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On March 6, 2020 By In History, Theology, Wisdom, Worship

Sabbath Harder: Eric Liddell and Complete Surrender

Original post at CrossPolitic Blogazine

Christians should know how to keep Sabbath. I am not saying this the way that some in our culture would say it. Some people say we need more rest because we are too busy, living crazy, distracted lives. These people suggest we need to do some yoga and find our inner guru stillness. That is not what I am talking about. I am suggesting that we are not doing enough with Sabbath. What we really need is to Sabbath harder. By that, I mean we need to have a better understanding and vision for Sabbath. This means we have more to do, not less.

In the fourth commandment, God commands his people to rest. He says work on six days and then rest on the seventh. This is a command. This is not an option. While it might seem like a command will dampen our joy, the reality is that obedience brings great joy and peace. This command is a wonderful gift so that we have one day out of seven to rest. This Sabbath rest is a gift to us because we are reminded what our rest should be founded on. It should be founded on something that God has done, not something we have done.

In Deuteronomy 5, it says that the Sabbath day is a memorial for what God has done for his people: once they were slaves in Egypt and God brought them out with his mighty hand. God has done this great work and so the people need to rest. In the new covenant, we celebrate and remember God’s work on Sunday, the first day of the week, the day Jesus rose from the dead. Our Sabbath rest is on the first day of the week because our lives are oriented around the Gospel. God has done a great work for us and we are to reflect and remember and celebrate that work. This is something American Christians need to do more. 

Eric Liddell and Sabbath

The story of Eric Liddell is a wonderful lesson of how to Sabbath harder. In 1924, Eric was a runner who was going to compete in the 100m event at the Olympics in Paris. However, that year the 100m event was held on a Sunday. So Eric switched events, changing over to the 400m event. Eric refused to run on Sunday because he knew that was against God’s law. He honored God above men. Eric knew of the schedule issue ahead of time so he was able to train for a different event but this new event was still a huge challenge for him. It is crucial to see that while Eric honored God and kept Sabbath, this did not mean that Eric sat back and was passive about it all. Actually, he jumped in and worked harder. He trained for the 400m and he won that race. 

The famous movie Chariots of Fire records the story well. The character Eric in the movie talks with his sister about being a missionary in China. He explains that he will be a missionary but that God also made him to be a runner. He says the great lines, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” In this way, we see that Eric was not a snooty sabbatarian; he truly wanted to enjoy the good gifts of God in his life. He knew that God had called him to be fast and he wanted to use that gift to honor God.  

After he won the 400m, Eric explained how he had won: “The secret of my success over the 400m is that I run the first 200m as fast as I can. Then, for the second 200m, with God’s help, I run faster.” 

In this quote, Liddell is not saying that he ran 50% and then God added another 50%. Rather, the whole thing was a gift of God. By God’s grace, Liddell ran the whole thing. 

That is the correct vision for Sabbath rest: we need it because that is where we are reminded that we cannot do what is required. We must run and strain for the goal but we cannot get there in our own efforts. We must look to God for our strength in order to run. Paul in Romans 9:16 says it this way: “So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” 

Sabbath as Surrender

Later in his life, Liddell went to China to be a missionary. He followed God’s calling on his life and he worked and served there for several years. He eventually gave his life there dying in 1945 in an internment camp. His last words are recorded to be: “It’s complete surrender.” 

Liddell’s last words summarize the Christian life: it is surrendering everything to God. But this surrender does not mean that we remain still and passive and don’t have anything to do. Rather, It is a complete surrender to God’s will for our lives and so this means that we work harder and longer than we ever thought possible. But this comes from God’s strength, not from us. 

There are two errors in how we approach Sabbath rest. One error is to think that rest means inaction: I just sit here and do nothing. Some might erroneously encourage us to a still quietness as if our problem is that we are too busy in life. But busyness is not the problem for Christians. The reverse is more often the case: we are too lazy. So Sabbath is not about finding an inner peace or quiet. True Sabbath rest is about action. 

The other error is to think that I must do everything. God might save me, but I am the one who has to run the race. So I get out my running shoes and I run. I grit my teeth and I try to run harder and faster: as if God will be more pleased with me, if I can just do more things faster. But this is wrong too. My job is not to do what I think; my job is to do what God says to do. 

This means that I must obey God all the way, every day. I must obey the command to glorify God but the reality is that this command is an impossible task for me. So it is only by God’s grace that I can fulfill the task before me. 

The answer then is complete surrender. We must give it all up to God. In God’s command to rest on the Sabbath, he is not saying that the other six days are ours to do with as we please. All our days belong to God. He has claimed them all. There is nothing left over for us. In turning to God, we must surrender it all to him. Then God in his grace gives us back six days to serve and obey him. 

Sabbath as Launch

In this discussion, it is important to emphasize God’s grace to us. It is all grace. I am not saying that we must do our part and then God adds his part. The truth is that all of it comes from him. God gives us the task to run and we must run our best. And we run only by God’s grace. And then God takes us even farther than we thought possible. And that is by God’s grace also. When it is all done and we reach the end, we will see that we had run because we had surrendered it all to God. He will get the glory because we were merely obeying what he had told us to do.

In Luke 17, Jesus says it this way, “Does [the master] thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’” At the end, when we have run our hardest and in God’s strength we have gone even farther than we thought possible, we will say like Liddell, I didn’t do it. I just surrendered it all to God. I don’t deserve any praise. I was just doing what I was commanded to do. 

In this way, we see that the Sabbath is not about us having a chance to rest or for us to get a chance to take a nap, although those things are good gifts from God. The true vision of Sabbath rest is that life is like a pole vault competition. The pole must be placed in a stationary spot, a spot that doesn’t move. This is not to keep the pole from moving, but because the pole is supposed to move. The stationary spot is the point from which something larger can be launched. Sabbath is like that spot for the pole. We set it there in God and in his great work of deliverance, and then He launches us farther than we ever thought possible. 

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On March 1, 2020 By In Counseling/Piety, Worship

The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father

This past Wednesday the church began the journey to Easter. From at least the second century, the church has prepared for Easter in various ways and for various periods of time. Within the first few centuries, the practice of making a prayerful journey through Lent took an almost universal form: forty days of focused prayer, usually involving some type of fasting. (These fast days didn’t include Sundays, which were always feast days.)

The focus of Lent is penitential, which is why fasting is a part of the journey. Fasting is an embodied or enacted prayer that cries out to God for mercy, confessing that we and those for whom we are praying deserve to be cut off from his blessings in death, but look with faith-filled hope for deliverance.

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On February 25, 2020 By In Worship

Some Thoughts on Pancakes (and Lent)

Our church always has a big pancake feast on Shrove Tuesday before the season of Lent. It’s one of the highlights of the church year for the kids. Several children, my own included, mentioned that they had skipped lunch in order to have more room for pancakes at the celebration. They didn’t just want to enjoy some pancakes. They wanted to enjoy as much pancakes as humanly possible.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is a picture of what the season of Lent is all about. It is not merely an opportunity to declutter our lives, or to learn contentment with less, or to practice self-discipline. Lent is not a giving up or an emptying out. Lent is about making room for more. And it is the culmination of Lent that teaches us what we are making room for–the resurrection power of the risen Christ in our everyday lives.

The Apostle Paul said, “…that I may know [Christ], and the power of His resurrection, and may share in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Phil. 3:10-11)

Jesus left left the tomb empty that He might fill the earth with His glory. He left His disciples that He might fill them more fully with the Holy Spirit. Whenever God pours us out in sacrifice and service, it is always for the purpose of filling us up with better things, namely Himself. Each Lord’s Day we come with empty hands to His table and He fills us with strength and joy that overflows into the rest of the week.

So this Lenten season, do not merely ask what it is that you need to give up, but more importantly, ask yourself what it is that you want to be filled up with in its place. Certainly we must throw off the sin which clings to us. a We should lose our appetite for sinful pleasures. But we must also hunger and thirst after righteousness. b We must long for Christ as the desperate deer pants for water. c

Therefore, we fast from those good things that we might feast on the greater things. And there is no greater thing than to be filled with the life and love and peace of Christ.

  1. Hebrews 12:1  (back)
  2. Matthew 5:6  (back)
  3. Psalm 42:1  (back)

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On February 9, 2020 By In Theology, Worship

Family Conversation

God is a conversationalist. He speaks. He has always been speaking. Speaking is so much a part of who God is that the second Person of the Trinity is called “the Word” (Jn 1.1, 14). The Father is the Speaker, the Son is the Word, and the Spirit is the Breath that carries the Word of the Father. God speaks within the Trinitarian family eternally.

The conversation of God was so full of love and life that, by it, he created the heavens and the earth to join in. The apex of God’s creation was his own image: man. To be the image of God means many things, but one of the primary meanings is that man is a conversationalist. Man is made to speak.

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On February 2, 2020 By In Theology, Wisdom, Worship

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

The story of the Good Samaritan is well-known in our culture, not just among Christians, but by everyone. We have Good Samaritan laws that protect those who help people in distress from being sued if the rescue doesn’t go well. Presidents and other politicians have referred to the story of the Good Samaritan in their speeches to encourage certain policies. Back in 2018, Nancy Pelosi recited the entire story in her eight-hour speech on the floor of Congress to promote “The Dream Act.” (https://www.christianpost.com/news/nancy-pelosi-recites-the-good-samaritan-parable-praises-evangelical-leaders-in-8-hour-speech-216989/) There is a Christian mercy ministry run by Franklin Graham called “Samaritan’s Purse.” Christians have a health insurance replacement called “Samaritan Ministries.” The story of the Good Samaritan is well-known, well-loved, and well-used.

When a story like this becomes such a common cultural fixture, it becomes easy to assume we understand the story. Our American culture has taken the story, for the most part, in a very simplistic way, reading it as if it were one of Aesop’s Fables: a story that promotes a moral. In this case, the moral is “Do good for hurting people.” This, of course, is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. There is quite a bit more to the story.

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On January 28, 2020 By In Worship

Can I Pray Like The Psalmist?

Guest Post by Rob Noland


“Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and my mind. For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in your faithfulness. I do not sit with men of falsehood, nor do I consort with hypocrites. I hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked. I wash my hands in innocence and go around your altar, LORD, proclaiming Thanksgiving aloud and telling all your wondrous deeds.”- Psalm 26:2-7 

There is a stream running through the Psalms that I have often found difficult to swim in, and I suspect that I am not alone (especially among reformed folks). How can a desperate sinner like me pray and sing about his righteousness before God? How can I say, “you have tested me and will find nothing” (Psalm 17:3) or, “I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me.” (Psalm 119:101-102)?

I tell my wife every day that I love her. Of course, I don’t love her perfectly. My love is a needy kind of love that never arises to the perfection of Christ’s love for the church. But I don’t rise up every morning and confess my lack of love for her. How would she feel if I always told her how little I loved her? There are some days that I just feel like shouting from the balcony of our apartment, “I love Amber Noland!” Of course, that would not turn out to be a very practical way of loving her, because it would embarrass her terribly. But there would not be any hypocrisy to it. It would not be appropriate for someone to take me aside and say, “You know, you really shouldn’t say that you love your wife, because you don’t love her perfectly.”

There is also a place in my marriage for me to proclaim my love for her in a different way. I can say to her something like, “Search my internet history, you will find nothing,” or “There hasn’t been a single time this week that I’ve held my gaze on another woman.” She knows very well that this hasn’t always been the case with me, so there are times when she really needs that kind of assurance. Proclaiming my faithfulness to her is an act of love.

I would suggest that the difficulty comes from a certain posture that is right and good in confession, but not normative for praise. The mistaken idea is that we can only ever confess our lack of love for the LORD. Further, we must always come before the LORD and say, “I have not loved you as I ought,” “I have despised your word,” “I have hated your statutes.” We cannot proclaim our obedience to the LORD, even in thankfulness for God’s grace to us, because that would amount to self-righteous boasting.

What I am saying is, our love for the LORD is expressed through our obedience to him. It is appropriate in some contexts to proclaim our love for the LORD by proclaiming our obedience to his word—not out of an expression of self-righteous boasting. It is the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us that enables our obedience, and his work on our behalf that enables us to walk boldly into his holy place. And, of course, we need to regularly confess our lack of love for the LORD, just as sometimes I need to confess to my wife that I have not loved her well. But after we come to the LORD in confession and receive forgiveness, we praise him. It is not self-righteous to praise the LORD. Let all the earth praise the LORD.

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On January 4, 2020 By In Worship

Ten Blessings of Community

Dear friend,

I just want to take a few moments to exalt the virtues of community life and to show that without it one’s humanity suffers:

First, to be in community is the closest human sample to that heavenly experiment in the age to come.

Second, to be in community is to put to test those divine imperatives to love, show kindness, and cover one another.

Third, to be in community is to see weakness displayed often and to be humbled by it.

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On December 15, 2019 By In Theology, Worship

Ordinary Changes

Worship with God’s people on the Lord’s Day is not always exciting. It’s okay. You can admit it. Many times we walk out feeling encouraged. Sometimes we leave feeling refreshed. But there are those times–more often than not–that worship is … well … rather ordinary. We’ve gone to worship because we know that’s what God commands, but we don’t feel extremely different when we leave (except for exhaustion if you’ve had to wrestle with small children). We certainly don’t look any different. Nevertheless, as faithful Christians, we faithfully plod on Sunday after Sunday.

Somewhere in our hearts, there is this hankering for some excitement in worship. We want something different, something special that will thrill us and provide emotional motivation to be zealous throughout the week. Sometimes God provides this. There are times in worship when the fellowship of the saints seems particularly joyful, the sermon is especially penetrating and encouraging, and the Supper is a deeply emotional experience. Those times are special.

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On December 8, 2019 By In Counseling/Piety, Theology, Worship

Glorifying God

At the top of the Mt of Transfiguration, Jesus is glorified. The Father and the Spirit transfigure him, altering his face and making his clothes brilliantly white. This glorification is a gift from the Father through the Spirit to the Son. This gift is a responsibility, a mission, that will entail Jesus taking up his cross and be raised so as to redeem the created order. Jesus will take this gift, make it more than it is in the present—glorify it—and then return it to the Father. This sequence is basically what Paul outlines in 1Corinthians 15.20-28.

What is happening between the members of the Trinity on the Mt of Transfiguration is a glimpse into the eternal life and family culture of the Trinity. This mutual glorification, this giving-glorifying-and-returning sequence, is not unusual or something specific only to the incarnational ministry of Jesus. What we see is the revelation of the character of the Trinity. In his words and works, God reveals his eternal, immutable character.

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On December 2, 2019 By In Culture, Theology, Worship

Why the Church Year?

There was a time when time was not. God began to speak. The heavens and earth came into existence. The rhythms of life within the eternal Trinity began being imaged in the rhythms of the creation. Day one. Day two. Day three. Day four. Day five. Day six. Day seven. A steady, twenty-four-hour rhythm turns into the rhythm of the week. The rhythm of weeks turns into the rhythm of months. The rhythm of months turns into the rhythm of seasons. The rhythm of seasons turns into the rhythm of years. What started as a slow steady beat has turned into a symphony of layered rhythms; some consistent, some syncopated, but all moving the creation relentlessly forward.

In order to conduct this symphony, God put the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament-heaven. They separated the day from the night and were for signs and festival times. The heavenly lights were God’s authoritative clock to tell the world the time (Gen 1.14-19).

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