The blog has been silent for the past few weeks.

It’s not that I’ve been too busy. Though things are busy, that isn’t usually enough to stop me from writing. It’s not that inspiration hasn’t struck. It definitely has. It’s not that I haven’t been writing, either. Just not publicly.

Instead, it has been a helpful time of reflection, re-evaluation and perspective shifting.

It’s a bit hard for me to articulate, but essentially, sharing something with someone or writing something on a blog immediately holds me accountable to live in a consistent manner. Just as “hearers” of the Word are accountable to be “doers” of what they have heard, how much more are “speakers” of the Word accountable to do what they speak or write about?

In short, I’ve realized that in many ways, my life is inconsistent with my writing. I think a lot, and I write a lot as well, but how much of what I have written about have I applied to my life, beyond just thinking about it for a week or so? How much more profitable (and difficult!) would it be to live a godly life rather simply write godly words? I’m the last person to deny the power of godly words – fitly spoken, of course – but not in a way that at all detracts from the value of a godly life. I think I’ve allowed the content of my writing to exceed the content of my life by too great of a margin, and I’ve wanted to take some time to reevaluate things. Integrity is crucial, and far too rare.

Of course, there will always be a measure of disintegrity because Christians are called to speak the truth of the Word of God and we will invariably fall short of its standards, but that is no excuse. The solution is not to speak or write in a way that lowers or downplays the standards of Scripture, but with all our strength to pursue a life that is consistent with it. If I’ve been saying “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” (1 Cor 10:31) and I realize that this isn’t true in my life, I shouldn’t start questioning whether “all” means “all” (at least in this case), but rather pursue the glory of God to the utmost.

So what does it mean to be godly, particularly as a Christian in my context? This question led me to fellow Navigator and my old friend (a friend who doesn’t know who I am) Jerry Bridges. I remembered that part of his book, Respectable Sins, had dealt specifically with the foundational sin of ungodliness.

We tend to think of ungodliness in terms of blatant pagan behavior and wicked deeds. We wouldn’t normally think of the person we seek walking down the street or sitting at a coffee shop enjoying a latte as “ungodly.”

But ungodliness, Bridges points out, is not so much defined by someone’s unrighteous deeds, but by his perspective. An ungodly person is one who lives his life as if God was functionally absent. I realized that in certain ways, I am very ungodly.

As responsibilities piled on in my life, I found myself complaining. “Why am I the one to have to take on responsibilities? Why aren’t other people taking care of this?”

I began to see the things that I had to take care of in my life as obstacles that got in the way of my agenda.

But the problem wasn’t so much the responsibilities that I had assumed. The problem was that I forgot where they came from.

If God is a sovereign God, then even these things that I tend to complain about are purposely given to me from Him. Far from being the obstacles that prevent me from glorifying God, these responsibilities are the specific opportunities that He gives me to do so.

Forgetting God’s purposes in my responsibilities opens up the door for complaint, frustration, and discontent. Remembering His purposes turns everything around to thankfulness for the opportunity to be faithful in service.

I was treating responsibility as an opportunity to complain, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to glorify God.

In the parable of the the ten minas (Luke 19:10-27) the servant who was faithful with his mina was given the responsibility for ten cities as his reward. The unfaithful and lazy servant had his responsibilities taken away as a rebuke.

It occurred to me that complaint about responsibilities is a sure sign of immaturity. In the quest to be a mature man of God, there is no room for complaining, and to my shame I was doing a lot of that in my own heart.

But it can all be traced back to the root of ungodliness. If God is not present behind the responsibilities that come up in my life, then perhaps there is reason to complain. But if a sovereign God who is working for the good of sanctifying His saints is behind the circumstances I face, then there is reason to be thankful that He is using me and giving me the chance to be faithful with much.

A simple shift in perspective (simple, not small) has made all the difference. I feel as if I’ve been revived, and rediscovered the joy that had been missing from the ministry of the church. Ministry is a mercy, and we need to see it as such.

Press on, friends. His commandments are not burdensome. That’s Scripture, not my opinion.

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