Happily Ever After

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

A short time after Caleb and I began dating, he heard some “excellent” relationship advice that he just had to share with me: “Run hard and fast toward Jesus; if out of the corner of your eye, you see someone else running the same way, that’s someone to consider.” And I thought to myself, “am I about to be dumped for not reading my Bible enough?!”

I’m pretty sure I said something like, “That’s exactly how we found each other!” and then immediately redirecting the conversation. Perhaps you’ve been in a similar situation where your mouth says you love God first and most, but your actions show that your heart is otherwise ordered.

I was running toward Caleb. I definitely loved Jesus, but finding a boyfriend/husband seemed to be a much more tangible goal than growing a relationship with God. There really was a part of me that wanted God to be first in my life, the part that admired missionaries in foreign countries, people who were planning to go to seminary, and girls who woke up early for quiet time instead of mirror time; that part of me knew this was excellent advice. And there was another part of me, the part that likes romantic comedies, flowers and chocolate, and Caleb; that part of me was winning.

Similar advice is distilled by the writer of Proverbs in a few verses found at the very end of chapter 31.

Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Proverbs 31:30

Charm is a cover up.  If you’re covering up what’s underneath, you’re probably not hiding a kind heart and God-loving spirit. Beauty is attractive, but gravity and biology will eventually win: things stretch and sag (that tattoo won’t be in the same place when you’re 70…), hair turns gray, and wrinkles replace tan lines. Relationships built on temporal, worldly things will quickly fail to satisfy.  

Photo Credit: Flickr user Jelle Drok 

We can hear all of that, though, and still miss the point: the writer isn’t directing us to a better form of love, rather to a different object of our love. He confronts our cultural norms; movies, sitcoms, dramas and lifestyle magazines promote the idea that romantic love is the ultimate human endeavor. The false promise is that the right person will fill all our empty places, repair all of our pot holes – someone who makes us feel happily ever after. No human can live up to that standard. 

If the focus of your life is finding ultimate satisfaction in a mate, it will be a bumpy and unsatisfying ride. Earlier in Proverbs 31 the writer describes an ideal spouse; if you read those verses, you will discover that being the perfect spouse is an impossible standard! Instead of attempting perfection and failing, we are invited to acknowledge that we don’t come close to measuring up, but that Jesus measures up perfectly. The holes and missteps and places we lack in marriage – or in anything – should drive us to Him.

Some years of marriage (not even a ton! Just some!) have revealed the not-so-secret secret that Caleb cannot be everything to me. He is wonderful, self-sacrificing, deeply loving and caring; but he is also flawed, finite, and limited in time and power. God, however, is infinite; He is able to meet all of my needs. He is perfect! God is the creator of needs, and the fulfiller. He is the only one who can repair our pot holes and fill our empty places. Marriage is His design, and it is undoubtedly a blessing to be enjoyed; but it is not the ultimate thing. He is. He was. He always will be.

Whenever we put something in God’s place, the idol we create will disappoint us. Normally we think of idols as really bad things like hoarding wealth, power, or pleasure. Marriage is a sneaky idol, because desiring a good marriage is not a bad! But John Calvin would tell us, “The evil in our desire typically does not lie in what we want, but that we want it too much.” Even the best marriage will never fulfill us in the way that God can.

Pastor Dirk boiled the author’s advice down to a few questions:  what is your perspective? Do you fear God and have your eyes on Him? Is your happily ever after in His kingdom that is coming? Are you being transformed by the Spirit to be more like Christ? If so, marriages (and the process of finding someone to marry!) will be positively affected by the new creation you are becoming.  

So how do you get to 40 years of bliss? Not by finding the perfect mate, becoming the perfect mate, or by trying to perfect the one you have. Rather, by encouraging one another as you run the good race, pressing on toward the prize. (1 Corinthians 9:24, Philippians 3:14) Encourage each other not to be better spouses, but more faithful servants of the Most High God. 

[Robin Bupp is married to Caleb, and they are from many places east of the Mississippi (but are calling Michigan home for the foreseeable future). A former high school science teacher, Robin is slowly turning the two Bupp kiddos into tiny nerds while they teach her lots of things, including humility and patience.]

How To Be a Friend Like Jesus

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

As a child, I loved books about the kind of friends who lived in the same neighborhood and walked and rode their bikes to each other’s houses. They had dinner at each other’s houses, made forts in each other’s backyards, played games both inside and out, and generally enjoyed being friends. These, I determined, were the kinds of friends I wanted to have. 

Photo Credit: Flickr User sloanpix, Creative Commons

It’s easy to focus on the good, fun parts of friendship. Some friendships may never get beyond that level, which isn’t entirely a bad thing—it’s good to have a variety of friends, as long as we know which ones are the ones we can trust with the larger matters of life. If relationships are going to be worth having though, we must also have the kind of friendships that form and shape us into better versions of ourselves—the kind that involve tough conversations where both people walk away a little frustrated, while at the same time knowing a good, holy thing just happened. As Proverbs 2:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” We need to have people in our lives that are willing to engage in the sometimes awkward and painful work of showing us areas of our lives that aren’t reflecting Christ like they should be.

What we sometimes forget is that as important as it is to choose good friends who help us become better people, it’s equally important to be a good friend. Fortunately, the Bible gives us a great person to emulate when it comes to being a friend. His name is Jesus.

The actions of Jesus—his love, patience, kindness, grace, and more—are all important ingredients to being a good friend. We can’t expect people to extend those same things to us if we’re not willing to lavishly gift them to other people. Friendships need some measure of reciprocity, with each party giving and neither doing all the taking. It can be easy to spot when other people are doing all the taking in a relationship, but more difficult to see when we’re the ones taking more than is healthy. Just as Jesus was generous with his wisdom, love, and time, we need to be willing to be generous with our friends as well. 

Of course, another thing we learn from Jesus about being a friend is that he also wasn’t afraid to deliver the hard truths. Jesus knew the way for his friends to live better lives was for them to follow him, and following him meant acknowledging their sin. It’s never comfortable to have our shortcomings pointed out to us, but, when it’s done with the right attitude and in a fitting way, it can actually be an act of care. If our friendships are truly going to be the type that makes both parties better, we have to be willing to say the hard words when they’re needed. And, in turn, we have to be ready to accept those hard words when we need them.

Friendships like these aren’t born overnight, nor should they be. Not everyone needs to be invited into the deep corners of our lives. But I absolutely believe that everyone should have at least a friend or two who are invited into those messy places of our lives we often keep hidden. Making friends, especially these deep, meaningful, life-shaping ones, isn’t a slow or easy process, but a friendship is a relationship unlike any other, with its own unique value. They are more than worth investing time and energy into, because, when they’re good, both people will be changed for the better because of it. 

[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]

Life in the Middle

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

I love the Olympics--more than is probably natural or perhaps even healthy. While I’ll watch pretty much any event, gymnastics, and in particular the balance beam, is one one of my favorites. As a kid, I even asked my dad to build me a (very low) balance beam, and I quickly discovered how difficult it really is. One slight misstep and I was flailing wildly or on the ground.

Finding contentment often feels much the same way. It’s easy to get caught in the mentality of “a little more.” We have a job that pays the bills, but what if we got paid a little more? The apartment or house is adequate, but what if we had a little more space? Our car is solid, but what if we had one with a little more class? Contentment seems ever-elusive--we may get close to it, but never fully grasp it.

In Proverbs 30:7-9, the writer is wise enough to realize how easily we can fall off the balance beam of contentment. Verses 7-9 read:

“Two things I ask of you, Lord; 

Photo Credit: Flickr User margiee329, Creative Commons

do not refuse me before I die:
Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.”

The writer knows we are prone to forget God when things go well, and prone to resort to drastic measures when things are not going well. So instead, he asks for the kind of life that is lived on a balance beam--never falling into excess on one side or lack on the other. It’s not a life of striving after “a little more,” but taking stock of what we have for each day and seeing the goodness in that.

It’s about realizing that having comes with responsibility, because ultimately it all belongs to God.

With responsibility comes the opportunity to share what we have with others. It seems counterintuitive that by giving away what we have we may come to find contentment, but in the kingdom of God, things don’t always work the way we’re used to. When we give as an expression of gratitude for what we do have, even if what we have doesn’t feel like very much, we place ourselves in a spot to be reminded that we don’t stay on the balance beam of contentment through our own work, but by the grace of God.

If it was just up to us, we’d have a terrible time getting anywhere near contentment. The writer in Proverbs knows this, which is why he asks the Lord for only his daily bread, as a means to learn continued reliance on God. Our own work can’t make us content or willingly generous, but as we seek God and he draws us near to him, he graciously gives us gifts like contentment and generosity. We have to be willing to hear his call to accept these things and then obey, recognizing that a life lived in the middle can be a beautiful one.

[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]

Your Work Matters

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

The summer after I graduated from college, I had a part-time job that filled 20 hours of my week. Most of the rest of my time was spent sleeping, reading, or watching TV. It was not my finest time of life.

Up until that point, my identity had been that of “Student,” and I was comfortable with it. The Christian schools I attended did a good job of reminding us that being a student was work, and as such, we should approach it as a way to bring honor to God in the way that we learned and studied. Once that goal was gone, my 20 hours of work a week didn’t feel like much, and I was at a loss as to what to do with all my time (besides applying for jobs I was grossly underqualified for). I had lost sight of the fact that God cares about all of our work, whether physical, spiritual, or emotional work, whether it takes place in a classroom, an office, a living room, a backyard, or anywhere else.

Photo Credit: Flickr User Brick Wares, Creative Commons

We often get caught up in thinking God cares very much about what kind of work we’re doing. Sure, he likes it when students study hard, he likes people who work at churches and nonprofits, and he likes when parents read their kids Bible stories. But accounting or scooping ice cream? Filling out job applications and not getting call backs? Sometimes it feels like God probably doesn’t care much about those things.

I love the way The Message translation words Galatians 6:4-5 (emphasis added): “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.”

We don’t all have the same work to do, but God cares about all the kinds—from the unglamorous tasks like cleaning bathrooms and taking the trash out, to moments that have glimpses of weightier purpose, like reading a bedtime story or bringing a meal to a sick friend. It might be the emotional work of having a difficult conversation, or spiritual work of making sure we’re regularly connecting with God and a Christian community. In God’s eyes, all of this work matters.  Each kind is different, but significant in its own way. He cares much less about the kind of work we do than how we do it.

The book of Proverbs warns us to not be like the sluggard who sits around all day, but to be like the ant who works diligently and prepares for what’s to come. Neglecting or refusing to work comes with very real consequences, whether it’s physically in the form of lack or resources, or spiritually or emotionally in the form of broken relationships or bad decisions. Full-time jobs are great for some people, but they’re not the only way of glorifying God through work.

Whether we recognize it or not, everyday moments of work are ripe with possibility to be holy moments. God’s grace is woven through all that we do. If I could redo the summer after I graduated from college, I would find much better, more productive things to do with my time—whether through volunteering, writing, or the messy work of thinking through how God made me and what that means for his calling on my life. Instead of allowing ourselves to become sluggards, any of those options and so many more can become powerful ways of glorifying God through our good work.

[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]