This Thing Called Hope

Some weeks into last semester, I found myself asking the Lord about hope. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” Proverbs 13:12 points out, and my heart was sick. Too much hope had been crushed, too many ideals and desires and passions broken again and again by the hard reality I saw every day. There were weeks, when the brokenness and death and darkness were too overwhelming, when I would cry out to the Lord, longing for a hope that did not disappoint. What is hope? I wondered. Where does it come from? Why do our spirits need it so desperately? And where is it when every vulgar, hateful and angry insult imaginable is hurled, or when books and pencils begin replacing those words? When students are literally trying to escape out the window because we’re on lockdown for eight hours due to gang-related violence? Where is hope when the police come with metal detectors and drug-sniffing dogs and a place of learning turns into a prison? When there’s blood on the walls because the chaos and defiance are stronger than I am? And perhaps more importantly, why should I even seek it out when the disappointment of its failure is so overpowering, so utterly deflating? What is the point of opening myself to that kind of despair again and again?

I searched the Scriptures, wanting to understand this strange and intangible thing we call hope. I read Romans 5’s claims that somehow, inexplicably, we can “rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” What? Suffering ultimately produces hope? How?? This upside-down, inside-out Kingdom never ceases to take me off guard, challenging me to lower myself in humility and learn to see things from the underside, from the perspective of the One who lowered himself all the way to death. What’s more, Paul goes on to proclaim that “hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” How is this possible when you feel confronted on all sides by all the ways hope is disappointing you?

So I looked up the Greek word for hope, which comes from “elpis”, from the primary word “elpo”. This means “to anticipate, usually with pleasure. It is the expectation of good and that in which one confides or to which he flees for refuge” (www.blueletterbible.org). It is the expectation of good and a place to flee for refuge. What is it about hope that forms refuge?

Then I was drawn back to Romans 15:13: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Of course! Hope has something to do with the Holy Spirit. Hope overflows by the power of the Holy Spirit and is grounded in trust in the Lord. And trust in the Lord is based on His unfailing love. “‘Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you” (Isaiah 54:10). There’s the core: the substance of hope is found in God’s unfailing love.

What’s more, this is how suffering eventually produces hope, because as you learn to persevere, as you experience first-hand the Lord’s incomparable strength at work in you, when you see his grace and his peace and love make the impossible possible, you come to know him in a new and deeper way. It is here, when you know firsthand the faithfulness of His unfailing love, that hope springs new. Every time a dream that has died rises again by the power of Jesus Christ; every time the redemption of God restores a gift that has been stolen; every time the beaten down lift their heads and stand strong in the eternal promise of the Father’s love; every time the broken find their strength renewed by the unmistakable joy of the Lord, hope springs new. When you see first-hand that the enemy can’t win, that his power has been stripped from him, that the greater power of Jesus overshadows him, hope is birthed in you. When you drink from the living waters of the Spirit, from the fountain of life that flows through your soul, renewing and refreshing and you are made new, hope rises. This is the beauty of the Kingdom, of the God who loves us with an unfailing love. Only he can take the refuse of the world and the darkest nights and create new life through this inscrutable thing we call hope.

“The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.” ~Psalm 147:11

I Repent

I heard Derek Webb’s “I Repent” for the first time the other day and it stopped me in my tracks. “I repent,” he begins, “of my pursuit of America’s dream…of living like I deserve anything. Of my house, my fence, my kids, my wife in our suburb where we’re safe and white. I am wrong and of these things I repent.” Talk about cutting to the quick. No bushes to beat around or sugared coatings here. He goes on:

i repent, i repent of parading my high liberty
i repent. i repent of paying for what i get for free
and for the way i believe that i am living right
by trading sins for others that are easier to hide
i am wrong and of these things i repent

i repent for judging by a law that even i can’t keep
of wearing righteousness like a disguise
to see through the planks in my own eyes

i repent, i repent of trading truth for false unity
i repent, i repent of confusing peace and idolatry
by caring more of what they think than what i know of what we need
by domesticating you until you look just like me
i am wrong and of these things i repent

(“I Repent” words and music by Derek Webb. Listen here.)

Derek apparently took a lot of flack for this song, for the entire album (I See Things Upside Down). People would walk out of his concerts, calling him judgmental and questioning his love for the church. Some friends of mine recently began reading and discussing Shane Claiborn’s book The Irresistible Revolution, and some of the initial response seems to be the same: he’s so harsh, so judgmental of the church, of suburban America and her extravagant wealth. Where is the love? When I returned from Mozambique, I encountered the same. I found it incredibly difficult to relate to the American church, to reconcile what I had seen and known there and what I saw here. Difficult to reconcile the poverty with the excess, the pursuit of God with the pursuit of comfort, the wholehearted, untamed faith of Mozambican believers with the safe, easy Christianity of the West. For all our grand statements to the world about faith and morality and the love of Jesus, all I saw were whitewashed tombs. Including my own.

And so I began grappling with my own privilege, my lifestyle, my day to day choices that are only possible because of the exploitation of others. I struggled with big business, corporate America, and the economics of consumption and capitalism. I longed for a Body of Christ who loved people more than their religion and Jesus more than their own doctrine. For an “Evangelical America” who is more interested in knowing their Savior than selling Him to the masses. I hungered and thirsted for the freedom and simplicity of true righteousness, of holiness that is not about standards but about the only One who is Holy.

I started looking for more, for ways to live counter to this culture that I found so overwhelmingly difficult to re-integrate into. And I got called harsh and judgmental. I felt judged for not fitting back into the American church, for asking questions, for being discontent with the typical evangelical American life. I got reminded that God loves the American church and that I needed to love her too. This was true. God does love the American church, and I did need to repent for judging her. But sometimes I wonder, too, if He also weeps for her, for what she’s missing in her embrace of the American Dream. I wonder if in our fear of judging we forget to truly love. My question now is, can we have this discussion apart from judgment?

Because the truth is, God is a God of the poor. The whole of Scripture shows us this core aspect of His character. He is the Advocate of the marginalized, the Lover of the forgotten, the Redeemer of the oppressed. We have to be able to dialogue in love and with humility, without pridefully accusing one another of judgment when we hear something we would rather not. Do we stay in the suburbs because they’re safe and white? Do we love property values more than we love people? Do we shy away from the asking the hard questions and taking a critical look at our comfortable lifestyles because we fear the truth? It’s far easier to dismiss the entire dialogue as too judgmental than to face the challenge of sacrifice. But when we don’t, we miss the heart of the gospel. When we ignore the implications of our lifestyles, we ignore the poor. And when we ignore the poor, we miss the heart of God. We miss the core of who God is and what He cares about. When we take the easy road of not asking, not discussing, not wrestling with the cost of our lives, we miss the opportunity to know Him.

In the end, I would rather be accused of judgment and repent a thousand times over than to miss the heart of God because I was too afraid to enter the dialogue. So I repent. I repent of choosing comfort over relationship, convenience over conservation. Of justifying a powerless faith rather than risk disappointment. I repent of standing by silently while broken systems exploit broken people. Of being more concerned with the value of the dollar than with the impact of my economic choices. I am wrong and of these things I repent.

The Sacrifice of Praise

I was in church one Sunday morning recently, after a long and difficult week that had left me weak, broken, and beaten down, longing for the Lord’s refreshing touch of Life. I came before Him knowing my spirit would be revived with His hope that springs eternal. As I began to worship, praising my great and glorious God, I wept from the pain of it. Not from the pain of the week or of my brokenness, but from the pain of praise. Praising Him literally hurt. As I turned my face upward and gazed into His blazing eyes of Love, it was like I could feel my flesh dying, like a knife was gently slicing away layers of my heart.

There’s a passage in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a book in the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, that offers an image of what I felt that morning. Through a series of events involving an island and hidden treasure, Eustace has turned into a dragon—the result of his own greed and fear. Scared and wondering what to do next, Eustace has this encounter with the ferociously gentle lion Aslan, who begins removing the dragon scales:

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And…it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off…Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone…”

The thing about sacrifice is that it involves death. And death is always painful. I think this is true of the sacrifice of praise that David talks about as well. Praise is a sacrifice when it requires death: death of the self, death of the flesh, death of our independence and self-sufficiency in the face of His greatness. And whether we’re entombed in scales of our own making—the results of our own sin—or in those piled on by others—the results of a fallen world—praise gives God the opportunity to make us tender and new again as He cuts through these hardened layers. Praise in the midst of darkness creates space for Him to move.

It’s a pain that brings perfectly delicious freedom when praise is a sacrifice, when blood is spilled as the flesh dies on the altar of His grace, in the fellowship of His suffering. It’s in those times when praising God is heart-wrenching, to the very core of our souls, that He can peal off our scales, freeing our spirits to see, to know, His surpassing greatness and indelible beauty. It is in those times that He gathers our tears of brokenness and trial and turns them into tears of joy. Yet another expression of the resurrection and redemption of Jesus Christ, He uses our pain poured out in a moment of surrender to sooth and to heal; He washes us with the Light of his Life to make us new once again.

Daily Bread Means Daily

“Give us this day our daily bread.” ~Matthew 6:11

One thing that I am quickly learning through this new job of mine is what it means to depend on the Lord for daily bread, what it is to be totally dependent on Him for strength and nourishment in each new day. I don’t know that I’ve ever been so keenly aware—even in Mozambique—of what it is to need God to give me strength every single day. Not just coming to Him to be refreshed and recharged here and there. Not even just coming to Him every morning to spend time in the Word, in worship, in prayer out of desire for more of Him or desire for deeper relationship. It’s more than that. This kind of daily dependence is borne of necessity, out of the deepest part of my being, where I know that I know that I know that I can’t face the day without Him.

The thing about relying on God for the day’s bread, for each day’s grace, strength, and endurance, is it’s just that: daily. He promises me enough strength for the day and invites me to come to Him with each new day. Taking something as stressful and overwhelming as my job currently is to me one day at a time is more than a figure of speech or a piece of good advice. It is a requirement for survival. Because, like the Israelites had to rely on new manna from Heaven every day and couldn’t save one day’s manna for the next, I can’t store up the strength the Lord gives me today for tomorrow. I can try, but it will be spoiled and full of maggots. Today’s strength won’t be the fresh and nourishing strength that I need tomorrow. It’s enough for today. And I need it all today. Turns out God is about the day by day, about our continuous dependence on Him and Him alone.

This principle of day by day is so often counter-cultural for me. Our culture teaches us to plan for the future, to set goals and work toward them, to have long-term career plans, savings accounts, and Roth IRA’s by the time we reach our mid-twenties. Our culture teaches us to live today in the context of tomorrow. None of those things are bad in and of themselves. They are wise and diligent principles that teach us to be good stewards of the lives, gifts, and resources God has given us. Absolutely. But that worldview is incomplete. It is not borne of complete and utter dependence on our Lord and Savior, on our Source of Life and Strength. In our focus on building well-planned, disciplined lives in (or for) the Kingdom, we so easily miss Him. We miss the deeper truths, greater wisdom, and more valuable riches of living dependent on God alone.

There is an intimacy in the Lord that can only grow out of total, day by day, minute by minute reliance on His life, strength, and provision. There is an intimacy found in the day by day surrender that cannot be found in anything else. It is in that place of desperation, as we cry out to God, knowing that we can’t possibly survive the day without Him, that we encounter our own brokenness and inadequacy—and His healing and grace—most deeply. It’s our daily dependence that breaks us, that opens us, that allows Him to go deeper than He could otherwise. It is also this place of having to trust Him daily that teaches us to trust Him more fully and more deeply than ever before.

Isaiah 58:10 says that “if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry, and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” I’m struck by that phrase, “spend yourselves.” It’s more than just give of yourself. To spend yourself implies that there’s nothing left, that you’re not holding anything back. You’re not saving any part of the strength He’s given you today for tomorrow, just in case. You’re pouring it all out today. That’s huge. It’s overwhelming and risky and scary. Oh, but the promise that follows: Your light will rise in the darkness. And not only that, but the Lord will guide you always. “He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” (Isaiah 58:11). When you spend yourself in behalf of the needy, broken, and hungry; when you give what He gives you in each day, you find in Him the ever-renewing satisfaction of your needs. It’s counter-intuitive. The world’s wisdom would tell us to hold tightly to whatever we have in a high-pressure situation, because we might need it later. But the Lord says, spend it and you will find a strength that does not fail. It is when you pour it out rather than store it up that you discover the everlasting Source, the Living Water that will transform you into a spring that never stops flowing.

Carriers of His Glory

We speak often in Christian circles of glorifying God. We want to live lives that bring glory to God, to glorify Him in all we do. As the Westminster Catechism says and John Piper reminds us, this is the chief end of man: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. This is why we were created and the most foundational purpose of our lives. But what does that really mean? We so easily reduce this idea of glorifying God to a set of guidelines for how we should live, for what doctrine we should hold to. Glorifying God comes to be about a set of beliefs that in some way inform our actions, our politics, our lives. On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with that—except that it masks a much deeper truth, one that is found in our very identities. The thing is, we don’t glorify God primarily because we believe, say, do or don’t do certain things. We glorify God because we are carriers of His glory.

Some song lyrics caught my attention the other day. The song is called “Shine On Us” and the first part of the first verse says:

O Lord we cry out, long for the day
To see your glory radiate

It’s a powerful song that we as a congregation sang passionately, full of hope and vision for the coming glory of God in the earth. But that particular sentence grabbed me. We long for the day when we will see God’s glory radiate, we sang. And it’s true, we do long for that day. We all of us imagine what the world will be like in full revival, or at the return of Christ, when He rules and reigns and His glory spreads unhindered throughout the earth. In all our excited visions of future glory, though, I think we lose sight of the simple fact that we are carriers of God’s glory now. Today. It’s deeper than a set of beliefs and closer than the distant future. It’s who we are.

Colossians 1:19 says, “God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him (in Christ), and through (Jesus) to reconcile to Himself all things.” This fullness of God, this “mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations but is now disclosed to the saints” (that’s us!), is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (vv. 26-27). Christ in you, Christ in me. In this truth is found the glorious riches of the mystery, the very fullness of God (2:2). Wow. Can you feel the depth of it? Can you sense the profound power, the unfathomable nature of this union with Christ? Paul goes on to say in Colossians 2:9 that “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity”—all the fullness of the God of the universe—“lives in bodily form.” Oh, but that’s not all. Actually, that’s only half of it. The rest is this: “and you have been given fullness in Christ” (vs. 10). All of the fullness of the Deity, which dwells in the incarnate God, has been given to us, now that we’re in Christ. It is more than a transformation that takes place when we become Believers. It is that, but it is so much more than that. It’s union with Christ. We have died and are now hidden with Christ in God (3:3). We become new creations because we become one with Him, Who is the glory of God.

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being” (Hebrews 1:3). We become carriers of God’s glory when the Son of God takes up residence in us, reconciling us with the Father, Who crowns us with glory and honor and puts everything under our feet (Hebrews 2:7-8). This is how we shine like stars in the universe as we hold out the word of life (Philippians 2:15-16). We can’t help but radiate God’s glory. Not only does His glory rest on us, since we are crowned with honor and glory, but it is impossible for His glory to depart from us because the very radiance of that glory and the exact representation of His being is in us as we are brought into perfect union with the Son. How can we not be transformed? How can we not transform our cities and nations? We can’t help but carry His Presence everywhere we go, bringing transformation as we go. Not primarily by what we say or do (although how we live will naturally reflect that glory) but simply by being who we are.

So when we sing about the glory of God radiating in our cities and nations, as we cry out for revival, as we seek to glorify God in our lives, we first must know who we are: carriers of His glory. His glory is to radiate in us, because He is radiant in us. Our longing to see Him glorified is fulfilled as we carry his light, demonstrating the power and freedom of the Kingdom of God. We see His glory in each other as He lives and moves and has His being in each of us. It’s Christ in me—Christ in you—the hope of glory.

“Glorify the Lord with me;
let us exalt His name together.
I sought the Lord, and he answered me;
He delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant;
Their faces are never covered with shame.”
~Psalm 34:3-5

That Alluring Old Wine

“And no one pours new wine into old wine-skins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wine-skins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wine-skins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is better.’ ” ~Luke 5:37-39

I was listening to a sermon on this passage Sunday when that last verse caught my attention. After drinking old wine, no one wants the new, for he says ‘The old is better.’ That’s interesting. This verse doesn’t seem to make sense in the context of Jesus’ parable. He’s saying in this passage that the old wine-skins of the world can’t hold the wine he is pouring out on it. His new wine of freedom and redemption can’t be poured into the old wineskin of slavery to the law. The fermentation process would cause the old, brittle wine-skins to crack and eventually break apart. Instead, he needs new wine-skins that are still soft and pliable, that will stretch without cracking, in which to ferment this new wine. I’ve heard teaching on this passage many times—Jesus brings new wine, which we are to desire and pursue. We are to be the new wine-skins he speaks of. But what about that last verse? As if contradicting all that he just explained, Jesus points out that no one, after drinking the old wine, wants the new. They say instead that the old is better. Why?

I think Jesus is commenting on humanity, on the fallen human nature, on the power of sin and the hold that the law has on our lives. He’s pointing out the danger, saying that this is what we tend to do. We have developed a taste for the old wine. In a thousand different ways that don’t necessarily even bring to mind the Levitical code of the Old Testament, we have spent our lives drinking in the nature of the law. We have filled ourselves with the rules of righteous living, with the mindset that we must earn our salvation. We have lived by the principle of comparison that separates us into levels of righteousness or holiness based on our pasts, our sin, our actions. In our striving to be holy or in believing God will reject us, we have believed that we have to earn the right to God’s Presence and grace. We have accepted the condemnation of failure over the redeeming grace of God and bought into the lie that if we show God how disciplined we are in our quiet times, in prayer and fasting, in serving, maybe, somehow, we’ll eventually be good enough. We don’t do it purposefully or even consciously. But we do it very easily. We drink the old wine of the law in the way we emphasize doctrine and fight over denominational divisions, in the way we are suspicious of our differences rather than grateful for our common bond of peace. We have been prideful and self-sufficient, evaluating and trying to control each other rather than trusting our great big sovereign God to work in his own way in each heart and life. Yes, we have—I have—drunk the old wine, drunk in the law, and developed quite a taste for it in the process.

It’s not surprising, then, that when we taste the new wine of God’s abundant, illogical mercy, grace, and freedom—when we see him go against the laws of nature and of the church—our gut reaction is to say, that’s a great story, but I think I’ll stick with my old wine. I’m familiar with it and it tastes good to me. It’s aged, tested, tried and true—and besides, it’s been around longer, so it must be better, right? So much of my life and worldview are based on it that it can’t be wrong. That’s impossible.

Hebrews 10:1 says that the law, that old wine that we so naturally and pointedly prefer, “is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves.” Jesus, in bringing the new wine, brought those realities. His light exposes the shadows of the old wine, rips the veil in two, and makes accessible to us the reality of the incarnate God. His new wine brings freedom and makes new creations. It is the reality of freedom from the law, of grace and forgiveness, of love, joy, hope and deepest peace. It is greater freedom than we have ever known. But freedom is scary. It’s unfamiliar, unpredictable, unstructured, unknown. It’s not safe or orderly or explainable. It is in our fallen human nature to crave safety and structure over freedom, even when that means oppression. Ask the citizens of a nation that has just lost a harsh dictator or that was formerly communist (or better yet, watch the way they live). Look at the history of the church, where each new denomination starts out by somehow breaking the oppressive patterns of established Christendom in search of the simplicity and freedom of the gospel but inevitably, gradually, adds controls, rules, and oppressive traditions of its own. Freedom is scary.

Thankfully, we aren’t bound by that fear or by that penchant for what’s most familiar. As we rely on his transforming power, we’re able to embrace this new wine, to let go of the shadows of our habits and rule-ridden lives, and to take hold of the wild, untamed freedom and love we find in Christ. He will create in us the new wineskin that will stretch with the creation of new wine in our lives. But we are also dependent on him to transform our desires, to make our palates new, to give us a taste for that new wine. Because our natural desire is to return to the old wine of sin, of pride, of the lordship of the law over Christ in our lives. Though we so easily choose the shadow of the law in the ways we live and think, with complete surrender to him and by his grace, he lovingly transforms our tastes, until we desire instead the incredible reality and freedom of Jesus, of Christ in me, the hope of glory.

The Answer to Our Problems

“…I believe the revelation of relationship with the poor is happening to the leadership of (my church).  Revelation is not necessarily something you don’t know intellectually, but something that suddenly you have the grace and passion to truly embrace at a new level…It will change (my church) and Nashville.  I believe the poor are actually the answer to most of our problems, instead of the other way around.  They really are the secret, if we allow ourselves to go there.  If we truly engage our calling to the poor, we will not have to worry about how many people show up to assemblies, how to equip them, connect them or how much they give ever again.”

Bill, the pastor of urban ministry at my church said that recently and it struck a chord in me.  I like the part about revelation, because I think it’s true.  There are so many things that we as believers in the West know intellectually but don’t have the grace and passion to embrace and live out in our daily lives.  We need eyes to see our world the way God sees it, eyes to see our role in changing it.  We need His revelation as he opens our eyes, covers us with grace, and fills us with the passion to live out our faith in the radical ways Jesus demonstrated for us.  What would our churches, our communities, our world look like if we “went there”–if we truly engaged our calling to the poor?  What would my life look like?

the not-so-passive idea of receiving

“Until now, you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” ~John 16:24 (NIV)

When I read this verse, I began thinking about the process of asking for and receiving things from the Lord. I don’t know that I had ever thought about it in depth before. I mean, it’s pretty straight-forward, right? You have need or desire, you ask in Jesus’ name, and then God, in His grace and love and mercy, gives and thus you receive. I always thought of the asking as the active part and the receiving as fairly passive. What’s active about receiving? You simply accept. Doesn’t seem to require much action… Then, I did some research.

The Greek word translated “ask” in this verse is aiteo (Strong’s #154) and means, among other things, “to crave, desire, require.” That is some serious asking! That’s a little more intense than I imagined it to be. What do we crave from the Lord? Those are the desires of our hearts. That is the posture he’s looking for in our asking. And what happens when He delays in giving what we ask? Our desire only increases.

The Greek word translated “receive” in this verse is lambano (Strong’s #2983) and means, among other things, “to take, lay hold of, claim, strive to obtain.” Wow! That’s not passive at all! Turns out there’s quite a bit of action contained in the seemingly inactive state of receiving. Not only are we to crave what we ask of the Lord, but we are to lay hold of it, to strive to obtain it and in our action we receive. Could it be that, with the intensity of our craving at its peak, it is in the reaching out, in the striving after, in the laying hold of what He offers us that we come to understand the value of the gift and the nature of the Giver?

The Greek word translated “joy” in this verse is chara (Strong’s #5479) and means “gladness or the cause or occasion of joy.” It comes from the root word for rejoice (chairo, Strong’s #5463), which means “to rejoice exceedingly, be glad, be well, thrive.”

Finally, the Greek word translated “complete” in this verse is pleroo (Strong’s #4137) and means, among other things, “full, to cause to abound, so that nothing shall be wanting, to render perfect.” To render perfect. Jesus’ promise here is that our joy, our rejoicing, our gladness will be rendered perfect through this process of asking and receiving. Maybe, just maybe, it is the Giver we actually receive. As our desire increases, as the value of His gifts increases in our eyes, we come to know and understand Him, His goodness, His faithfulness. We come to know our God–to know His love, which surpasses knowledge so that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19). Maybe it is in knowing Him that our joy is made complete, rendered perfect.

What powerful promise we find in this little verse when we consider the facets and depth of its meaning! I think I need to read it again:

“Until now, you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask, beg, call for, crave, desire, require and you will lay hold of, take what is your own, make it your own, claim, take and not let go, seize, apprehend, take possession of, catch at, reach after, strive to obtain, collect, gather, receive what is offered, not refuse or reject, receive a person and give him access to yourself (hmm…Jesus?), gain, get, obtain, get back and your joy, gladness, rejoicing will be complete, full, filled to the brim, caused to abound, supplied liberally, filled to the top so that nothing shall be wanting, consummated, rendered perfect, carried through to the end, accomplished, carried out, brought to realization, brought to pass, fulfilled.” ~John 16:24