Exegesis that will Rock your World

"I Have Fought the Good Fight"

"For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

-Paul writing his last words to "his beloved son", Timothy

---

If I died today, I wonder what would people would say of my life? I wonder what God would say of my life? For me, I wonder if people would remember me as a nice guy, or someone who was passionate about learning or ideas or books? Or a good beer? A great dealfinder? Financially savvy? Smart?

I think a lot of these are true of me. As I read an older man (Paul) encouraging a younger man (Tim), though, I wonder. You see, as I read it, my Spirit confirms that there's going to be a moment in my life- a moment where the only questions that will matter as I look back on my years on planet earth go something like this:

Brett, have you fought the good fight?
Brett, have you finished the race?
Brett Allen Ripley, have. you. kept. the. faith?


It's that day. My mind wants to think of this day as if it's a concept and not as an exact day on the calendar. But it is. We all have a day. There is a day on the calendar as real and concrete as our birthday where this organ in our chest beats just one more time and then stops. For you, this day could be March 11th or August 14th. Mine could be December 2nd. Though we don't know the date, He does.

It's the day where we look back on the years, the relationships, the lives we've touched, the things that we stood for. It's the day when the mystery of eternity is a door that we will walk through. It's the day when the next appointment on the calendar is with the one who made and orchestrated everything that you ever experienced up to this point. Your appointment is with Jesus. The subject? Your life.

How will you answer the questions?

The day is coming- and you know what? That day makes this day different.

---

Father, there's lots going on down here. There's passions that you've put in me (lots of them). I think these are good- the will in me to learn a bunch and make a bunch of money and all these other things. Let me not squander them and get lost in them as an end in themselves. Help me to use these things as different ways to drive at the prize- Your glory through my life. I have botched this recently. Save me from me, Jesus- I will do what you want me to do and I will give it up for you because it's only on loan anyways. All Glory be to YOUR name and not mine. You are God and I am not. Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Learning to Love

Well, it's official- a few "tough" situations in my life have confirmed exactly what the Lord is doing in my life. I am learning a skill that is foreign to me: love. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I am able to really empathize with people. Not just fake empathy, but actually feel with them.

When I'm honest, I guess I don't know what to think about this. The plus? Well, it's certainly what we're called to (or did you think that "weeping with those who are weeping" were throwaway words). Paul is all over the place emotionally- his heart out in the sea, vulnerable to all the changing currents of the people he loved. Whether making the Corinthians' joy his own (2 Cor. 1:24) or experiencing the unceasing anguish that goes along with loving the Jews (Rom. 9), his heart is "wide open" (2 Cor. 6:11)

You know what, though? This way of life- of tying your joys and sorrows to others around you- it sucks. I'm not kidding. Love, relationships where you tie yourself to someone else? Let me tell you, it costs something. It really does. It distracts at work- it can make you less "efficient". It can take huge amounts of energy. I mean, think about it: you will actually have bad moods that you would not have had without hitching your heart and entering in to that person in your life. The easy way is to detach. To fake empathy, to just stick to what you're going through.

God, it's just so much easier to intellectually understand where people are at and throw some advice at them! It just is! But that only kicks a hurting soul when it's down. What hurting people need is someone who's in it with them. Speaking truth in love (Eph. 4:15).

I've always had friends like this, but I guess I just don't think I ever understood what it costs to love like this. On the other hand, I don't think I really understood the joy that went along with real love either.

I think- through Scripture, and increasingly through experience... that this is the better way. I think all of us at all involved in conservative Christianity would do very well to let these verses hang over everything they think of as progress in the faith.

But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.

1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
...
13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Cor 13

Please don't gloss over the last verse without thinking about what it means practically.

Today, a memory

Today our life is normal. There is a day for many of us, God-willing, when we will look back on days like today as a unique, but passing moment in time. 

In my life, will I will look back on being a 24-year-old single guy as a time of joy and freedom? A time when things were good- or easy? A time when I was young and naive?

The truth is that I can't know. What I do know that there was a time when playing Saturday morning basketball tournaments and trading sports cards were normal. What I do know is that I look back on this little guy as a different person living in a small world. 

Where does that leave me? I think more than anything it leaves me not wanting to miss this- the 24th year of life. The end of the year called 2011. It's staggering to think that both will come just once in this great spectrum we call time. 

Whether your concern is making it count or just making sure it doesn't pass you by like the 3-hour Minneapolis to Pelican, it seems that the answer is the same. 

The only moment we have is this one- it is here. Don't miss it.

Intentional Jars

"So we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us". (2 Cor. 4:7)

Here's the homework:
"this treasure":  "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (from the verse before). I'd sum it up as "faith in the gospel".

"jars of clay": A common metaphor in the ancient world for human weakness

The word that makes all the difference
The first connecting word, "to", makes all the difference in the world. It's not just that we, unfortunately, are weak, and God still manages to do something with us. The verse makes it clear that our frailty is no accident. This is God's means to showing that the power belongs to him.

So, our failing bodies, our roller-coaster emotions, and even our unstable will are NOT merely a side effect that God is willing to work around. Rather, it is the precondition that he does anything at all! Your weakness is the ordained way that God has chosen to get things done.

Why? Because while there may be an infinite number of ways to "get God's stuff done" he is concerned with doing it in a way that makes people say, "What a God" and not "what a guy"...

Brett want to write good

Ok, so I'm trying to write a book. I'm finding that it's a bit like pulling teeth right now. Why is this? While I think that perhaps some of it could be that it's not a subject I'm super-jazzed about, another some of it is simply because I haven't been writing.

So, in an effort to reclaim my "voice" I am picking up both journal and blog after a long dry spell. I want to write again, if only to have an outlet to express some of my thoughts. So, mysterious (non-existent?) reader, buckle up- it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Father, Savior, Friend

While God remains immutable in the heavens, it seems our understanding is quite mutable. 

It is when we have no other friends that the friendship of Jesus appears, sweet and as real as the air we breathe.

It is when our own father fails us that we, feel the embrace and approval of our true Father.

It is when we feel the reality and weight of our own sin that we are embraced and overjoyed- by a Savior.

While we lack nothing materially and relationally, we miss out on the sweetness of, as Tullian Tchvidjian would put it "Jesus + Nothing = Everything".