Jesus

To the Young Person Wondering How to Live Your Life

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

Dear young person wondering how to live your life,

Now is the time when you have energy and passion. So do the work. Pour out your heart. You won’t regret the castles you build in this phase of life.

Someday your energy will wane, and you’ll have children and mortgages and responsibilities — and all of that is good. But you can build something now that you’ll be proud of later. 

So work hard, in whatever you do, as working for the Lord.

And build your life on Jesus Christ. You’ll never regret laying that foundation. But don’t be afraid to question, to doubt, to seek God in your questions. He will meet you there, purify you, strengthen you.

I heard someone talking about the house they built, a metaphorical house that crumbled in midlife. They listed all the things that house was built on and then asked if it was any wonder the house fell down in the storm? It had been built on the wrong things — the inessential things.

And I thought to myself, Your house doesn’t have to crumble in the storm. Not if you build it on the essential one, Jesus. And allow Him to prune you of the inessentials as you go. 

I look back and am glad I built my life on faith and examined my beliefs and expectations as I went. That purity culture that my husband and I taught so earnestly in the early 2000s? By the 2010s, gone. Those American-centric assumptions? Pulled out of us by preparation for the field and life on the field itself. 

That works-based understanding of sanctification? Dross that was burned away by grief work (with the help of a Christian counselor) in the early 2000s. Beliefs about the equality of men and women in the church? Whittled away by the realities of marriage and life in an international church. Beliefs about how the Holy Spirit works? Slowly expanded as I learned to trust God more.

Now, in my 40s, I look back and am so glad I built my life on something that will last and that I let that Someone prune my belief system as I went. My faith is sturdier and calmer than it was before, but I started in the right place, with the right Person.

It’s not that I haven’t had faith struggles. I have. And that’s the point — we have to keep pressing in. It is through those struggles that faith is strengthened, if we surrender to the process.

The truest, most important thing about you is your soul. Neglect that, and you’ll lose yourself, lose touch with the person God created you to be and still calls you to be. Return to your first love, and you’ll return to yourself — even if you have to evaluate a few beliefs along the way.

When I struggled during re-entry, when I veered away from my foundation, my first love, I also strayed from my true self, my true nature.

Only when I returned to my first love did everything in my life click into place. And I was so glad that I had built that foundation so long ago. It was something sturdy to fall back on, to return to, to rebuild with. 

I’m so glad I committed Scripture to memory and planted hymns in my heart when I was young, when my mind was young and pliable. Truth embedded in the brain will not fail to bear fruit as the calendar years pile up. Your body may feel the wear and tear of more trips around the sun, but your spirit can keep growing stronger. 

So take your young energy and do something meaningful with it. Pour into your community, pour into others, give of yourself. And in the background quietly build your faith. Commit Scripture to memory when you’re young. Carve out time to talk to God. Practice listening to the Spirit. Spend your life on something worthwhile.

You’ll be so glad you did.

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Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and say, “Life is not pleasant anymore.” Remember him before the light of the sun, moon, and stars is dim to your old eyes, and rain clouds continually darken your sky. Remember him before your legs—the guards of your house—start to tremble; and before your shoulders—the strong men—stoop. Remember him before your teeth—your few remaining servants—stop grinding; and before your eyes—the women looking through the windows—see dimly.

Remember him before the door to life’s opportunities is closed and the sound of work fades. Now you rise at the first chirping of the birds, but then all their sounds will grow faint.

Remember him before you become fearful of falling and worry about danger in the streets; before your hair turns white like an almond tree in bloom, and you drag along without energy like a dying grasshopper, and the caperberry no longer inspires sexual desire. Remember him before you near the grave, your everlasting home, when the mourners will weep at your funeral.

Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don’t wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well. For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.

That’s the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty.

Ecclesiastes 12:1-7,13 NLT

Sex, Missions, and Listening to God {book recommendations for you}

/ trotters41 / Leave a comment

by Elizabeth

This spring I read three of the best books I’ve ever read. One in particular I couldn’t stop talking about for weeks – but it wasn’t the sex book! I had to start with that word, though, because I knew it would grab your attention. 

Up first, the best book on missions EVER: The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures by Jayson Georges.

When Christine Paterson of FieldPartner recommended the book and mentioned that it was only $3.99 on Kindle, I figured I’d give it a try. I intuitively knew that American culture held more than just a guilt/innocence worldview and that shame/honor and fear/power comes into our thinking as well, and I was eager to learn the specifics of each worldview.

What I didn’t expect was for the book to so thoroughly rewrite my understanding of culture. I underlined nearly the entire book. At only 80 pages in paperback, there’s no fluff here. Every word seems essential, and every sentence sheds light on world cultures and their differing assumptions and thinking processes. I began to understand shame/honor and fear/power cultures more fully, and I began to see how the Bible beautifully addresses all three cultural concerns (guilt, shame, and fear). 

Once my eyes were opened to this, I even began to see these three concerns addressed in most of our worship songs. In Western cultures we tend to tell the gospel story only through a guilt-innocence lens, and while that’s not wrong, it is incomplete. We look to God for help with our problems regarding fear and shame, but we don’t tend to bring these perspectives into our telling of the Gospel story, and this hinders our spiritual growth. 

Thankfully, we can offer people a more three-dimensional gospel, one that has the power to redeem their day-to-day struggles with fear and shame, whether in our passport culture or a host culture. God knows the human heart and has offered a solution for all our problems in Jesus Christ. 

This book made me fall in love with God all over again.

Next up, the best book I’ve read in a long time about listening to God: How to Walk into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away by Emily P. Freeman

I remember resonating so deeply with Emily’s podcast episode, “How to Walk Out of a Room,” a couple years ago. The episode was mercifully devoid of details so that her principles could apply to all sorts of situations. When I heard she was writing a book based on that episode, I knew I would want to read it.

Emily is a spiritual director and has a master’s degree in spiritual formation, and she has a way of walking with people in discernment that is quiet and calm. She offers a “non-anxious presence,” as they say in spiritual direction circles. (Full disclosure: I’ve been meeting monthly with a spiritual director for about the past year, and it’s been a huge part of drawing my heart back into conversation with God after some dry, lonely years.)

I had a feeling this book would be important, and so I decided not to mark it up but to leave it empty and, in a way, sacred. Instead, I would rewrite meaningful sections in my journal. This helped slow me down and really savor Emily’s words. It helped me process the past, it helped me learn how to make better decisions, and it gave me peace in the decisions I was making. Then one day I looked around and realized I was making decisions much more easily than I had in the past, even small daily decisions, and I had to wonder if this book had something to do with it. 

The thing I love about this book – and that sets it apart from other books purporting to help people recover from restrictive religious environments and explore a more expansive relationship with Christ – is that Emily gives tangible steps people can take to process the past and discern their present and their future. To walk with Emily is to learn together how to listen to God.

And lastly, one of the best books I’ve ever read about sex: The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex: Creating a Marriage That’s Both Holy and Hot by Sheila Wray Gregoire.

This is the book every woman needs to read before she gets married – or after, if things in the bedroom aren’t working, whether she got married a year ago or 30 years ago. Sheila co-wrote The Great Sex Rescue with two other authors, and it’s a great research-based book that helps people untangle their unhealthy and unbiblical beliefs about sex, but The Good Girl’s Guide really gets into practicalities. 

I heard it recommended by a Bible college professor who teaches classes about sexuality, and I wanted to check it out myself. There was an earlier version of the book, but just this year it was revised and expanded, so I read the revised version. This is the book I will give to my daughters when they are engaged or newly married. I still recommend Aanna Greer’s Darling: A Woman’s Guide to Godly Sexuality for those who are quite innocent or naive about sex and their bodies, but Sheila’s book is a necessary follow-up.

Sheila, along with her pediatrician husband, also wrote The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex: Because Good Guys Make the Best Lovers. I haven’t read that one, but I’m assuming it’s good because that same Bible college professor recommended it and because it’s from an author I trust.

I hope these books will help you or someone you love.

Is the primary danger “out there”?

/ trotters41 / 3 Comments

by Jonathan Trotter

Note: this post was inspired by this article by David French.

As a homeschooled-in-the-80s kid, I’m well versed in the terrified cry, “The danger is out there! The danger is out there!” I can remember watching The Village and feeling like M. Night Shyamalan had just made a film about my life. (My parents didn’t yell this too loudly, but we were Gothardites.)

But is the primary threat “out there”? No. It is not.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve received a fraction of the pushback that David French has, but still, I resonated deeply with this:

“I get an enormous amount of criticism for not critiquing the secular left more than I do. Yet if I’m concerned for the health of the church, then corruption at the highest levels of the world’s largest Christian university, sexual predation by arguably Christianity’s most influential apologist, widespread conspiracy theories, and disproportionate disregard for the health and well-being of neighbors do more harm than the worst of Joe Biden’s culture war regulations or the most radical developments in the sexual revolution.”

The whole article is excellent, but here are a few more quotes worth pondering:

“If your reaction is that the greatest threat to human souls or to the church itself comes from without—from the external forces attacking Christianity or from the cultural temptations buffeting our children—then that dictates a very different posture to the world and approach to politics than if you believe the true threats lie within.”

A different posture indeed.

I have seen this fear, this alarm:

“If you believe the most dangerous threats come from without, fear can rise in your heart. As you lose political and cultural power, and you see others shape the environment in which you live, then you start to have genuine alarm that other people are destroying the souls of those you love. What a terrifying idea.”

There is hope, of course.

At the end of the day, the Church remains his, and he still loves her. He still calls her to remember her first love. I want to still love her too. I want to build more than I tear down. I want to heed with every fiber of my being Jesus’ call: “Your business is life, not death. Follow me. Pursue life.” (Matthew 8:22)

I want to love more than I fear.

I haven’t always done this, for sure. But I want to. I want to know Jesus more. I’m a few chapters in to Dane Ortlund’s new book, Gentle and Lowly, and it’s helping. It’s not about The Chosen, but it’s explaining, in theological terms, why the Jesus portrayed in The Chosen is so fascinating and healing and loving. He’s helping me understand why I cry every.single.episode.

Turns out, it’s because the stories are real. Ortlund writes, “Jesus is not trigger-happy. Not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms.” He goes on to say that Jesus’ “deepest impulse, his most natural instinct, is to move toward” sin and suffering, not away from it.

Jesus is really like that.

And that is Good News indeed.

*Contains Amazon affiliate link.

Would You Even Like Jesus?

/ trotters41 / 4 Comments

by Jonathan

Would you even like Jesus?

Would you like him if he came into your church and started yelling about houses of prayer? Or would you call him just another angry man?

Would you like him if he told you to sell even some of your stuff and give the proceeds to the poor? Or would you call him a socialist?

Would you like him if he told you to stop sleeping with people you weren’t married to? Or would you call him a legalist?

What if you realized he wasn’t a Republican?

Or a Democrat?

Or white?

Would you like him if you found him crying by himself on a hillside, talking about a rebellious city? Or would you call him an emotional wreck?

I don’t know, would I even like him?

What about the time he let those guys chop up an innocent man’s roof?

Would you like it if he hadn’t planned ahead and all of a sudden asked you to feed a few thousand people?

What would you think when he dozed off during a life-threatening storm?

He is not as tame as we make him, after all.

Would you like him when he let the prostitute get a little too close? Or would you start to wonder about his dedication to purity?

Would you like him when he befriended your political enemy, visiting his house and sharing a meal? Or would that be a red (or blue) line crossed?

You see, we sanitize and sanctify Jesus, stripping him of context and personality, until he looks (we think) like us.

But he’s not like us. Thank God.

So, would you like him?

What if he showed up in your deepest pain and you saw his eyes, red with mercy and compassion? Would you like him then?

What if you heard him cry, “Forgive them!” And you knew he was talking about you? Would you like him then?

Would you run to him, grasping his sleeve for acceptance and love?

He’d let you.

He’d love you.

He’d heal you.

After all, he liked you first.

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He’s just a…

/ trotters41 / 2 Comments

He’s just a carpenter. A blue-collared day laborer. And he’s the one who builds mountains and stars.

He’s just a carpenter. A townie, a long long ways from cosmopolitan. And he’s the King of kings.

But he’s just a carpenter, uneducated, the son of nobodies. And he’s the dearly loved son of the Father.

The crowds are blind, eyes filled to the brim with scoffing, incredulous. They can’t see beyond their own limiting words.

It is true. He is a carpenter. But he is not just a carpenter. He is so much more.

And by his grace, we are too.

We are not just sinners.
We are not just failures.
We are not just inadequate.

We are loved.
We are saved.
We are sought after and enjoyed by our God.

So when people see us and laugh, saying we’re “just a” whatever, we smile and nod and run to Jesus.

And there we sit among the wood chips, remnants of a Roman cross, and we belly laugh with the Carpenter who saved the world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jesus left that part of the country and returned with his disciples to Nazareth, his hometown. The next Sabbath he began teaching in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. They asked, “Where did he get all this wisdom and the power to perform such miracles?” Then they scoffed, “He’s just a carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. And his sisters live right here among us.” They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him. 
Mark 6:1-3

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