he will get very angry. Jesus said this as clearly as we could wish in Luke 19:27, “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.” Fearing God means fearing the terrible prospect of running away from the merciful, all-providing, all-satisfying reign of King Jesus. Hell Means That Sin Is Unfathomably Serious Jesus’s command that we fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell teaches us to see sin as more serious than we ever dreamed. The reason so many people feel that eternal hell is an unjust punishment for our sin is that they do not see sin as it really is. This is because they do not see God as he really is. When Jesus tells us what he will say to those who are going to hell he says, “Then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:23). They are workers of “lawlessness.” That is, they break God’s law. Sin is against God first, then man. Therefore, the seriousness of sin arises from what it says about God. God is infinitely worthy and honorable. But sin says the opposite. Sin says that other things are more desirable and more worthy. How serious is this? The seriousness of a crime is determined, in part, by the dignity of the person and the office being dishonored. If the person is infinitely worthy and infinitely honorable and infinitely desirable and holds an office of infinite dignity and authority, then rebuffing him is an infinitely outrageous crime. Therefore, it deserves an infinite punishment. The intensity of Jesus’s words about hell is not an overreaction to small offenses. It is a witness to the infinite worth of God and to the outrageous dishonor of human sin. The Precious Gift of Fear Therefore, give heed to Jesus’s clear command to fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Hear it as a great mercy. What a wonderful thing it is that Jesus warns us. He does not leave us ignorant of the wrath to come. He not only warns. He rescues. This is the best effect of fear: it wakens us to our need for help and points us to the all-sufficient Redeemer, Jesus. Let it have this effect on you. Let it lead you to Jesus who says to everyone who believes in him, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). The reason we do not live in the discomfort of constant fear is because we believe. This article is adapted from All That Jesus Commanded: The Christian Life According to the Gospels by John Piper.

An Impossible Standard? If we approach the Sermon on the Mount only or mainly as a means by which we see our sinfulness, we’ve not taken the sermon on its own terms. Martyn Lloyd-Jones saw the situation clearly: Is it not true to say of many of us that in actual practice our view of the doctrine of grace is such that we scarcely ever take the plain teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ seriously? We have so emphasized the teaching that all is of grace and that we ought not to try to imitate His example in order to make ourselves Christians, that we are virtually in the position of ignoring His teaching altogether and of saying that it has nothing to do with us because we are under grace. Now I wonder how seriously we take the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The best way of concentrating on the question is, I think, to face the Sermon on the Mount. Lloyd-Jones is exactly right. We’ve turned the Sermon on the Mount into a giant spanking spoon—good for making you squeal in pain, but not a welcome instrument or a way of life. The Great Commission, then, becomes a summons to teach the nations everything Jesus has said—which, of course, they cannot do, and he doesn’t expect them to observe. But isn’t the Sermon on the Mount an impossible standard? Who among us never worries, never lusts, never gets angry, never lies, is never a hypocrite, and always loves his enemies, always follows the Golden Rule, and always serves God alone? Here it’s good to recall the distinction between true obedience and perfect obedience. There is a way to insist on genuine obedience as a way of life without doubling down on never sinning and always doing what is right. Besides that helpful theological category, however, notice four things in the text pointing us away from thinking Jesus means to give us an impossible discipleship plan. First, Jesus presents us with bracing either/or options at several points in his sermon. We can take the narrow gate or the wide gate, the easy path or the hard path, the way of life or the way of death (Matt. 7:13–14). We can be healthy trees bearing good fruit or diseased trees bearing bad fruit (Matt. 7:17–20). We can build our house on the rock and be secure or build our house on the sand and be destroyed (Matt. 7:24–27). The stakes could not be higher. If we are no more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:20). If we murder in our hearts, we are liable to the hell of fire (Matt. 5:22). If we give ourselves over to lust, we will end up in hell (Matt. 5:29). If we don’t do the will of our Father, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 7:21). We must not give up hope of obeying Jesus’s commands, lest we give up the hope of heaven. Too many Christians instinctively set aside the commands of Scripture as utterly impossible to obey on any level. The danger with this mindset is not only that we might be disheartened when we shouldn’t be, but that we might not be warned when we should be. Once we convince ourselves that failure is the norm—“No one really obeys Jesus. No one really builds his house on the rock. No one really is pure of heart. No one really enters the narrow gate. No one really bears good fruit.”—we won’t take seriously the many warnings given to us in Scripture that people unchanged by the gospel prove themselves to never really have been saved by the gospel (1 Cor. 6:9–10; Heb. 12:14; Rev. 21:8). When genuine (though imperfect) discipleship becomes impossible, hell often becomes impossible as well. By contrast, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount urges us to choose the right way to live and stick with it. Second, Jesus understands that there is an already-and-not-yet dimension to our Christian walk. On the one hand, Jesus announces that the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matt. 4:17). On the other hand, he also tells us to pray for the kingdom to come (Matt. 6:10). The fact that we have to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven implies that we are not always angelic in our obedience. Heaven has broken in but is not yet fully and finally come to earth (Rev. 11:15). Third, woven into the fabric of Christ’s kingdom living is the expectation that we will need grace and forgiveness. This is a key observation, and one we often miss. When Jesus exhorts us to “[hear] these words of mine and [do] them” (Matt. 7:24), he’s thinking of all the words he’s just been preaching. And think about what we find among those words. “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3). “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matt. 5:4). “Forgive us our debts” (Matt. 6:12). And in Luke’s account: “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). The Sermon on the Mount contains within its many commands an awareness that these commands will not be kept flawlessly. That means part of entering by the narrow gate is being so poor in spirit that you know you need God’s help. It means lamenting your sins and looking to God for mercy. It means asking your heavenly Father to forgive the debts you accrue daily. Jesus’s sermon is not a mount of self-defeating misery, because part of observing all that Jesus commanded is knowing where to find relief when we are miserable offenders. This may be a good spot to say something about the importance of the conscience. The normal state of the Christian should not be one of low- to medium-level guilt. Remember, Paul said the conscience accuses and excuses us (Rom. 2:15). The conscience is supposed to be a prosecuting attorney when we sin and a defense attorney when we don’t sin. And yet many Christians operate with the assumption that if they are truly spiritual, they will feel bad all the time. That wasn’t Paul’s approach. He boasted in the testimony of his conscience (2 Cor. 1:12) and even went so far as to say he wasn’t aware of anything against himself (1 Cor. 4:4). That didn’t mean he was sinless. In fact, he quickly acknowledged that the Lord was the ultimate judge and he might be judging himself incorrectly. But his goal as a Christian was to serve the Lord with a clean conscience, and he frequently boasted of doing so in his ministry (Acts 23:1; Rom. 9:1; 1 Tim. 1:5; 2 Tim. 1:3). In other words, when Paul sinned, he felt convicted, which prompted him to repent, which allowed him to know the grace of God and have a clean conscience. And when he didn’t sin, he didn’t manufacture a guilty conscience. He wasn’t going to make himself feel bad in order to make his opponents happy. If we are to follow Paul’s example, we too should always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man (Acts 24:16). Don’t train yourself to have a guilty conscience. If you are guilty, deal with it and know the joy of forgiveness in Christ. If you aren’t guilty, don’t wallow in feelings of failure as if that makes you a better Christian. Fourth, the Sermon on the Mount is not an impossible standard because pleasing Jesus is not impossible. With most sermons, the messenger should decrease so that message can increase. But when you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God, the point of the preaching is going to be the preacher himself. The Sermon on the Mount compels us to ask: Who is this that thinks we will be persecuted for his sake (Matt. 5:11), that religious tradition bows before him (Matt. 5:21–22, 27–28, 31–32, 33–34, 38–39, 43–44), that building a life on his words makes one wise (Matt. 7:24), that the final judgment will be given with reference to him and given by him (Matt. 7:23)? Of course, the first and lasting impression of the sermon was Jesus’s authority (Matt. 7:28–29). No one had preached like Jesus before because there never was a God-man like Jesus before. Walking in the way of the Sermon on the Mount means walking close to Jesus. The relentless subplot to this entire sermon comes in the form of this question: Are you with me? Are you really with me? Are you with me no matter what? Submitting to this sermon means finally and fully submitting to Jesus. The law in the Sermon on the Mount reflects the heart of the lawgiver. The commands of Jesus are not meant to crush us any more than Jesus means to crush us. Jesus came to save us (Matt. 1:21), to enlist us (Matt. 16:24), and to be with us until the end of the age (Matt. 28:20). To the unbelieving and unrepentant Jesus will be a terror (Matt. 11:20–24), but to all who know the Son, to those who look for rest in the Son, to those who are eager to walk with the Son and learn from the Son, the yoke he gives you is easy, and the burden he asks you to carry is light (Matt. 11:30). Walking in the way of the Sermon on the Mount means walking close to Jesus. This article is adapted from Impossible Christianity by Kevin DeYoung

Unopened Doors “If any of you lacks wisdom,” James 1:5 says, “let him ask God, who gives generously without reproach, and it will be given him.” According to 1 John 5:14–15, “If we know that [God] hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” And our Lord Jesus asserts, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matt. 7:7). “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). “Whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you” (John 16:23). The testimony of Holy Scripture about prayer is clear, consistent, and bold. In theory, this should be encouraging and emboldening for prayer. But in practice, things are not always so uncomplicated and comforting. The problem of “unanswered prayers” is one we all must reckon with. What we hear in Scripture often seems to contradict what we see in everyday experience. Frequently you do not receive from the Father “whatever you ask.” You knock and knock, and the door seems never to be opened. What help might the wider biblical testimony and Christian wisdom offer in that painful circumstance? Iniquity An initial important, but also insufficient, consideration is that sin obstructs answers to prayer. When Jesus makes promises about the Father granting “whatever you ask,” he adds clear conditions. His promise in John 16:23 only concerns prayers asked “in my name”—that is, in accord with Jesus’s character and purposes, for his honor, because of his priestly mediation and representation. John 15:7 says that if we abide in Jesus, which is immediately linked to his words abiding in us, then we can confidently petition the Father. But to the degree that we hold abiding in Christ in abeyance for abiding in some sin, to the degree that we reject Jesus’s words and assert our own iniquitous will, to that degree we can hardly expect to have a smooth experience in supplication to the Father (see also 1 Pet. 3:7). Of course, those knowingly hardened in sin are likely not wrestling with existential anxiety over unanswered prayers. But we can sometimes be, in a sense, unaware of the sin that hinders our supplications. Strangely, it’s possible to pray with zeal that God might effectively subsidize our idolatrous trysts with money or nation or success or family or health (see James 4:3–5). In such cases, to be sure, we rationalize our sin and idolatry, perhaps because everyone’s doing it and it’s “normal.” Or maybe we evade responsibility since we “aren’t directly hurting anyone.” Maybe we’re simply oblivious to our self-seeking violence and lovelessness, blind to how our pursuits functionally contribute to grinding the faces of the poor (Isa. 58:3b–4, 6–7, 10). With such rationalization, evasion, or oblivion, we may sincerely seek God daily and delight to know his ways, but wind up shocked when he takes no notice of our prayers (Isa. 58:2–3). So it is wise practice in the life of prayer to give regular space for confession and repentance, both corporately and individually. It is just as important, by regular seasons of silence before the Word, to humbly lay ourselves open to the Spirit who exposes otherwise unnoticed areas of sin and idolatry (John 16:7–11). Ignorance But Scripture and experience tell us that we can oftentimes pray not obviously hardened in some sin or ignoring the Spirit’s convicting ministry, and God still does not answer. We can oftentimes pray in Jesus’s name for clearly good things—the conversion of unbelieving family, the health of our local church, victory over addiction or societal injustice—and still have the experience of R. S. Thomas’s man in a country church: To one kneeling down no word came, Only the wind’s song, saddening the lips Of the grave saints, rigid in glass; Or the dry whisper of unseen wings, Bats not angels, in the high roof. Was he balked by silence? We can give basically the same answer given above: our prayers might not be in Jesus’s name, in accord with his character and purposes, for his honor. But here the problem is not our iniquity but our ignorance. Our ignorance in such instances is less culpable (as with the people in Isa. 58 and James 4) and more due to our finitude and infirmity. Perhaps we have an underdeveloped sense of God’s character and the things he is committed to, thus needing to mature in our understanding and, correspondingly, to mature in what we pray for and how. Every Christian is on the way of faith seeking understanding. Every Christian needs to learn how to pray aright (see Luke 11:1; cf. Rom 8:26). Perhaps, while we know the general substance of God’s purposes and ways, we are ignorant about their specifics in our time and place. Abraham knew and believed in God’s promise to bless all nations through his offspring, and he prayed fervently that his firstborn son Ishmael might be the one through whom such blessing would come (Gen. 17:18). But he received an immediate “no” from God (Gen. 17:19). Eventually, God gave Abraham not the specific thing he prayed for but the general substance of what he longed for and most truly needed: the son (Isaac) through whom he, all his children, and all families of earth would be blessed. Perhaps we’re ignorant of the timing of God’s answers to our prayers. We pray frequently and fervently, “Your kingdom come! Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven!” Opening our eyes after praying and looking around, we do not yet see much of an answer (cf. Heb. 2:8). We anguish not just at the apparent absence of the kingdom but also at the silent treatment our prayers seem to meet. But the anguish will not endure forever. According to Revelation 8:3–5, God is storing up in a bowl all “the prayers of the saints,” which on the last day he’ll pour out on earth to bring in the full kingdom justice and peace for which we long. Ignorance is often, in these ways and more, a source of our sorrow in the life of prayer. But on the path of faith seeking understanding, we must not give up earnestly asking God for the desires of our hearts. Rather, we must be well practiced in the man’s plea from Mark 9:24: “I believe; help my unbelief!” And with humble, open hands, we must pray, as our Lord Jesus himself prayed, “Not my will but yours be done.” Intimacy It may be true that our frustration in prayer is often tied to our ignorance, but it’s probably not terribly comforting. And while we must acknowledge that iniquity can hinder our prayers, we are also too prone to try to “fix” the problem of unanswered prayers by attempting better, longer, more supposedly comprehensive confessions of our sins. Our self-reliant, self-justifying bent can rear its head even in a penitential mode. We need a third avenue of help. Along these lines, it’s crucial to receive Scripture’s testimony that God hears our anguished pleas, all of them, even the ones he doesn’t seem to grant. “I have heard you,” God says to Abraham in his “no” to Abraham’s supplication (Gen. 17:20). God didn’t need to explicitly say such a thing, except that the express reassurance is necessary to comfort our troubled souls. When God’s response to our supplications is “no,” it is never for inattentiveness or deafness to our prayers in Christ’s name. It’s crucial also to know that God expects us to have seasons in the life of prayer when we’re tempted to lose heart. If this were not so, our Lord wouldn’t have told parables to fortify us for times when to our perceptions God is an unjust, unwilling judge (see Luke 18:1–8). Seasons of “dryness” in prayer, when God seems absent though our supplicatory thirst for him is great (Ps. 69:3; cf. Ps. 63:1), are not aberrations in the Christian life. They are no evidence of God’s distance from us. And it’s crucial, finally, to hear again the good news. Specifically, we must realize its divinely inspired dramatic shape, which can easily escape our notice. At the center of the three-day gospel drama, between the Good Friday crucifixion of Christ for our forgiveness and his Easter Sunday resurrection for our life, came a holy Saturday when disciples experienced the silence of God. God’s silence, with all the confusion, uncertainty, and anguish it stirs up, is written into the heart of the story. But the silence the disciples suffered was not absolute, though they deserved it for their sin. Christ Jesus suffered the absolute silence of God, though he deserved it not. He cried out to God from the cross but received no answer. He prayed that, if possible, the cup of wrath would pass from him, only to have his prayer emphatically and absolutely denied. Christ suffered the fullness of unanswered prayer and ultimately died so that we sinners might be reconciled to the holy God. And Christ rose from the dead so that all who trust in him may receive on the final day not another “no” but the greatest “yes”—namely, resurrection with Christ unto indestructible life. For those in Christ, God’s absolute silence and rejection is done away with, forever. We may pray long and receive back silence, but in Christ, we can know that it is not God balking at us for our sin. He kneeled long, And saw love in a dark crown Of thorns blazing, and a winter tree Golden with fruit of a man’s body. We may pray long without receiving any apparent answers, but it need not drive us away from the Father in doubt but always boldly further into his breast with our confused lamentations and anguished pleas and continued supplications raised in Christ’s name. And we may find that this deepened and intensified engagement with God, this deepened intimacy with him, proves more needful and sweeter than anything else we might seek from him in prayer. For thirty-plus chapters, Job cried out to God and, in the end, God gave Job answers to none of his questions. Rather, as Christina Bieber Lake comments, “God answers Job’s queries not with explanations but with himself.” If wrestling with the problem of unanswered prayer leads for you to a similar discovery, then the “problem” may prove a severe, strange, and sweet mercy. Every Christian is on the way of faith seeking understanding. Every Christian needs to learn how to pray aright. Daniel J. Brendsel is the author of Answering Speech: The Life of Prayer as Response to God.

“Atonement” is one of those religious words that rarely leaves the halls of seminaries and makes its way out into the wider world. For example, if I said to one of my friends with whom I had recently had a disagreement: “I’d like to invite you over to watch the game together this weekend as a step toward atonement,” he would probably respond with, “a step toward what?” My friend’s unfamiliarity with the term would not be surprising. A Google Ngram search reveals that the word has been steadily declining in popular usage since its peak in 1811. Even regular Bible readers might be unfamiliar with the term because 93 of its 107 occurrences in the NIV appear in the books of Exodus (17), Leviticus (56), Numbers (18), and Deuteronomy (2)—not the first books Christians turn to for their daily devotions. Clearly “atonement” needs to get out more. It needs to be more widely known because it lies at the very heart of the Christian faith. So let’s take a closer look at this critically important word. What is Atonement? The Oxford English Dictionary defines atonement as: 1. The condition of being at one with others; unity of feeling, harmony, concord, agreement. 2. The action of setting at one, or condition of being set at one, after discord or strife: a. Restoration of friendly relations between persons who have been at variance; reconciliation. b. The settling of differences, staunching of strife; appeasement. 3. spec. in Theol. Reconciliation or restoration of friendly relations between God and sinners. The note to Exodus 25:17 in the NIV Study Bible adds a crucial detail in its definition of atonement as “the divine act of grace whereby God draws to himself those who were once alienated from him through a blood sacrifice” (italics added). Why Is Atonement Necessary? What the definitions for atonement presume, therefore, is the existence of some preceding rupture in the relationship between the parties involved. It is that disharmony, discord, strife, or alienation that atonement is meant to resolve. In the case of human beings’ relationship with God, the rupture is old and deep. It is caused by our sin. Our estrangement from God began with Adam and Eve’s willful sin against him in choosing to listen to the serpent rather than God. They ate a malignant poison that found its way into every area of our beings. Now sin is part of our human nature. It was not originally so, but is now a continual and pervasive presence that corrupts that nature. As a result, every human being has sinned and continues to sin. No one hammers this point home more effectively than the apostle Paul. Quoting many Old Testament passages, he lays down a blistering indictment of human sinfulness: There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. (Romans 3:10–12) The words “no one” (4x), “not even one” (2x), “all,” and “together” leave the universality of the problem in no doubt. The sin of every single person has alienated them from God. This “pre-existing condition”is what makes atonement necessary if there is to be any restored relationship with God. Where Can Atonement Come From? We sin-infected human beings, however, cannot bring about atonement ourselves. We understand from our everyday lives that the guilty party is usually responsible for atoning for their offense. For example, if I damage my relationship with my wife by forgetting our anniversary (which I have never done btw!), perhaps flowers and a nice dinner out could atone for my forgetfulness. Things are not so easily dealt with in our broken relationship with God, however. Our relationship with God is broken because of our rebellion against him (aka sin). So how can we, who continue to rebel against God in our very nature, atone for our rebellion? We cannot atone for an offense that we continue to commit. We seem to be locked in a fatal feedback loop. Clearly, we need someone else to intervene and do what we cannot. If God wants a restored relationship with us (and what right do we have to expect that he would?), he himself will have to provide a way for it to happen. Atonement in the Old Testament In the Old Testament, God provided the sacrificial system as a way for sinful human beings to restore relationship with him. Because “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22), for atonement to be realized, something would have to die. Shedding the blood of the sacrifices effectively served as a substitute for shedding human blood and was the divinely prescribed way for Israel’s sin to be atoned for. This need to cleanse Israel from its sin was preeminently addressed by the annual Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16)—the one day of the year in which the high priest entered the most sacred room of the temple to sprinkle sacrificial blood on and in front of the atonement cover of the ark. The ark represented the invisible presence of God himself and was the focal point of this annual atonement rite. But the fact that the high priest had to repeat this atonement rite year after year indicated its imperfect and forward-looking nature. Moreover, the blood of animals does not equate to the blood of human beings. The author of Hebrews describes the inadequacy and provisional character of the Old Testament sacrificial system for achieving real and lasting atonement: It [i.e., the Old Testament provision for atonement] can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats [i.e., the animals sacrificed on the Day of Atonement] to take away sins. (Hebrews 10:1–4) For atonement—the restoration of our relationship with God—to be achieved finally and completely, it would take a perfect priest offering a perfect sacrifice. Atonement in the New Testament In amazing and incomprehensible grace, God provided both the perfect human being and the perfect sacrifice for imperfect human beings by sending his son, Jesus Christ. Because Jesus was sinless, unlike the previous high priests, he did not need to make atonement for himself. Moreover, the sacrifice he offered was not in any way provisional or inadequate. It was as perfect as he is, because the sacrifice was him. The author of Hebrews explains: Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself…. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own…. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:24–26) Atonement and the Gospel The gospel, or “good news,” is that Jesus’ sacrifice of himself on our behalf achieves atonement with God for all who by faith claim Jesus as their representative. It is an atonement that was (and only could be) achieved by the shedding of human blood, the blood of a perfect human being, Jesus Christ. Only through Jesus is the impossible made possible. Believers’ union with Christ by faith is their claim that he is their high priest and that his perfect sacrifice is made on their behalf. The good news is that just as Adam’s sin brought death to humankind, Jesus’ atoning sacrifice brings life. In the words of the apostle Paul: The gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! (Romans 5:15) The fatal feedback loop is now broken. We are no longer helpless in our sinfulness. Through faith in Jesus Christ, our relationship with God is restored. We have atonement. Not only that, but God’s own Holy Spirit is at work within believers to conform them to the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:29) so that we experience more and more the riches of that restored relationship with the author of life. The author of Hebrews helps us make the connection between our atonement with God and our new lives in Christ: Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place [i.e., the very presence of God] by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the faith we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds…. (Hebrews 10:19–24) It is impossible to fully grasp the depth and multidimensional character of the atonement. No dictionary article, sermon, theological reflection, or blogpost can ever hope to explain it in all its richness. Perhaps it is best to conclude, as Leon Morris does, that “however it is viewed, Christ has taken our place, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Our part is simply to respond in repentance, faith, and selfless living.” Written By: Michael Williams (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) an emeritus senior professor of Old Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary

Life is full of insults and assaults. There are times it seems that hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t try to undermine or hurt us in some way. The sources of harm are countless. We might find ourselves the victim of a crime, betrayed by a spouse or deceived by a friend. The injury may be small or large, but after the initial shock, our natural reaction may be to seek revenge. If someone cuts us off on the way out of a crowded parking lot after a concert or sporting event, we blast our horn while our blood boils. When someone delivers a cutting remark in our direction, our mind spins into appropriately nasty retort mode. If a business associate undercuts us, we fantasize about embarrassing them publicly or destroying their career. Now think of the harm Joseph’s brothers caused him. They threw him into a hole in the ground to die, then thought better of this approach when the opportunity arose to sell him as a slave. Nice, huh? Later, his boss’s wife falsely accused him of rape. When in jail, he interpreted the dreams of two important fellow prisoners. When they were sprung, the one who survived promptly forgot all about Joseph, leaving him there to rot. If anyone had a right to be angry about the way life was treating him, it was Joseph. This background helps us understand why Joseph’s brothers worried about their fate when their father died. They presumed that Joseph was, underneath, like everyone else — that their father’s death would pave the way for payback. When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept. (Genesis 50:15-17) Joseph wasn’t blind to the injury his brothers had brought on him: “You meant it for evil,” he reminded them simply. Then, amazingly, Joseph added the clincher: “but God meant it for good” (see Genesis 50:20). He looked back over his life and recognized that even the horrible things that had happened had a purpose. God used every one of them to bring him to a position through which he could provide the people of God with food during a devastating famine. Without this series of events in Joseph’s life, Jacob’s family might have died. This is what Paul, in Romans 12:14-21 says about revenge: Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. It’s unlikely that Joseph always had a clear view of God’s plan for his life. Neither do we. It comes down to a matter of trust. We may even go to the grave, not knowing why bad things have happened to us. But God worked through the negative events in Joseph’s life to pave the way for Moses. And David. And, through the family line, eventually, the Messiah. God knew what he was doing in Joseph’s life. Can you imagine what he might have in mind for yours? Takeaway 1. How do you react when someone hurts you? 2. The next time you pause to pray, look back on your life and try to discern the path on which God has been leading you. Pray for wisdom and insight to know which way to go at the next fork in the road. Drawn from the NIV Men’s Devotional Bible.