Eyes on You
Church in the Age of the Coronavirus
On March 1st I was in Poland preaching at Fellowship’s partner church there in the city of Szczecin. The coronavirus outbreak was growing, but at that point not a pandemic or to the level that it is now, where it has brought a grinding halt to daily life and created an atmosphere of fear, anxiety, and confusion.
But the text I preached from that day is one that speaks to our moment in a deeply profound and prophetic way. How do we as individuals respond to a crisis? Especially one that surprises us? How do we as the church, the people of Jesus, respond in the midst of a crisis?
The story of King Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20 gives us a blueprint for pursuing and trusting God right in the midst of a crisis. It’s a word we desperately need right now to reframe our moment in light of God’s power and providence over all things.
The Crisis
“After this the Moabites and Ammonites, and with some of the Meunites, came against Jehoshaphat for battle. Some men came and told Jehoshaphat, “A great multitude is coming against you from Edom from beyond the sea; and, behold, they are in Hazazon-Tamar” (2 Chronicles 20:1-2)
The specific crisis in this context is a surprise attack from several incoming armies against the people of God. There is a “great multitude” coming up against. They are quickly approaching and their intention is to wipe out God’s people.
Now this is obviously not the news Jehoshaphat thought was going to greet him when he woke up in the morning. I have no doubt he was caught off guard by this news and then had to totally shift his reality to confront the news that he had just been told.
And this is true of all us. Life is disruptive. Despite our best efforts to plan, prepare, and control our lives things come into our lives which are beyond our control and expose how little control we actually have over anything in our lives. COVID-19 has become our “great multitude” of this moment and it is truly disrupting everything in our lives and sowing in fear, anxiety, and confusion.
But how are we are to respond in a global pandemic? How are we to respond when anything comes into our lives that totally disrupts us? King Jehoshaphat is going show us 4 ways to respond in the midst of a crisis.
1) Seek the Lord’s Presence (2 Chronicles 20:3-4)
“Then Jehoshaphat was afraid and set his face to seek the LORD, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah assembled to seek help from the LORD, from all the cities of Judah they came to seek the LORD.”
Jehoshaphat was afraid, the writer notes, but he didn’t remain paralyzed by his fear, but pushed through his fear to seek the presence of the LORD. The exterior situation was scary, but the interior of Jehoshaphat’s heart was ready to respond with faith and trust.
Why?
Because Jehoshaphat’s interior life had been seeking the Lord regularly long before this crisis. The way that you naturally seek God in the midst of a crisis is because you have been regularly seeking God in the midst of ordinary life.
2 Chronicles 17:3-4, 6 states that “The Lord was with Jehoshaphat, because he walked in the earlier ways of his father David. He did not seek the Baals, but sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments, and not according to the practices of Israel. His heart was courageous in the ways of the Lord.”
There was a different spirit in Jehoshaphat, he was courages in the ways of the Lord and sought the Lord and not the false gods of the Baals.
Disruptive events and suffering expose where we really are and show us how much peace is actually in our hearts. What have we truly been holding on to? What have we been truly trusting in? Our response as the people of Jesus must be to seek the Lord, to go to Him. How exactly do we seek Him? What does that look like? Jehoshaphat shows us.
2) Trust in the Sufficiency of the Lord (2 Chronicles 20:5-9)
“And Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, 6 and said, “O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you. 7 Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend? 8 And they have lived in it and have built for you in it a sanctuary for your name, saying, 9 ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment,[c] or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before you—for your name is in this house—and cry out to you in our affliction, and you will hear and save.”
We must go to the Lord in prayer, to cry out before Him. That is what Jehoshaphat does in these verses. This is what spiritual leadership looks like. He prays. But he doesn’t just pray randomly or haphazardly, he prays in response to who God is. Let us pray to God in a time of crisis by calling out to him with our fears and anxiety, but also remember who it is that we are praying to! We cannot only pray our circumstances, we must also pray God’s character over our circumstances. COVID-19 is a reality, but the greater reality is the God who rules and reigns of over COVID-19 and over everything, every place, and every moment.
We must trust God to do what he will do no matter what. That’s the power in verse 9 where Jehoshaphat says “if disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, pestilence (which means a fatal disease or epidemic), or famine, we will stand before this house and before you—for your name is in this house—and cry out to you in our affliction, and you will hear and save”. He is saying, even if we die, you are still our God and you are still our salvation. This is trusting in the sufficiency of the Lord in the midst of a crisis—asking him to deliver and save and rescue, but also saying that even he doesn’t he is still God and he is still good. That’s a prayer only someone who has truly been walking with the Lord could pray, not just for himself, but for his entire nation. That is the type of prayer we as God’s people must be praying now and the type of trust that God is trying to build into us right now.
3) Embrace Powerlessness (2 Chronicles 20:10-12)
“And now behold, the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy—behold, they reward us by coming to driver us out of your possession, which you have given us to inherit. O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do but our eyes are on you.”
COVID-19 has exposed the illusion of control and power that we (especially as Americans) have built our entire lives on. We are truly powerless in the face of it. But as the people of Jesus we can embrace powerlessness. We don’t have to be afraid of it. We know that we are powerless and God is the truly powerful one and in fact when we are weak then He is strong.
“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
If there was ever a verse for our moment this is it. We do not truly know what to do, but where is our focus? What are we looking at? What are we hoping in? Disruption and suffering can be a time of clearing away all the other things in our life we thought were important or that we were obsessed with and help us focus in on what truly matters.
4) Remember the Lord is With You (2 Chronicles 20:13-17)
13 Meanwhile all Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children. 14 And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, son of Benaiah, son of Jeiel, son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, in the midst of the assembly. 15 And he said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God's. 16 Tomorrow go down against them. Behold, they will come up by the ascent of Ziz. You will find them at the end of the valley, east of the wilderness of Jeruel. 17 You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”
The Lord responds to desperation. The Lord responds to us. His words through Jehoshaphat are words of comfort. The battle is ultimately not their battle, but the Lord’s battle and he will fight it for them. Though they will literally go into the battle and fight it is the Lord’s presence that goes with them to assure them that they will not be overcome. God’s presence is not an invitation to passivity or fatalism, but an opportunity to pray, to fight, to battle, to act in light of Him being with us!
The same God who was with the people of Judah that day is the God who is with us this day in the midst of COVID-19. He’s still on the throne, in control. He’s not anxious or fearful. He is working in the midst of all of this to call us back to himself, to help us focus on him again. We can know, somehow and someway, God is working all things together for good.
The epidemiologist’s and experts tell us that to truly fight the battle against COVID-19 we need to be in a “war-time mindset” and need to do things which cause us great personal sacrifice so that others might live and not die. The church should not need reminding on this because this is meant to be our posture at all times. We are at war against a great enemy who seeks our destruction and we are called to love our neighbors at great expense to ourselves because that is the way of our true King—Jesus.
COVID-19 is a remarkable opportunity for the church to be the church, to lead the way in a posture of fearlessness, Spirit-led powerlessness, love, generosity, and desperate prayer. Let’s not waste this moment. You may never have this much time on your hands again. Don’t spend it only binging Netflix, putting your head in the sand, or just waiting for things to “get back to normal”. Let’s examine where we are, let’s embrace this disruption, and let’s seek God’s presence like we haven’t in a long time. I truly believe this is a moment God is calling you, God is calling the church to something greater and for a watching world to wonder again how we can respond so differently than everyone else. The church has historically responded in truly incredible ways in the midst of crises, and epidemics particularly.
The plague of Cyprian in the 3rd century tore through the region of Northern Africa and fear set in throughout the region causing people to abandoned the sick and the dying, but the church of Jesus stepped in instead of running away. Dionysus, the Bishop of Alexandria recorded this about the love the Christians had for the sick and the dying in the cities of North Africa and beyond.
“Most of our brethren showed love and loyalty in not sparing themselves while helping one another, tending to the sick with no thought of danger and gladly departing this life with them after becoming infected with their disease.
“Many who nursed others to health died themselves, thus transferring their death to themselves in hopes they may not die.. The best of our own brothers lost their lives in this way – some presbyters, deacons, and laymen – a form of death based on strong faith and piety that seems in every way equal to martyrdom.”
The church in these ancient cities showed incredible love towards the sick. In fact, Dionysus says, they were unafraid of transferring the sickness of others onto themselves if it meant that others might live. They were literally substituting themselves in the place of others, dying, so that others might live.
I wonder where on earth they ever got an idea like that from?
Monday, March 16, 2020
Thursday, October 27, 2016
On Saying Goodbye to a Place You Love
"The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal" - C.S. Lewis
As I write this our house sits nearly empty, a little fire going for the last time. The movers have taken everything away and we sit on our blow up mattress remembering back to our very first night in this house and then back even further to the past 4 and a half years here in a place we have come to love---Wisconsin.
Wasn't it just yesterday that we arrived here? Wasn't it just yesterday that I walked into my new job for the first time? Wasn't it just yesterday that we knew no one here? Wasn't it just yesterday that our girls were born here? It feels like it, but the reality is it wasn't yesterday, it was many yesterdays ago. That's how time works--it just keeps going. It doesn't really care that you want to stop it and make it last longer, doesn't care two bits about it.
It's always hard to say goodbye. And over the past couple weeks we have had to say goodbye to so many dear people in our life. The pain we have in leaving is the happiness we had in being--that is how it is. We have come from not knowing anyone here in Wisconsin to now leaving some of our best friends.
So now we are looking back on the memories we have made here--buying our first home, surviving our first blizzard, seeing our daughters born and raised here, growing stronger in our marriage, finding friends who love us for us, enjoying the occasional cheese curd. Isn't it amazing how a place you have never been before, a place so different from the one you grew up in, a place where you have no family, no history, and no sunshine for what feels like 6 months can suddenly, wonderfully come to be a place you love deeply?
Places mark us. They shape us and mold us and it really is only in leaving a place that we realize how deeply they have affected us. They get their claws into us and don't let go, they get into our blood and our hearts. It is why the smell of salt air will always remind of Mobile Bay--where I grew up for 12 years.
Don't take the place you live in for granted, enjoy it, revel in it--who knows how long you will be there?
I am so grateful for the place where our family was able to spend the past 4 and a half years. Wisconsin really is a beautiful place filled with the most decent people you could ever meet--hardworking, kind, humble, and strong. Thank you Wisconsin (and Madison especially) for being our home and shaping us so profoundly.
It's time for us to go, to move on and begin our journey in a new place, but we go in sadness and joy, grateful and grieving, excited for what's ahead and yet wishing we could just stay in this moment forever.
The fire is dying out now, the final pieces of wood turning to ash. We will leave part of ourselves here tomorrow and we will bring Wisconsin (and all the other places we have been) with us as we go--hopeful for what's to come, thankful for the pain we feel...it truly was the happiness we had...and the happiness we will have every time we think of this place that became our home.
Monday, December 1, 2014
A Wedding Day without Regret
I was sent Samantha Pugsley’s article “It Happened to Me: I Waited Until My Wedding Night to Lose My Virginity and I Wish I Hadn’t” by a good friend of mine. He said that it had been making the rounds on social media and as of this writing it has been shared nearly 150,000 times. I was very intrigued by the title of her article so I dove in.
After reading Ms. Pugsley’s blog post I thought I would write a little response to her. Please read her blog post before you read my response to her blog post, that is the way these things should work!
At the outset I want to say that I respect Ms. Pugsley’s opinion and her thoughts as it relates to sexuality, virginity, and marriage. I know many other people who would affirm and celebrate her well written take on these issues. I don’t want my response to come off as mean-spirited or heavy handed, but I understand it might be viewed that way by some!
My hope is that my response would be generous, hopeful, and that it might provide a deeper way to view sexuality, virginity, and marriage. Whether or not I achieve that in these brief comments remains for you to judge!
True Love Waits?
I, like Ms. Pugsley, went to a True Love Waits rally when I was young, though I was several years older than 10. I actually attended several True Love Waits rallies and each time everyone signed the pledge card, and I mean everyone! I am fairly certain they knew to keep playing the same song until every single person came down to the front to declare that they were ready to wait until their wedding night to have sex! Everyone signed the card. Everyone was committed to their cards until wedding night do you part. So I understand where Ms. Pugsley is coming from when she describes the pledge that she took at the age of 10. These events, however well intentioned, can come across as emotionally manipulative and guilt-driven.
Where things began to diverge between our stories is what we were hearing from our churches at it relates to sexual activity. She says (and I fully believe her) that her church proclaimed that if you engaged in extramarital sex you would go to hell. I know that there are many churches that teach that and teach how dirty sex is and how it is to be avoided at all costs or you will burn in the fire!
The only problem with that teaching is that it doesn’t originate from the Bible.
The Bible never says that extramarital sex will send you to hell anymore than it says that marital sex will send you to heaven. That would counter the clear narrative teaching of the Bible that your works are NOT what either justify or condemn you before God. It is supposed that if you are a good person and don’t do all of these sinful sexual things then God will love you and take you to heaven, but that is a gross misunderstanding of the biblical text. Good people do not the kingdom of God make. Forgiven people, on the other hand do the kingdom of God make. The basis for our acceptance before God is not our performance, but trusting in life, death, and resurrection of God’s son Jesus.
I am saddened by the guilt and shame that Ms. Pugsley experienced after her wedding night and which tormented her for two years and then for many years beyond that after finally confessing to her husband. Guilt, shame, and hiding are never the will of God, they are the exact opposite of what the kingdom of God looks like.
Identity
Ms. Pugsley describes the church “applauding my righteousness” for taking a stand against having sex before marriage and her identity being totally wrapped up in her refusal to have any sexual relations or thoughts with anyone else who wasn’t her husband. When she declares to her future husband that she is “waiting” until her wedding night he applauds her because, in Ms. Pugsley words, “it was my body, my choice, and he loved me.”
We all form identities for ourselves and we all tell ourselves stories which make us feel good about yourselves. We may place our identity in our family or our role as a father or mother, we may place our identity in our vocation or in our hobbies. We may also place our identity in our righteousness (our rule-keeping) and this can be the most tragic thing of all.
The Bible tells us that our identity is bound up in God. Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that we are created by a Creator and that this Creator’s image is upon us. This is where our identity must be anchored, in something (or someone more accurately) who is eternal, someone who can bear the weight of all of our longings and expectations. If you build your life on your success and you wake up one day and your success is taken from you then you will be devastated. If you build your life on your reputation and you wake up one day and your reputation has evaporated then you will be devastated. In the same way if you build your identity on your righteousness (on your personal virginity!) and then you wake up one morning and it is taken away from you then you will be devastated.
Why? Because anything you build your life on besides the eternal God will be taken away from you, and if that thing you built your life on is what what made you feel happy, secure, and righteous and it goes away then you have no where to turn but inwardly, to guilt, shame, and despair. You will, to paraphrase Ms. Pugsley, fall off your self-made pedestal. Who can put us back together again then?
The book of Ecclesiastes says that God has planted “eternity” on our hearts. If we choose something which is not eternal and plant that in our hearts we will have to continue our exhausting search for new plants regularly and continually--for that thing, that person, that experience, that job, that achievement, which will finally and fully justify us. But a new plant or tree here or there will never satisfy us; we need a whole new garden, new soil and deeper roots to connect us to our eternal Creator--to bear the weight of our eternal longings, for someone greater to actually put us back together--for good.
You Are Not Your Own
Ms. Pugsley finishes her post with a great flourish--espousing the dominant secular dogma of our culture--your body (and by extension your whole life) is solely yours.
She concludes with this advice, “If you want to wait to have sex until marriage make sure it's because you want to. It's your body; it belongs to you, not your church. Your sexuality is nobody's business but yours.”
You are the captain now. You actually have always been the captain, and it is now time to ascend to your natural rank and set sail with absolute freedom and abandon, unshackled from anyone and anything that dares speak a word of correction or direction. After all, who knows better than you what is going to make you happy and provide you meaning?
St. Paul would submit (and I join him) that God knows. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you received from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”
You are actually not your own, you are God’s. And not simply your heart and soul (the so-called ‘spiritual’ parts of you), but your entire physical body. All of it belongs ultimately to your Creator. God has created us in his image, to bear his image to the world around us, and we do this by how we honor our Creator with our physical bodies. Your body doesn’t belong to the church, but it does belong the eternal God and he invites us to live our lives not for ourselves, but for him.
Why?
“Because you were bought with a price.”
The price you put on something is the value you believe that thing is worth, this is what someone should pay to receive this. The higher the price the higher the value. What type of value must we have if the price for our lives is the very life of God’s son?
What are we worth to God?
The life of God’s son. God puts forth his son for us. This son bears all of our rebellion on himself on the cross. He bears it willingly and lovingly to demonstrate how valuable we truly are to him.
Paul says---this sacrifice of God’s son, this love, this Jesus is the reason why we should honor God with our bodies. Not because we believe sex is dirty and bad (it isn’t!) or because we are more moral or righteous than others (we aren’t!) or because we want to control everyone like robots (we can’t!), but because of what God has done through Jesus in us and for us--he now has the rightful claim on our bodies (and the whole earth). And we can trust this God with our lives (and our bodies) because he is a good God who invites us to obey him not to earn his acceptance, but because we have already received it through our trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Our Wedding Day
“Ten-year-old girls want to believe in fairy tales. Take this pledge and God will love you so much and be so proud of you, they told me. If you wait to have sex until marriage, God will bring you a wonderful Christian husband and you'll get married and live happily ever after, they said. Waiting didn't give me a happily ever after.”
I still want fairy tales to be true. I admit it. Happily ever after, it seems, is written somewhere down deep within us. In our culture (and even within the church) we see marriage (wrongly) as the ultimate goal, the final fulfillment that will lead to our happily ever after. Ms. Pugsley’s church told her that sexual purity and marriage to a good Christian gentlemen would usher in the dawn of her true happiness, the beginning of her happily ever after. That is a fairy tale indeed.
Human marriage can be good and beautiful, but it is not ultimate. It a gift which our creator God has given us not for our happily ever after, but to point to us to our ultimate happily ever after which is to come. The Bible begins with a wedding in the garden of Eden, where God walks his daughter Eve to her husband Adam. The Bible also ends with a wedding in the renewed Eden, the wedding at the beginning of our eternal life with God in the new heaven and new earth.
The book of Revelation paints the wedding scene this way--
“Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:
“Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.
Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.”
Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God.”
This is where all of history is headed--to a glorious wedding day between the people of God and the son of God.
In the end, true love, gospel love has not waited for us, but has come for us and initiated a relationship that will culminate fully on our wedding day to come. We who have been washed by the healing hands of our future bridegroom Jesus are making ourselves ready for his return for us.
A wedding day without regret.
After reading Ms. Pugsley’s blog post I thought I would write a little response to her. Please read her blog post before you read my response to her blog post, that is the way these things should work!
At the outset I want to say that I respect Ms. Pugsley’s opinion and her thoughts as it relates to sexuality, virginity, and marriage. I know many other people who would affirm and celebrate her well written take on these issues. I don’t want my response to come off as mean-spirited or heavy handed, but I understand it might be viewed that way by some!
My hope is that my response would be generous, hopeful, and that it might provide a deeper way to view sexuality, virginity, and marriage. Whether or not I achieve that in these brief comments remains for you to judge!
True Love Waits?
I, like Ms. Pugsley, went to a True Love Waits rally when I was young, though I was several years older than 10. I actually attended several True Love Waits rallies and each time everyone signed the pledge card, and I mean everyone! I am fairly certain they knew to keep playing the same song until every single person came down to the front to declare that they were ready to wait until their wedding night to have sex! Everyone signed the card. Everyone was committed to their cards until wedding night do you part. So I understand where Ms. Pugsley is coming from when she describes the pledge that she took at the age of 10. These events, however well intentioned, can come across as emotionally manipulative and guilt-driven.
Where things began to diverge between our stories is what we were hearing from our churches at it relates to sexual activity. She says (and I fully believe her) that her church proclaimed that if you engaged in extramarital sex you would go to hell. I know that there are many churches that teach that and teach how dirty sex is and how it is to be avoided at all costs or you will burn in the fire!
The only problem with that teaching is that it doesn’t originate from the Bible.
The Bible never says that extramarital sex will send you to hell anymore than it says that marital sex will send you to heaven. That would counter the clear narrative teaching of the Bible that your works are NOT what either justify or condemn you before God. It is supposed that if you are a good person and don’t do all of these sinful sexual things then God will love you and take you to heaven, but that is a gross misunderstanding of the biblical text. Good people do not the kingdom of God make. Forgiven people, on the other hand do the kingdom of God make. The basis for our acceptance before God is not our performance, but trusting in life, death, and resurrection of God’s son Jesus.
I am saddened by the guilt and shame that Ms. Pugsley experienced after her wedding night and which tormented her for two years and then for many years beyond that after finally confessing to her husband. Guilt, shame, and hiding are never the will of God, they are the exact opposite of what the kingdom of God looks like.
Identity
Ms. Pugsley describes the church “applauding my righteousness” for taking a stand against having sex before marriage and her identity being totally wrapped up in her refusal to have any sexual relations or thoughts with anyone else who wasn’t her husband. When she declares to her future husband that she is “waiting” until her wedding night he applauds her because, in Ms. Pugsley words, “it was my body, my choice, and he loved me.”
We all form identities for ourselves and we all tell ourselves stories which make us feel good about yourselves. We may place our identity in our family or our role as a father or mother, we may place our identity in our vocation or in our hobbies. We may also place our identity in our righteousness (our rule-keeping) and this can be the most tragic thing of all.
The Bible tells us that our identity is bound up in God. Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that we are created by a Creator and that this Creator’s image is upon us. This is where our identity must be anchored, in something (or someone more accurately) who is eternal, someone who can bear the weight of all of our longings and expectations. If you build your life on your success and you wake up one day and your success is taken from you then you will be devastated. If you build your life on your reputation and you wake up one day and your reputation has evaporated then you will be devastated. In the same way if you build your identity on your righteousness (on your personal virginity!) and then you wake up one morning and it is taken away from you then you will be devastated.
Why? Because anything you build your life on besides the eternal God will be taken away from you, and if that thing you built your life on is what what made you feel happy, secure, and righteous and it goes away then you have no where to turn but inwardly, to guilt, shame, and despair. You will, to paraphrase Ms. Pugsley, fall off your self-made pedestal. Who can put us back together again then?
The book of Ecclesiastes says that God has planted “eternity” on our hearts. If we choose something which is not eternal and plant that in our hearts we will have to continue our exhausting search for new plants regularly and continually--for that thing, that person, that experience, that job, that achievement, which will finally and fully justify us. But a new plant or tree here or there will never satisfy us; we need a whole new garden, new soil and deeper roots to connect us to our eternal Creator--to bear the weight of our eternal longings, for someone greater to actually put us back together--for good.
You Are Not Your Own
Ms. Pugsley finishes her post with a great flourish--espousing the dominant secular dogma of our culture--your body (and by extension your whole life) is solely yours.
She concludes with this advice, “If you want to wait to have sex until marriage make sure it's because you want to. It's your body; it belongs to you, not your church. Your sexuality is nobody's business but yours.”
You are the captain now. You actually have always been the captain, and it is now time to ascend to your natural rank and set sail with absolute freedom and abandon, unshackled from anyone and anything that dares speak a word of correction or direction. After all, who knows better than you what is going to make you happy and provide you meaning?
St. Paul would submit (and I join him) that God knows. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you received from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”
You are actually not your own, you are God’s. And not simply your heart and soul (the so-called ‘spiritual’ parts of you), but your entire physical body. All of it belongs ultimately to your Creator. God has created us in his image, to bear his image to the world around us, and we do this by how we honor our Creator with our physical bodies. Your body doesn’t belong to the church, but it does belong the eternal God and he invites us to live our lives not for ourselves, but for him.
Why?
“Because you were bought with a price.”
The price you put on something is the value you believe that thing is worth, this is what someone should pay to receive this. The higher the price the higher the value. What type of value must we have if the price for our lives is the very life of God’s son?
What are we worth to God?
The life of God’s son. God puts forth his son for us. This son bears all of our rebellion on himself on the cross. He bears it willingly and lovingly to demonstrate how valuable we truly are to him.
Paul says---this sacrifice of God’s son, this love, this Jesus is the reason why we should honor God with our bodies. Not because we believe sex is dirty and bad (it isn’t!) or because we are more moral or righteous than others (we aren’t!) or because we want to control everyone like robots (we can’t!), but because of what God has done through Jesus in us and for us--he now has the rightful claim on our bodies (and the whole earth). And we can trust this God with our lives (and our bodies) because he is a good God who invites us to obey him not to earn his acceptance, but because we have already received it through our trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Our Wedding Day
“Ten-year-old girls want to believe in fairy tales. Take this pledge and God will love you so much and be so proud of you, they told me. If you wait to have sex until marriage, God will bring you a wonderful Christian husband and you'll get married and live happily ever after, they said. Waiting didn't give me a happily ever after.”
I still want fairy tales to be true. I admit it. Happily ever after, it seems, is written somewhere down deep within us. In our culture (and even within the church) we see marriage (wrongly) as the ultimate goal, the final fulfillment that will lead to our happily ever after. Ms. Pugsley’s church told her that sexual purity and marriage to a good Christian gentlemen would usher in the dawn of her true happiness, the beginning of her happily ever after. That is a fairy tale indeed.
Human marriage can be good and beautiful, but it is not ultimate. It a gift which our creator God has given us not for our happily ever after, but to point to us to our ultimate happily ever after which is to come. The Bible begins with a wedding in the garden of Eden, where God walks his daughter Eve to her husband Adam. The Bible also ends with a wedding in the renewed Eden, the wedding at the beginning of our eternal life with God in the new heaven and new earth.
The book of Revelation paints the wedding scene this way--
“Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:
“Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.
Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.”
Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God.”
This is where all of history is headed--to a glorious wedding day between the people of God and the son of God.
In the end, true love, gospel love has not waited for us, but has come for us and initiated a relationship that will culminate fully on our wedding day to come. We who have been washed by the healing hands of our future bridegroom Jesus are making ourselves ready for his return for us.
A wedding day without regret.
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