Kyle Edwards

Old Photo of the Day — September 4, 2026

2026-09-04T00:00:00Z

View from the Skydeck Observatory at Columbia Center in Seattle. A friend told us to do this over the Space Needle as it is taller and less expensive, and we were blessed that day with exceptionally clear skies. This angle, I believe, is looking east towards Bellevue.

Old Photo of the Day — September 3, 2026

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Summer 2020. Shooting hoops in the alley with some kids from the neighborhood.

We were still masking outside (very inconsistently). This was shortly after we returned to Chicago after my dad's death. Seems like a lifetime ago.

Measured Caesarism

2026-09-03T00:00:00Z

Stephen Wolfe:

I am not calling for a monarchical regime over every civil polity, and certainly not an autocracy, though I envision a measured and theocratic Caesarism—the prince as a world-shaker for our time, who brings a Christian people to self-consciousness and who, in his rise, restores their will for their good.

I await the arrival of measured Caesars with bated breath.

Begrudging a Point

2026-09-02T00:00:00Z

On the main I'm finding it difficult to read Stephen Wolfe's The Case for Christian Nationalism with charity. I am not persuaded at all that the New Testament even hints at something like Wolfe's vision.

However, I'm about halfway through, and there is one place that I find myself more persuadable, if not persuaded:

But wouldn't you prefer to live in a community where you can trust your neighbors, having mutual expectations of conduct, speech, and beliefs according to Christian standards? Wouldn't you prefer to have neighbors with Christian standards of decency, respect, and admonishment, even if it is merely cultural? Wouldn't you prefer some common and good standard of living by which one neighbor can confront and correct another?

My answer is yes, in the sense that parenting teenagers would be a lot easier. But to go back to the New Testament (which Wolfe does very sparingly), isn't being out of accord with your culture and your neighbors kind of the vibe?

Old Photo of the Day — September 2, 2026

2026-09-02T00:00:00Z

Ancient cave art in Joshua Tree National Park. I don't think I ever really looked into the people who made it and lived here. Toria and I spent a wonderful week in Joshua Tree for our 15th anniversary in 2020. The cave art is on one of the more popular trails.

Joshua Tree is one of the most spectacular landscapes I have ever seen, and I hope to return one day.

Car handle design

2026-09-01T00:00:00Z

Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things:

Some doors have appropriate hardware, well placed. The outside door handles of most modern automobiles are excellent examples of design. The handles are often recessed receptacles that simultaneously indicate the place and mode of action. Horizontal slits guide the hand into a pulling position; vertical slits signal a sliding motion. Strangely enough, the inside door handles for automobiles tell a different story. Here, the designer has faced a different kind of problem, and the appropriate solution has not yet been found. As a result, although the outside door handles of cars are often excellent, the inside ones are often difficult to find, hard to figure out how to operate, and awkward to use.

A glaring exception for the well designed outdoor car handle is Tesla. An Uber driver once snapped at me for taking too long for getting into his car. I couldn't figure out how. Come on, Elon.

Old Photo of the Day — September 1, 2026

2026-09-01T00:00:00Z

This is from the graveyard at the church in Grantchester, a very pleasant walk from Cambridge. Toria and I were watching the show Grantchester at the time, and it was a delight to come here.

My favorite quotes from Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, who died yesterday

2026-09-01T00:00:00Z

Some days, sitting here on my porch over the river, my memory seems to enclose entirely; I wander back in my reckoning among all of my own that have lived and died until I no longer remember where I am. And then I lift my head and look about me at the river and the valley, the great, unearned beauty of this place, and I feel the memoryless joy of a man just risen from the grave.

This grief had something in it of generosity, some nearness to joy. In a strange way it added to me what I had lost. I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated with presences and absences, the living and the dead. The world as it would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come.

Sometimes, living right beside it [the river], I forget it. Going about my various tasks, I don't think about it. And then it seems just to flow back into my mind. I step and look at it. I think of its parallel, never-meeting banks, which yet never part. I think of it lying there in its long hollow, at the foot of all the landscape, a single opening from its springs in the mountains all the way to its mouth. It is a beautiful thought, one of the most beautiful of all thoughts. I think it not in my brain only but in my heart and in all the lengths of my bones.

What This Website Is For

2026-08-31T00:00:00Z

In a moment of insanity I decided to build my own website. Or, more accurately, have Claude build me a website. I reserve the right to completely change direction whenever I want to, but here are the four foundational purposes for this site.

First, I want to have fun. I've never done anything like this. I'm not an artist or creator as I typically think of people who are, but I think it would be fun to make something new and different (to me). I like photography, I like writing. I'm not necessarily any good at either, but I enjoy them, and this gives me a place to collect them and an incentive to add more.

Second, I want to own my own stuff rather than give it all to the tech giants. Alan Jacobs has been an influence for me here, including pointing to the IndieWeb is Punk website.

Third, I want a space to write myself clear. As is true for many people, the act of writing helps clarify my thoughts. This site gives me an incentive to write and thus an incentive to think.

Fourth, and this will be the most aspirational of the four, I want this site to be a place where I can exercise what my teacher John Dickson calls the six ways of doing public Christianity: Declaration, Defense, Concession, Beautification, Critique, and Affirmation. I imagine I'll have to grow into this.

Here we go.

Reading and Studying the Bible: A Short Guide

2026-07-29T00:00:00Z

Introduction

There’s a special section of my bookshelf for books that I treasure more than other books I own. Some of them mean much to me because of how useful they’ve been over the years, or how much I’ve learned from them. Other books are there because they’re emotionally intertwined with really important moments in my life.

One of these latter books is the short devotional The Cross He Bore: Meditations on the Sufferings of the Redeemer by Frederick S. Leahy. It’s a wonderful reflection on Jesus’ suffering on our behalf, but the content of the book is not why I love it so much. The reason it’s one of my most treasured books is because of the handwritten note on the title page: “Kyle, I hope and trust that this little book will encourage you to draw near to the Savior. Jeff.”

Jeff is one of my best friends from college, and he gave me this book a few years after we graduated. That little note is so precious to me because it means so much more than just what the words themselves say. It’s a token of a treasured friendship that began at a formative time in our lives and endures to this day. God has used Jeff to shape me into who I am today, and his note in a book befitting our shared commitment to Christ is a wonderful reminder of the goodness of this friendship.

If a one sentence note from a friend can carry such weight, how much more incredible is it that the God of the universe has given us a written book for us to know him and live for him? God is not an impersonal force. He is personal and alive. He does not need us to accomplish tasks which he can’t or won’t do, nor does he need us emotionally, as if he created humanity because he was lonely and wanted someone to talk to. The one God is Triune—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who existed in perfect relational wholeness within himself before we came along.

No, the staggering truth is that this very personal God made us, knows us, and calls us to know him because of his great love for us. He wants us to know him and find eternal joy in him. That is why, amongst his many wonderful works, he speaks to us. What he has spoken has been written down, and so we have the Bible as a gift of our Maker and Father inviting us into his joy.

The Bible is a miracle of his grace and power. It is a wonder that we can own our own copy, hold it in our hands, read it, study it, hear it explained and applied in a sermon or small group discussion.

So why is understanding the Bible so difficult? Shouldn’t God have made it easier for us to understand it?

Christians face numerous barriers to rich Bible study. Some of these are our responsibility. Unrepentant sin and bad personal habits not only hinder our study but often sap our desire to spend time in God’s Word. Other barriers are beyond our control. A poor night’s sleep has thwarted many a good intention of early morning Bible reading and prayer.

We must add to these barriers the fact that many parts of the Bible are difficult to understand. I should hasten to add that most of the Bible is not difficult to understand, especially when we take the time to hear it. John 3:16, for instance, is blessedly clear: “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.”

Other parts of the Bible, though, are rather less accessible to modern readers. What are we to make of Ezekiel 1:4-9?

I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, and the wings of one touched the wings of another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.

Such passages befuddle and bewilder. What does this mean? What does it matter for my life today? Many Christians get stuck here and give up study efforts and Bible reading plans.

This booklet is meant to be a guide for Christians seeking to grow in their skills in reading and studying God’s Word. I will try to answer these three questions: What is the Bible? Why should I study the Bible? How should I study the Bible? I also will recommend some resources for Bible study and discuss the difference between reading various reading disciplines and strategies. Then I will give a brief overview of all sixty-six books of the Bible. This overview is intended to be a quick reference guide for you as you dive more deeply into the Scriptures. After a prayer asking God’s help, I end with a reproduction of a famous essay that might encourage us in careful observation of God’s Word.

What is the Bible?

Let’s listen to how the Bible defines and explains itself. The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:14–17,

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Notice that this explains Scripture’s origin and purpose. It is “God-breathed,” that is, inspired by God. In other words, what God wanted written down got written down. We can contrast this view of the Bible’s origins with both secular historiography and Islam’s account of its holy book the Koran.

Non-Christian historical scholars would argue that the Bible is entirely a human product. People from very different eras and backgrounds wrote their texts for a variety of reasons, such as in response to crises, personal religious feeling, internal power struggles, and so on. But all of these, they claim, can be explained historically as the product of human activity.

Islam declares the opposite: that the Koran was dictated to the Prophet Muhammad directly by the Angel Gabriel. One might say that it almost literally fell from heaven.

Christians, however, affirm that the Bible is neither human-only or God-only. It was written by real, flesh-and-blood people in response to a variety of real life situations, but God himself inspired them to write what he wanted written. As Timothy Ward says, God “is the divine Author behind the human authors.”

Other biblical texts affirm this same point. In Acts 4:25–26 the Apostle Peter quotes King David’s words in Psalm 2:1–2. He introduces the quotation by saying that God “spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David.” By the Spirit through David—God inspired David to write what he wanted him to write. We also see this when the anonymous (but very human) author of Hebrews quotes the anonymous (but very human) author of Psalm 95 with the introduction, “as the Holy Spirit says” (Hebrews 3:7). So was Psalm 95 written by the Holy Spirit or by a human psalmist? Yes! The Bible, therefore, is God’s own Word given to us through human authors.

Let’s return to 2 Timothy 3. We also discover the Bible’s purpose from this passage. It makes us “wise for salvation through Jesus Christ.” That is, we hear the good news of Jesus Christ and how to find forgiveness in him by trusting in him through the Bible. We did not get the chance to hear Jesus or his disciples preaching, but we do have the essential words of what they preached. How can I know that God loves me, that Jesus died for me, and that I should believe in him? Because God has told me this in the Bible (John 3:16, for example). So many people have come to experience the joy of salvation in Jesus through hearing sermons from the Bible or by reading the Bible themselves. God’s Word makes spiritually dead people come alive!

The Bible’s purpose doesn’t end once we become Christians. It is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” The purpose of the Christian life is to grow in holiness and to serve him in the world with our good works. The Bible tells us what righteousness looks like, such as in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7). It shows us how to live for him and serve him wherever we are.

I believe that formal church confessions and credal statements can be a helpful way of grasping essential truths. Here is how the Anglican catechism To Be a Christian, which was edited by J. I. Packer of blessed memory, answers the question, What is Holy Scripture?

Holy Scripture is “God’s Word written” … given by the Holy Spirit through prophets and apostles as the revelation of God and his acts in human history, and is therefore the Church’s final authority in all matters of faith and practice.

This definition adds one important point that we have not yet discussed. God’s Word is the “final authority,” the deciding vote, on everything that Christians are to believe and do. Thus, to summarize this section, the Bible is God’s inspired, authoritative Word written through human authors so that we can come to faith in Jesus and follow him.

Why should we study the Bible?

The origin and purpose of the Bible leads to our next question: why should you read and study the Bible? There are undoubtedly many reasons to invest our minds and hearts in God’s Word, but I will discuss what I think are three of the most important reasons. Note that these reasons apply also to sermons, group Bible studies, or other public and corporate occasions for hearing and discussing the Bible.

First, we should study the Bible in order to know God more. The colonial American theologian Jonathan Edwards preached a famous sermon called “Heaven is a World of Love.” His argument is that heaven will not be a boring place of disembodied souls floating on clouds playing harps (or perhaps spying on people on earth) but the blessed experience of God’s perfect love:

There, in heaven, this infinite fountain of love — this eternal Three in One — is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it, as it flows forever. There this glorious God is manifested, and shines forth, in full glory, in beams of love. And there this glorious fountain forever flows forth in streams, yea, in rivers of love and delight, and these rivers swell, as it were, to an ocean of love, in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment, and their hearts, as it were, be deluged with love!

That is what awaits us, but we are not left starving of his presence until then. We have the downpayment of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13–14) who calls out that we are God’s adopted and beloved children (Romans 8:22–27). That means that God can be known and his love enjoyed now. One primary way we can know is through his Word.

J. I. Packer shows how God speaks to us in order that we might know and enjoy him:

The word which God addresses directly to us is (like a royal speech, only more so) an instrument, not only of government, but also of fellowship. For, though God is a great king, it is not his wish to live at a distance from his subjects. Rather the reverse: He made us with the intention that he and we might walk together forever in a love relationship. But such a relationship can exist only when the parties involved know something of each other. God, our Maker, knows all about us before we say anything (Ps 139:1–4); but we can know nothing about him unless he tells us. Here, therefore, is a further reason why God speaks to us: not only to move us to do what he wants, but to enable us to know him so that we may love him. Therefore God sends his word to us in the character of both information and invitation. It comes to woo us as well as to instruct us; it not merely puts us in the picture of what God has done and is doing, but also calls us into personal communion with the loving Lord himself.

So let us hear his invitation into his presence by hearing, studying, and sitting under the Scriptures.

Second, we should study the Bible in order to know how to live in his world. Jesus’ call to each person is simultaneously a call to freedom and a call to obedience. The same Lord who says “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30) says “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Obedience is not a burden but the joyful calling of following the one who loved us to the point of death on a cross. The more we know his love the more we want to live in his way.

But how do we live his way? Our hearts are still burdened with sin, and the world offers so many deceptive ways away from him. It is like we are trying to drive on an abandoned country road without street lights or working headlights. God must illuminate our way.

In his kindness, he does illuminate our way in Scripture. How should I battle my sin? How should I respond to this relational conflict? What convictions do I need as a spiritual minority in a secular culture? For these and every other situation and challenge Christians face, we need to read deeply in his Word.

Third, we should study the Bible for the encouragement and strength to live for him in this world. No one would disagree with Tish Harrison Warren’s belief that “grief [is] part of the everyday experience of being human in a world that is both good and cruel.” Or with Martin Luther’s lyrics, “this world, with devils filled.” The news is rarely good. Our bodies’ warranty runs out sooner than expected. People hurt us, and we hurt them.

We don’t have to go out looking for reasons to despair; despair is quite competent at finding us. What we need, with all our weakness, is the encouragement and strength of God for us to follow him in hope and courage. He is “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3), so it is right to go to him over and over again for renewal once again in his comfort.

I don’t know how many times I have been mired in trouble and have gone to the Lord in prayer and Bible reading and have heard him say to me through Scripture words to the effect of, “You are my precious son whom I love.” I need his comfort. We all do. Let us drink deeply of his encouragement in Scripture without hesitation.

How should we study the Bible?

So how should we study the Bible? Let me begin by making two preliminary points. One point to note at the outset is that not all Bible reading requires in-depth study. Bible study should be a normal practice, of course, but that does not mean that reading the Bible for devotional reasons is subpar. There will be times for in-depth Bible study, and there will be times for reading devotionally. God has not given us a law to follow here.

On the other hand, Bible study can also be devotional! Below I will give suggestions for Bible reading habits that foster in-depth study and broader devotional reading.

Another point to make is that Bible study is a skill to be developed not a technique or technology to be adopted. We live in a fast culture with instant access to nearly infinite amounts of information and entertainment. We’re promised that the right “life hacks” can improve our efficiency, and now artificial intelligence can perform many of the tasks we used to do exponentially faster.

Yet the most worthwhile human endeavors require time and dedication to master. Any musician who plays publicly has put in thousands of hours of practice to get to that level of proficiency. Whatever profession you’re in or aspire to likely involves years of formal education, internships, and regular on the job training. My point is not that it will take you years before you can be competent in Bible study but to encourage you that patient work is always a worthy investment for what is most important. So now, at long last, let’s get into these skills that we can begin training.

First, ask for God’s help and illumination. This is not a skill, of course, but it is vitally important. God wants us to understand his Word. Prayerfulness should always accompany our Bible reading.

Second, make your primary tool an actual Bible, not an app on your phone or a program on your computer. Don’t get me wrong—I use Bible apps and software programs. They are extremely useful supplementary tools; I’ve used my Bible app plenty of times to track down important words, and I regularly use Bible software in sermon preparation.

The reason these must be supplementary rather than primary tools is because we need to get familiar with the actual words on the pages in their relationship to the whole message. If we’re reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, for instance, which is one of the most theologically dense books in the entire Bible, we need to be able to follow his argument. He makes points and subpoints, he builds a case piece by piece. The physical structure of a Bible helps train us to more easily see this bigger picture. There are more words on the page than on a screen, so we learn to see how the dots connect together. If Paul says something in chapter 7, that might remind me of something he said in an earlier chapter. I might not remember what chapter it was, but I do remember that it was on the top righthand side of the page. In just a few moments of flipping pages and scanning the lines I’ve found what I’ve been looking for. An app can’t train us in these ways.

Third, take notes. Notetaking slows us down. It helps us notice what’s there. You can take notes directly in your Bible if you want. Some Bibles are designed exactly for this purpose and have wide margins for notetaking. Or use a notebook or legal pad.

What should you note? Anything that seems important! You can underline significant words. You can track how some words get repeated. You can try to summarize the point in your own words. You can write down how it’s encouraging or challenging for you personally.

The goal for notetaking is to help us observe what is there. The heart of good Bible reading is observation. We can read a great illustration of this principle in the 1879 essay “Agassiz and the Fish, by a Student” by Samuel Scudder. Scudder was a student of Louis Agassiz at Harvard and was given the task of painstakingly observing a fish specimen. The essay has become beloved by Bible teachers and is reproduced below.

Fourth, learn to make your peace with unanswered questions. Sometimes a passage we’re reading is really difficult to make sense of or to know how it could possibly have relevance for me. In those moments rather than giving into frustration and giving up, think of your unanswered questions as clues leading you to the treasure. Write your questions down in your notes. Maybe you’ll have a chance to return to them with more clues and resources later.

Fifth, learn the cardinal rule for interpretation: context, context, context! The texts of the Bible didn’t fall from heaven. They were written within contexts. That is, they exist within their literary, historical, and biblical contexts. We need to understand these contexts as best we can in order to understand the texts rightly.

A text’s literary context is perhaps the most important of the three. It refers to the rest of the book in which the text was written, and the “immediate” literary context refers to the passages immediately before and after the one you’re studying.

My favorite example of why the literary context is so important is how Philippians 4:13 often gets misinterpreted. It says, “I can do all this through him who gives me strength,” or, in the more familiar translation, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” People often take it to mean that I can do whatever I want and dream to do through Jesus who strengthens me. Athletes in particular love this verse. This verse was painted onto the free throw line of the gym of the church where I grew up (a great church, by the way). The point was obvious: you can make this free throw and win the game through Jesus who strengthens you.

But is that what Paul means? Not quite. When we look at the immediate literary context of just the few verses that come right before, we can see that he’s saying something different than guaranteeing our athletic achievements. He says in verses 11 and 12, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” “All things” in verse 13 means being content in “whatever the circumstances” we face, including severe hardship.

In addition to the literary context, we also need to know something about the historical context. This refers to the historical events and culture in which the text was written or is describing. Take the crucifixion of Jesus for instance. If we knew nothing of the historical context of the Roman crucifixion, we might not know exactly what the Gospel writers mean when they describe the terrible scene from Golgotha. But we know lots about this context—we know that the Roman Empire used it only against non-citizens as a terrorizing deterrent against rebellion; we know that victims died slowly and painfully; we know that they would have been stripped naked and exposed as publicly as possible to maximize their shame. These kinds of contextual details help us make sense of what happened on Good Friday. Lots of great resources are available for helping us understand the historical context of Scripture, and I’ll share those below.

Finally, we need to know something about the whole biblical context. In other words, where does this passage I’m studying fit within the whole story of the Bible? If I’m studying a very bloody passage about the sacrificial system in the Old Testament book Leviticus, I need to know the bigger story of sacrifice, especially that Jesus is the once and for all sacrifice to forgive all sins that makes the Old Testament sacrificial system obsolete. Or if I’m reading about the Last Supper, when Jesus and the disciples celebrate the Passover meal before, and Jesus takes the cup and says, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28), it sheds light to know about the original Passover in Exodus 12 and the blood sprinkling in Exodus 24 which confirmed God’s covenant with Israel. In other words, Jesus is the New Passover sacrifice whose death will confirm the new and better covenant with God’s people. The bigger biblical context, therefore, helps make sense of this particular passage.

This raises a question: how do we learn this bigger biblical context? Let me suggest four ways. The first is to regularly read the whole Bible. This can be part of a year’s reading plan, which I’ll say more about below.

Another way is to use the tools in a standard reference Bible. Many Bibles will put footnotes or column notes on every page of other Bible verses that show these connections to other places in the Bible. To return to Matthew 26:28, the Bible I have open with me as I write (the NIV Thinline Reference Bible) lists four verses or passages that connect to this one verse: Exodus 24:6-6; Hebrews 9:20; Matthew 20:28; and Mark 1:4. These are your clues on your treasure map! Track down those other passages and see what they say. When you get to those passages, you’ll discover that they probably have still other passages referenced to them. The Bible is so richly interwoven that you’ll never run out of opportunities to see how it all fits together.

A third way to discover the biblical context is to know the overall historical timeline of the Bible. We don’t know all the dates of all the events in the Old Testament, but we can know the order of the big events and when they happened. Here’s a brief historical overview. I’ve added dates to those events whose dates we have more confidence in:

Creation
The Garden of Eden, Fall, Flood, and Tower of Babel in Genesis 1-11
Abraham and the Patriarchs
The Exodus and the giving of the law
The period of the Judges
King David and the creation of the kingdom of Israel
Solomon and the building of the temple
The division of the kingdom into Israel and Judah
The destruction and exile of the northern kingdom Israel by the Assyrian Empire (732 BC)
The destruction and exile of the southern kingdom Judah by the Babylonian Empire (586 BC)
The return to the land of Judah under the Persian Empire (536 BC)
Rebuilding of the temple (516 BC)
Birth of Jesus (2-4 BC)
Crucifixion of Jesus (AD 30)
Writing of the New Testament (between AD 40-90)
Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (AD 70)
The return of Jesus (AD 2027. Just kidding, of course. But you never know!)

As you’re studying a passage of Scripture, one question to ask yourself is, “Where does this fit in the whole plot?” Doing so will help you have a sense of where the story has been and where it is going.

A fourth way to grasp the biblical context is by understanding the basic covenantal structure of Scripture. God uses covenants—binding agreements—in his loving, gracious relationship with his people. Here are the most important ones:

The covenant of creation (sometimes called the covenant of works) in Genesis 2. Humanity would remain in perfect communion with God provided they obeyed him perfectly to not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The Noahic covenant in Genesis 9 that God would never again destroy the earth by a flood.
The Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15 that God would bless Abraham and his offspring.
The Mosaic covenant beginning in Exodus 20 that showed how the covenant community was to obey God.
The Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7 that promised a king over the covenant community who would lead them in righteousness.
The New Covenant prophesied in Jeremiah 31 and fulfilled by Jesus that God’s law would be written on the hearts of his people.

Understanding how these covenants ultimately find their fulfillment in Jesus is therefore another way of seeing where the story has been and where it is going.

Sixth, try to notice the structure of the passage you’re studying. I love Christopher Nolan’s movies (The Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, Oppenheimer, etc.). One reason I find them so entertaining is how skillfully he plays with the narrative structure of the story. Flashbacks and flashforwards, stories that go backwards (Memento) or end in the middle (Tenet), make for a very interesting watch.

The structure of a Bible passage can be similarly illuminative. It can show us what the author is emphasizing or what the main lesson of the story is. If you’re studying a narrative passage, the structure can show you where the tension is and how it gets resolved. The Apostle Paul’s letters can often be quite dense; discovering the structure can help us make sense of his flow of thought.

Seventh, learn how the genre of the passage can illuminate its meaning. “Genre” means the kind of literature it is. If you walk into a bookstore today, all the books are organized by their genre: fiction, biography, travel, manga, and so forth. If you’re into manga, you would expect to see lots of fantastical pictures and a heavy dose of Japanese culture. You would not expect to find such things in the section selling SAT preparatory books. It’s a different genre.

What genres do we find in the Bible? Here are the big ones.

Narrative. This genre is most familiar to us today. It tells stories. It uses plot and characters. We can find narrative writing in both the Old Testament (like the book of Joshua) and the New Testament (the Gospels and Acts).
Wisdom poetry. This includes the Old Testament books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. It is typically written as poetry. Hebrew poetry often makes use of two-line parallelism. The first line will make a point, and then the second line restates or makes a similar point.
Psalms. This comprises the book of Psalms, of course, but includes other Old Testament examples embedded within other books. These also tend to use Hebrew parallelism. Most of the psalms in the Bible were used in public worship, and that should be the main takeaway for readers today: praise to God.
Prophecy. This includes the three “Major Prophets” (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) and the twelve “Minor Prophets” (Hosea through Malachi). Prophecy typically does not make future predictions, as we might use the language of prophecy today. Rather, it gives commentary and often harsh rebuke of the failings of God’s people and her leadership, warning them of their impending judgment, and promising future restoration. These future promises include many prophecies of the Messiah, such as we find in Isaiah 53.
Epistles. The New Testament letters of Paul, Peter, John, and Jude are epistles, i.e., letters to a particular audience. Many but not all of them were prompted by particular issues that the author is trying to address. Paul’s writing is linear–he makes one point, then the next, then the next, and so forth. John’s letters, on the other hand, are more circular. He keeps circling back to earlier points and ideas.
Apocalyptic. Much of the book of Daniel and most of the book of Revelation are in the apocalyptic genre. The word “apocalypse” comes from the Greek word “revelation,” hence the name of the last book of the Bible. These books use large amounts of symbolic imagery to show the wickedness of God’s enemies, such as the monstrous beasts that arise out of the ocean. These books can be the hardest to make sense of because the genre is so unlike our modern genres.

There’s much to learn about studying the Bible, isn’t there?! Don’t give up. Keep reading. The Lord has treasures waiting for you to discover them.

What about when I don’t want to study the Bible?

Sometimes the best of intentions runs into the brick wall of our lack of desire. We know we should read and study the Bible, but often we just don’t want to. We want to do something else instead—sleep, scroll Instagram, read a different book, check the news, or paint the kitchen. What do we do then?

We must first get it out of our heads that if we do something we don’t want to do then we are being untrue to ourselves. The modern idol of authenticity—in which I must discover my “true” self, and my true self is defined by how I feel—does not serve the cause of growing in Bible reading or any of the spiritual disciplines well. To commit to intentionally spending time in Scripture and prayer when I don’t feel like it is not being fake or inauthentic. It’s just discipline.

There are so many worthwhile activities that we do even when we don’t feel like doing them. A mother who gets up at 2:00 a.m. to feed and change her infant would much prefer to stay in bed, but of course she gets up. The middle-aged man whose metabolism is slowing commits to running in the morning even though his body screams in protest. In fact, in order to counter his own desires to stay inert, he’ll set out his running clothes the night before, post his runs on an app, or even join a running club for accountability. Over time he might even discover that his desires change. Whereas before he didn’t want to run but did it anyway, now he actually enjoys it.

Every Christian will find days, weeks, or even long seasons when the desire to read and study the Bible wanes. This is normal and could have any number of causes, such as fatigue, depression, or sin. Don’t beat yourself up for going through such a season.

Take a lesson from the runner. How can you prepare for the discipline ahead of time so that you’re not as much at the mercy of how you feel in a particular moment? You could set up a private space in your home for this purpose. You could decide your reading or study plan (such as are discussed below) so that when it’s time to read you don’t have any decisions to make.

Then get about your reading and studying! And do it regularly. The discipline will harden into a healthy habit.

How do I make sense of hard passages in the Bible?

We cannot deny that some passages of Scripture strike us as morally problematic. Some might bristle against how the Bible speaks of gender differences and roles. Others might have difficulty with Old Testament laws prescribing food restrictions and slave transactions. Other examples of difficult passages can be found, but at the top of the list for just about everybody is surely the Old Testament passages prescribing and describing the slaughter of entire Canaanite cities in Israel’s conquest of the land. This is often referred to as “the Canaanite problem.”

Paul Copan’s book Is God a Moral Monster?, written in response to the New Atheists’ accusations against religion in general and Christianity in particular, devotes three whole chapters to this issue, and I recommend it for anyone who wants to wrestle with this issue. Here I summarize a few of his points.

First, the Canaanites’ ethnicity is not the problem. Their sin is. In other words, the Canaanites are not targeted by God’s people because they are racially different or inferior to them—which would amount to ethnic cleansing—but because of the magnitude of their sin. They were notorious for human sacrifice and sexual immorality, which were central to their religion. They threatened Israel’s spiritual and moral fidelity. Exodus 23:33 says, “Do not let them live in your land or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.”

Second, Copan makes a compelling case that the actual military actions against the Canaanites were not as widespread or harsh as first appears. The language of total annihilation found in Scripture was typical of Ancient Near Eastern rhetoric that indicated total victory rather than literal destruction of 100% of the population. In other words, the language is hyperbolic, which would have been obvious to original readers.

This explains why groups that are described as completely wiped out are later described as remaining in the land. For example, God commands Saul to “totally destroy” the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15. This happens, yet in 1 Samuel 27 we’re told that David made a raid against the Amalekites. This shows that the language of total destruction is hyperbolic rather than literal.

Third, this hyperbolic language also makes it difficult to see that many of the cities the Israelites attack are more likely to be primarily military fortifications rather than civilian settlements. The majority of noncombatants would have fled prior to the arrival of Israel’s armies, as is always the case in war.

The last argument I will point out from Copan’s argument is that “the Canaanite problem” is never depicted as the typical way God deals with sinners. God’s character is most clearly seen in giving up his Son, Jesus, as a sacrifice for sins and the reconciliation with his enemies. Copan writes, “Since God was willing to go through all of this for our salvation, the Christian can reply to the critic, ‘While I can’t tidily solve the problem of the Canaanites, I can trust a God who has proven his willingness to go to such excruciating lengths–and depths–to offer rebellious humans reconciliation and friendship.”

Recommended Resources

Christians today are living in the golden age of Bible resources. There are so many books, apps, and computer programs out there. I only know of a fraction of them. Here is what I recommend as manageable and affordable for each person.

First, get a good reference Bible in a reliable translation (the NIV and ESV are my favorites, but these are not the only good ones). A reference Bible, as mentioned earlier, will show how other verses and passages are linked to what you’re reading.

Second, get a good study Bible. Study Bibles contain large amounts of information on each page. Chances are most of your questions about the meaning of a passage will be answered in these notes.

Third, get familiar with apps or computer programs. These can be especially efficient for searching how a word in the passage you’re studying is used in other places in the Bible, which is a great aid in interpretation. The highest capacity programs can run you thousands of dollars if you go with all that they offer. I would recommend the completely free resource the STEP Bible instead (stepbible.org).

Fourth, if you’re willing and able to spend a little bit more money, you can invest in good Bible commentaries. These give thorough explanations of biblical texts and, depending on the kind of commentary it is, can suggest how it applies today. Some commentaries can be pretty expensive, but you can usually find used copies that are more affordable.

I regularly use bestcommentaries.com to find the highest rated commentaries. That website will also tell you the kind of perspective the author is coming from and how technical it is. Some commentaries require you to know Greek or Hebrew. Bestcommentaries.com will show you what’s more accessible to people without specialized training.

One caveat to keep in mind with commentaries is that you are reading one scholar’s own arguments and views. He or she may be wrong in his or her conclusions. That’s why I like to have at least two commentaries so that I can hear another perspective.

Reading the Bible Broadly and Deeply

Generally speaking, you can read the Bible for breadth or depth (or, what’s best, both!). Reading for breadth means that your goal is to read large amounts of the Bible over a larger amount of time. Often this will be reading the entire Bible over the course of a year. God can use the daily discipline of saturating yourself in the Bible over its great diversity and richness in amazing ways in your own spiritual formation.

There are many different wonderful reading plans. For years I have used the M’Cheyne reading plan, which was developed by the young Scottish pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne in the 1840s. This plan will take you once through the Old Testament and twice through the Psalms and New Testament each year. Each day you will read 4-5 chapters, which typically takes 15 or so minutes at an average reading speed. One benefit of this strategy is that if you find yourself reading a particularly challenging or inaccessible chapter (like a list of names), that’s OK, because you’ll read three other chapters that will be more accessible.

Here is the M’Cheyne reading plan, which you can find online.

You can also read for depth, and this is especially where your growing Bible study skills can come into play. I would recommend reading through one book of the Bible very slowly. Take one passage per week and read it everyday, taking notes along the way. You’ll be surprised at how much you see after days of careful attention that you missed on the first reading. You’ll also be surprised at how God uses that in-depth work to encourage and move you towards Christ.

Overview of the books of the Bible

Lastly, provided here are a few points on each book of the Bible that can help orient you as you read widely and deeply.

Genesis. The first book of the Bible is organized by the repeating phrase “This is the account of…” or, in some translations, “These are the generations of…” This phrase introduces a new section of the book each time it is used. It occurs in Genesis 2:4 (the heavens and the earth), 5:1 (Adam), 6:9 (Noah), 10:1 (the sons of Noah), 11:7 (Terah, Abraham’s father), 25:12 (Ishmael), 25:19 (Isaac), 36:1, 9 (Esau), and 37:2 (Jacob).

Exodus. It picks up the narrative from Genesis and tells how God leads the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. The giving of the Ten Commandments in chapter 20 leads the second half of the book that gives various laws for the community’s guidance.

Leviticus. This challenging book continues the lists of laws with a particular emphasis on holiness. “Be holy, for I am holy” (11:44) is key. The purpose of following these holiness laws is to be more like the holy God. Ultimately holiness is fulfilled by Christ, who gives us his Holy Spirit.

Numbers. Continues the story of Israel in the wilderness after the Exodus with an emphasis on how many people from each tribe were present. Sadly, that number steadily declines as the people die off in the wilderness due to their unfaithfulness to God.

Deuteronomy. This is Moses’ sermon to Israel that reminds the people of their covenant obligations to the God who rescued them out of slavery. Israel at this point mostly consists of the second generation to come out of Egypt, as their parents died in the wilderness for their unbelief.

Joshua. After Moses dies, God calls Joshua as his successor. The book recounts how they take possession of the land God had promised to give them. The most challenging part for modern readers is the description of violence against the inhabitants of the land. I recommend the book Is God a Moral Monster by Paul Copan for guidance here.

Judges. The outline of the book comes in chapter 2. Israel commits apostasy with pagan gods, God sends an enemy nation to punish them, he raises up a judge to deliver them and calls them to greater faithfulness … and then the cycle starts over again. The book ends with Israel in complete moral and spiritual ruin.

Ruth. Taking place during the time of the judges, Ruth shows how God will raise up a king through the faithfulness of a widow and her pagan daughter-in-law.

1 and 2 Samuel. The period of the judges gives way to the kings. On the one hand, this is bad, because they rejected God, their true king. On the other hand, God in his kindness promises that one day his king will come to rule his people in perfect faithfulness.

1 and 2 Kings. A sad account of decline from the heights of Solomon’s kingdom to civil war, the division of the kingdom, and the kings’ apostasy, which leads to the destruction of the northern kingdom by Assyria and the southern kingdom by Babylon.

1 and 2 Chronicles. Covers the same historical period as 1 and 2 Kings but with different emphases. It has large amounts of genealogical records as well as deeper theological reflections on why Israel ended up in ruin.

Ezra. The Jews who had been exiled to Babylon are permitted to return to Judah and rebuild. Under Ezra’s leadership, the temple is rebuilt. Importantly, though, it is not as grand as the first temple (3:12-13) which shows the reader that the people’s restoration is far from complete.

Nehemiah. Also focusing on the restoration of the southern kingdom, Nehemiah is an account of the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem. Many pastors love this book for its leadership lessons, but more important is its lessons for God’s faithfulness and the need for genuine, corporate repentance (chapter 9).

Esther. This is one of the more unusual books of the Bible as the name of God is never mentioned. That surely is intentional–it is a clever way of showing how God’s sovereign hand is at work to bring about the good of his people even in ways that aren’t obvious from moment to moment. Esther is the name of the Jewish girl suddenly thrust into marriage with the Persian king and who saves the Jews from genocide.

Job. This is the first of the wisdom books, and its theme is the problem of evil and suffering. The first two and last two chapters are narrative. It tells how Job, a righteous man who does not deserve special punishment, loses everything before eventually being restored. The middle chapters are poetry. Most of these are a debate between Job’s three friends on whether or not his suffering is deserved before Elihu and then ultimately God himself speaks in defense of divine justice. The problem of evil is not an easy problem to solve, and the book of Job does not give easy answers.

Psalms. A collection of 150 individual songs used in worship. Some give historical contexts for their composition, but most do not. The whole book is divided into five books (chapters 1-41, 42-72, 73-89, 90-106, 107-150), with each book ending with a benediction. There are many different types of psalms including thanksgiving psalms, psalms about the king, and (a full third of the psalms) psalms of lament.

Proverbs. A collection of wisdom sayings that show how we are to live faithfully and wisely in the complexities of real life. These are meant to be memorized, mulled over, and put into practice. Many of them are addressed to young men and warn against the various kinds of temptations young men face and the need to learn from one’s authorities and even from one’s own mistakes.

Ecclesiastes. The main portion of the book of Ecclesiastes is written in the voice of King Solomon, the wisest of Israel’s kings, but was probably not literally written by Solomon. It is a very pessimistic account of the possibility of finding meaning in this world, which is punctuated by the repeating refrain, “Meaningless, meaningless!” It’s important to keep in mind that a separate narrator begins and ends the book, and it is his voice that is ultimately authoritative for interpretation. Despite what might feel like meaningless, fruitless toil in this world, our ultimate calling is to walk obediently with God.

Song of Songs. This is a collection of love poetry between a man and a woman. For most of church history this was taken as a symbol of God’s love for the church, but most contemporary readers take it more on face value that it is a celebration of romantic love. There is no reason why the author cannot have intended that it is both a depiction of human and divine love.

Isaiah. Written during the Syro-Ephramitic crisis, in which Judah was under existential threat of annihilation, the prophet Isaiah was called to appeal to the kings that their hope must be in the Lord and not in any other military alliance. Isaiah is one of the most theologically and literarily complex of all the books of the Bible, and for that reason one can spend years in fruitful study here. It is especially important for our understanding of the sacrifice of Jesus as the Suffering Servant in chapters 52-53.

Jeremiah. Jeremiah likewise warns against the people’s unfaithfulness (this is true for all the books of the prophets), but what makes this book unique is its regular use of Jeremiah’s theatrical performances. Much of the book seems to be a collection of Jeremiah’s preaching ministry, and its organization feels less straightforward than the other prophets. Modern readers can find this to be a challenge. It could help to focus more on the vivid imagery than to look for the flow of thought.

Lamentations. Squeezed between two major prophets, this smaller book shows the utter horror of life in Jerusalem under military siege, which was a consequence of their spiritual rebellion. There is hope (chapter 3), but most of it is lament.

Ezekiel. This can feel like one of the more exotic books. It gives us images of God’s presence which feel bizarre and even intimidating. It contains many warnings of judgment but ends with visions of the restored temple and city.

Daniel. Daniel contains two sections: a narrative section on faithful Jews in the midst of the evil Babylonian court and an apocalyptic section on God’s sovereign power over the pagan empires of the world.

Hosea. The first of the Minor Prophets vividly depicts Israel’s spiritual adultery through the literal adultery of Hosea’s wife.

Joel. The disaster of a locust plague warns against the even greater judgment to come lest Israel repent.

Amos. This book is divided into a series of oracles which are directed against Israel as well as the other nations of the world.

Obadiah. A very short book that proclaims God’s judgment against Israel’s enemies.

Jonah. This is a dramatic book that displays how shockingly merciful God is. God tells the prophet Jonah to preach to Assyrian city Nineveh so that they might be saved, but he runs as far away as he can. Even when he finally fulfills his duty, he’s still happy that God’s grace is for those whom we wish would be destroyed.

Micah. Micah has a lot of overlap with Isaiah. Its most famous verse is 6:8: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Nahum. This is the mirror image of Jonah. Nineveh will be destroyed for its wickedness.

Habakkuk. This pungent book wrestles with the question how God could use the evil Babylonians to bring about his purposes. It’s organized in a series of Habbakuk’s questions and the Lord’s answers.

Zephaniah. This is another book that contains a series of oracles against the pagan nations and against Judah. God’s anger and mercy both abound.

Haggai. Written after the return from exile, Haggai focuses on the promise of redemption as embodied in the rebuilding of the temple.

Zechariah. Also written after the return from exile, this book uses vivid images to show the need for full renewal.

Malachi. The last of the minor prophets and the last book in the Old Testament, it ends with the promise of the return of the prophet Elijah, which is fulfilled by John the Baptist, the forerunner of Israel’s Messiah.

Matthew. Like all four Gospel writers, Matthew tells the gospel: the good news of what Jesus has done and said, culminating in his crucifixion and resurrection. Matthew’s emphasis is to show how Jesus fulfills Old Testament teachings with his frequent use of “this was to fulfill…”

Mark. The shortest and probably the earliest Gospel, Mark wants his readers to wrestle with the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth. The final account of the resurrection of Jesus is almost certainly not Mark’s original ending.

Luke. Luke’s emphasis is on how Jesus’ kingdom is for those who have been historically excluded from it, such as women and Gentiles. Some of Jesus’ most famous parables, such as the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the Parable of the Prodigal Son, are only found in Luke.

John. John gives the most unique account of Jesus’ life. It gives us many episodes and teachings that are not found in the other Gospels, and it teaches Jesus’ divine identity the most explicitly. John helpfully tells us why he wrote this book: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (20:31).

Acts. This is also written by Luke and continues the Christian story in the early church under the leadership of the twelve apostles before focusing on the Gentile ministry work of the Apostle Paul. 1:8 provides an outline for the whole book–the gospel will go forth from Jerusalem to all Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, as represented by Rome.

Romans. This is the Apostle Paul’s most famous and theologically dense book. Much of it is concerned with how Jews and Gentiles are alike before God in judgment and in the grace of Jesus. “Justification,” how one is righteous before God, is important here. The book ends with practical implications for the Christian life.

1 Corinthians. The church in Corinth, which Paul planted, was a hot mess, and this letter is intended to set them straight. Paul wants them to see how the gospel should move them to love and holiness rather than to group fighting and spiritual gamesmanship.

2 Corinthians. Paul here defends his ministry against the charge that he is too weak and prone to suffering to be a real apostle. On the contrary, weakness is the way of God’s power in the gospel.

Galatians. This fiery letter was written to stop the church in Galatia from abandoning the gospel by insisting that Gentile converts be circumcised. This would be a legalistic return to the Old Covenant, which has now given way to the New Covenant and the life of the Spirit.

Ephesians. This is another of Paul’s top theological writings, showing how all the treasures of God come through the gospel. At the risk of oversimplification, the first half (chapters 1-3) gives the theology, and the second half (chapters 4-6) gives the application.

Philippians. Paul wrote this very warm letter from prison to a church which has repeatedly supported him financially and personally. He regularly appeals to them to fight for their unity and humility. The famous “Christ hymn” in 2:8-11 was probably not written by Paul but gives us an amazing picture of what the early church thought about the earthly suffering and heavenly majesty of Jesus.

Colossians. This book bears a lot of similarities to Ephesians. Jesus’ supremacy is emphasized here.

1 Thessalonians. This is probably one of Paul’s earliest if not the very earliest letter he wrote that is part of our New Testament. One of his goals is to encourage them about the second coming of Jesus.

2 Thessalonians. Similar themes occur here as in 1 Thessalonians. Paul returns to the theme of the end times with a focus on the mysterious “man of lawlessness.”

1 Timothy. Written to his protégé towards the end of his life, this letter gives instructions on church government and how the gospel applies to real life issues.

2 Timothy. This second letter to Timothy encourages him to faithfulness in his ministry.

Titus. Another personal letter to a church leader, Titus gives instructions on church government and how the gospel moves us to good works.

Philemon. This very short letter is written to Paul’s friend Philemon on the occasion of Philemon’s slave Onesimus having escaped, became converted to Christ, befriended Paul, and is now being sent back to Philemon. Paul urges Philemon to accept Onesimus back as his brother in Christ rather than as his slave.

Hebrews. We don’t know who wrote this rich book (or, more precisely, this sermon). It takes pains to show how Jesus is better than every other heavenly being or every figure in the Old Testament.

James. James was the half brother of Jesus and became one of the main leaders of the mother church in Jerusalem. This letter is what’s called an “encyclical”; it was meant to be distributed to a Jewish Christian communities all over that part of the world. The letter focuses on the need for genuine discipleship rather than an empty profession of faith. One part that is often difficult to make sense of is what seems to be the denial of salvation by grace alone in chapter 2. The best way to make sense of this is that James is critiquing an understanding of faith as merely an intellectual assent to truth rather than genuine, transformative trust.

1 Peter. Peter wrote this letter to a marginalized Christian community that was beginning to experience hostility from their neighbors. Jesus suffered, and so will his followers.

2 Peter. This letter has a lot of overlap with the letter of Jude. It gives instruction on the reliability of Scripture in the face of false teaching and the certainty of Jesus’ return in the face of those who scoff at Christian belief.

1 John. As mentioned above, John’s letters are not as linear as Paul’s, so don’t be surprised when he keeps on returning to his main themes, especially God’s love and Jesus’ incarnation in the flesh (as opposed to a purely spiritual, ghostly presence).

2 John. This very short letter is written “To the lady chosen by God and to her children,” by which John probably means a particular Christian congregation. The theme of Jesus’ fleshly incarnation returns in this letter.

3 John. John’s final letter is an exhortation to faithfulness in contrast to examples of those who do not love the church.

Jude. Jude was another half-brother of Jesus. This short letter is interesting in that it appeals to popular stories about biblical characters that were written in books that were not part of the Bible. His main point is to warn about the judgment of the ungodly and to call the faithful to persevere in faith.

Revelation. The very last book of the Bible is one of the most difficult. The first three chapters consist of letters to churches in Asia Minor, and the rest of the book is a textbook example of the apocalypse genre. Many people make the mistake of trying to identify all the scenes and characters in the book in light of current events and politics. Revelation was written first of all to Christians who were suffering terrible persecution by the Roman Empire. So many of the symbols and images are codes for Rome and Caesar. A refrain throughout the book that helps explain the book’s purpose is “the one who is victorious,” referring to Christian believers who endure under persecution. In other words, don’t be intimidated by all the beasts, horns, bowls, and scrolls. Remember the main point: that the worst, most powerful empire in the world will try to crush the church, but God wins in the end, so be victorious in the endurance of your faith.

Concluding Prayer

Our heavenly Father, thank you that you have revealed yourself to us in your Son Jesus Christ, whom you have united to us in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thank you for speaking to us in the Bible. Use your Word to make us more like Jesus by showing the beauty of the gospel and the life that flows out of the gospel. Make us eager to study and read it, help us to understand it, and empower us to apply it.

“The Student, the Fish and Agassiz”

(effectivebiblestudy.com)

It was more than fifteen years ago that I entered the laboratory of Professor Agassiz, and told him I had enrolled my name in the scientific school as a student of natural history. He asked me a few questions about my object in coming, my antecedents generally, the mode in which I afterwards proposed to use the knowledge I might acquire, and finally, whether I wished to study any special branch. To the latter I replied that while I wished to be well grounded in all departments of zoology, I purposed to devote myself specially to insects.

“When do you wish to begin?” he asked.

“Now,” I replied.

This seemed to please him, and with an energetic “Very well,” he reached from a shelf a huge jar of specimens in yellow alcohol.

“Take this fish,” said he, “and look at it; we call it a Haemulon [pronounced Hem yú- lon]; by and by I will ask what you have seen.”

With that he left me, but in a moment returned with explicit instructions as to the care of the object entrusted to me.

“No man is fit to be a naturalist,” said he, “who does not know how to take care of specimens.”

I was to keep the fish before me in a tin tray, and occasionally moisten the surface with alcohol from the jar, always taking care to replace the stopper tightly. Those were not the days of ground glass stoppers, and elegantly shaped exhibition jars; all the old students will recall the huge, neckless glass bottles with their leaky, wax besmeared corks half eaten by insects and begrimed with cellar dust. Entomology was a cleaner science than ichthyology, but the example of the professor, who had unhesitatingly plunged to the bottom of the jar to produce the fish, was infectious; and though this alcohol had “a very ancient and fishlike smell,” I really dared not show any aversion within these sacred precincts, and treated the alcohol as though it were pure water. Still I was conscious of a passing feeling of disappointment, for gazing at a fish did not commend itself to an ardent entomologist. My friends at home, too, were annoyed, when they discovered that no amount of eau de cologne would drown the perfume which haunted me like a shadow.

In ten minutes I had seen all that could be seen in that fish, and started in search of the professor, who had, however, left the museum; and when I returned, after lingering over some of the odd animals stored in the upper apartment, my specimen was dry all over. I dashed the fluid over the fish as if to resuscitate it from a fainting-fit, and looked with anxiety for a return of the normal, sloppy appearance. This little excitement over, nothing was to be done but return to a steadfast gaze at my mute companion. Half an hour passed, an hour, another hour; the fish began to look loathsome. I turned it over and around; looked it in the face—ghastly; from behind, beneath, above, sideways, at a three-quarters’ view— just as ghastly. I was in despair; at an early hour I concluded that lunch was necessary; so, with infinite relief, the fish was carefully replaced in the jar, and for an hour I was free.

On my return, I learned that Professor Agassiz had been at the museum, but had gone and would not return for several hours. My fellow students were too busy to be disturbed by continued conversation. Slowly I drew forth that hideous fish, and with a feeling of desperation again looked at it. I might not use a magnifying glass; instruments of all kinds were interdicted. My two hands, my two eyes, and the fish; it seemed a most limited field. I pushed my finger down its throat to feel how sharp its teeth were. I began to count the scales in the different rows until I was convinced that that was nonsense. At last a happy thought struck me—I would draw the fish; and now with surprise I began to discover new features in the creature. Just then the professor returned.

“That is right,” said he; “a pencil is one of the best of eyes. I am glad to notice, too, that you keep your specimen wet and your bottle corked.”

With these encouraging words he added,—

“Well, what was it like?”

He listened attentively to my brief rehearsal of the structure of parts whose names were still unknown to me: the fringed gill—arches and movable operculum; the pores of the head, fleshy lips, and lidless eyes; the lateral line, the spinous fin, and forked tail; the compressed and arched body. When I had finished, he waited as if expecting more, and then, with an air of disappointment,—

“You have not looked very carefully; why,” he continued, more earnestly, “you haven’t seen one of the most conspicuous features of the animal, which is as plainly before your eyes as the fish itself; look again, look again!” and he left me to my misery.

I was piqued; I was mortified. Still more of that wretched fish! But now I set myself to my task with a will, and discovered one new thing after another, until I saw how just the professor’s criticism had been. The afternoon passed quickly, and when, towards its close, the professor inquired,—

“Do you see it yet?”

“No,” I replied, “I am certain I do not, but I see how little I saw before.”

“That is next best,” said he earnestly, “but I won’t hear you now; put away your fish and go home; perhaps you will be ready with a better answer in the morning. I will examine you before you look at the fish.”

This was disconcerting; not only must I think of my fish all night, studying, without the object before me, what this unknown but most visible feature might be; but also, without reviewing my new discoveries, I must give an exact account of them the next day. I had a bad memory; so I walked home by Charles River in a distracted state, with my two perplexities.

The cordial greeting from the professor the next morning was reassuring; here was a man who seemed to be quite as anxious as I that I should see for myself what he saw.

“Do you perhaps mean,” I asked, “that the fish has symmetrical side with paired organs?”

His thoroughly pleased, “Of course, of course!” repaid the wakeful hours of the previous night. After he had discoursed most happily and enthusiastically—as he always did—upon the importance of this point, I ventured to ask what I should do next.

“Oh, look at your fish!” he said, and left me again to my own devices. In a little more than an hour he returned and heard my new catalogue.

“That is good, that is good!” he repeated, “but that is not all; go on.” And so, for three long days, he placed that fish before my eyes, forbidding me to look at anything else, or to use any artificial aid. “Look, look, look,” was his repeated injunction.

This was the best entomological lesson I ever had—a lesson whose influence has extended to the details of every subsequent study; a legacy the professor has left to me, as he has left it to many others, of inestimable value, which we could not buy, with which we cannot part.

A year afterward, some of us were amusing ourselves with chalking outlandish beasts upon the museum blackboard. We drew prancing star-fishes; frogs in mortal combat; hydra-headed worms; stately craw-fishes, standing on their tails, bearing aloft umbrellas; and grotesque fishes, with gaping mouths and staring eyes. The professor came in shortly after, and was amused as any, at our experiments. He looked at the fishes.

“Haemulons, every one of them,” he said. “Mr. ---------- drew them.”

True; and to this day, if I attempt a fish, I can draw nothing but Haemulons.

The fourth day, a second fish of the same group was placed beside the first, and I was bidden to point out the resemblances and differences between the two; another and another followed, until the entire family lay before me, and a whole legion of jars covered the table and surrounding shelves; the odor had become a pleasant perfume; and even now, the sight of an old, six-inch, worm-eaten cork brings fragrant memories!

The whole group of Haemulons was thus brought in review; and, whether engaged upon the dissection of the internal organs, the preparation and examination of the bony framework, or the description of the various parts, Agassiz’s training in the method of observing facts and their orderly arrangement was ever accompanied by the urgent exhortation not to be content with them.

“Facts are stupid things,” he would say, “until brought into connection with some general law.”

At the end of eight months, it was almost with reluctance that I left these friends and turned to insects; but what I had gained by this outside experience has been of greater value than years of later investigation in my favorite groups.

The Beautiful Struggle

2022-05-09T00:00:00Z

Introduction: Welcome to the beautiful struggle of marriage.

Few words approach the beauty of marriage in both poetic cadence and real-life execution as these: “I take you to be my wedded wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part. This is my solemn vow.”

On the other hand, is there anything that holds out the promise of beauty, happiness, and fulfillment so boldly and yet so often delivers disappointment, resentment, and even misery more than marriage?

I married my wife Toria on November 19, 2005. I was just out of college and she was in her last semester. Since then, we have welcomed three boys into our family, two by adoption and one biologically. We have moved seven times, gone through unemployment, infertility, pandemic, the loss of loved ones, and plenty of parenting trouble. In God’s kindness, we have experienced plenty of the beauty of marriage: the shared pleasures of stumbling across a gorgeous view on a hike, inside jokes, and physical intimacy; the comfort of knowing this person will never bail on me no matter how hard life gets. But we have also known plenty of the struggles of marriage: harsh words, the failure to support each other in particularly vulnerable moments, major disagreements about major life decisions that produce distrust and enmity.

However, I am not a marriage therapist. I am a pastor who desires to bring God’s Word to bear upon people’s sins, struggles, hopes, and fears. I have had the pleasure of watching congregants fall in love, encouraging them towards marriage, inviting them to my home for premarital counseling, and, most pleasurable of all, officiating their weddings. I have also had the terrible burden of sitting with couples who can hardly look each other in the eyes, have caused each other unbelievable pain, and have found themselves trapped in vicious cycles of dysfunction and animosity. More than once, I have even been able to help a struggling marriage only to go home and obtusely struggle in my own marriage.

My hope is that this booklet can help those who long for the beauty of marriage, yet find themselves struggling through marriage just as often or even more than they enjoy its beauty. Which is to say that this booklet is meant to help all married people!

As we look at a couple of significant Bible passages about love and marriage and tackle some of the struggle of marriage, I pray that this booklet might help you to love your husband or wife, to endure with hope and faithfulness through the particular struggles that confront your marriage, and allow you to enjoy more fully the beauty of marriage.

A Biblical Word on Love: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Frank Sinatra crooned, “Love and marriage, love and marriage, they go together like a horse and carriage. This I tell you, brother, you can’t have one without the other.” I know this not as a Sinatra fan but because it was the theme song for the ’80s and ’90s sitcom Married with Children. My parents expressly forbade me from watching the show, but the song was catchy enough to remember when I caught snatches of episode previews. Sinatra is right: love and marriage do (or should) go together like a horse and carriage. And when we look to Scripture, we find that the gospel is a story of beautiful love for us and has everything to say about how we should love each other. For this reason, before looking at the Bible’s teaching on marriage, let’s start with its teaching on love.

When engaged couples ask me to officiate their weddings, the passage of Scripture they most frequently ask me to preach from is 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, the Apostle Paul’s so-called “love passage.” It reads, “4Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” To help us understand how these words do and do not apply to marriage, I want to share three observations from this passage.

1. Understanding that this is not marital love.

First, this is not a description of romantic, marital love. Paul is not writing to a young couple. He’s writing to a church, telling the members of that church that this is the way they need to treat each other. It’s not a description of romantic, married love. It’s a description of normal, Christian love.

This doesn’t mean that these words are irrelevant to marriage. Rather, they challenge our temptation to think about marital love as completely different from all other kinds of love. Romantic love, we believe, is something that we fall into, something that happens to us. But if something can happen to us from one direction, it can happen to us from the other direction too. We can fall in love and we can fall out of love. That sadly happens to people all the time. These words remind us that any kind of real love, including marital love, isn’t something that just happens to us, but it’s an energetic calling that we give ourselves to.

In this description of normal, Christian love, Paul tells us what love looks like, what it doesn’t look like, and what it accomplishes. What it looks like is patience and kindness. What it doesn’t look like is arrogance, rudeness, and resentment. What it accomplishes is a flowering of mercy, faith, hope, and endurance.

The application for married couples, then, is not just to be in love with each other but to be Christians to each other. Love each other with Christian love.

2. Understanding that this love assumes others’ weaknesses.

To love your spouse, or others, with this Christian love is to assume the weaknesses of the other person. This is the obvious implication in Paul’s exhortations. He would not tell us to be patient instead of rude unless, from time to time, something about the other person provokes our impatience and rudeness. He would not explain that love isn’t irritable or resentful unless the person you have pledged your life to draws out your irritability and resentment. He would not tell us to bear all things unless some things needed to be borne.

All that’s to say, Paul is describing love as a battle, and the reason it’s a battle is because loving other people has to reckon with all of their weaknesses. The person you have married is weak in two significant ways: he or she is simultaneously a sufferer and a sinner. As a sufferer, bad things happen to you, and you need help when they do. Spouses need to help each other when hard things happen.

But to bear another person’s burdens while at the same time bearing your own burdens is just hard. Bearing burdens is literally burdensome. You might feel irritable that you have got to take care of your spouse. You might want to respond with rudeness rather than patience and compassion. So to love your spouse means that you have to love a sufferer, and that can be hard to do.

However, your spouse is not just a sufferer. He or she is also a sinner. I can recall a conversation with a friend about that day’s struggle in my marriage. He observed that the closer you are to someone, the more deeply you can hurt each other. Even in a faithful, loving marriage, the hurt can go deep.

This means that the words “forgive me” and “I forgive you” need to be normal in your marriage. But what real love looks like, according to this passage, is loving the other person with all of his or her weaknesses. In marriage, you are called to love someone who is very weak.

Think how this goes against the grain of how we usually think about love and marriage. The dominant model of love in our culture is the contractual model. In this model, when we fall in love, we enter into a contract for mutual benefit. Each person effectively says, “You will satisfy my needs and desires, and I’ll satisfy your needs and desires. But when one of us stops satisfying the other’s needs and desires, or when our needs and desires change”—which they inevitably do over a lifetime—“then the contract can be broken and the relationship can end.” The theologian Stanley Hauerwas explains how this model of love runs into deep problems for marriage:

Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person. We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem is…learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.

We change. We’re weak. A contractual view of love says that the contract can be broken when that happens. Love as the Bible describes it, on the other hand, says, no, this is when real love really gets to work.

A most common way young people think about marriage today is as a capstone achievement. A capstone achievement is one of those moments when we conquer a vital step in life. We get a degree, then we get a job, then we get into a romantic relationship, then we get married, then we have kids, and on it goes. These are capstone achievements: we achieve something in one of a handful of opportunities in a lifetime that are necessary for our personal flourishing.

Love, then, is entered into by way of contract, which can be easily broken; and marriage is something else we achieve in a lifetime of achievements. How different, though, is truly loving a person who is weak? How different is it to commit to your spouse for the rest of your life when both you and your spouse are weak people? There’s no contract here. No achievement. There’s sacrifice, endurance, patience.

If you think that doesn’t sound as attractive as a Disney fairy tale romance, remember that this is exactly how God loves you. If you want to see what real love looks like, look at how you are the object of God’s love. Look at how God loved you before you were ever inclined to love him back.

According to the Bible, it’s not that we are always the most awful people committing the most awful crimes. Rather, our hearts are always inclined to love the wrong thing. We look to other gods, or other people, or our professions, or food, drink, entertainment on a screen to give us hope, happiness, security, or significance.

We can do that as well with romantic love. We think, if only I’m with this person then everything—absolutely everything in life—will be happy and safe. When we love anyone or anything in that way, we are loving it as if it were a god. That’s idolatry. But those other things are not gods. They are idols, and an idol is like an addiction governed by the law of diminishing returns. It gives you less and less but requires more and more. If you turn another person into that idol and you look to that idol for your ultimate hope and happiness, then what will certainly happen is that the idol will collapse under the weight of your own expectations of it.

Only the true God can satisfy those deepest needs and desires, and the way he does this, the way he accomplishes his love for us—even when we are consumed by loving the wrong things in idolatrous ways—is by the most costly, sacrificial love imaginable. When Jesus died on the cross for you, he was embodying everything about this passage. He was patient and kind, not insisting on his own way, enduring all things, even enduring the shame and rejection of death on the cross.

For a married couple to love each other like this, therefore, when you take all the weaknesses that the other person brings to the marriage and your spouse takes all your weaknesses that you bring along, that is actually the most beautiful kind of love in the universe.

3. Understanding that you will fail.

However, you can’t do it; this call to love is a call you will inevitably fail to meet.

When I was in college, I had a huge crush on a girl (who, incidentally and thankfully, did not end up being my wife). In my hormonal twenty-year-old musings, I took this passage in 1 Corinthians and turned it into a love poem. It’s probably in some box in my mom’s basement, and Lord forbid it ever to see the light of day! You can imagine its tone. It sounded very sweet, earnest, heartfelt. I have never watched a Hallmark movie, but I suspect my love poem would have had a similar vibe.

However, if we were to read Paul’s words in the same tone as he wrote it, it would not be sweetness but exasperation. “Don’t you understand that love is patient and kind, that it’s not arrogant and rude? So stop being so rude to each other!” Its tone is perhaps best captured in the voice of Seinfeld’s Frank Costanza airing his grievances on Festivus.

A wider reading of this letter to the Corinthians would show just how justified such exasperation is. The rich people are getting drunk during Communion while the poor people stand in the corner with empty stomachs (chapter 11). There were sexual scandals (chapter 5) and virulent cliquishness (chapter 1). Some of them were even suing each other in court (chapter 6). In other words, this description of love is a description of what the Corinthians were not.

While most of us may not be as morally compromised as they were, as weak people we have to recognize that we never actually live up to this standard of love. Every married person knows this by experience. You have made promises and vows to your spouse, but sometimes it feels like you have committed to a bar that is impossibly high.

In a very real sense, this description of love is a description of what we are not; but it is also a perfect description of who Jesus Christ is. The encouragement for married couples, then, is not to just try harder, to love better. The encouragement is to rest more and more deeply in the love of Jesus for you. You are loved when you fail. You are loved when you do not measure up. You are loved when you do exactly what you saw your parents do, which you swore you’d never do yourself. Jesus takes all that is ugly and broken in you and gives you all that is beautiful and whole in him. He covers you in his forgiveness and righteousness—not grudgingly but willingly, because he loves you and delights in you.

You and your spouse will never be perfect for each other. Jesus will always be perfect for you. The more you live and rest in his love for you, the more you can move in the right direction in loving your spouse as this passage calls you to.

So love your spouse as a Christian. Love your spouse with all of his or her weaknesses. And know that Jesus will always be for you what you will never be for each other.

A Biblical Word on Marriage: Ephesians 5:22–33

What is true about the forgiving, patient, Jesus-modeled love in every relationship is especially true about the marriage relationship. The apostle Paul applies these general principles in ways specific to marriage in Ephesians 5:22–33, one of the most important and totally uncontroversial (cough, cough) passages on marriage in the Bible:

22Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

25Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30because we are members of his body. 31“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

We must unavoidably acknowledge the major point of controversy here: the apostle Paul’s instruction to wives in verses 22–24 that they submit to their husbands. Our culture resists hierarchical orderings of human relationships, especially in male–female relationships. And we should not sneer at or dismiss this resistance as if it were simply endemic to secular, liberal culture, particularly if you identify more with cultural conservatism. The #MeToo movement must be commended for truth-telling. Men have abused women. Institutions have sheltered predators. Women have suffered in their inability to safely face and seek justice against their abusers. Such concerns are worthy of our deepest compassion and fiercest desire for doing what is right.

At the same time, God’s Word is given for our good, so we seek to obey it for our flourishing. I likely will not be able to answer every objection or tease out every implication of these instructions, but my hope is that even if you disagree with my interpretation of the passage or still feel discomfort with Paul’s words, the major theme that you take away from this discussion will not be controversy but beauty.

So what does this passage teach us about marriage? It teaches us that human marriages—our own marriages—are meant to reflect the greatest marriage of all: the marriage of Jesus Christ and the church. The challenge to married people, therefore, is to love and honor your spouse in a way that faithfully mirrors the love and honor displayed in the greatest marriage.

Paul gives distinctive instructions to wives and husbands. Wives are to submit to their husbands, and husbands are to love their wives. We start with the instructions for wives. Two questions arise here: (1) What does it mean to submit? and (2) Why should she submit? Due to the challenges of these questions, we’ll be spending a fair amount of time here before moving on.

The first question—What does it mean to submit?—is complicated by the fact that the word “submit” is not actually in the original text in verse 22 that our modern translations render, “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.” More precisely, verse 22 is not even a complete sentence but concludes the sentence that began a verse earlier. The theme of submission starts in verse 21: “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” In other words, there is a general command to the church to submit to each other, and that general command is then applied to specific human relationships starting in verse 22. But submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ in verse 21 is part of the explanation for what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit in verse 18: “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.” We can keep following the paper trail farther back. Being filled with the Spirit is part of what it means to walk wisely in verse 15, and walking wisely is part of a bigger theme of your new life in Jesus, which starts in chapter 4 verse 1: “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

So let’s put all that together in the proper order. If you are a genuine Christian, you have been called by God. “Called” means saved. God saved you entirely by his grace. You did not earn it. Jesus died for you and gave you a gift that you could never earn. And now that he has called you, respond to his grace by living your life in a manner suitable to that calling. This lifestyle includes being filled with the Spirit rather than booze, and when you’re filled with the Spirit you’ll submit to each other. Finally, returning to the passage, submitting to each other has a few specific implications for family relationships.

In Paul’s day, writers and philosophers identified household relationships whose right ordering was necessary for the right ordering of society. These household relationships were the husband–wife relationship, the parent–child relationship, and the master–slave relationship. Paul adopts these same categories here. The following passages address the parent–child and master–slave relationships. Paul is not too worried about the right ordering of society, but he does use these categories to work out the relationships where submission happens.

So to return to the first question: what does it mean to submit? As with the case of children in their relationship with their parents and slaves in their relationships with their masters, submission at its simplest means to recognize authority. As we will see shortly, the husband’s authority is anything but authoritarian. For now, this authority is described as the husband being the head of the wife in an analogous way that Christ is the head of the church. She is to submit to him “in everything” (verse 22), which, as Frank Thielman notes, excludes obligations which are “harmful, silly, or sinful.” Paul fleshes the idea out further in verse 33: “... and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” Submission, then, means respect.

But what does this look like in reality? New Testament scholar Karen Jobes’s comments on the thematically similar passage of 1 Peter 3:1–7 can perhaps apply equally to our discussion in Ephesians 5:

The specific expressions of appropriate submission must be culturally defined. A woman who is active outside the home or a married woman appearing in public without the escort of her husband or other male relative does not scandalize our society as it did in the first century. Peter wisely did not spell out in specific terms what it means for a Christian wife to submit to her husband or for a Christian husband to live considerately with his wife. The apostle laid down the principles and then left the details to be worked out between the spouses. The church today is right to uphold a biblical order within marriage that mirrors the relationship of Christ and his church, but it should also follow Peter’s wisdom and refrain from trying to specify what that must look like in every case.

But this leads to the next question: why should the wife submit to her husband? Paul gives two reasons. First, wives are to submit “as to the Lord” (verse 22). In other words, wives, submit to your husbands not because he is a great guy but as if you were doing it for the Lord Jesus. Submit for the Lord’s sake, not your husband’s.

Second, the wife should submit to her husband because that is what the best marriage looks like. Verse 23 says, “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.” In other words, there is an analogous relationship between husbands and wives with Jesus and the church. There is headship and submission in the Jesus–church relationship. The best marriage models headship and submission for our marriages.

This is very different from what one might have heard elsewhere in Paul’s day. The great philosopher Aristotle, who had been dead for some time but whose ideas remained influential, would have agreed that wives should submit to their husbands. However, his reasoning was much different: “for the male is by nature better fitted to command than the female.” Josephus, a Jewish historian and rough contemporary of Paul, said, “The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for her humiliation but that she may be directed.” Wifely submission to them is rooted in the husband’s physical, intellectual, and moral superiority. For Paul, the husband’s authority does not come from any innate superiority but because of the best marriage—the marriage of Christ to his church.

We have had a lot to say about wives, but Paul has even more to say to husbands. If a wife’s submission to her husband looks like the greatest marriage, then so does a husband’s love for his wife. Some men might ask, “How can I possibly live up to that standard? Jesus is perfect, but I can’t be perfect. I’m doomed to failure.” Don’t worry, Jesus is not calling husbands to perfection. He is calling them to selfless, self-sacrificial love.

Paul describes the husband’s love in two ways. First, a husband loves his wife on the model of Jesus’ love for the church by giving himself up for her. Verse 25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” For Jesus to give himself up for the church means that he died for her. To give up is to die. This means that if the call for the wife is to submit, the call for the husband is to die.

How does the husband die for his wife? Not literally, unless exceptional circumstances come to that. In real life, everyday terms, this means putting your own needs and desires to death for the sake of your wife. Your selfish desires, your innocent ones, your need to be proved right, your need for enough time and space to do whatever it is you want to do—all of that goes to the cross to die for the woman you have pledged your life to.

So is the husband the head of the wife? Yes, Paul says. But how does the husband exercise his headship? By dying. That’s the kind of love that Jesus showed the church. Death.

Paul then explains the purpose of that love: “that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (verses 26–27). In Paul’s day, people did not bathe every day like many people do today, but a bride would bathe before the wedding as part of her preparations for the big day. Just as brides today walk down the aisle looking radiantly beautiful, so Jesus makes his bride, the church, beautiful by washing her with the word of the gospel. This word is the good news that through faith in Jesus, who was crucified for sinners and raised from the dead, his people are forgiven, adopted into his family, reshaped into his image over a lifetime of change-working grace, and kept in his sustaining embrace until the very end. Jesus died to make his bride beautiful, and so the husband dies for his wife so that she becomes beautiful in body and soul—she flourishes, grows in grace, and more and more reflects the image of her true Husband who died for her.

Second, Paul describes the husband’s love as loving his own body, which is to say as himself. One night during college, I wandered into one of the main common rooms of the dormitories. A sorority was hosting a formal ball that evening, and people were coming in and out dressed for the occasion. I sat down on a couch with a friend who, like me, had not been invited to the ball. The couch sat directly beneath a mirror, and my friend and I noticed that every single person who walked by looked at himself or herself in the mirror. Even the people who hadn’t gotten dressed yet in a suit or dress still took an appraising glance.

We love our bodies. We do not always like what we see in the mirror, but we have a vested interest in our bodies. All of us care at least a little bit about our appearance, our health, our comfort. Husbands are to love their wives in the same way: “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church” (vv. 28–29). In other words, this is how the best marriage works. Christ loves his own body (the church), so husbands love their wives as their own bodies.

Paul gets this idea from God’s creation of marriage in Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Paul knows this is speaking about human marriage, but he also knows that in God’s eyes this verse looks forward to the best marriage. He says, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it”—the creation of marriage in Genesis 2—“refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32). Built into the foundational fabric of human marriage is a mirror reflecting back upon the best marriage, the marriage of Jesus with his people. For a husband to love his wife, therefore, is to love his own body.

To love your body is to nourish and cherish it. Consider how this might play out in normal marital conflict (a topic we will turn to at greater length shortly). Husbands, a challenge for you: the next time you get into an argument with your wife, or the next time there’s a loud silence between the two of you, stop for a moment and ask yourself, “How might this end differently if I nourish and cherish this person in this moment just like I nourish and cherish myself?”

This biblical word on marriage points us toward the best marriage, where love and respect, submission and dying, work together to create the beauty of marriage. Even so, the healthiest, most beautiful marriages still can struggle. Conflict is going to happen, and we need to think about how to love each other well when it does. Sex, likewise, is an arena for marital tension and disappointment. It’s to these two issues that we turn next.

Conflict

C. S. Lewis’s book The Horse and His Boy ends like this: “Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I’m afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.” It’s a humorous take on marriage to be sure, but one that I’ve grown to appreciate for its wisdom too. Marriage is marked by conflict (and, I’m afraid, even fights), and making up afterward is a skill that must be learned.

Yet many married people grow discouraged by the presence of conflict in their marriage. “If I had a better marriage we wouldn’t argue so much.” However, marriage counselor Winston Smith encourages us not to take such a grim view of marital conflict. Of course there is conflict in your marriage, and God regularly uses conflict for our spiritual growth and strengthening.

The significant point about conflict is not whether it exists but how it is conducted and resolved. Simply put, are you able to enter into conflict and still love your spouse through it? In reflecting on this question, we will consider the sources of conflict, opportunities for conflict, and responses to conflict.

First, what are the sources of conflict? One source is that we are different people. God has not made us into cookie-cutter copies of each other. He’s an infinitely creative Creator. Your personality, imagination, interests, and everything else that makes you you are wonderfully unique. Next, put that unique makeup into a particular culture and particular life story, and we are beautifully different. Now take two beautifully different people together in marriage—how could there not be conflict? Different family backgrounds can have an outsized effect on marital conflict. Communication patterns, how love is shared and received, personal values, and more are profoundly shaped by our formative years in the houses in which we were raised. Unless we are marrying our sibling (gross!), those different family backgrounds will inevitably produce conflict, and that is okay, because that’s part of our beautiful diversity.

However, we are not just different. We are sinners. James puts it this way: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel” (James 4:1–2a). Our sinful hearts are bent by misshapen passions and desires. What we want has gone wrong. We want the wrong thing, or we want the right thing too much or in the wrong way.

What I want is warped, and this affects what I actually love. I instinctively love myself first. I instinctively want to rule my own life as my god and lord. My wife now has to submit to my own little kingdom, except that she is doing the same thing to me! Our kingdoms are at war.

Marriage, therefore, is marked by conflict because two beautifully different sinners are trying to share a life together. Of course there is conflict.

Second, what are the opportunities for conflict? What are the usual suspects for instigating trouble? When I lead couples in premarital counseling, I always take them through the Great Expectations survey created by Dennis Rainey. I do not have them answer all the questions for me. I ask them instead to talk through these questions before the counseling session and then during the session to tell me where they discovered differences and disagreements. Inevitably, some tensions will have arisen that need more attention during the counseling session. I have found this survey helpful also for couples who are already married, especially if they had not worked through a similar process before marriage. Here, in part, are Rainey’s questions, with the language adapted for married couples. After each question, this additional question can be added: has this been a point of tension or disagreement?

Regarding the marriage relationship:
- How do you make decisions in your marriage, and what do you do when you cannot agree?
- How often do you spend time with friends?
- What about friends of the opposite sex?
Regarding finances:
- Who is the primary financial provider in the family?
- Should both of you have mutual careers?
- How do you decide on major purchases?
- Who pays the bills and keeps track of expenses?
- What is your philosophy of charitable giving, and how do you make decisions about giving?
- What is your conviction about debt and the use of credit cards?
Regarding where you live:
- Where do you want to live?
- What kind of setting (urban, suburban, small town, rural, plains, mountains, desert, coastal, etc.)?
- Do you want to buy a house, buy a condo, or rent an apartment?
- Do you want higher living standards than you currently have?
Regarding socializing and home environment:
- How important are family mealtimes for you?
- How often do you eat out?
- Do you have or want pets?
- How often do you invite people to your home?
- How often do you go out on dates?
- What’s the role of electronic entertainment in your home?
- What hobbies or recreational pursuits do you pursue individually? Together? How often do you pursue them?
Regarding household responsibilities:
- Who prepares the meals?
- What types of foods do you typically eat?
- Is your home clean, and is that important?
- Who is responsible for laundry? Groceries? Yard work? Cleaning? Making the bed?
Regarding children and parenting:
- What is your general attitude toward children?
- If you haven’t had children yet, when would you like to begin?
- How many children would you like to have?
- What will you do if you cannot biologically conceive children?
- What is your view on birth control?
- Who is the primary caregiver of the children?
- How do you discipline the children? How is the responsibility for discipline shared?
Regarding spiritual matters:
- When and how often do you pray and read the Bible together?
- What is your level of involvement at church?
- Who takes spiritual leadership in the house, and what does this mean?
Regarding holidays, vacations, and special occasions:
- Where do you spend Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter? How do you decide?
- What do you do for vacations?
- How do you celebrate birthdays and anniversaries?
- What do you do on the weekends?
Regarding parents and other relatives:
- How has your relationship with your family changed since you got married?
- How much time do you spend with your parents and in-laws?
- What type of relationship do you have with your in-laws?
- How involved are your parents and in-laws in your children’s lives?
Regarding sex (this topic will be taken up more fully in the next section):
- How often do you have sex?
- How do you feel about your spouse sometimes saying “no” to sex?
- What is your overall level of satisfaction with your sexual relationship?

Let me encourage couples who are reading this booklet to take some time together to talk through these questions. I have found that talking about a potential point of conflict—household duties, say—is more fruitful and less emotionally fraught before the argument happens than in the heat of the moment when one spouse gets frustrated over those duties.

It should be clear that usually the answers you give to these questions are not right or wrong. Let’s say the husband wants to live in a condo in the city, whereas the wife would prefer a house in the suburbs. Each one might give reasons why such a move would be good for their family relationally, spiritually, and financially. So who’s right? No one! Each person can have different perspectives yet still be equally committed to a wise, God-honoring decision. The crucial piece in these opportunities for conflict is not making the right decision, but how do you love and honor each other even when you disagree? How can you listen to what the other is saying and understand with compassion the deeper hopes and fears that often live beneath these big decisions?

These considerations lead to the third primary question: how should we respond to marital conflict when it happens? Aaron Sironi and Lauren Whitman write that people tend to respond to conflict in one of two ways: moving away or moving against. Moving away is to retreat from conflict. When a person shuts down emotionally, or appeases the angry person without voicing his or her own concerns, or physically retreats from the room rather than engage in argument, these are examples of moving away. The problem with moving away is that it is rooted in fear. Someone who grew up with an intensely angry parent might tend to move away because that is what is safe. Anger is frightening. Avoiding or appeasing the angry person is safe. That is, it feels safe. A bullying father who gets to say whatever he wants to say however he wants to say it needs to be confronted for the good and maybe even the literal safety of the family.

On the other end of the spectrum is moving against. This is when the purpose of conflict is to win, to defeat your enemy. People who move against might yell, demean, use language like “You always do this!” and, in the worst examples, be physically violent. The problems with moving against are obvious, especially in the more extreme manifestations. However, even in non-abusive examples of moving against, like your garden variety short-tempered, cutting words kind of argument, it is still a failure to love. It is more concerned with winning than loving.

If most of us tend to either move away or move against, and if we do this instinctively and habitually, is there a better, third way to train ourselves in conflict? Sironi and Whitman argue that the biblical vision for conflict is to move towards. The goal of moving towards is to love your spouse by listening well, compassionately seeking to understand the hopes and fears beneath the surface, and being reconciled to each other if one or both spouses has sinned against the other. At least five virtues are necessary for moving towards: courage, patience, mercy, humility, and compassionate understanding.

You need courage to enter into hard but necessary conversations, especially if you are a move-away kind of person. You need patience because working out conflict takes time. Sometimes it takes years to work through. We all have what Richard Lovelace calls our characteristic flesh or what the Puritans would have called besetting sins—those patterns of sin and idolatry whose domineering slavery we are freed from when we become new creations in Christ but which also linger around as we are still spiritual works in progress. A spouse whose characteristic flesh is selfishness is not going to stop being selfish overnight. God can and will do amazing changes in a selfish person’s heart, but it’s likely going to take place over a lifetime of following Christ. That means that conflicts arising from selfishness are likely going to be regular to some degree. Moving toward a selfish spouse, therefore, or any spouse at all, requires patience.

Moving toward also requires mercy. Forgiving anyone is difficult; forgiving a husband or wife can be even harder for the fact that the pain caused by such a person can go so much deeper. Yet forgiveness is the way of the gospel. God has shown mercy to us, so we show mercy to others. We enter into conflict with our spouse with a willingness to forgive.

One important caveat to note here is that mercy is not an automatic ticket to reconciliation, especially in cases when the offending spouse is not genuinely repentant or has committed a grievously destructive sin, such as abuse or adultery. In these cases, forgiveness is complicated. Christ still calls us to mercy, but this doesn’t mean abusers and adulterers get an easy pass. Forgiveness in these cases has to lean on the judgment of God who sees and condemns the evildoer (Psalm 10). In more typical cases of marital conflict, on the other hand, mercy is simpler. We show mercy in conflict easily, willingly, and fully.

Fourth, moving toward your spouse in conflict requires humility. You need humility to say, “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have said that. Please forgive me.” You need humility to say, “Even though I prefer we make a different decision, I choose to make you more important than me, to prioritize your hopes, fears, desires over my hopes, fears, and desires.”

Finally, moving toward your spouse requires compassionate understanding. What I have in mind is a willingness to try to understand from a posture of loving empathy what is going on beneath the surface during conflict. The wife says, “I want this shade of blue.” The husband, oblivious to the fact that his wife has dreamed of her home ever since childhood and that decorating the living room carries significant emotional significance for her, responds bluntly, “No, I don’t like that one. I like this other one.” The husband’s blunt response hits his wife at a point of deep vulnerability. Some of her deepest hopes are being dismissed. So when her husband says, “No, I don’t like that one,” what she hears is, “I don’t really love you all that much to care about what you think.”

She is a move-against kind of person, so she hits back with, “What, are you the expert now? Like you were the expert with the leaky faucet?” Side note: the husband was not an expert with the leaky faucet, and they both know it; the comment was intended to sting. The deeper truth is that the husband is deeply insecure about his lack of handyman skills. He is afraid his inability to fix leaky faucets makes his wife not respect him. He’s a move-away kind of person, so he mutters, “Fine, that blue’s fine. Sorry” … and then doesn’t say another word for an hour.

The argument wasn’t really about the shade of blue. It was about feeling loved and respected. Moving towards your spouse with compassionate understanding means that you seek to understand what is really going on down below and to sincerely show that you really do love and honor your spouse, even when you still disagree about the shade of blue.

With courage, patience, mercy, humility, and compassionate understanding, you move toward your spouse rather than moving away or moving against. Conflict shows us the unavoidable and painful struggle of marriage. Moving towards your spouse in love shows one of marriage’s most radiant beauties. This is how, like Aravis and Cor, you learn to have many quarrels with each other and always make it up again.

Sex

Sex embodies the beauty and struggle of marriage. It is beautiful, good, and celebrated on the one hand; fraught with pain, sin, and disappointment on the other. Here we will consider, first, how the Bible celebrates sexuality; second, problems in sex; and, third, a few practical suggestions to help ground married couples in a healthy sexual relationship.

First, then, the Bible celebrates sexuality. Specifically, we note four biblical celebrations. The Bible celebrates sexual abstinence. Singleness, according to God’s Word, and contrary to the opinions of both the culture of Bible times and our own day, is a good gift of equal standing with the gift of marriage. Whereas this booklet is addressed to married people in particular, it is imperative for all Christians, regardless of marital status, to affirm this essential component of the biblical vision for sex. Sexual abstinence is not merely tolerated or regretfully permitted—it’s celebrated. This would even apply to certain cases within marriage. Imagine a wife unexpectedly falls into a coma. The husband’s abstinence in that situation is good and right, even demanded by his marital vows. Less tragic scenarios, such as normal sickness or the weeks following the birth of a child, would likewise call for abstinence. Again, this is to be commended and even celebrated.

The Bible also celebrates sexual fidelity. As Tim Keller puts it, the logic for the Christian insistence that sex is only appropriate within marriage is that you should only give your body to the one you give your life to. Sexual fidelity is part of the broader theme of marital fidelity. I remember how the pastor who officiated my wife’s grandmother’s funeral applauded the newly widowed husband’s decades of faithfulness to his wife. To limit your sexual activity to your spouse and to “hold fast” (Gen. 2:24) to our spouse until one of you is six feet under together encompasses the biblical vision of marital faithfulness. Such fidelity is celebrated.

The Bible also celebrates sexual mutuality. Many Christians are quite fond, perhaps in response to the (perceived) prudishness of earlier eras, of highlighting how the Song of Songs so brazenly praises sexual pleasure. For instance, Song of Songs 7:6–9a:

6How beautiful and pleasant you are,

O loved one, with all your delights!

7Your stature is like a palm tree,

and your breasts are like its clusters.

8I say I will climb the palm tree

and lay hold of its fruit.

Oh may your breasts be like clusters of the vine,

and the scent of your breath like apples,

9and your mouth like the best wine.

Indeed, these words do praise sexual pleasure! However, it must be equally asserted that what is being praised through the Song of Songs is mutual sexual pleasure. The bride and her beloved delight in each other mutually, reciprocally.

The reason I emphasize this is that in some Christian writings on sex—including in so-called Christian sex manuals and in well-publicized and controversial public teaching—it’s taught that the wife’s duty is to satisfy her husband’s sexual needs and that any moral sexual failings on the husband’s part can be directly or indirectly attributed to the wife’s failure to do her sexual duty. God’s Word will have nothing to do with this!

The clearest example of mutual sexual obligations comes in 1 Corinthians 7:1–5:

1Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Note here that there is a duty to satisfy your spouse’s sexual needs, and that this is linked to protecting against temptation to sexual sin. But note as well that it is a duty that husband and wife owe equally to each other. Moreover, we need not limit this to physical desire. For some spouses, sexual activity can fill an emotional need to feel loved and connected as much or more than it fulfills a physical need. The duty of giving one’s spouse his or her “conjugal rights” applies to these needs as well.

This mutual duty is part of the broader joyful obligation to love your spouse self-sacrificially. Self-sacrificial love, not sexual urges, gets the last say in the marital sexual relationship. If a wife is recovering from childbirth, menstruating, sick, or even just flat out exhausted from being with young children all day, she emphatically is not obligated by divine law to satisfy her husband if he is howling at the moon. He can love his wife, learn patience and self-control, and then at the appropriate time they can and should return together again sexually.

Similar counsel would apply to the types of sexual activity the couple engages in. Neither spouse—though in most marriages this will apply disproportionately to the wife—should be obligated to perform sexual acts with which he or she is not comfortable.

My point in this discussion isn’t to create hard and fast rules for every couple. Instead, I am trying to draw out the full implications of how the biblical view of married sex is its mutuality. It is only when sexual pleasure and enjoyment are mutually given and received that it is celebrated.

Additionally, the Bible celebrates sexual productivity, that is, bearing children. Our culture more often celebrates the opposite: sexual activity without the risk of pregnancy. The advent of cheap, safe, and effective birth control medication in the last century has helped to normalize this ethos. However, the Bible celebrates the conception, birth, and raising of children.

One of my favorite jobs as a pastor is meeting new babies in the hospital. I usually read these words as a kind of benediction over the newly expanded family:

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,

the fruit of the womb a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior

are the children of one’s youth.

Blessed is the man

who fills his quiver with them!

He shall not be put to shame

when he speaks with his enemies in the gate (Psalm 127:3–5).

Not all couples are able to experience this. Infertility, I have discovered, afflicts a surprising number of couples, and the majority of these couples grieve deeply over their affliction. My wife has only gotten pregnant once to our knowledge, which led to the birth of our youngest son, Winston. Our decision to adopt children, which in God’s wonderful kindness brought Duncan and Charlie into our family, was propelled in part by our painfully unfulfilled desire to raise a family. We have great sympathy for couples who walk through this dark valley.

It is right to grieve the absence of children. Conversely, it is right to celebrate the conception and birth of children. The vexed issue of birth control for Christians is too complicated to get into here. My own inclination is that, given the Bible’s celebration of sexual productivity, it should be used either very sparingly or not at all. However a couple works through the complicated landscape of birth control, family planning, or infertility, the essential point to be recognized is that for the lifelong loving commitment of marriage to be expressed most intimately in sex which then results in the creation of new life is indeed a beautiful vision for sex.

The Bible celebrates sexuality. It celebrates sexual abstinence, sexual fidelity, sexual mutuality, and sexual productivity. This celebration is part of the beauty of marriage. However, like every other aspect of marriage, sex has its struggles too.

We have already mentioned a few. Broadly speaking, we can place sexual problems into one of three categories: sin, suffering, and performance.

Sin. The sexual sin of adultery is, according to Scripture, grounds for the termination of marriage (though not a requirement for termination). Adultery is profoundly destructive to the relationship. Reconciliation, if it is to happen at all, requires the absolute sincere repentance of the guilty party and intensive pastoral care and professional counseling.

Pornography is a more common sexual sin. Besides the fact that watching porn is voyeuristically adulterous and further enables the pandemic of human trafficking to supply many of the “actors” in porn—two reasons with plenty of weight on their own to stay away from it—there is also the issue that porn creates extremely unrealistic sexual expectations of what normal married sex should look like. If you want to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8) and work towards a flourishing and mutually enjoyable sex life in your marriage, then stay away from porn.

Suffering. Other sexual problems fall under the category of suffering. Infertility, mentioned above, is a type of suffering. Sex can become a chore and a burden which gets heavier with each unsuccessful cycle. Sexual abuse survivors are also sexual sufferers. Married sex for a survivor can provoke fear and shame rather than delight, and this through absolutely no fault of the survivor. Spouses of survivors must work extra hard to love their afflicted husband or wife well. A skilled professional counselor might be necessary to guide you as you work through these profoundly difficult issues. May sexual sufferers, like all sufferers, be convinced that they are loved infinitely and known perfectly by the God who made them and gave his Son for them. May they find refuge, hope, and healing in him. May they know that this too shall pass and that this present suffering “is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17).

Performance. Still other sexual problems fall into the third category which, for lack of a better word, we label performance problems. Sometimes the body just does not do what we want and expect it to do. This can lead to embarrassment, frustration, and tension. Winston Smith reminds us that many performance problems can be attributed either to biological or to psychological or spiritual causes. In other words, your performance problem might stem from deeply rooted fears that should be explored in counseling, or it might be because some random organ in your body that you have never given a second’s thought is doing something weird but which medicine could sort out. Smith sensibly suggests to first rule out a biological cause by getting medical advice before considering psychological or spiritual issues.

The Bible celebrates married sex, and married sex can be fraught with all kinds of problems. So where does that leave us? Let me suggest a few practical considerations that will hopefully contribute to a mutually healthy and enjoyable sex life.

First, couples should embrace the reality that quite likely you and your spouse have different levels of sexual desire. One of you wants (“needs” may be the better word) more sex; the other wants and needs less sex. This can cause tension and frustration, and as such provides another opportunity to move towards each other in love. Loving each other well means that the spouse with lesser desire should be generally agreeable to sex even if he or she is not “in the mood”—though again with the caveat mentioned above when it is perfectly appropriate, as after childbirth, to abstain from sex. The one with the greater desire, on the other hand, must love your spouse as a person not an object. Your husband or wife is a person to cherish rather than a fleshly means to the ends of sexual satisfaction. Couples with differing levels of desire should talk about their sexual relationship openly with each other and move towards each other in courage, patience, mercy, humility, and compassionate understanding.

Second, once again following Winston Smith’s wise counsel, couples should not expect every act of sex to register a 10 out of 10 on the Richter scale. There may be those 10s, but there are also the 1s. The law of normal distribution (i.e., the bell curve) will probably put most sexual activity in the 4–6 range. It’s great when sex is a raging inferno, and it’s also perfectly fine when it’s just a simmer. Embrace this! Do not put unrealistic expectations on yourself. Sex is not exclusively a physical act with a physical goal. It is also an emotional act with the emotional goals of loving, cherishing, affirming, and comforting.

David Powlison gives similar counsel when he says that sex should be normal.

Sorry to disillusion you. But much of good sex is just—well—normal and healthy. Think about it. Most people in the history of the world have lived in one-room huts, where the kids slept in the same room with their parents! Countless families have lived in flats, with only curtains for room dividers, your mother-in-law in the far corner, or your wife’s younger brother sleeping on the couch. Or they’ve lived in tents, as nomads. Not much soundproofing or privacy in that household arrangement! And not much in the way of gymnastics or sound effects possible if you have children.

Just as most meals do not need to be the Thanksgiving feast, so most sex doesn’t need to be unbelievably thrilling, Powlison says. “Basic love goes a long way toward making good sex good. Maybe the Richter scale occasionally tops out at an earth-shaking 8.0. But in normalized good sex, you’ll also enjoy 3.5 temblors that hardly rattle the tea cups.”

Sex is best when it is in its right place—as good but not ultimate. When sex is in the right place, then it is okay when your spouse is unavailable to you due to sickness or circumstances. It is okay when it’s not heart-poundingly exciting because it’s also a place to nourish and laugh. And when sex is in the right place, your spouse stops being the object of your frustrated desire or controlling fear but instead becomes the object of your genuine love.

Sex is complicated physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It wraps up hopes and fears, biological desire and relational need, adolescent fantasies and aging realities in a complicated tangle that is bound to be a source of struggle. But in its holy intentions to love, serve, give, and enjoy, it’s an undeserved gift unique among human relationships.

Conclusion

In this booklet, I have tried to help normal married couples appreciate the beauty of their marriage while also navigating the struggles they face. We looked at some key Bible passages that speak to Christian love and marriage. Then we looked at marital conflict, which invariably happens but which we can learn to love and honor through it. Finally, we considered sex in marriage, when we quite literally become one flesh with each other, and which embodies the beauty and struggle of marriage.

As Jon Dennis likes to say, some things are better caught than taught. Perhaps we can best learn what promotes greater flourishing in our marriages by observing other marriages rather than merely reading about important principles.

I have one such marriage in mind in Frank and Susan Borman. Frank is 93 years old, and Susan died on September 7, 2021. Frank is famous as the commander of Apollo 8, the first human spacecraft to fly to and orbit the moon, a crucial step towards Apollo 11’s moon landing seven months later. A 2018 profile of Borman on This American Life shows him as straightforward and uncomplicated. He was not particularly romanticized by space and the future of space travel, and he didn’t come across as particularly romantic towards his wife. He loved her and was exclusively faithful to her, but their relationship does not come across as lovey-dovey.

Robert Kurson’s book Rocket Men, an account of the Apollo 8 mission, shows how Susan increasingly struggled with her husband’s NASA career. The fear of losing him in space or in an accident like the one that killed the Apollo 1 astronauts consumed her. She slipped into depression and medicated herself with alcohol. Yet Frank loved her and stayed faithful to her through it.

She eventually came out of that darkness, but unfortunately, in later years she developed Alzheimer’s and had to live in a nursing facility. Here’s how the This American Life story ends:

Frank Borman: “I’m with her every day, and she can’t walk or talk or feed herself. So that’s where I come in. So that’s very, very difficult—very. And that’s it.”

David Kestenbaum (interviewer and narrator): “Which is either the least romantic thing you can think of … or just the opposite.”

I don’t know what spiritual convictions, if any, Frank Borman has. But an old man dressing and feeding his afflicted wife after a lifetime of devotion and faithfulness epitomizes, I think, the glorious beauty and love amidst struggle in marriage. May we be so blessed to catch that vision.

Battling Anxiety

2020-01-21T00:00:00Z

I'm speaking about anxiety as a pastor. I'm not a professional counselor. I'm a pastor, and an anxious pastor a lot of the time.

I'm firstly a Christian though. I have certain beliefs and convictions that have been shared by Christians for 2,000 years. Those beliefs and convictions inform what I say here. If you're a person who doesn't share those same beliefs and convictions, let me say first of all that I'm very glad you're reading this and are interested in what God says to your anxiety. I hope to be able to speak in genuinely helpful ways to encourage you regardless of your spiritual identity and experiences.

If you do share my beliefs you'll probably be the first to admit that you're just as anxious as people who don't. What we affirm in our faith and how we live that out don't always align. So I hope this will encourage you no matter where you're coming from.

My Anxiety

One morning as I was waiting for a congregant to arrive for pastoral counseling, I received a long email from a person who was upset with me for how I had handled a recent issue. I just finished reading it when the congregant arrived. For the next hour, as he spoke about what he was struggling with, my mind kept running back to what I was struggling with: the email! Instead of listening well and offering compassionate counsel, I was anxious. I was anxious about the email author's anger. I was anxious about what my response should be. I was anxious about what the fallout might be.

I am an anxious person.

In the spring of 2019 my family vacationed with some extended family in southern Utah. We stayed at an AirBnB on top of a hill. Every direction you looked was sublime. Desert cliffs with shades of red and yellow and orange loomed on the horizon. I passed the hours reading, aiming a telescope at the mountains, and shooting hoops on the basketball court.

And it was quiet! My house in Chicago sits under the O'Hare Airport flight path a few blocks from the Kennedy Expressway. My downtown office is right next to the "L." I'm used to machinery screaming at me. But in Utah, it was quiet enough to hear myself think!

But I woke up one morning about halfway through that week in that peaceful place with a mounting sense of dread. My heart rate went up. I tossed and turned in bed. My imagination went into a perpetual repeat mode playing out scenes of conflict and burdens.

Like most people, there are problems in my family. Like most people, work can be stressful and discouraging. These problems and stressors can overwhelm me at times.

As I was lying in bed that one morning, it felt like there was a clock ticking down on my vacation ending and having to return to all these troubles. The desert was quiet, but my anxieties were screaming. The mountains were big, but my fears were bigger.

I am an anxious person. I battle anxiety.

I'm not alone. There are people in my family who struggle with anxiety. People in my church struggle with anxiety. I've sent a number of people to professional therapists because of their anxiety. And if you're reading this, chances are you're anxious too.

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is a very common experience with multiple forms of expression. Some people have panic attacks. Some people have particular phobias. I can get grumpy and irritable when I'm anxious. A lot of anxious people also have depression as a kind of tag-a-long companion to their anxiety. One person I talked to—someone who's successful, popular, and stable—told me that some days he can't get out of bed because of his anxiety.

We often use words like anxiety, worry, and fear to describe an overlapping set of experiences. Todd Stryd defines anxiety as focusing on a hypothetical future (which may or may not be realistic) instead of being present in this moment where I actually exist. Similarly, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, more commonly known as the DSM-5, the standard mental health manual, says that "Fear is the emotional response to real or perceived threat, whereas anxiety is anticipation of future threat."

And there are so many future threats to make you anxious! You can be anxious about money. You can be anxious about health. You can be anxious about relationships. You can be anxious about the future. Heavy rain can cause anxiety for one anxious person I know, because her basement leaks, despite having spent lots of money to fix it.

Who Suffers from Anxiety?

The National Institute of Mental Health says that 1 in 7 Americans are suffering from an anxiety disorder at any given point. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), states that "The term 'anxiety disorder' refers to specific psychiatric disorders that involve extreme fear or worry, and includes generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder and panic attacks, agoraphobia, social anxiety disorder, selective mutism, separation anxiety, and specific phobias." It puts the number of sufferers of such anxiety disorders at 18%—nearly 1 in 5 Americans.

Whatever the exact numbers, millions of Americans will suffer from an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. For the rest of us who don't have an anxiety disorder right now or who might be spared from one in the future, we still have anxiety. If you're only anxious one day every two weeks (less than what would classify as an anxiety disorder), that one day can be miserable for you.

What Causes Anxiety?

Scott Stossel, the editor of The Atlantic magazine, wrote a book a few years ago called My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind. He talks about his own lifelong, crippling battle with anxiety, which landed him in the school nurse's office every day with a sick stomach as a kid, and compels him to take Xanax and drink vodka before public speaking or getting on an airplane as an adult.

So, he asks, why is he so anxious? What causes anxiety for people in general? Is it nature, nurture, or culture? The rest of Stossel's book is an exhaustive study of thousands of years of research on anxiety, including the most cutting edge psychiatric research.

Does nature, particularly the mysterious processes in our brains, cause anxiety? Or does nurture cause anxiety? In Stossel's case, his mother was a worrier, and his father's family were Jews who fled the Nazis. Did he learn anxiety from his family?

Or is something about our culture making us anxious? Is this an age of anxiety that we all live in? Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge, from NYU and San Diego State, respectively, wrote a recent paper asking the question, Is there an increase in adolescent mood disorders? Yes, they say, but they're not exactly sure why. Maybe it's smartphones and social media. Maybe it's overprotective parenting. Maybe it's the global financial crisis and rising inequality. Whatever it is, there seems to be something in the water. The world we live in is making us anxious.

Stossel concludes that the answer to the question of anxiety's cause is that it's all three. It's nature, nurture, and culture. However, he thinks the lion's share of the cause is nature. Most of it is stuff going on in your brain.

The problem with the nature explanation though is that there's nothing approaching scientific confidence and consensus about what exactly is the cause. What part of your brain is to blame? Or what chemicals or neurons have derailed? We don't really know, as Stossel acknowledges.

Despite our lack of knowledge, though, it seems many people are afflicted with psychiatric conditions that likely have some biological roots for their anxiety. The last section in this booklet addresses anti-anxiety medication and related questions.

Since the causes of anxiety are so slippery, Stossel's strategies to battle his anxiety have taken the "let's try anything to see what works" approach:

Here's what I've tried: individual psychotherapy (three decades of it), family therapy, group therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, rational emotive therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, hypnosis, meditation, role-playing, interoceptive exposure therapy, in vivo exposure therapy, supportive-expressive therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, self-help workbooks, massage therapy, prayer, acupuncture, yoga, Stoic philosophy, and audiotapes I ordered off a late-night TV infomercial.

And medication. Lots of medication. Thorazine. Imipramine. Desipramine. Chlorpheniramine. Nardil. BuSpar. Prozac. Zoloft. Paxil. Wellbutrin. Effexor. Celexa. Lexapro. Cymbalta. Luvox. Trazodone. Levoxyl. Propranolol. Tranxene. Serax. Centrax. St. John's wort. Zolpidem. Valium. Librium. Ativan. Xanax. Klonopin.

Also: beer, wine, gin, bourbon, vodka, and scotch.

Here's what's worked: nothing.

Some medication takes the edge off, but nothing has cured him. By the end of his book, Stossel comes to the conclusion that anxiety is something he just has to live with.

We're all anxious, some of us desperately so. We're not always sure why, and sometimes the best medical breakthroughs don't help us as much as we'd like.

What Does God Say to Anxious People?

So what does God say to us when we're anxious? How does he help us battle anxiety?

The Bible has lots of encouragement for anxious people, but I want to focus on one passage in particular. The following are reflections from what Jesus says in Luke 12:22–35. I'll also make a few comments about the text that comes right before this one.

Here's what Jesus says about anxiety:

22 And he said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 26 If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! 29 And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. 30 For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.

32 "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Four Reasons Not to be Anxious

Let me summarize what Jesus says this way: 4–2–4. Four reasons not to be anxious. Two reasons why you might be anxious. And four ways to battle anxiety.

In the passage you just read, Jesus names four reasons not to be anxious—these rare four encouragements to anchor your heart when you worry.

Reason Not to Worry Number One: Your life is more than the thing you're anxious about.

Jesus says don't be anxious about food. Don't be anxious about clothing. Moreover, he's saying this to people who live in a subsistence culture where what you earn that day very much determines what you're going to eat and what you're going to wear. What I earn determines what level of gym membership I can have. But that's not the reality for Jesus' audience. Reality for them is the basics of survival like food and clothing. In other words, Jesus tells people with very big things to worry about, "Do not worry." Why not? Because your life is more than what you're worrying about.

Here's what happens when you worry: When you are anxious, whatever it is you are anxious about feels very, very big. It feels like the totality of your life. But it's not, Jesus says. Life, according to Jesus, has an orientation to God and his kingdom that's bigger than your life. It's "bigger than your body," as John Mayer would say. In the moment when you're anxious, it feels like that thing is so big that it masters you. It feels like you belong to it. But Jesus says, you don't belong to it.

Reason Not to Worry Number Two: Worry won't help you.

This is what Jesus means when he says being anxious won't add a moment to your life. In other words, anxiety is an exercise in futility. It's like what the Bobby McFerrin song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" says:

In every life we have some trouble

But when you worry you make it double.

That's kind of what Jesus says! The irony is that we want help and rescue in that moment of fear, yet our fear itself cannot help or rescue us.

Now, of course, anxiety can be helpful when it compels us to do something that should be done. If I'm worried about this pain in my chest and I go to the doctor, and the doctor performs a surgery that saves my life, then that's obviously a good thing.

But I don't think that's what Jesus is talking about. The anxiety that Jesus is talking about is the kind of futility that asks, for example, when all you did was worry from morning to night, when you went throughout the day just stewing over it, did that day of worry help you? Did it give you clarity into the situation? Did it help you to be fully present with the people around you and the responsibilities before you?

Have you ever looked back and said, "I'm so glad I was so worried that I couldn't get out of bed that day"? I hope not! That normal everyday anxiety doesn't help us.

Reason Not to Worry Number Three: You matter to God.

Let that sink in. You matter to God.

This is getting to the heart of what Jesus is saying. Jesus starts by talking about not worrying for food and clothing. Then he gives two illustrations—one about food and the other about clothing.

He says, "Look at the birds. Look at the flowers." They're outdoors when Jesus is talking, so he's pointing to objects within their field of vision. So look around you, Jesus says. If you're worried about food, look at the birds. If you're worried about clothing, look at the flowers.

Jesus goes on to say in verse 24, "Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!"

Now, it's interesting that Jesus uses ravens as an illustration, since in the Jewish religion ravens were considered unclean. So we're not talking about a sweet little bluebird on my shoulder kind of thing.

Here's how one counselor David Powlison puts it (he calls them crows instead of ravens):

How does God feed them? Think about it for a minute with me. It's not romantic in the least. A crow is a scavenger. Jesus isn't painting a sweet little picture of God feeding the poor helpless birdies. These aren't cute little babies looking up to momma bird to give them a worm. Crows are tough. They are dirty birds. They are aggressive. They are smart. They are savvy. They are noisy. They are obnoxious. They are pests. They are scavengers. How does God feed crows? Road kill. Trash picking. Raiding your crops. That's why you have to have scarecrows. God feeds the crows by the fact that they steal your food and pick over your garbage!

To put it in an urban context: Look at the pigeons eating fries off the ground in the bleachers of Wrigley Field that were spilled by a drunk guy. God is feeding them! But Jesus says, if God feeds the scavengers, if God feeds the pigeons at Wrigley, then of course he'll take care of you, because you're so much more valuable to God than scavengers.

And look at the flowers, he says. He's talking about some kind of weedy wildflower. No one planted them, but they're beautiful. Before too long they're going to be cut down and thrown into the furnace and burned. Yet, short-lived as they are, God has made them beautiful.

But if God gloriously adorns what will soon be headed for the furnace, then he will adorn you. He will clothe you in his glory, because you matter to him so much more than the flowers.

You matter to God.

Reason Not to Worry Number Four: God is your Father.

Now it needs to be said that Jesus is making this point to his followers. In other words, the comfort of knowing that God is your Father isn't extended to all people indiscriminately but to those people who've committed to trusting and following Christ.

That being said, the invitation to follow Jesus—and thereby to know the comfort of a heavenly Father—is offered to everyone. The way you come to know God as your Father is through trusting his Son, Jesus. It's not through any kind of performance. It's by grace.

So when Jesus says that God is your Father who knows what you need, he means that in a particular way to people who have experienced that grace through faith. If you've trusted Christ, if you've come to the Father through his Son, God is your Father. That's why you shouldn't worry.

Now, this one can be tricky. Not everyone can find easy comfort in concepts of divine fatherhood. We've all seen the failures of our fathers in one way or another, sometimes tragically so. I've failed as a father plenty of times.

However, as emotionally complicated as this concept might be for some people, the central point that Jesus is making is that God is the one who knows you the best. God is the one who knows your needs and your weaknesses more deeply and intimately than anyone else. He is the one who is personally committed to your security and your flourishing more passionately and consistently than anyone else. He's your Father.

There are some days when my kids seem absolutely convinced that I'm planning on letting them starve to death. They're hungry right now! "I'm starving!" they'll say over and over again. And I say (on my best, most patient days, at least), "I know you're hungry. I'm not going to let you starve. I'm your father."

In your anxiety, when your mind is stuck on that one problem, and you're being consumed by that fear, it's like my kids thinking they're going to starve. God is your Father who knows what you need. So do not worry.

Two reasons why you might be worrying

Jesus also gives two reasons why you might be anxious.

Before we get to those two reasons, however, there's one thing you might think is a reason for your anxiety: the circumstances. But that, according to Jesus, is not actually a reason. So you might be tempted to say that the reason I'm worried is because of what's happening in my life right now. I'm worried because the economy is going down. I'm worried because my kids are struggling. I'm worried because the doctor's report didn't look good. In other words, you're saying that the reason for your anxiety is what you're anxious about.

But the problem with that—the problem if all you do is point to the circumstances—is that there will always be something to worry about. If you worry about money, you say, "I'm worried because I don't have enough money. So if I just get another job or if I get a raise then I'll stop being anxious." But let's say you get a raise. And then all of a sudden your furnace goes out. Or someone sideswipes your car and insurance doesn't cover all of it. Or someone gets sick and now you've got hospital bills that you hadn't planned for. Will you not then worry about money?

There will always be something to worry about. The circumstances of your anxiety are not the reasons for your anxiety. So what are those reasons? According to Jesus, there are two possibilities.

First Possible Reason: You have little faith.

After Jesus says that you're more precious to God than the birds and the flowers, he says in verse 28, "O you of little faith." A reason you might be anxious is that you have little faith. Perhaps you are a person who has sincere faith in Jesus, yet in that moment of anxiety, you have little faith. Your heart does not trust him to care for you in that moment.

Take that episode from my idyllic Utah vacation when I woke up worrying about all those problems waiting for me when the vacation ended. What was going on in my heart then? In that moment, as anxiety overwhelmed me, I didn't really believe that I mattered to God more than birds or flowers. I didn't really believe that God is my Father.

Of course, as a Christian I know these truths intellectually. I can read these words in the text. I know what Jesus says. I confess it. I affirm that God is my Father who values me. But in that moment, I didn't really believe that God's love was a reality in my life. I didn't trust that God's fatherly care was as real as the air I breathed. I had little faith. That's why I was anxious.

Second Possible Reason: You are seeking the wrong things.

Listen again to what Jesus says in verse 29 and 30 about seeking:

And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world [that's all those people who don't know God as their Father] seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you (emphasis added).

So what you seek, what you desire, what you run after might be the cause of your anxiety.

The passage in the Gospel of Luke that comes right before this one is called the parable of the rich fool. The man in the parable wants more and more stuff so he builds more and more buildings to store all of his stuff. And then God kills him, and all his stuff doesn't do him any good now that he's dead. That's why he was a fool. Everything he lived for proved to be a dead end the moment he stopped living.

So Jesus tells a parable about coveting and greed. And then, without pause, he turns straight to anxiety. By putting coveting and anxiety side by side like that, he's showing how coveting and anxiety can be on the same spectrum.

If I covet something, if I greedily desire something, and I get what I want, what does that do to me? It makes me prideful. It makes me complacent. It makes me self-centered. But if I don't get what I want or if I lose it, then I get worried and anxious.

So why is my mind stuck on this fear? Maybe it's because there's a problem with what I'm seeking. I'm not seeking God and his kingdom. Instead, I'm seeking my comfort or my health or my status or other people's approval of me like that is the most important thing in the world. Because I'm seeking the wrong thing, it makes me anxious.

So why might you be anxious? Maybe Jesus is saying, "O you of little faith." Or maybe, you're seeking the wrong things.

Four ways to battle anxiety

So how do you battle anxiety? How do you start to come out of anxiety?

When I was anxious about that email or anxious about returning from vacation, I was stuck in that fear and needed something to pull my head back above water. Here are four strategies, four methods of attack.

And I should say that these aren't four cures for your anxiety. There's no quick fix here. Depending on who you are, depending on how frequently and deeply you struggle with anxiety, maybe this is going to look like going from walking to running. Or maybe from crawling to walking. Or maybe from being completely stuck to starting to crawl. Or maybe from overwhelmed and drowning to still feeling stuck but now facing the right direction for the first time.

Strategy Number One: Go deeper than the situation.

This is the corollary to my earlier point about how your circumstances are not the cause of your anxiety. When anxiety comes, and you want to come out of anxiety, go deeper than the situation. To put that another way, resist the temptation to justify your anxiety.

Some people tell me (and it's something I feel often enough), "Don't you see why this is something to worry about? Don't you see how my anxious response is completely reasonable?"

And maybe your anxiety is reasonable at times. There's a difference between worrying about money during an economic downturn and the fantasy delusions of someone suffering from schizophrenia. You will always have reasonable justification to worry about something.

But if you want to battle anxiety, go deeper than that. What's going on in your heart? Do you not believe that you matter to God? Are you desiring the wrong thing? Are you desiring the right thing too much, as if it were the best thing?

Go deeper than the situation. I'm challenging you to do a bit of self-counseling. Ask yourself these kinds of questions:

When am I most anxious?
Why am I anxious about some things (money, for example) but not others (health, for example)?
Why am I more anxious than I used to be?

Then, after wrestling with these questions, the next question is: What does this say about my heart? What does this say about my trust (if I'm not trusting God's love and fatherly care)? What does this say about what I desire (if I'm seeking the wrong things)?

Now you're starting to dig deep. Keep digging! Go deeper than the external events that are happening to you.

Strategy Number Two: Preach to yourself.

This was a point that Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a pastor in London, used to say. Preach to yourself.

Preaching to yourself is the opposite of listening to yourself. When you listen to yourself, you hear all the reasons you have to worry. You hear all your doubts. You hear all your insecurities. But when you preach to yourself, you speak to yourself with truths that are external to your anxious heart. You speak God's Word to yourself.

In other words, if you have good reasons to be anxious, what better reasons does God give you not to be anxious? Remind yourself of those things. Meditate over them. Pray over them. Preach those things to yourself.

This is not the same thing as saying that you have nothing to worry about. What Jesus doesn't say is, "Stop being silly. You're making a big deal over nothing."

Jesus isn't saying that. Food is a big deal. Clothing is a big deal. Whatever you're going through might be a very big deal.

It's not that you have nothing to be worried about. Rather, if there are big reasons to worry, there are bigger reasons not to worry. So what are those reasons? Preach to yourself those things.

Say you're worried about money. What better reasons does God give you to not be worried about money? For starters there's what Jesus says here about food and clothing. But that's just scratching the surface of what God says to you. There's also, to mention another example, what the Apostle Paul says about contentment in any circumstance, even in financial deprivation:

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Even in material deprivation God strengthens me and meets my needs in ways that accomplish his purposes for me. That's a very good reason not to be anxious about money.

Or say you're anxious about an upcoming job performance review. You're even losing sleep over it.

What better reasons does God give you not to be anxious about that review? How about this: Your value and your worth is never tied to what another person thinks about you. You are a child of your Father. Whatever comes out of that review, it doesn't get to define your identity. The reason you're worried about it is because you believe it does. But it doesn't. God alone has the prerogative to tell you who you are.

Don't listen to yourself. Preach to yourself.

Strategy Number Three: Name your idols.

A number of years ago I was going through a stressful time. I was worried about the future, just like you might be worried about right now. I typically kept bourbon in the house and would have a nightcap while sitting and reading in bed.

But then I started doing something else. I would still limit myself to drinking before bed, but I started filling up the glass higher than before. It was becoming more than a nightcap.

That went on for about two weeks. For those two weeks that drink was my refuge. It took away all my problems. I wasn't worried about anything. If I had kept going in that direction, it would have destroyed me. Thankfully, by God's grace I woke up to what was happening before it went too far. But it wasn't just a drinking problem. It was an idol. It was my god who gave me comfort and refuge.

Question 17 in the New City Catechism asks, "What is idolatry?" The answer follows: "Idolatry is trusting in created things rather than the Creator for our hope and happiness, significance and security."

Take Jesus' words in Luke 12 as an example. If he's saying that a reason you don't need to worry is that God is your Father who values you greatly, then he's inviting you to take refuge in your Father. When you're anxious, God is the one for you to take refuge in.

So when anxiety comes, what do you actually take refuge in? Where do you actually turn to? Food? Alcohol? Netflix? The hope of peaceful circumstances? Whatever that place of refuge for you is, you're treating it as if it were your god. That's your idol. An idol looks like a god. It's what you treat like a god. It's what you serve like a god. But it's not a god. It requires more and more from you and gives less and less. Eventually it consumes you.

A few years after that season when I was tempted to find refuge in bourbon, I was again going through a lot of stress. My refuge this time was the pleasures of a good book. I craved the end of the day when I could escape into bed and read my book, whatever was on my Kindle at the time.

Reading a book is a lot healthier than drinking too much. But it was more than just enjoying a book. I would want to sneak away and find a quiet spot away from my family. And if someone interrupted me while I was reading I would snap at them in anger.

That book, that story, that isolation from other people, was my refuge. It let me escape my trouble. I could live in this other world—the world of this story that was so far away from all my problems.

This seemingly harmless activity (and I still read before bed!) was actually becoming an idol, a false god that I ran to in my anxiety. And like any idol, it didn't have my best interests at heart. It gave me temporary refuge; all it wanted in return was for me to turn away from my family.

So what do you run to in your anxiety? Where do you find refuge? That's your idol. So name your idol.

But don't stop with naming it. Put away that idol. Work through what it means for Christ to be your refuge rather than that drink, that book, that person, that vacation, that show on Netflix, that mindless hour on social media, that video game, that extra hour of work, that politician, that…whatever it is you run to for comfort and security when you feel most anxious.

Strategy Number Four: Give yourself away in this present moment.

Jesus tells people who are worried about food and clothing to sell their possessions and give to the poor. Seek God's kingdom where you never lose your treasure. Give.

David Powlison speaks to how the anxious person can move beyond her own problems and give herself to other people in need:

Do and say something constructive. Care for someone else. Give to meet human need. In the darkest hole, when the world is most confused, when there are barbarians in the streets, when life's the toughest, there's always the right thing to do. There's always some way to give yourself away. The problem might seem overwhelming. You could worry, worry, worry, worry. But what you're called to do is small, just a little itty-bitty thing. There's always something to give yourself to, and some way to give.

Todd Stryd makes a similar point. After focusing on his breathing (which helps focus his attention on the present moment) and praying through what's causing him anxiety, he says to "participate in the present." That could mean participating in the normal duties of marriage and parenthood. It could mean taking the next faithful, dutiful action in your work. You don't exist in a hypothetical future. You exist in a present where God is real now.

So battle anxiety by participating in the present. Give yourself away to people in need. Give yourself away to people who exist in this present moment with you. Do the next right thing. Give.

Is there a place for anti-anxiety medication?

We are embodied creatures, yet we live in a fallen, imperfect world that waits with anticipation when all will be made new. God gave us bodies, but sometimes our bodies cause us lots of problems. He gave us brains, but sometimes our brains cause us lots of problems. We take painkillers for headaches and antibiotics for infections. Should we also take medication for our anxiety?

Mike Emlet, a physician and counselor, has a wonderful article in the Journal of Biblical Counseling called, "Listening to Prozac … and to the Scriptures: A Primer on Psychoactive Medications." I cannot improve on his expertise and counsel, so what follows is a condensation of his article.

After summarizing the various classes of psychoactive medications (i.e., medications that treat anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, insomnia, and so forth) and the research into their effectiveness, he offers the following conclusion:

So, what should we conclude from all this information, particularly with regard to antidepressants? They do seem to work—that is, improve mood and other symptoms of depression—in some people, some of the time, but they certainly are not the "silver bullet" that some make them out to be. Even if we conclude that medications are or might be effective for a particular person, they comprise only a part of the total approach to the person. Secular research shows the critical importance and efficacy of psychotherapy as well.

In other words, anti-anxiety medication can be greatly helpful for some people in conjunction with counseling in the spiritual components of anxiety, which this booklet tries to do.

So should you consider medication as part of your battle against anxiety? Emlet states the issues in contrastive terms, and deciding on medication is a matter of making a wise decision with these points in mind:

"It is a kingdom agenda to relieve our suffering; it is a kingdom agenda to redeem us through suffering." Medication can be a gift of God to relieve suffering, yet at the same time God uses suffering to sanctify us. Relief from suffering shouldn't always be our only goal.
"Medications are a gift of God's grace; medications can be used idolatrously." We should be thankful that medicine can help suffering people without turning medication into our savior that rescues us from our troubles. God alone is our Savior.
"Too much suffering can be hazardous to spiritual growth; too little suffering may be hazardous to spiritual growth." We can suffer so much that we become embittered rather than hopeful. On the other hand, following Jesus means taking up your cross and following him. A cross-centered life cannot and should not always avoid suffering.
"A person can have wrong motives for wanting to take medication; a person can have wrong motives for not wanting to take medication." One person might want medication as a substitute for trusting God's promises, or because people are pressuring her in that direction. Another person might be avoiding needed medication sheerly out of pride ("I don't need that because I'm strong enough to get through this!").
"Using medications may make it more difficult to address moral-spiritual issues; not using medications may make it more difficult to address moral-spiritual issues." Medication might distract from the deeper issues of the heart that fuel my anxiety—my faithlessness, idolatries, and so forth. However, some people are so afflicted by poor mental health that they cannot make any headway in spiritual matters without medication addressing their worst symptoms.

Emlet concludes by saying that he's most likely to recommend medication when "symptoms are severe and unremitting, symptoms are not abating despite engagement with the counseling process, or there is a high risk of suicide." Please consider his wise counsel as you weigh the pros and cons of seeking medical assistance for your anxiety.

Conclusion: The Anxious Person's Prayer

Heavenly Father, you are MY Father. You love me. You know me. You feed the birds and clothe the flowers, and you value me so much more than birds and flowers.

Even so, I confess that I am an anxious person. Sometimes I get worried about silly things. Sometimes I get worried about things that aren't silly at all, things that are very real and dangerous. In this moment, I am anxious about ____________________________.

I also confess that when I'm anxious, I look for safety and refuge in other places besides you. I need a person to affirm me. I need food to comfort me. I need a pill to save me. I need a drink to soothe me. I need a screen to settle me.

Forgive me when I run to idols that can't save me. Forgive me when I don't trust your love. Forgive me when I make you small. Forgive me when I live as stranger or slave rather than as a son or daughter.

And yet, even before I ask forgiveness, I know that I am already forgiven, justified, accepted, welcomed, adopted, and loved without limit in your Son Jesus Christ. My Savior died for me. My Savior keeps me. My Savior pleads for me in this moment. My Savior opened the way to the throne of grace, which will never be closed for me.

When I'm most anxious, when I'm most fearful, remind me of all the better reasons I have not to worry. Remind me of the gospel. Assure me of your power. Assure me of your goodness and kindness. Lift up my eyes beyond what's troubling me so deeply. Lift up my eyes to your grace and mercy. Lift up my eyes to my kind Father. Lift up my eyes to my selfless Savior. Lift up my eyes to the Holy Spirit, my Advocate.

I ask this in the name of Jesus, my only hope in all my anxiety, who will one day make all things new and defeat every reason I have to be anxious. Amen.