3 Major Questions

In Dissecting the Heart (28-30), the late biblical counselor David Powlison says there are three questions that people struggle to answer in the realm of psychology and spirituality. In fact, the church tries to answer these questions while the broader culture wages war with its own answers. It’s a war of influence, waged for the affection and trust of every soul.

1. Who is right? Whose view of the human condition—including our motives and grasp of truth—is correct? For instance, are we strictly earth-bound beings with no transcendent destiny, as Western secular culture suggests? Or are we creatures with eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11) who cannot find satisfaction apart from the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (John 7:37)? Is the point of life to “eat, drink, and be merry” as we weather the suffering that comes our way? Or is it to encounter divine change at the heart level, which drastically alters both our longings and how we interpret our suffering? Whose view of human life and reality is right?

2. Who has the right? To whom should we give the opportunity to love and help us? Powlison would ask, “Who’s at the end of the referral lines?” When people have a spiritual or psychological problem, whom do they consult? A secular therapist? A pastor? A counselor somewhere between the two? As a culture, to whom are we pushing people for help when confusion, loss, and turmoil surface? Who should care for souls in need?

3. Who can make it right? Who holds the deepest solution to human problems and truly makes things better? Who possesses the keys of change? Who can do something about the problems we face? Who can make a difference?

These questions get at the source of truth, care, and power. And whether we know it or not, we all have functional answers. Those answers are based on what we treat as most important. That’s where boats come into play.

“Dissecting the Heart is the most insightful biblical critique of a psychologized culture and its influence on the church that you will ever read.” — Paul David Tripp

Order Dissecting the Heart

Ocean Liners and Lifeboats

Following his list of questions, Powlison introduces the concepts of “ocean liners” and “lifeboats” in order to present one of the most incisive critiques of the evangelical church I’ve ever read. I believe it’s a critique just as applicable now as it was at the time it was given (some thirty years ago). The harsh summary of his message is this:

The church has been blind (not seeing people for the complex, heart-driven creatures they are), deaf (unable to truly and lovingly listen to hurting souls or to the Bible’s true message), and dumb (unable to speak biblical truth into concrete situations leading to change).

He unpacks that critique with two images.

Ocean Liners

Ocean liners are the major questions and conflicts we meet as humans. They seem to be the things that life is all about. They sap our mental energy and call for devoted attention.

• Who am I?

• Am I significant?

• What does my life mean? (What is my purpose?)

• How do I find peace?

• How does hope work?

• Why do I deceive myself?

• Why do I defend myself?

• Why do I have so much internal conflict?

• What do I want/love most?

• What experiences am I chasing, and why?

• How do I respond to trauma or deep pain?

For Powlison, these are the questions that psychology and psychotherapy have been obsessed with for the last two centuries. For example, Sigmund Freud dealt with self-deception, self-defense, and sexuality. New Age psychologists deal with human meaning and purpose as self-created.

But these ocean liner questions are what the Bible is fundamentally about. Think of King David and his wild longing for Bathsheba, along with the train wreck that follows. Think of Moses being called to lead an entire nation after committing homicide and fleeing into the desert. Think of the Pharisees standing tall and proud with a brittle veneer of self-elevating righteousness. Think of Job losing family, wealth, and health in a single day and crumbling to the dust like a pile of rocks. Think of Jesus celebrating a wedding at Cana with friends and family, turning water to wine to increase the joy. The Bible is full of stories that get at the deepest human emotions and the rawest relational experiences. Scripture taps the marrow of the human condition. And yet, Powlison says, the church often misses this. And in doing so, it undervalues the Bible, which is the opposite of what it aims to do.

Lifeboats

Lifeboats are questions and issues that we treat as larger than we should. They hold fewer passengers and help fewer people. And yet, Christians tend to focus on them. Such a focus may not necessarily be wrong, but it ignores the ocean liners that most people are living on. Lifeboat issues are significant, but they can be emphasized to such a degree that the deeper issues of human experience get left behind.

• How do I appear to others in terms of my ethics?

• Do I have the “right” theology?

• Do I do enough spiritual/religious activities?

• Am I experiencing a deep, indescribable connection with God?

• Am I in a regular rhythm of “Christian rituals” (attending church, confessing sin, publicly worshiping, receiving communion)?

• What does the Bible say about my behavior?

Notice that with that final question, it’s very different to ask, what does the Bible say about the desires, motives, identity, addiction, and self-deception that drive my behavior? That would be an ocean liner question.

Lifeboats, again, are not worthless. Ethics matter. Theology matters. Spiritual and religious activity matter. And the Bible certainly talks about behavior. But Powlison’s critique is that the church focuses too much on lifeboats and not enough on ocean liners. How so? That’s the thrust of his critique.

The Thrust of Powlison’s Critique

Rather than focusing on ocean liners of human experience, the church focuses on six lifeboats. Powlison expressed each one as an inward-facing judgment (Dissecting the Heart, 34-37). The bolded text below is his. The explanations are my own.

1. We are too external. We think life is all about being good boys and girls. And so we treat Christian faith as a To Do list, rooted in willpower and self-discipline. Incidentally, because all humans are inconsistent, this is likely the reason why many outsiders consider Christians hypocrites.

2. We reduce faith to doctrine. Functionally, we believe that Christianity is mostly about getting our theology “right.” True faith is more about correct doctrine than it is about holistic life transformation. Faith becomes more about reading the right books than living from a renewed heart (with new motives, longings, purposes, and values).

3. We default to religious activity as an end-all solution. We treat all spiritual and emotional problems as having a quick fix, namely, going to church, joining a small group, reading the Bible, and praying. Do these things, we think, and your addiction will disappear. Your marriage will be restored. Your rebellious kids will start listening to you.

4. We are too internal. We notice the superficiality of just trying to be good boys and girls, and so we search for some mystical internal experience to validate our faith. We seek a mountaintop moment or some nebulous sense of “letting go and letting God.” When asked what this actually means, we aren’t sure what to say.

5. We fall into religious ritualism. True faith becomes the habitual life. Where the rituals of church attendance, confession, public worship, and communion thrive, we must be doing well. We must be. Right?

6. We forget that the word of God is about the ocean liner issues. When we have questions about our identity, grief, addiction, anxiety, or deep passion, we don’t go to Scripture, because we think the Bible isn’t about these things. Instead, we listen to a TedTalk or take a personality test or consult a self-help guru. “Scripture,” we think, “is mainly about morals and dogma.”

Putting all these things together, Powlison portrays the problems of the broader evangelical church as a sort of blindness, deafness, and dumbness. (This is my language, not his.)

Blind

First, the church is blind in the sense that it doesn’t see the true heart struggles of people on the ocean liners of life. It doesn’t see their soul-grappling—the deep and sincere questioning, confusion, and passion driving or pulling them. The church focuses mainly on exteriors (moral behavior), doctrine (right belief, theology), and activity when people really need help at a far deeper level: facing stubborn and unexplainable anxiety or depression, loving someone in a seemingly “unsolvable” broken marriage, guiding a child encountering sexuality and identity issues, standing up to addictions that sap life of its vigor and destroy relationships. There are no quick and easy “fixes” to things like this. The depth and complexity of such experiences call for long term care aimed at roots rather than shoots of human life. And we only get at roots by digging.

What might a biblical response to ocean liner issues look like? Hard and long conversations; extensive and prayerful searching of Scripture; unpacking the word of God for this problem, not for “life in general.” For example, Powlison mines Psalm 10 for a better understanding of evil, and then he applies it to the nature of suffering physical or sexual abuse. (See the chapter entitled “Unfixable Suffering: Psalm 10 on Suffering and Our Savior.”)

If the church doesn’t see people on the ocean liners, it can’t help them. In terms of the major questions we looked at, the church might believe it is right on a moral issue, but it won’t have the right to help more specifically, and therefore it will not even have the chance to make it right. To people on the ocean liners, the church will appear out-of-touch and irrelevant.

Deaf

Second, the church is deaf because it isn’t (1) hearing voices from the ocean liners or (2) hearing the word of God as rightly focused on the heart—the sacred insides of humanity. On the first front, when people encounter life-altering situations—addiction, sexual brokenness, grief, crippling anxiety, chronic illness—the church is not truly hearing them in the sense that it devotes time and attention to listening, understanding, and searching Scripture alongside them. The church hears whispers from the lifeboats (e.g., the importance of ethics and doctrine, the role of religious activity and rituals), but not the screams calling attention to the depths of the human condition. Why? It’s hard to say. Perhaps the church feels unequipped to speak into issues such as identity or grief beyond giving general platitudes or fridge-magnet Bible verses. Perhaps true biblical responses to ocean liner issues are inefficient, and we aren’t willing to delve deeply into a relationship that disrupts our routine. Whatever the reason, people with ocean liner issues are not being heard while people on the lifeboats are. And so it’s no surprise that folks on the ocean liners are disenchanted with the church, if not hostile towards it.

On the second front, the church continues to struggle with hearing God’s word as a message to the heart. What does this mean? It means that Scripture does not have the primary focus of helping people “behave better.” Changes in behavior are changes rooted in the heart (Matt. 15:18-19). The Bible is about the pith of humanity, the deepest part of who we are. It is a story written to the depths of living, breathing people within a web of real relationships and messy problems. And so it asks them the deeper questions and points them to Christ: What are you chasing (Matt. 6:24)? Why do you lie to yourself (1 Cor. 3:18)? How do you keeping going after indescribable loss (the book of Job)? Where do we find hope in the face of death (1 Cor. 15)? Christ will answer each of these questions, but with detail that none of us can fathom, and on a timeline we cannot mark out.

Hearing and applying God’s word as a message to human hearts is an invitation to weave the Bible into the narratives of detailed lives for months, years, and decades. It is not a short game. It is not about quick conversion and easy change. Just as hearing from people on ocean liners is inefficient, so is hearing Scripture as a word to the heart. Love has nothing to do with efficiency. It has everything to do with long patience, quiet presence, and a willingness to learn how God’s speech can shape us—even when we don’t want it to. That’s why the Bible can be described as God’s love letter to the church: reading it, and letting it read us, is a lifelong exercise.

Dumb

Third, the church is dumb in the sense that it can’t speak to people stuck in the most painful and difficult places. In such places, Powlison argued that Christians and non-Christians gravitate towards either secular psychology or super-spirituality (so-called “deliverance ministry,” where casting out demons is the answer to besetting sins and unfixable suffering). Why? Because the church seems to have nothing helpful to say. (This gets at the who has the right? and who can make it right? questions). Think about it. What would a common church goer say to the following? “I’m so overwhelmed with anxiety that I can’t even leave my house most days. I’m not eating or sleeping, and my life feels skeletal.” Be candid.

As an anxiety sufferer myself, I once said these words to Christian friends and family. Do you know how most of them responded?

• “But you’re a Christian. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

• “God is in control.”

• “Are you reading your Bible?”

• “Matthew 6 says not to be anxious about anything, so . . .”

• “God says perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18), so . . .”

• “God has a purpose for this.”

There are grains of truth in some of what they said, but on the whole my response as an ocean liner passenger was, “Wow. You really don’t get it, do you?” I was screaming from the deck rails of an ocean liner. They thought a lifeboat solution would do the trick.

The church cannot speak about ocean liner issues unless it is prepared to observe with fixation, listen in love, and mine Scripture for its riches as if life depended on it (because it does). I ended up writing Struck Down but Not Destroyed because I couldn’t find a book that addressed anxiety with first-person awareness, deep biblical wisdom, and raw observation of what anxiety looks and feels like, especially for Christians striving to be faithful in the midst of it. (A second book, Peace in His Presence, is forthcoming with The Daily Grace Company). To do this in a way that shows how Scripture truly speaks to our anxiety took years. But so what? Is there something else worth our time and attention?

Powlison often remarked that it was secular psychologists and therapists who went into ridiculous detail observing human behavior: whether its physiological roots or its social manifestations. Why don’t people in the church study something like “defense mechanisms” with the intensity that Freud did? He went all in. His methodology and conclusions were wrong because he discarded the truth of Scripture, but at least he was thinking deeply about the ocean liner issue (i.e., why do we respond to things defensively?). David Powlison’s article “Does the Shoe Fit?” makes many insightful comments about self-defense in the midst of critiques. Without thinking deeply and biblically about ocean liner issues, the church will remain dumb, unable to speak to people when they find the courage to shout for help.

Blind to the ocean liners; deaf to their passengers and to the word of God; and dumb when it comes to offering deep wisdom and care—that’s how Powlison critiqued the church.

Keep in mind that Powlison was speaking in generalities and trends. We all (I hope) can identify situations where the church has responded well to people asking ocean liner questions. But, in terms of the noticeable and popular responses in the evangelical church, this is where Powlison saw problems.

Responding

What did Powlison propose as a response? True biblical counseling—an ancient practice with modern proponents who are struggling to answer the three major questions with a Bible in hand. Who is right? Who has the right? Who can make it right? Biblical counseling was meant to answer those questions with both depth and clarity. Powlison said in the early 2000s, “Biblical counseling has only been around for a few decades, but it aims to be a thoughtful, loving, consistent worldview, a practical theology dealing with the problems of people’s lives, relationships, emotions, and so on. It’s a horse to bet on” (Dissecting the Heart, 41). But true biblical counseling is still hard to find, and even harder to practice. This is the task before a new generation of Christians. It will take a lot of time, inefficiency, and loving labor with a open Bible.

How Does This Hit You?

I’m curious as to how Powlison’s critique hits readers today, and even former Christians. I have friends and family who have left the church. When I look at Powlison’s critique, it seems eerily accurate. For many of them, the church was blind, deaf, and dumb. It did not see them, could not hear them, and did not speak to them. It may have had every intention of doing the opposite, but it somehow ignored the complexity and depth of ocean liner issues and focused on lifeboats.

If Powlison was right in his critique of the church, then the task of the next generation is to see, hear, and speak in ways that surprise sufferers and skeptics.

• See: Do we truly see what someone is grappling with? If we don’t, we must ask them to show us, to tell us their story. That doesn’t mean their story will be “the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” but it’s a start. We cannot begin by assuming that people are living in lifeboats. Most of them are on the ocean liners of human experience. They are dealing with massive questions about identity, suffering, love, loss, and purpose. We will not see them if we remain fixated on the lifeboats.

• Hear: Hearing other people involves active listening (not just waiting for our turn to speak). And hearing the word of God as a word to the heart means listening for more than “right doctrine.” God wants all of us—the heart, the head, and everything in between. God’s word is about that. When we think it’s about something less, we misread it.

• Speak: Applying biblical truth to personal pain and problems will take a lot of exegetical and prayerful work. Scripture gets into so much more than codes of behavior. It has much more to say to someone battling anxiety than, “Don’t be anxious.” But to truly speak into the lives of people living on ocean liners, we’ve got a lot of work to do. And God has given us his Spirit so that we can do it! Until we delve headlong into Scripture with a problem to work out, we will remain dumb in the presence of those with real pain. And those people will look elsewhere for help.

Learn more about David Powlison’s thought and theology.

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In The Pleasures of God, John Piper draws on a quote from a seventeenth-century writer, Henry Scougal. “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.” What we truly love determines the worth of our soul. It’s a bold (but true) claim. Scougal’s words help us identify what we truly believe in, since love presupposes belief. No one loves what he doesn’t believe in. And what we truly love is what we chase after—not just with our professed theology, but with our passion, hope, joy, marvel, and fixation.

“What,” I wondered, “is an implication of this for the broader evangelical church, especially given the exodus of long-time Christians from biblically orthodox faith?” And here is where I landed: Beware what you believe in. There is a powerful and life-altering difference between believing in God, believing in other people, and believing in the gifts God gives. Many times we confuse these options and end up disenchanted, disgusted, or deflated.

Believing in God

From the perspective of biblically orthodox Christianity, believing in God means at least two things, and hypocrites embrace only the first: (1) submitting to what God has said about himself (i.e., biblical doctrine); and (2) finding our joy, meaning, and purpose in God alone. Belief in the true God is not just a matter of agreement with theological claims; it is a heart-venture. The core of who we are seeks God like a magnet drawn to its opposing pole. We don’t just know about God (doctrine, theology); we yearn for God. We don’t just dabble in doctrine; we “delight” in the Lord (Psalm 37:4). We truly and sincerely want him more than anything else.

What does this look like? J. I. Packer would describe true belief in God as a three-legged stool, which stands on doctrine (biblically rooted belief), experience (a heart that truly seeks God and delights in him), and practice (putting God’s word into action).

Being a Christian is a blend of doctrine, experience, and practice. Head, heart, and legs are all involved. Doctrine and experience without practice would turn me into a knowledgeable spiritual paralytic; experience and practice without doctrine would leave me a restless spiritual sleepwalker. If Christ is to be formed in me, doctrine, experience, and practice must all be there together. (Growing in Christ, 143)

Put differently, a true God-believer:

• (1) knows the basics of what God has said about himself and accepts God’s word as true and trustworthy (doctrine);

• (2) moves beyond knowledge of God to love and delight in him above all earthly goods (experience); and

• (3) implements what God teaches in routine activities of kindness, self-sacrifice, and generosity (practice).

Do you know anyone like that? Of course, no one is perfect; mistakes abound for all true believers. But Packer is describing the overarching, recognizable pattern in a God-believer. And his criteria provide plenty of conviction for an honest heart.

Think about it. We all know people (including ourselves) who “go big” on doctrine and practice but lack experience. How can you tell? We identify people with this problem by discerning the motive for what they are doing. Are they believing and acting out of love and delight in God, or is some other motive propelling them? As David Powlison said, “All of us are motivated people. We’re bombarded with things that attempt to motivate us” (Dissecting the Heart, 5). If you discern the motive, you discern the heart, and that reveal’s a person’s experience with God.

Likewise, we all know people who go all-in on experience and practice but dismiss biblical doctrine as outdated, irrelevant, or offensive. We can identify people with this problem by discerning how separate their beliefs and values are from those of the broader secular culture. If they are virtually identical in their beliefs and values with non-Christians, that’s a sign that biblical doctrine is missing, for biblical doctrine will almost always go against the current of popular opinion. The gospel is an “offense,” after all (1 Cor. 1:23; 1 Pet. 2:8; Rom. 9:33). If your faith is something that everyone else finds amenable, that’s a red flag. I write this as someone who hates conflict and often avoids it like the plague. But it’s nevertheless true.

For a God-believer to accurately represent Jesus Christ, there must be, as Packer said, head, heart, and legs. That’s what a true God-believer looks like, and that’s the first option. I ask again, How many of those do you know?

Believing in Other People

Believing in other people is an attractive second option. It is, in fact, what draws many people to the church in the first place. Unfortunately, it also drives many away. Belief in other people is essentially a belief in community. For many, it is the hope and enjoyment we have in belonging to a fellowship of like-minded others.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the Nicene Creed says, “I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” The church is the community of God’s people. But the sort of belief that the Nicene Creed speaks of is not the sort that endows other people with the power to direct our souls or to give us meaning and purpose. We “believe” in the church as a God-given and God-led institution, which is nevertheless still broken and fighting against the effects of sin—with all its self-centeredness, pride, hypocrisy, and deviancy. We believe in the church only as an imperfect and progressively growing gift that God has given to support our faith in him. To that extent, the church is a necessary part of our spiritual formation and service. Christ is the true head of the church, and of what use is a headless Christian? We love and serve God through the church as the body of Christ.

But we don’t believe in the church for the salvation of our souls. The church is the community of those who believe in God, but it’s God we long for and hope in above all else (remember the experience component in Packer’s model). This can easily slip off our radar. But we’re reminded of it when we see horrific behavior in the church. It’s heartbreaking that we have no shortage of examples. A leadership scandal or character flaw runs rampant, and we say, “Yuck! I don’t believe in that!” Of course we don’t. That’s because we don’t go to church primarily for the people; we go there primarily for God. Though it may sound harsh to contemporary ears, we don’t believe in them; we believe in him. People may be the body, but they are not the head. They are not meant to be objects of our faith.

How do we know if this is a problem for us? Here’s the important test for seeing if we believe in people more than we believe in God: Do the actions of people in the church have the power to destroy your faith? Do the ugly things they do send you away from God? If so, that betrays a belief in people rather than in God himself. People do not save souls; God does. People do not provide you with purpose and meaning; God does. People will always fail and disappoint, but God never will. People will bore us at times; God doesn’t. He’s what John Piper calls “inexhaustibly interesting” (The Pleasures of God, xi). If God is the reason for your going to church, you need never leave. People will come and go; he will stay.

We are part of the church for the glory of God, not for the filling of our relational “holes.” We go to church because God is there, and he’s calling his people together. In that sense, people do play an important role in our faith and spiritual growth. But we don’t go to church because people are there, and we want community. Do you see the difference?

If we go to church for the latter reason, then when people disappoint us, we’ll leave. When sin strikes, our faith will falter. And then we’ll go elsewhere for community. That is part of what lies behind the mass exodus of people from the broader evangelical church. Former Christians sometimes speak of being “disenchanted” with the church. They leave because the sins of others have scarred them too deeply. But, spiritually speaking, could it be that what’s really happened is that they’ve realized the shallowness of their belief not in God but in other people?

If our faith is in other people, then when those people hurt or disappoint us, we will probably leave faith behind. What truly matters to us—community—is something we’ll look for elsewhere.

Believing in the Gifts God Gives

Believing in the gifts God gives is a third option. This is commonly labeled the “health-and-wealth” gospel, but it has many subtler forms. Here’s a quote that recently convicted me.

Saving faith is the cry of a new creature in Christ. And the newness of the new creature is that it has a new taste. What was once distasteful or bland is now craved. Christ himself has become a treasure chest of holy joy. The tree of faith grows only in the heart that craves the supreme gift that Christ died to give: not health, not wealth, not prestige—but God! Test yourself here. There are many professing Christians who delight in God’s gifts but not in God. Would you want to go to heaven if God were not there but only his gifts? (Desiring God, 63).

Yes, test yourself. Are you in love with the good things God has given or with God himself?

Some people might ask a follow-up: “How can I delight in God apart from his gifts? His gifts are all that I know.” That’s a great question. Indeed, our knowledge of God comes only through his gifts, especially the gift of his self-revelation in Scripture, but also through the more concrete gifts that reflect his goodness (e.g., loving relationships, delicious food, passions and purposes we pursue in daily life). But that does not mean God himself has no identity and meaning to us. We delight in God by pursuing the Giver behind the gifts. Who is the Giver? God is the invisible, ever-present Spirit who wants to talk with us, and he wants us to talk with him. He wants nothing less than a whole-souled, living relationship with us that demands back-and-forth, engagement, and conversation. God speaks through his word and through the natural world that reveals him (Psalm 19:1-4; Rom. 1:20). He tells us about himself and what he’s up to, and even in our own hearts. He calls us to speak back in prayer and praise, to lay our hearts bare before him and ask for the help he is so ready to give. My point is, if we don’t speak with God, how can we delight in him? How can we be passionate about someone with whom we do not communicate?

That, in truth, is why Christians should be passionate about daily Bible reading, prayer, and regular worship in the church. The broader culture mocks the idea of Bible reading, prayer, and church attendance. It considers them a waste of time. But for the true God-believer, they are the means of communicating with the Giver behind the gifts. If we don’t routinely hear from God and speak with God, we cannot delight in him. Why? Because we don’t really know him.

The sad part of loving God’s gifts more than God himself is that we are the ones who lose out. God is every human soul’s highest satisfaction. Every one of his gifts pales in comparison to him. “In the end,” Piper wrote, “the heart longs not for any of God’s good gifts but for God himself. To see him and know him and be in his presence is the soul’s final feast. Beyond this, there is no quest. Words fail. We call it pleasure, joy, delight. But these are weak pointers to the unspeakable experience” (Desiring God, 80). Even comparing God to his gifts is a venture in futility. God’s beauty and greatness exceed earthly comparisons. If we believe in God’s gifts rather than in God himself, we are bound to be woefully disappointed and heartbroken.

Beware What You Believe In

If what we truly love measures the worth of our soul, we must be careful of what (or whom) we believe in. Is it God, his people, or his gifts? This goes well beyond stated doctrine or an affirmation of Christian basics. Plenty of people claim to be Christians but have already given their hearts to God’s people or to his gifts. True God-believers find their meaning, hope, joy, purpose, and contentment in him. When we believe in anything else, bad things will follow. When we believe in anything else, our souls diminish.

PRAYER

God of persons, peace, and passion,
We are chasers, seekers, searchers.
You have set yourself in our center,
A magnet lifting us skyward.
You are the one we yearn for.
But we have a thousand eyes
Bent on dimmer lights.
We chase and fight to find,
But we’ve lost our holy sight.
Give us the eyes to see you.
And give us open-handed hearts
So that we might glimpse your glory
And leave all lesser lights behind.

New and Forthcoming

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The more you read, the more you notice. That’s why I love reading so much. Over the last two years, I’ve read the entire corpus of books from David Powlison and J. I. Packer—two brilliant thinkers and spiritual giants. I’ll be sharing many thoughts about what I’ve learned from them in the coming months. Much of my work on Powlison is set out in the forthcoming book, Dissecting the Heart: Secular Psychology, Spiritual Warfare, and True Theology. The book comprises lectures by David Powlison that I’ve introduced and then packed with annotations. It’s a testament of theological passion and love for my friend, who is now in glory. As for my work on Packer, I’ll say more soon, but I’m very excited about it.

There are three themes I’ve found in Powlison’s and Packer’s work that get very little attention in contemporary Christian spirituality. And I’m convinced that this has crippled us. I hope and pray for change. Read on to see why. For each theme, I’m offering a quotation from Powlison or Packer (or both) and a few sentences about why it’s detrimental for us to not think about these things.

3 Neglected Aspects of Contemporary Spirituality

1. Motivation. “Motivation” is our language for what the Bible might call “heart-direction.” It answers the questions, “Why are you doing what you’re doing? What are you chasing after?” Or, as David Powlison would say, “What makes you tick?” For Powlison, what your heart chases after is a question not simply of what you want but of how your heart relates to God. Here’s how he put it:

   Motivational dynamics do not simply operate within or between persons. The human heart has to do with God. So when the Bible describes the desires that obviously play within our souls and rule our lives, it does not portray them as hard-wired psychological or physiological givens: as needs, instincts, drives, longings, wishes. It speaks of them as morally freighted vis-a-vis God, as moral-covenantal choices: we are ruled either by cravings of the flesh or by repentance-faith-obedience to God’s desires. (The Biblical Counseling Movement, 288)

   In simple terms, whatever motivates you to act reveals what you think of God—whether good or bad—and how you’re choosing to live in his presence. This is very practical. For instance, a sugar craving that leads to binge eating isn’t just an example of human behavior. It says something about what your heart ultimately values, what you think will satisfy you. And in this case, it isn’t God. That matters. All of our tiny daily pursuits matter.

   
   Whatever motivates you to act reveals what you think of God—whether good or bad—and how you’re choosing to live in his presence.

   Why is it detrimental for us not to think about this? Because if we’re blind to our motivations, then we’re blind to the roots of our behavior. And without addressing the roots, we won’t change. We’ll be stuck in a behavior loop that promises to satisfy us but never does, because only God can do that. At a basic level, we need to daily ask ourselves, “What am I chasing?” If the answer is anything other than “a deepening relationship with God,” then we need to practice the next item, which might be the most neglected and misunderstood spiritual exercise in our day.

2. Repentance. Repentance—turning your heart in the opposite direction and marching toward change by dependence on the Spirit of God—is a central teaching in both the Old and New Testaments. Many Christians in broader evangelicalism are simply oblivious to this, which is mind-blowing. They talk about Jesus and the cross, about forgiveness of sin, about the resurrection, about the comfort of the Holy Spirit. And praise God for these things! But repentance? That drops out. This is very odd, considering how much Jesus himself focuses on this, in addition to the book of Acts (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; Mark 6:12; Luke 24:45-47; Acts 2:38; 17:30; 20:21; 26:20). Jesus, John the Baptist, Peter, and Paul have a special place in their message for repentance. J. I. Packer wrote,

   Repentance was . . . primary in the preaching of John, of Jesus, of Peter, and of Paul, and Peter’s last words on paper include the description of Jesus as “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). The centrality of repentance in the gospel and purpose of Jesus Christ our Lord is a fact we must face. (Taking God Seriously, 70-71)

   Powlison would write about repentance as Jesus’s “one-liner” at the start of his ministry:

   In his one-liner “Repent,” [Jesus] is capturing something. The words repentance, repent, and turn refer to something far more than a punctiliar moment after a specific transgression. He is speaking about nothing less than the complete metamorphosis of a person’s life, the radical metamorphosis of who we are. I think in our culture—de-natured, urbanized—we tend to lose sight of how radical a metamorphosis is, that a caterpillar of all things becomes a butterfly. And it is that kind of metamorphosis that I want to think about with you: the metanoia, the repentance, the transformation of who we are, a radical change in the fundamental drive of what your life is, of what you are living for, of how you orient yourself to reality. (Dissecting the Heart, 249)

   

   
   “A radical change in the fundamental drive of what your life is”—is that how we think of repentance today, or do we think of it more as “saying I’m sorry”? Of course, repentance involves saying sorry—both to God and to those we’ve hurt. But it is more than this. Repentance “means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God” (Keep in Step with the Spirit, 128). Think about how much more that involves than saying you’re sorry. Repentance is whole-souled movement towards the brilliance of God’s holy and loving nature.

   Repentance is whole-souled movement towards the brilliance of God’s holy and loving nature.

   Why is it detrimental for us not to think about repentance and to make it regular practice? Because if we aren’t in the habit of turning our hearts around, that suggests we aren’t even looking at our hearts in the first place. We’re like guests aboard a cruise ship. We’re happy to be on board, but we aren’t really thinking about the direction or destination. We’re on auto-pilot. That’s a very dangerous place to be. Spiritually speaking, the absence of repentance means the presence of negligence. And negligence never leads to good places. When we aren’t consciously repenting of the harmful motives and behaviors that emerge from us on a daily basis, we’re going to injure ourselves and those around us.

3. Holiness. Linked to repentance is the broader move toward Christ-likeness. Christian faith is a wind blowing us Godward. As we mature in faith, we should begin to drop harmful habits and pick up holy ones. That doesn’t mean perfection, but it does mean change in some sense at the heart level, which makes us God-focused rather than self-focused. This is tied to what it means to truly know God—not just know about him. Powlison writes,

   Whenever you need to change, put the Redeemer in the center of the picture. Whenever others need to change, remember that the Light enlightens and the Holy One sanctifies. God is primarily interested in making us know him. . . . The motive is not self-reformation or success in interpersonal relations. The motive is to know the Lord. Good principles gutted of the Lord—‘deChristified,’ to put it clumsily but precisely—can only function as self-serving. (Seeing with New Eyes, 43, 44)

   
   As we grow in faith, our hearts should be more happily God-oriented. If repentance is the negative side of this (turning away from sin), then holiness is the positive side (moving toward God). Holiness is ultimately about pleasing God. Packer wrote about this with his classic reverent passion. Note that “motivation” is part of his definition of a “holy person”:

   A holy person’s motivating aim, passion, desire, longing, aspiration, goal, and drive is to please God, both by what one does and by what one avoids doing. In other words, one practices good works and cuts out evil ones. . . . Holiness is always the saved sinner’s response of gratitude for grace received. (Rediscovering Holiness, 25-25)

   Packer is describing heart-level response to God’s grace, and that response leads us to cultivate holy practices, all of which are modeled by Jesus Christ. We don’t all have the same amount of work to do in every area. Some of us need to work on patience, contentment, and joy. Others may have more work to do in being generous, humble, and kind. But we all have work to do. Are we doing it? Or are we just too busy being busy? Packer calls this activism, “activity gone to seed through not being grounded on sustained self-distrust and dependence on God” (Keep in Step with the Spirit, 122).

   
   Why is neglecting the daily grind of holiness detrimental to us? For many Christians, the “correct” theology has become a stand-in for moral development. The functional outworking of that error is a person who believes “all the right things” yet is basically undistinguishable from a non-Christian. James (2:14-26) was clear: doctrine without devotion is dead. Devotion means, at the least, giving more conscious attention to the areas in our spiritual lives where we need growth, and then starting to read Scripture and pray for the Spirit’s help in cultivating that growth. It does not happen without intentionality.

Spirituality is an area of ongoing interest to those outside the Christian faith, and so our neglect of these themes—motivation, repentance, and holiness—does more damage to our witness than we realize. If someone can look at your life and not see differences in your motive, a daily practice of repentance when that motive is off, and a continual striving for holiness in specifics aspects of your character, something is deeply wrong. If we find ourselves walking that path, we’re living what David Powlison would say is the life of a “functional atheist.” And that functional atheism is going to do far more damage to the Christian message than can be counteracted with the best theology. In fact, since spirituality is an important part of theology, we might say that many (most?) Christians today are struggling to have much of a practical theology to begin with. They may read Scripture and maintain their church involvement, but there is not a sincere effort to examine their hearts, flee from what destroys the soul, and chase after the God of grace and glory. We all struggle with this. I hope this reminder is a nudge for all of us to revisit these themes in our daily spiritual life.

New and Forthcoming

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Dissecting the Heart brings some of Powlison’s best insights to a new generation that is struggling to deal with its relationship to secular psychology and spiritual formation. For the first time on the printed page, readers get a front-row seat to Powlison’s personal thoughts on secular psychology, the role of counseling in the church, the nature of spiritual warfare, and the function of true theology.

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The burning heart of the Trinity
Is giving gifts we cannot see.

As we age, our capacity for gratitude grows. We begin to see the hand of Providence in every breeze. Where we once saw scarcity we now see abundance. Where deserts roamed now rivers flow . . . because God is a giver. None of us knows why God gives so many gifts. “Love” is the ultimate answer, but that’s still deeply mysterious. At least I am old enough to know that every good thing I have experienced has been an act of reception, not an accomplishment. In all of that reception as a writer, I’ve learned many things I think readers would benefit from.

I have written or been the editor for almost 30 books since 2018. Some have gone through traditional publishers; others have been independent. I’ve seen the book publishing world from the outside and the inside. I’ve been around the block enough times to know what difficulties many writers face. And I want to give readers a small window into that exciting but challenging world.

Why? Well, aside from wanting to inform people of what goes on inside a writer’s world, I think it’s good for readers to know how they can help and pray for writers (trust me; we need prayer). As an avid reader, I do my best to help the authors I’ve read over the years—spreading the word about their work, writing notes of encouragement, asking how I can pray for them. That whole experience has been a blessing to me and (I think) to them. It has shown me that one of the main blessings of being a writer is learning not just how to give your words to others, but to lift up those who may be trying to give their words to you.

Let me set out five of the biggest challenges book authors confront today. Other writers would add to or subtract from this list based on their own experience. I invite that sort of interaction. The more we communicate, the better positioned we are to meet our challenges faithfully. My aim in doing this is to welcome readers into the community of writers, for writers would be workless without readers to serve.

5 Challenges

So, what are five things that readers might not know about the book writing and publishing ecosystem? For each item, I’ll suggest how readers can help.

1. Writing a book is hard. That’s obvious but, depending on the author, “hard” can apply to different facets of writing and publishing, but I’ll just mention two. First, “hard” can apply to writing itself. For me, writing a book is easy and invigorating. It energizes me. It’s the thrill of discovery and the search for words that give me wings. But for other writers, putting a book together is painstaking; it enervates them, like a maple tree tapped too long for sap. Second, “hard” can apply to the effort that goes into having the book make an impact. It is hard simply to get a book noticed in today’s market. Did you know that there are around 200,000 new books published every month? For some of us, publishing a book feels a bit like throwing a prized penny in a fountain the size of a Walmart. Will anyone see it? Will it help even a handful of readers? Remember that the vast majority of authors are not on bestseller lists or drawing thousands of Amazon reviews. Those are the exceptions, the situations authors dream of. In today’s world, it is hard to release a book that has a broad impact. And yet “impact” is often one of the main metrics authors and publishers measure to determine “success” (more on that below).

   How can readers help? First, pray for the authors you know and love. They are under more pressure and strain than you realize. Their hearts are full of hopes that may never be realized and aspirations that may never materialize. (That’s okay, since most of us love the craft anyway.) Pray that their hearts would trust the God who gives good gifts, amidst a loud and chaotic world of information and entertainment. Second, support them by ordering (and even pre-ordering) their books. When I buy a book, I may even get two copies—one for me and one to give to a friend. Third, for any book you read, write a concise and candid review that can be posted on Amazon of Goodreads or Barnes & Noble. It’s hard to overstate how powerful customer reviews are in the contemporary world—both for books and for products at large. Many purchasers make decisions solely based on the number and quality of reviews they see. Writing a review of an author’s book is a gift. Speaking of which, if you’ve read Our Hope Is in Help, consider leaving a concise review to let others know what you think. For Amazon, all you have to do is scroll down the product page and click a button (“Write a customer review”).

   

   It takes less than five minutes and makes a huge difference—trust me. Leaving an author a review is one of the biggest compliments you can give them.

   

   Leave a Review for Our Hope Is in Help

2. Writing a book can be lonely. This might be one of the most under-appreciated truths in the writing world. Writers live large swaths of life inside their own head. Sometimes we spend months reading and studying before we even get to writing. That’s a lot of internal processing! I experienced that recently with a new David Powlison book I edited and annotated, coming out with Westminster Seminary Press. It took me over a year to read most of David Powlison’s other books and listen to a number of lectures. It was an amazing learning experience, of course, and hugely formative. But it also meant I spent a lot of time by myself. It felt a bit like traversing miles and miles of open country on my own. I get back from a year-long journey like that, and it seems impossible to communicate where I’ve been and how I’ve grown. As a writer, you realize there’s a distance between yourself and others, which you now have to bridge by speaking. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to find listeners.

   

   Preorder

   How can readers help? Again, pray for the authors you know. Pray that they would find and maintain friendships with those who can direct and encourage them. Second, if you’ve read something they’ve written, send them a note. I can’t tell you how uplifting it’s been to receive a kind note or email from a reader when I least expect it. It’s a reminder that words are always working, even when we’re blind to it.

3. For book writers, comparison is easy and dangerous. Social media is designed to breed envy. Do you know what sort of content I see on social media as a writer? Other writers doing amazing things. There’s always an indirect draw to compare yourself to them. “Wow—look at his book! That cover is fantastic.” “She won that award? That’s . . . amazing.” “I can’t believe his book sold that many copies.” Comparison is easy and dangerous. Writers have many opportunities to do it everyday, and the danger that lurks behind it is a heart-corrupting egoism and a blindness to God’s grace. The only ones writers should compare themselves to are their yesterday-selves. Are we growing? Are we learning how to serve readers better? Sadly, we live in a world where comparison and competitiveness (especially in a capitalist society) run rampant. It’s a scary environment in which to write a book.

   How can readers help? First, pray for the spiritual health of the authors you read and their commitment to Christ and his kingdom. Pray that they would be protected from comparisons and egoism. The Spirit can and does do that protective work in many of us, thank God. I don’t dare to think of where I’d be spiritually without the prayers of those who know and love me. Second, encourage people to read broadly. We all have our favorite authors, but I often tell people that I refuse to decide on “my favorite book/author.” Why? Because God’s kingdom is diverse, and it is beautiful because it is diverse. Read many authors. Find new ones. Expand your horizons. One fun way to do this is to ask the authors you enjoy whom they like to read. Every writer is happy to talk about the books he or she is reading. Here are some of my favorite writers:

   George MacDonald

   J.R.R. Tolkien

   C.S. Lewis

   Andrew Peterson

   Vern S. Poythress

   G.K. Chesterton

   Madeleine L'Engle

   David Powlison

4. “Success” is hard to define for authors. What does it mean for a book to “succeed”? How you answer that question determines a lot. Some authors focus on book sales and reach (and publishers need to focus on that to some degree). Success, in that case, can be represented with numbers. Others focus on how readers use their book. The number is less important than the quality of engagement. In other words, some writers just want to know their book is changing the world in some small way. How a writer defines success determines how a book launch will go—for better or worse.

   How can readers help? Readers can help by asking the authors they read what “success” means to them for a given book. That may sound strange (just imagine writing the email), but I’ve always enjoyed thinking through that question as a writer. “What would it mean for this book to ‘succeed’?” If nothing else, that question reveals any lingering vanity inside me! But it also reminds me that the purpose for which I write is deeply personal and rooted in the triune God of Scripture. “Success” for any book I write really means, “This book has pushed someone closer to Christ.” Or, “This book has helped people get excited to commune with God as they read the Bible.” If I start to define success primarily by any other means, I’m going astray. Readers can remind writers why they’re doing what they’re doing.

5. Writers depend a lot on others. Ask any author. We depend so much on other people—whether that’s our families, or editors, or our mentors. I don’t know if I ever would have begun publishing articles and books if I hadn’t been recommended to some publications by Carl Trueman, my church history professor at the time. He didn’t have to do that. And that kindness opened doors for me to write more articles, and then to write books. Friends and mentors such as Vern Poythress and Tim Challies have also been great encouragers for me. Where would I be without their kindness and prayer? But depending a lot on others can sometimes make a writer feel like a burden. I still struggle with this, especially in a family context. My wife has to juggle a lot, and adding her husband’s book writing (and a book launch) into the mix is never easy. I often tell her that I couldn’t write any of the books I write without her quiet and steady support. Even my kids bear some of the burden in hearing me talk about what I’m writing.
   In my case, asking for endorsements with my non-fiction books is always uncomfortable. “Hey, uh . . . would you mind reading these two hundred pages and saying something complimentary about them? But, no pressure.” Most endorsers I’ve asked have been very gracious, even when saying “no” to doing an endorsement. But the asking always feels a bit like laying a burden on someone else’s back.
   What I’m saying is that writing a book is never a solo effort. It demands much from other people besides the author.

   How can readers help? Pray for the families of authors, who are (sometimes unknowingly) making sacrifices so that their spouse or father or mother can work on a book. Pray for the friends and encouragers who may meet authors with unlooked for grace.

Writing books is one of my favorite things. But the challenges that come with it are real and persistent. One of the themes in this article is the call for prayer. That really is a foundational help for writers. Pray for wordsmiths. They need all the help they can get. Praying for them will lead, in unseen ways, to their giving more gifts to readers.

And to those readers who have been an encouragement and friend to writers such as myself, THANK YOU. Your camaraderie is deeply cherished. Keep fighting the good fight with us.

New Media

TWR UK Radio Interview: Why We Need Help

The Daily Grace Company Blog Post: “Beware the Good Times”

A World Gone Mental: A Christian Response to the Mental Health Crisis

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“The hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live” (Eccl. 9:3)

Madness. Insanity. We hear these words in different contexts, though not as often as we once did. The terms are derogatory now. And yet what they signify is very much with us. Madness is either “a state of severe mental illness” or “behavior that is very foolish or dangerous.” But the question for us isn’t just what madness is but what causes it.

There are three common approaches: body, mind, and heart.

• Is madness a problem of the body—hormones and internal systems gone wild?

• Is it a problem of the mind—psychological breakdown of some sort?

• Is it a problem of the heart—the roots and shoots of sin and evil or disordered desires?

Of course, things are more complicated than a three-category approach suggests. For any given situation, all three dynamics are likely in play. But since I’m a Christian theologian, I focus on what Scripture teaches about the heart. Solomon wrote that madness is a heart issue. And the biblical counselor David Powlison (1949–2019) would say that our hearts are “unsearchably insane.” What does this mean, and why does it matter? Answering those questions brings out the legacy of David Powlison and points the church forward in its discussions of mental health and counseling.

For Christians, our sanity will always be found in God as he teaches us to dissect our own hearts with Scripture. I’ll show you how to do that in a moment. Let me first set out what David Powlison meant with his language, why it matters, and how we take up the practice of dissecting our hearts.

Insane Hearts

David Powlison’s language has a way of cutting through the fog of confusion. He deals in fresh vision. Most of us are used to hearing “insane” attached to mental activity, so I was struck by his frequent references to “hearts” being insane. Here’s a sampling:

• “The madness in our hearts generates warped spectra. But God sees all things in bright, clear light—and this God is the straightener of crooked thoughts. He makes madmen sane.” (Seeing with New Eyes, 10)

• “The only sanity is to know Him-who-is. Anything else perpetuates our insanity.” (Speaking Truth in Love, 169)

• “The core insanity of the human heart is that we violate the first great commandment. We will love anything, except God, unless our madness is checked by grace.” (The Biblical Counseling Movement, 290)

• “The God of the universe calls us to love him with utter devotion. When I forget my Shepherd, I orient my life around another god and love some good gift more than the Giver. . . . I am commanded to the sanity of love, and it lays my heart bare.” (Good & Angry, 164)

• “In Christ, in order to sin, you must relapse into temporary insanity, into forgetfulness. It is your worst cancer, your most crippling disability, your most treacherous enemy, your deepest distress.” (God’s Grace in Your Suffering, 80)

• “Hearts may be unsearchable and insane, but the word of God reveals the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb. 4:12–13).” (The Pastor as Counselor, 33–34)

Sanity, for Powlison, is a matter of the heart. It’s a matter of knowing and loving God as he reveals himself in Scripture. When the thoughts or desires of our heart violate God’s will, we are insane. When we chase after something more than we chase after God, we are insane. When we love anything as ultimate beside the Father, Son, and Spirit, we are insane. When we refuse to let the piercing word of God examine and reveal our motives, we are insane. In order to be sane, we need grace, forgiveness, love, and renewed heart orientation from the one who sets all things in their perfect place. Sanity is a matter of divine-human relationship. To be sane is to be right with God.

That does not discredit or dissolve the concept of insanity when it comes to physiology (hormones and chemical imbalances, brain development) or psychology. But it does reveal something widely overlooked in discussions of mental health: God matters. In fact, he doesn’t just matter; he’s central. He is, as Powlison would say, the sun around which the planet of our life turns.

From this perspective, insanity is a far more pervasive problem than even the bleakest mental health statistics suggest (and statistics are pretty bleak right now). A top-notch businessman with a stable job, loving family, and solid “mental wellbeing” could very easily be insane. That insanity could show itself in his lustful or ambitious thoughts, in his disordered loves, in professional pride or egoism, in the treatment of his spouse as a means for self-satisfaction. Heart insanity is expertly camouflaged and knows no boundaries. It’s invisible on the surface but pervasive to the pith, growing out of diseased hearts like black mold on forgotten fruit. On the outside, a majority of people appear sane. On the inside, people fall under Solomon’s judgement: madness is in our hearts (Eccl. 9:3). We are unsearchably insane until and unless Christ calls us out of ourselves and grants us a new heart. And even then, the insanity of sin tugs us down. Only grace can give wings.

How To Dissect Your Heart

So, how do we respond when our hearts are insane? We dissect them. David Powlison drew on Scripture to present a way forward, and it’s a great path for the church to continue investigating as it gets deeper into discussions of mental health. We might set out heart dissection in three steps: check your motive, repent, and believe. Doing this repeatedly by reading Scripture is what keeps us sane.

1. Check Your Motive

Start with motive: Why do you do what you do? We fail to see how momentous that question is. Jesus told his disciples, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21). Our hearts always have a treasure, and that treasure is our motive—the thing prodding us to act. Motive is central to all human behavior. And it comes to the surface when we ask a simple question: Why? Powlison wrote, “The question WHY? launches a thousand theories of human nature. Why do people do what they do? An ‘answer’ to this question anchors each analysis of human personality, and every attempt to fix what ails the human race” (“X-Ray Questions,” 2).

We can summarize Scripture’s teaching by saying that our motives go in one of three directions: towards God, self, or idols.

Our love for God and for our neighbor is the highest and holiest motive for any thought, word, or action. God’s Spirit is the only one who can foster those motives inside us, hence the beauty of God’s promise in the book of Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26). With a Spirit-given heart, we can yearn for holy things.

But we constantly wage war against what Scripture calls “the flesh.” As Powlison put it, “The inwardness of motivation is captured by the inordinate and proud ‘desires of the flesh’ (1 John 2:16), our inertial self-centeredness, the wants, hopes, fears, expectations, ‘needs’ that crowd our hearts.” Desires of the flesh push us to love ourselves as the center of the universe. Many (maybe even most) of our motives are self-centered.

And then we can be motivated to serve idols, though few of us would use that language. An idol is anything other than God that is made ultimate. It is anything other than God about which we say, “If I can’t have that, then I won’t be happy. Without that, life cannot be good.” Powlison points out that desires of the flesh (self) and idolatry are actually part of a single thread of teaching in Scripture:

If “idolatry” is the characteristic and summary Old Testament word for our drift from God, then “desires” (epithumiai) is the characteristic and summary New Testament word for the same drift. Both are shorthand for the problem of human beings. The New Testament language of problematic “desires” is a dramatic expansion of the tenth commandment, which forbids coveting (epithumia). The tenth commandment is also a command that internalizes the problem of sin, making sin “psychodynamic.” It lays bare the grasping and demanding nature of the human heart, as Paul powerfully describes it in Romans 7. Interestingly (and unsurprisingly) the New Testament merges the concept of idolatry and the concept of inordinate, life-ruling desires. Idolatry becomes a problem of the heart, a metaphor for human lust, craving, yearning, and greedy demand.

A motive to serve self or to serve idols may be one and the same.

Those three directions for our motives set the foundation for our behavior. They reveal why we do what we do. So, how do we respond when it’s clear that we are motivated by self or idols? The Bible calls us to do something very simple: turn around.

2. Repent

Once it’s clear that our motive is not loving God or loving our neighbor, we have entered the realm of heart insanity. We begin living like those who despise God and reject him. We become darkened, foolish, and bound to futility (Rom. 1:21–22). What next?

Jesus’s keynote address in his ministry was simple: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). Repent. Turn around. Change course. Point the hull of your heart in the opposite direction, unfurl the sail of dependence, and beg the Spirit for wind. Whatever direction you’re facing with your selfish or idolatrous motive, do a 180. If you’re self-centered, ask God to be others-centered. If you’re full of lust, ask God to fill you with holy satisfaction. If you’re angry and bitter, ask the Spirit to open your eyes to the joy of forgiveness and gratitude. With Scripture as your guide, find the right direction for your heart, the Godward direction. And then ask the Spirit to turn your shoulders.

3. Believe

Faith is the final step, and it’s easy to miss. Many of us can be candid about our sinful motives, and we can ask God to help us repent. But believing that the Spirit of God will actually work—that’s a different matter. In the modern West, we are schooled in skepticism. We think doubt is a virtue. Herman Bavinck reflected on this in his classic The Certainty of Faith. Talking about his own time at the beginning of the twentieth century, he wrote, “A lust for doubt became the soul-sickness of our age, dragging a string of moral woes and miseries along with it” (The Certainty of Faith, 2). That’s our age, too. Our lust for doubt has become a soul-sickness that keeps us from believing in the invisible work and wonder of God. And yet Jesus was clear: “whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). This is true, of course, not for any wild request, but for those requests clearly aligned with the promised work of the Spirit, so that we might all love God and others with “a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5). Faith, once again, is tied to love for God, which is what it means to be biblically sane.

Dissecting our hearts takes on this three-part activity as we fix our eyes on God’s word: checking our motive, repenting, and believing.

Case Study: Dissecting My Heart

What does this look like in real life? Here’s an example at the most rudimentary level. Watch how heart dissection pulls apart even the most common experiences.

I made a new kind of coffee this morning. I didn’t like it. It tasted artificial and flat. So, I was thinking about grinding another bag of beans and having a cup of good coffee. The problem of bad coffee can be solved by drinking more coffee, right?. Let’s dissect my heart. We can use Isaiah 44:9, “All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit.”

Step 1. My motive was not enjoying the goodness of God through my coffee, which is what we’re meant to do with any earthly gift. It was to get a caffeine fix so I could plod through some writing and “feel better” while I’m at it. My motive was essentially self-serving (desires of the flesh). Or, you could think of it as quietly worshiping the caffeine idol. After all, I’m acting as if my morning won’t be “good” unless I have that. The idolatry comes to the fore with my proposed solution: drink more coffee to get a more pleasant caffeine fix. God’s word dissects my motive. The idol of caffeine (which is what I’m delighting in) will “not profit.” It won’t ultimately help me, despite any short term payoff. Idols always overpromise and underdeliver. Chasing caffeine, when left unchecked, is going to lead me to shame (Isa. 44:10–11).

Step 2. Before I went ahead to grind more coffee, God’s word revealed that my motive was off. So, I needed to repent, to turn around. What would it look like to be motivated to write for God, rather than to satisfy personal feelings? Well, it certainly wouldn’t look like making more coffee to get a better caffeine high (inward satisfaction). Instead, my motive should be facing outward; I should be others-focused. I don’t need more coffee to do that. I just need my heart redirected. So I pray quickly, “God, I’m sorry. My heart is in the wrong place. Would you move it?”

Step 3. Then I need to commit to believing that God’s going to answer that prayer. He’s going to work. His Spirit is going to grab my heart’s rudder and redirect me so that my motive and passion come from serving God and others.

Within fifteen minutes, I’m working on my writing without the nagging desire for coffee. Who cares that the coffee wasn’t good? Isn’t that what makes a good cup of coffee more enjoyable? And maybe tomorrow morning, I’ll actually look for God through my coffee cup, instead of having an opaque desire for caffeine. Remember that we are meant to see through the gifts we experience to the God who gives them. True gifts are always transparent, giving us vision of God’s character and faithfulness. He is the only one who truly profits us (Isa. 44:9), and he does that by giving us himself.

I know this example seems trite. But it shows that dissecting your heart works at any level—from having a disordered love of coffee, to slandering a friend behind his back, to confronting anger with a family member. Heart dissection is a daily (even hourly) practice that reveals our greatest treasure. Because our hearts are wayward, we’ll have many times throughout a single day to practice this. And if we keep it simple, it’s doable: check your motive, repent, and believe.

Conclusion: Heart Sanity

Dissecting our hearts leads to sanity. But central to that will be our ongoing embrace of God’s help, of our constant need for him. “Sanity has a deep awareness,” Powlison wrote. “I need help. I can’t do life right on my own. Someone outside of me must intervene. The sanity of honest humility finds mercy, life, peace, and strength” (Take Heart, 29). Dissecting our hearts and finding sanity is thus a practice of dependence. The more fully and consistently we depend on God to shape and guide our hearts, the closer to him we will grow.

Dissecting the Heart is a new book by David Powlison from Westminster Seminary Press. In this ground-breaking work, author and theologian Pierce Taylor Hibbs presents thirteen of Powlison’s most penetrating lectures given between the 1980s and early 2000s. The result is a one-stop introduction to Powlison’s thought and theology, with all of the psychological and theological background filled in for readers with content footnotes. Patently biblical, pastorally sensitive, and wonderfully engaging, this is David Powlison at his best, talking to his students, and to the church, with a heart for biblical wisdom and Christ-centered hope.

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I was on the Westminster Podcast last week with Brandon Smith, talking about Our Hope Is in Help. We get into what autonomy is and how we combat it with God’s Word.

I wrote this edition of Westminster’s Point of Contact, a print publication sent straight to your mailbox. You can order a copy for FREE here. It gets into what lies behind popular mental health language (a la David Powlison) and why Christ is the beautiful and engaging response to mental ailment of all stripes.

Giving and Receiving Help Is Revolutionary

Do you find it hard to ask for help? For many of us, asking for help feels like shrinking. We cringe at the thought of needing someone else. The “ideal,” we assume, is to be strong enough to make our own way in the world. Independence and self-sufficiency are guarded values in modern Western cultures. In that context, asking for help seems a bit revolutionary.

But it turns out that independence and self-sufficiency aren’t values highly praised in Scripture. And that’s because God is constantly referenced as the only independent and self-sufficient being. And that means asking for help is woven into the fabric of created reality. Help is a God-ordained gift, not an impediment to strength or stability. Help says, “I cannot do all things by myself. I need others.”

My latest book with is called Our Hope Is in Help. It’s the biblical story of how God has always offered us help through his word, even though we reject it. Rejecting God’s help is an exercise in what theologians call autonomy (the will to govern ourselves). Part of the book explores how autonomy works, and the other part gets into the goodness of receiving God’s word-given help.

One application of the book is the goodness of asking for help from others. We might cringe to do it, but the Spirit loves to see it. He is, of course, our Helper (John 14:16), and he often provides help by working through other people.

I want to show you one reason why asking for help from others is a very good thing. It’s what I call the “Up-Down Dynamic.”

When we give someone else help, we “go down.” We sacrifice our self-will in order to support someone else. This going down is good, since it images the servant heart of Christ. When we receive help, we also “go down” in the sense that we admit our limitation and our need for others. But what we often miss is that this sends someone else “up.” It gives them the blessing of being able to lift someone else higher.

I’ve been struck in recent years by hearing from constant givers how blessed they are to give, to offer help based on the gifts God has given them. We may not feel blessed to ask for help (not wanting to “burden” someone else), but others certainly feel blessed to give it. So, not asking for help deprives another image bearer of God from taking joy in giving themselves to others.

What can you ask for help with this week? Are you a mom who would love your spouse to take over dinner responsibilities one night? Are you injured and require some help to do routine housework? Are you “basically good” in many ways but see an opportunity where asking for help might actually bless someone else, even if this isn’t strictly necessary?

Ask for help. It is good to do so, not just “okay.” In asking for help, you are giving another image bearer of God the chance to bless you. Going down for you means going up for someone else. It affirms the truth of Jesus’s words: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

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According to the Bible, we can be blind and have 20/20 vision. Jesus made the point when confronting the Pharisees (Matt. 15:10–14; 23:16–19), calling them “blind” multiple times. His use of that word pulls back the curtain on our own hearts. Blindness, for him, comes down to how we see ourselves in relation to God and his word. The Pharisees had heart-induced vision problems. And so do we. Thankfully, Scripture shows us both why our vision gets blocked and how we can see clearly again.

Let’s move from identifying blindness to then recognizing it in ourselves and responding to it by dependence on God’s Spirit.

Identifying Spiritual Blindness

For starters, what did Jesus mean when he called the Pharisees “blind”? Of course, physically, they could see. And even in matters of spiritual and ethical importance, they were capable of having “clear vision” as students of the law of Moses. They knew what was true, loving, and just. The Pharisees weren’t spiritually disabled. So, why would Jesus call them “blind”?

Enter the heart, with its willingness or unwillingness to bow before the truth. The Pharisees had hardened hearts. They refused to see something—the true purpose of the law of God (Matt. 15:10–12); and the way holiness works (23:17). They willfully choose spiritual blindness. More importantly, they chose blindness to Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment of all Old Testament messianic prophecies. That’s why Jesus pronounces woe on them. They chose to be spiritually blind to God’s truth and ethically blind to the evil of rejecting God’s word as fulfilled in Christ.

And we do the same. For both the Pharisees and for us, blindness is a matter of the heart.

Recognizing Blindness

How do we recognize this spiritual blindness in our own lives? At the center of the Pharisees’ blindness and our own is a refusal to depend on God, a rejection of divine help. Why were the Pharisees offended? Because Jesus told them they had gotten the law wrong. They needed help. But they wouldn’t admit that. They sang an ancient song in their hearts, which we sing too.

I’m fine on my own—no divine assistance.
Heart set like a stone, hardened in resistance.

Throughout Scripture, people reject the help of God’s word to guide and direct them. They try to go their own way (what theologians call “autonomy”). That is what causes blindness.

We can recognize our own blindness only when the Spirit reveals how we have been living contrary to God’s word. And the Spirit often does that work by letting Scripture prick our conscience.

Responding to Blindness: Pray, Read, Lean

How can we respond to blindness once the Spirit pricks our conscience? One approach is to follow the model: pray, read, and lean. I’ll use Psalm 131 in relation to my battles with anxiety.

1 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
3 O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.

Psalm 131 points to the peace of God-dependence, which I need as I deal with adrenaline surges, lack of sleep, restlessness, and racing thoughts. These symptoms are often tied to me doing something new—novelty is a nightmare. But they also surface when I attempt to chase after things without asking for God’s guidance, such as when I set aspirational goals as a writer. In the words of the psalm, I “occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me” (Ps. 131:1). I chase after what God has not given me in this season of life or work.

To “calm and quiet my soul, like a weaned child with its mother” (v. 2), the Spirit directs my gaze to Christ. The all-powerful, all-knowing Son of God—the only one who could pursue majestic and mighty deeds—did not occupy himself with things too great or too marvelous for him. He followed his Father’s will for each season. That’s all.

In the Spirit of Christ, I can pause and shift the questions I’m asking: from “What do I want to do?” to “What does God want to do in me?” The latter question is less glamorous but far more nourishing and peace-giving. Then I pray, read, and lean.

1. Pray. No one can unblind himself. God is the one who opens eyes. The biggest barrier to clear spiritual or ethical sight is egoism. We refuse to ask for help out of stubbornness and pride, which J. I. Packer called “the taproot of our fallen nature” (Knowing God, 213). He also said, “We can never distrust ourselves too much” (Knowing God, 304). Bowing low and distrusting ourselves take concrete form in the simple request: “God, please help me.” Under the direction of Psalm 131, I pray, “God, show me where I’m occupying myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. Show me where I’m stretching beyond my God-given means, chasing glory instead of cherishing what you want for me.”

2. Read. The answer to our prayer will not come in a “still, small voice.” It will come in the clarity of God’s governing speech in Scripture. Once we ask for help, we go to the place God has given it, with the divine person who can help us understand it (John 14:16, 26).

We often reach for a self-help book or a podcast when we need spiritual or ethical discernment. Such resources can be great blessings. But nothing replaces the living and active word of God. It’s the rejection of that word, in fact, that leads to blindness in the first place. In the Bible, sound is what brings sight; verbal revelation pierces spiritual ignorance and rebellion.

Psalm 131 again shows the way forward. What does David call his listeners to do? One simple thing: “hope in the Lord.” It is ridiculously easy to hope in anything but the Lord: our own experience, the “wisdom” of friends, changing circumstances, the tides of politics and economics. We hope in a heap of ruinous things bound to the temporary and disconnected from the eternal. But in his calmed and quieted heart, David hopes in the Lord, the endless and ever-loving Sovereign. Prayer may come again at this stage: “God, show me how to hope in you and not in my own abilities or experience. Surprise me with the joy of your fellowship. Uncover the fractures of all my lesser hopes.”

3. Lean. Praying and reading Scripture soften our hearts to the body of Christ. Spirit-led prayer and Bible reading are like ants climbing around peony buds, drawing them open in the sunlight. We need work from outside us to expose what’s within us. Others in the body of Christ have different vantage points. Our vision, even when it’s not hindered by sin, is still limited. That limited vision is a creational gift. It requires us to go to our brother or sister in Christ and say, “Hey, I’m having trouble. This is what I’m seeing, according to Scripture. What do you see?” Their response will show us things about ourselves and the situation that we couldn’t predict. It’s a beautiful thing to find true vision in community. That’s how the church works.

In the end, our spiritual blindness is a problem of independence, a problem of autonomy. In striving to be independent, we cripple ourselves. Like the Pharisees, we become blind guides, unwilling to see what God has revealed about his work in the world and his standards for good and evil. But as the Spirit guides us to pray, read, and lean, we hope in the Lord to restore our sight. May we find vision from the True Vine (John 15:1), who continues pruning us until we see him clearly.

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Well, today is the day! Our Hope Is in Help officially launches into a world bent on independence and self-sufficiency. I’m thrilled that I can finally share this with you! To get a taste, you can listen to the first chapter by clicking the button below.

Listen to the Introduction

What’s the Book about?

The book is about how we have been created to need help. And God has always provided that help by communicating with us. God’s words give us divine help.

When we reject that help, we try to be autonomous, or self-sufficient. Since this is at the heart of human sin, I take a large part of the book to examine what it is and how it works, especially in the lives of Abraham, Moses, and David. Then I look at Christ’s response to autonomy and the ongoing work of the Spirit as our Helper. Each chapter ends with a prayer and discussion questions—perfect for small group study.

Here’s one of the kind endorsements I received from Tim Challies:

... God created us not to be radically autonomous but to be trustingly dependent—dependent upon him and the grace he loves to grant to us. If you are as prone to self-reliance as I am, if you have such a deep hunger for autonomy and such trouble trusting, you will benefit from reading this book. — Tim Challies

How Can You Help?

Most people don’t realize how hard it is to launch a book these days. There are so

many good books out there! And yet God has many more messages to relay through his people. So, as a writer, I continue to write and publish to the best of my ability. There are really three critical ways readers can support me in this.

1. Buy a copy of the book. You can pick up a copy from Christian Focus, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.

2. Write a concise, candid review on Amazon.

3. Tell someone else about the book.

Those three things will go a long way in getting the book into the hands of those who need to read it.

I’ll be sharing some podcast interviews on the book soon, so stay tuned! Thank you, as always, for reading the words God gives to me. As I used to tell my students when I taught writing, reading is an act of love. So, THANK YOU.

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Where Is Your Heart?

Some questions feel trite, and so we don’t ask them. “Where is your heart?” might sound like one of those, but it isn’t. It’s a question that unpacks the direction for your entire life. You just don’t see all the implications because your heart is hidden. And yet hidden things can be some of the most potent.

Asking where your heart is uncovers the engine churning behind your behavior. Why do you do what you do, say what you say, and think what you think? The answer is your heart’s location. But what does that really mean?

Heart (Hebrew, lebab, or kilyah, “kidneys”; Greek, cardia) is the Bible’s language for your innermost workings. These include thoughts, desires, passions, ambitions, longings—what the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck called “all of our rational and volitional life” (Wonderful Works of God, 3). Think of your heart as an unseen engine, constantly moving, rotating, expanding, contracting.

Because the heart is always moving, we are called to question it. We interrogate our unseen insides. “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?” (Ps. 42:5) The psalmist wants to know what lies beneath his visible grief and turmoil? What is going on with the roots of his self?

The Gravitational Pull

The question “Where is your heart?” does something similar. It asks, with solar system imagery, what sun we are rotating around.

David Powlison once said,

The Bible at every point is viewing people not with an essentially passive heart, an empty self, a needy self waiting to be filled or not filled; the Bible essentially portrays people as having active hearts, as worshipers. As people, we love something, we trust something, we seek something, we fear something, and we lay our hearts down before something. There’s some sun around which the planet of our lives turns. — Dissecting the Heart

Our hearts always orbit around “some sun.” We feel drawn to worship, love, trust, chase, fear, or praise someone or something. This is how we are made. We are orbiters.

In the simplest terms, our hearts can orbit around God or something else. That’s part of Paul’s message in Romans 1:22-23. Orbiting around God means putting the things of God first: personal love and worship of him, followed and expressed by self-sacrificing love for family, friends, and even strangers (Matt. 22:34-40). Self-giving love for God and others—that’s what it means to have a God-orbiting life.

But that’s not often how we live, is it? Our hearts orbit around many things, as reflected by our thoughts, worries, and longings. Here are some of the most prevalent.

• health (physical and mental)

• family turmoil

• personal satisfaction

• economic collapse/financial insecurity

• career/job frustrations or goals

• political corruption/dysfunction

None of these things is wrong to think about or plan for, of course. In fact, we can show our love for God by dealing biblically with these other facets of life. But it can be very easy to let our hearts slip into orbit around them, to give a majority of our waking hours to them. And when that happens, we’re called to repent, to turn around, to halt the orbit.

There is only one Sun around which we’re meant to turn. Where is your heart these days?

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A Spider Thread of Hope

I have many “favorite quotes” from David Powlison. His concrete imagery locks onto your imagination and leads you forward. But this little paragraph was especially moving and brought me to tears. So I won’t keep it to myself.

The line of the seed of the woman is a very thin line—a spider thread. It’s a spider thread trying to hang on while a torrent of the seed of the serpent rushes through—a world in darkness raging. Even when God rescues Noah as a righteous man, it turns out that the majority of Noah’s sons are not part of the line of light; it’s such a thin line. And there are times during the kingdom of Israel where even the last heir to David almost gets killed. The line was hanging by a thread. In the Old Testament, you get a picture of history where darkness reigns. The nations, the Gentiles, are under the power of the evil one. There’s just a thin little thread of light running through history. That’s all.

Then Jesus Christ comes, and the light explodes.

— David Powlison, Dissecting the Heart

A spider thread of hope. That’s what God works with. We often nod at metaphors and then move on, but don’t let this one slip past. Extend it.

Since the inception of the human race, there was hope in glory, in faithfulness, in communion with God. It all rested on a divine word. Would we listen and follow, or turn away in treason? That hope was a spider thread: light, airy, a gift from God to his people. But we gave it up at the garden. We went our own way. Why didn’t divine scissors snip the thread? Why did God speak again when we deserved silence?

The thread of hope would pass through Eve’s womb. Her line, God said, would crush the head of the one who wanted our hope-thread snipped: Satan.

The thread held up through many horrors: the first murder, where blood spoke from the soil (Gen. 4:10). And the murders multiplied . . . lights of God’s image bearers put out through Lamech, who bragged about his own death-dealing vengeance. The disease of sin spread like fire through dry leaves, until God said of all men, “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). Why did God not cut the thread then, when all was black and bitter?

Noah, God said, was a righteous man. He carried on the thread of hope in his sons. But not long after the world was saved from water, Noah drank himself into a stupor, which led to his son Ham being cursed. The curse was great, since Ham would become the father of the Canaanites, whose debauchery, violence, and filicide grew so ugly that they would be wiped out of the land by their brethren. The line of Noah almost fell away entirely. Only one of his sons would take the thread from their father and walk forward, passing it along to Abraham—who tried to pawn off his wife to save his own skin, twice—to Isaac, to Jacob—who stole his brother’s birthright and inheritance before raising a family of twelve sons with four warring wives. Again, why did God not cut the thread?

And then we come to David, a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14), whose adultery and murderous instigation somehow don’t sever the thread of hope. And yet at one point the last heir of David, Solomon, almost gets killed (1 Kgs. 1:12) by his brother Adonijah, who tries to steal the throne.

What is all of this? This wild narrative of hopeless hopefuls? It’s so bleak. “There’s just a thin little thread of light running through history,” Powlison says. “That’s all.”

A spider thread of hope. A thin little thread of light.

Christ Comes

“Then Christ comes, and the light explodes.” Imagine that little silken thread, sagging in the haze and gloom of death and faithless ruin . . . illumined only by grace, almost breaking and fading into nothing.

But then, with the cry of an infant in the Bethlehem dark, photons burst from the fibers. The spider thread widens and expands, taking over everything. It becomes a sun, an aura of holy life, “the light of the world” (John 8:12).

And then you see it: the spider thread of hope, all along, was held together by the Son of God. He is the thread. The only hope we ever had was in divine rescue and divine promise. The thin little thread of light was not just helping us hold on; it was bearing us up. Nothing, in the end, could have broken the thread because no one can challenge the Son, not even death itself. The thread always holds because the Son always stays.

Powlison always had a way with words. I keep many of those words in my memory. But these words, in particular, have altered my spirit so that I can never look at a spider web the same way again.

The spider thread of hope, so dim in the Old Testament, explodes in Jesus Christ. And that light will never be extinguished.

Be careful how you look at spider threads. They seem so weak, so easy to toss into the wind. And yet it was a spider thread that led us through the darkest of days into the breaking dawn of Jesus.

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As a book nerd, I love asking and answering the age old question: “What’s your favorite book?” Christians inevitably respond with, “Well, besides the Bible . . .” I get that response and have used it myself. But it’s become clearer lately why it’s better not to lump the Bible into the “book” category. The Bible is more than a book. And when we understand how, it can change what happens when we read it.

‍Living and Active

There is a health trend of people drinking ocean plankton. One product claims to offer people raw marine phytoplankton in a concentrated form. It’s essentially micro-algae—microscopic, photosynthetic organisms found in freshwater and marine environments. The idea is that you put something living inside your body to improve and maintain your health. The same principle applies to “active cultures” in probiotic yogurt, kefir, cheese, and other fermented foods. In that scenario, it’s live bacteria that improves your gut health. What’s living and active does something inside you while you’re not even aware of it.

Scripture is a living and active organism that gets inside of us and works.

It’s striking that the writer of Hebrews describes God’s word this way: “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). I’ve been steeping myself in the lectures of David Powlison lately as I finish editing and annotating a collection of his lectures (Dissecting the Heart), and here’s what he says about this passage: “What is the word of God like? First, it is alive. It is living because God himself is speaking it. Second, it is active. It’s effective. It’s doing something. It’s at work. What does it do? Well, it cuts. It’s sharper than a sword, piercing, laying things bare.” Living. Active. Working. Cutting. Exposing. That’s the word of God. It’s on a whole other level from ocean plankton, and it’s on a whole other level from every human book, too. We might even say that the word of God is “unparalleled spiritual ocean plankton.” I don’t think that phrase will be trending any time soon, but it gets at the point: Scripture is a living and active organism that gets inside of us and works.

Why It Matters

But is this anything more than a fascinating image? It is. Let me illustrate with Psalm 26, which is a psalm I’ve had a hard time getting into. Look at just the first three verses:

¹ Vindicate me, O Lord,
for I have walked in my integrity,
and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering.
‍² Prove me, O Lord, and try me;
test my heart and my mind.
‍³ For your steadfast love is before my eyes,
and I walk in your faithfulness.

‍At first, I think, “I don’t need any vindication. David was being chased by his enemies. I’m not really chased by anything except my own egoism and sinful longings.” But I set that aside.

I like this whole “prove me and test my heart” bit . . . for David. And for Christ, since all of Scripture is about him. Jesus, unlike me, was proved and tested constantly, and he always turned up pure. I’m so thankful for that—that I am hidden in him. But I guess I should think about what would happen if I made that request of God: “Prove me and try me; test my heart and my mind.” The plankton of God’s word starts to work. And I don’t like what drifts to the surface: vain professional ambition, egoism, lust, materialism, one-upmanship, distraction, gluttony for caffeine, for sugar, for pretty much anything. “My God,” I say to myself. “I am not David, pleading in a holy fear before you. And I am certainly not Christ, always tried and true and blindingly bright. I really need help.” I am being pursued not only by my besetting sins, but by a lion who is treading the grass outside my window and waiting to devour me (1 Pet. 5:8). It turns out I do need vindication from an enemy. I’m closer to David than I thought.

I pause to pray. I needed to voice what was in my heart and mind. But I wouldn’t have without the living and active word working inside me, calling me to confession. The active word activates repentance.

Verse 3 is hard to process, given what I just confessed. But now I’m more aware of Christ and his life-giving Spirit than I was before. On my own, my heart wanders like a vagrant, looking for people and places to plunder. But in Christ, in him, my sins are covered: past, present, and future. It’s because of him that God’s steadfast love is before my eyes.

And then it hits me: apart from God’s love in Christ, I’m blind. The goodness and steadfastness of God that I see is a gift of perception from God’s own Spirit, extended through the Son. God’s love is before my eyes because Christ is before my eyes. Right now. I don’t see him, but I’m seeing through him. He is the answer to the hymn “Be Thou My Vision.” I had no idea that the Son of God was before my very eyes. The plankton is swarming, first bringing confession and then bringing holy joy and spiritual sight.

“I walk in your faithfulness” now takes on new meaning. David tried (and failed) to walk in faithfulness. Christ did it perfectly. And me? I’m walking inside him. “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:14). “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). I put him on. I wrap myself in Jesus. I am blanketed by a divine person. I walk in his faithfulness. “God,” I say aloud, “this is so much better than pretending I’m okay on my own.”

I’m only three verses into the psalm, but the living and active word has already moved, cut, worked, and exposed. But, thank God, it has also healed and encouraged. Books do not do this, even if they inspire us or bring us joy or enrapture us in taletelling. Scripture is different. It is more than a book.

‍What Next?

All of this changes how we read the Bible each day. We often read other books for information or entertainment. They enhance our perspective or develop our thinking. That’s all well and good. But Scripture does something different. When we open the Bible, we are about to consume unparalleled spiritual ocean plankton. Something living and active is going to enter us. What will it do? How will it cut? Where will it mend?

Think about flipping around a question for your devotions. Instead of saying, “What passage will I read this morning?” we can ask, “What passage will read me?” Reading the word of God is always a confrontation, always a cutting, always a project of active engagement—not because of what we do with it but because of what it is. The word of God is living and active. Always. Even when we’re unaware of the movement, it’s happening. Just as micro-algae and bacteria work inside us without our knowing, God’s word affects our insides, often taking us by surprise. It lays us bare before the piercing vision of God. But it does not leave us there. By the Spirit, the word cuts, but it also mends.

The next time someone asks you what your favorite book is, don’t put the Bible in that category. And if someone asks you why you didn’t, you can tell them: “The Bible is not a book. It’s unparalleled spiritual ocean plankton.” They may look at you funny, but it will give you the chance to explain how the word has been working inside you.

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Also, scroll down to see the new book cover and pre-order page for a project that has been a long time coming. If you like David Powlison, you don’t want to miss this!

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Generosity Crowns the King

Generosity has many faces: large-scale philanthropy, small-scale giving, bestowing time and patience on others. But there is one central ingredient to biblical generosity: selflessness. Paul tells the Ephesians, “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2). Christ gave all of himself in the ultimate act of divine generosity.

The image I get in my mind for this sort of self-giving is an open field. Open fields have a special power and meaning to me. They are like altars, offering all of themselves to the hands that might work them. They hold nothing back. They keep nothing for themselves. They are simply open.

That is how Christ gave himself to us. There was no remainder, nothing left over. In fact, in the tradition of Old Testament sacrifices, nothing was permitted to be left over til the morning. Whatever parts of a sacrifice or offering were not consumed by people needed to be burned up. So, when Paul refers to Christ as a “fragrant offering and sacrifice to God,” that idea is there. Christ did not spare some part of himself for later use. He gave himself, his whole heart.

Our acts of generosity, if they are to be pure, must have that “whole-heart” component. We must give ourselves without having the act tainted by ulterior motives. We give ourselves—our money, time, attention, skill set, listening ear—wholly for the good of the recipient, and wholly for the cause of Christ in that person’s life. We expect nothing in return. Could those who offered sacrifices expect a return from the offered animal? Of course not. So when Christ offered himself in the ultimate act of generosity, he expected no return, nothing to credit his own character.

This doesn’t mean we must give ourselves to others (or to charitable organizations or missions) without any sort of restriction. But it does mean our heart in the act of giving should be pure. And that means we can say the following: “I want the best for you with this gift regardless of my involvement.” Many times, we give gifts with the hope or expectation that we now share in the life path or direction of the gift recipient. They are “in our debt.” But that reflects a heart with ulterior motives, and thus shows that the generosity was not truly biblical, not really Christ-like. To give after the image of Christ, we must have a heart fully devoted to the Christ-anchored good of another.

This is why Christ is our model for generosity. He was so full of love for us that he held nothing back. There was no remainder after his self-giving. He loves us that deeply. And no one on earth or in history can claim the same. Generosity crowns the King because he gives all of himself for love.

In your own giving this week, consider the motives of your heart. Are you giving with some interest in yourself? Are you holding something back in your gift? Pray and ask the Spirit to show you. Then repent and give with a clean heart.

Dissecting the Heart

A One-Stop Introduction to David Powlison’s Thought and Theology

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About the Book

David Powlison (1949–2019) was one of the most insightful biblical counselors of the last 100 years. Training in psychology at Harvard and at Penn in the history of science, Powlison immersed himself in Reformed theology and went on to help define the biblical counseling movement until his passing in 2019. In this ground-breaking book, author and theologian Pierce Taylor Hibbs presents thirteen of Powlison’s most penetrating lectures given between the 1980s and early 2000s. The result is a one-stop introduction to Powlison’s thought and theology, with all of the psychological and theological background filled in for readers with content footnotes.

Dissecting the Heart brings some of Powlison’s best insights to a new generation that is struggling to deal with its relationship to secular psychology and spiritual formation. For the first time on the printed page, readers get a front-row seat to Powlison’s personal thoughts on secular psychology, the role of counseling in the church, the nature of spiritual warfare, and the function of true theology. Patently biblical, pastorally sensitive, and wonderfully engaging, this is David Powlison at his best, talking to his students, and to the church, with a heart for biblical wisdom and Christ-centered hope.

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I’ve been busy writing! Allow me to pass along the following articles and announcements.

• I’m now regularly writing for my friends at The Daily Grace Company. Here’s my latest article on Christ as a our home.

• I’ve recently committed to doing regular writing for Greystone Theological Institute, at the kind invitation of my friend, Mark Garcia. I’ll send those along as they’re published.

• A Wrinkle in Time is cited often in the final season of the hit show Stranger Things. What might this mean? Here’s an article that explains some of it. (For a basic introduction to the “theology” of Stranger Things, click here.)

• I’ve signed 2(!) book contracts with The Daily Grace Company, both of which focus on applying God’s presence to various facets of life.

• Pre-orders for Our Hope Is in Help are now available!

Finding God in “And”

How do you join two things? You find some way to relate them. A link. A thread. A bond. Two things once separate can be joined. That is the magic of “and.” It’s also the magic of the divine-human relationship, if you have the eyes to see it.

“And” is a coordinating conjunction used to relate two or more things of similar type or structure. It’s a three-letter thread. It can relate things you’d never think of putting together.

• fire and water

• sky and sea

• hope and doubt

• joy and fear

• God and man

God has always had a conjunction to join us. We didn’t come up with it. We couldn’t. Apart from him, we can do nothing. He was the one who volunteered to relate himself to us. Though the relationship seems natural or even necessary to some of us, it’s impossible to imagine fully. God is a qualitatively different type of being. He’s not just a comparative: stronger, wiser, smarter, kinder. He is on a completely different level; he is on his own continent as Creator . . .

And he has chosen to relate himself to us, to not leave us on our own, to be with us. Perfect transcendence and beautiful immanence.

“And” is always an invitation to relationship. Each time we speak the word, we join things. And that joining is a spark testifying to the star of Christ, who unites us to God by faith. Without “and,” we would still be lost in ourselves. Without God’s conjunction, there would be no communion.

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The show Stranger Things ended recently. It was an epic five-season battle against evil breaking into the small town of Hawkins, Indiana. As happens with all good stories when the ending arrives, there’s a deep and mysterious sense of longing that burns beneath our surface. It’s the soul’s plea for continuance. And that feeling is anything but arbitrary. It taps into something that makes us human—that draws our humanity from the loud and lit present into the dim and dreamy future. Continuance is the call of all great stories because continuance is the lone prayer of every heart: to keep going.

One of the finest endings I’ve ever read is from C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle:

All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

The story continues. Words walk forward. The narrative marches ahead into some hazy but beautiful cloud of hope. And that haunts us.

It’s similar with the ending to The Lord of the Rings:

And Rose drew him in, and sat him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap. He drew in a deep breath. “Well, I’m back,” he said.

Back from years of travel. Back with a mountain of memories. But back to a new life, another path winding into the countryside. And Frodo, of course, took another pass across the sea. His life kept drumming beyond the clouds and water.

And what about the ending to Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, a book referenced throughout the fifth season of Stranger Things:

But they never learned what it was that Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which had to do, for there was a gust of wind, and they were gone.

Gone. The angelic guides of Meg Murry were off to help another. And Meg, as the series continues, walks forward to more adventures through time. That’s continuance.

Perhaps one more: The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson, as the characters fly to a mysterious well in the woods.

“They say the water does amazing things,” Artham said as he lifted Sara and situated her behind Leeli. “They say it heals—and maybe even more. I’ve wanted to taste it for a long time.”
“It’s worth a try,” Kalmar said. “Either way, it’s going to make a great story.” Kalmar mounted the other dragon and held out his hand to his mother. “Are you coming?”

Yes . . . are you?

Wondering Forward

Continuance is what makes a story worth starting and finishing. But that doesn’t mean all stories end in resolution. Part of continuance is the residual longing for a consummated resolution. With Stranger Things, we wonder what really happened to Eleven, and we long to know how the lives of the other characters play out. With Lewis, we want a peek at the next chapter, just one, so we might fully trust the miracle. With The Lord of the Rings, we want to know how Frodo fairs across the sea, and what life Sam is coming back to. For A Wrinkle in Time, we never learn what Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which had to do. And for The Wingfeather Saga, we are left with the promise of the ancient well, with water that might do miraculous things, even raising the dead.

These instances of continuance, of further beckoning, are powerful because the God-given pith of every person says, “More. More. More.” No story seems worthy if we are perfectly satisfied with its ending. The absence of satisfaction is the presence of pursuit, and we are built to chase, fashioned for a finality we never quite grasp.

The Door

The real beauty in this is that the story of our own lives mirrors continuance. Lewis, in fact, used the image of a door to convey it. In The Weight of Glory, he writes,

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

The most potent stories remind us that we’re on the wrong side of the door. We are close to a threshold that leads elsewhere, but we cannot turn the handle. Somehow, someway, it must be turned from the other side. We cannot open the door ourselves. Another must open it to us. Grace must turn the handle. There is no other way.

Our lives are veined with longings for continuance, like leaves run through with sunlight. But that means we are also bent and waiting, watching the handle, hoping for grace to open what we cannot enter on our own.

‍For a story on the power of doors, check out The White Door.

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“We are a shadow and a shining.”
— George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul

What are you made of? There are the material things—oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium, and a list of minerals. You are a collection of symbiotic substances. Touch a human, and you touch water, proteins, and DNA. That, some people say, is what you are made of.

But then there are the immaterial things, the things that really matter to you—moments, memories, imaginings, longings, dreams. An entire world of interlocking one-of-a-kind intangibles. What would your life mean without all of that? Aren’t these intangibles what set you apart from all other people? So, others say, that is what you are made of.

The truth is that we are both material and immaterial, body and soul. But the material and immaterial ofs go before us and beyond us. George MacDonald wrote, “We are a shadow and a shining.” A shadow, because we stand in the light path of Another; a shining, because we emit the light we catch. We are made of a far brighter light, a Father of light (James 1:17). That doesn’t mean we’re divine; it just means we bear an irremovable resemblance to God, in more ways than can be counted.

God is the foundation for all created things. He is the only pure original. There is nothing before him, nothing outside him, nothing beneath him. He is the source of every of, the home of all things good, green, and gold.

In our daily language, the word of is often a road sign that points back. That’s why it fits so well in genealogies.

“the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”
— Luke 3:37-38

Back. Back. Back. One life to another, stitched like knots on a thread, death preceding death preceding death . . . until there is unending life, until there is God. Of God is the final phrase, the ultimate beginning. There is nothing in the entire universe, then, that is detached from God. Every of is an index finger pointing back to him.

We are so good at pretending to be independent, living as if there were no “son of” standing before our name. But of is the very word that makes us who we are. Without of, there would be no shadow and there would be no shining. There would be no us.

Every time that preposition falls off your teeth and bottom lip, you testify to the God who is present, the God who is with you, the God who gave you life, your great Of.

What are you made of? Be very careful how you answer. The human species is a single violin string, humming as lives rise and fall. And God is listening.

The Daily Grace Company

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be starting to publish regularly at the blog for The Daily Grace Company! I’ve also just signed a contract with them, with another book under way! (The titles below are tentative.)

• Spoken Presence: Daily Enjoying God by Listening to His Word

• Peace in Presence: Walking with God through Anxiety

I couldn’t be more excited to partner with these friends to bring you encouragement in the word. More to come soon. But here’s my very first post for them. It’s perfect reading for Christmas Day!

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I realize that Stranger Things is not everyone’s favorite pick. And, let me be clear for my readers, I am in no way advocating for the show as “wholesome Christian content.” But I have analyzed the show from a Christian perspective in the past, and many readers found that helpful as a means of engaging with popular culture, so I decided to follow that up with a new installment since Netflix just began releasing the fifth and final season. If you like Stranger Things or know someone who does, give this a read and pass it along:

Finding God in the Word “Way”

Way is a thread we follow, a string connecting origin to destination. It is the only thing that carries us from here to there. Without a way, all is static; all is same.

When Jesus called himself “the way” (hodos), he knew. He saw with crystal clear vision that we are stuck, unable to depart and unable to arrive. Each of us is caught in the web of his own sinful spinning. We can go nowhere without a way, a road, a path.

But what does it mean for a “way” to be a person? How can blood, bone, and muscle be a path? That all depends on the destination. Only a Person can lead us to other Persons, can grant us a divine audience. The Son is the bridge to the Father and Spirit. Jesus is the way because the three-personed God is our home.

Every time we utter the word “way,” we echo the soundings of Christ, the way to God. Every one of our “ways” is derivative, a thread fiber from his holy hodos. All ways are bound to his way and mean nothing apart from him. Sundered from Christ, our ways are nothing (John 15:5).

Whatever ways are before you today, they are paths that point to God. When you feel stuck and parched of praise, remember his words to Isaiah: “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isa. 43:19).

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You. That word is sunlight on the skin. It singles us out, marking us like leaves struck by the morning light, lifted up and run through with rays. In that single word, we are seen. We are noticed. We are called forward.

David Powlison once paraphrased the beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt. 5:2–12) using the second person that occurs in Luke’s version (Luke 6). The effect is striking:

You who are poor in spirit, you are blessed because the kingdom of heaven is yours.
You who mourn are blessed because you will be comforted.
You who are the meek are blessed because you will inherit the earth.
You who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, are blessed because you will be satisfied.
You who are merciful are blessed because you will receive mercy.
You who are pure in heart are blessed because you will see God.
You who are peacemakers are blessed because you will be called the sons of God.
You who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake are blessed because the kingdom of heaven, this kingdom that is at hand, is yours.

You. The whole world might be deaf and drunk. But you. The graphic chaos and din of entertainment may roll away most contemplation. But you. Everything may seem doleful and dead. But you. You listen.

God is addressing you. In your poverty. In your grief. In your meekness. In your hunger and thirst. God sees you and calls out to you. You are not a stranger to him, not a mere third person. You are in conversation with him, even when you’re not paying attention.

What’s more, you are who you are because God is who he is. God is the Father saying “you” to the Son, who is saying “you” to the Spirit, who is saying “you” to the Father. Always. You. You. You . . . the trialogue of God. His self-address is eternity.

It is only because of the intimate, personal “You” in God that our word you has any meaning. We can address others and be addressed by them only because God addresses himself, and then by grace chooses to address us. You is nothing without God.

Every time we use the word “you,” there is a faint echo of God’s nature—his goodness and his grace. All the more pity, then, when we follow “you” with derision, scorn, and avarice.

We ask forgiveness for this. We mourn it. And—miracle of miracles—God says, “You who mourn are blessed for you will be comforted.”

I am comforted. I am addressed. I am seen. And I am deeply loved by the God who gave himself so that he could talk to me in the second person.

You is my call to worship.

Previous Post: Finding God in “Time”

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Time

Time is the house of movement. Places contain things, but time marks all movement—the changes and the stillness. Grass blades grow. Time passes. Birds build nests. Time passes. Boys turn to men and girls to women. Time passes. All movement happens in time.

Among the past, present, and future, we live in the present. The past is God’s to forgive; the future his to ordain. Standing in the present, we look backwards and forwards, but we cannot go backwards or forwards. Time limits us by moving in only one direction, carrying us in its current.

And yet, time is something God created. He stands above it, as a fisherman above the waters. As Lord of time, God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13). God is where all things begin (Gen. 1:1), God is where all things live (Acts 17:28; Heb. 1:3), and God is where all things go (Rom. 11:36). Past. Present. Future. They are God’s. He is King of chronology.

Whatever happens in time happens under his dominion, according to his purposes. And that means all our uses of “time” signal what he already owns, what he already uses to reveal himself. Time is the house of movement, but it is God’s house. The beams of the past, the boards of the present, and the ruins of the future all say in silent speech: “You. You. You.”

Passing seconds speak of God who spoke seconds into passing. We cannot detach time from him. There is no such thing as “mere time.”

The most common sentence using the word “time” is really all about God: What time is it? Answer: The hour of the Lord. The moment of majesty. The second of sovereignty.

Do you doubt this because you cannot see him? You cannot see time either, but you have no choice but to live inside it. So it is with God. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Go and ask what time it is. Do it all throughout the day. But know that each time you ask, you are also asking, Where am I in God? Am I lost? Or am I found?

Time will not give you the answer. But God will.

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The wind was wild and the sun was strong. “Just one,” I asked. “Let me see just one bird of prey—one red-tail today.”

It is March, freshly born in eastern Pennsylvania. We started walking—me with quickening strides, and the dog trotting with his ears dragging on the weathered gray pavement, riven and cracked like tired skin.

The sun was so confident in the wind, piercing the cloud linings and turning their middles gray-purple. The expanse seemed white-washed in glory, blue but blinding. The cornfields at the end of the street were just ahead, fully open to the waves of the wind, forming an altar for holy wandering. As we approached, the entire landscape felt like a surf. Breaker upon breaker. The waves in the trees. The waves in the grass. The waves on my bearded face. The waves tossing the coal-black crows. Wave upon wave of this . . . wildness.

There we were, looking out into the fields from the end of the street. A hundred yards out, a congregation of large birds drifted and fell like bits of paper in the golden sea of old cut corn stalks. The sun was staring down hard at them, polishing the flat surface of stalk and grass, making treasure from forgotten stories.

“Turkey vultures,” I huffed at first. “Of course.” But then came the noble screams. And when the birds floated up on the thermals, like consonants in the voweled wind, I saw the cream underbellies and the blood-red tail feathers catching the sun. Five. Six. Seven. Eight of them! Tusseling and tagging each other, playing in the waves, stretching their arms out to let the gift of the gold day lift them heavenward.

I raised my arms, so envious. Did they see me—a bipedal creature bound to the ground and gawking at them? I thought then that maybe as I dreamed of flying, caught up in the clouds, they dreamed of running on two long legs, stomping the earth instead of soaring over it.

This was a jeweled moment, a time to stop and stay. And so we watched the red-tails play, sweeping with their wings at the waves of wind and floating up on thermals, then back down, then up again. I wondered if the neighbors would notice me standing at the roadside—a man and his basset hound—looking out into the fields as if caught by a window into eternity. I didn’t care. Perhaps it was. Perhaps heaven is precisely the place where men fly and red-tails run, where things are turned upside down for a glorious unending afternoon, as breakers roll over the altar-fields. Heaven, I know, will be a place of wind—the four winds. That was given to the prophets (Jer. 49:36; Ezek. 37:9; Dan. 7:2, 8:8; Zech. 2:6; Matt. 24:31; Mark 13:27; Rev. 7:1). Wind from all directions, wind from the ever-moving, immovable God.

The hawks got word we were creeping around. One by one, they lifted, screeched, and left, happily taken up in their vortex to the sun-stained clouds. They looked lordly in the sharp breeze, with the light hanging on their chests.

The dog and I walked on. “Eight! Eight—and we asked for one!” My eyes opened wide and scanned the sky, watching for their tiny silhouettes far out in the expanse. My heart thudded like a drum. I could not take it all in, but I kept trying. Everywhere I turned, life was pulsing in the roaring wind. God had left all the windows open in heaven’s house. It was too much—gloriously too much.

For the next few minutes, I’m not sure whether we walked or levitated. But we moved fast around the next neighborhood, kicking the gravel and rushing back towards the cornfields. Would they still be there? Would they be playing again in the winded waves?

No. They were gone. And I was glad. Jeweled moments cannot linger. They cost too much and are too rare to capture. In the wildness of God, they are given, and then they are gone. Mostly, we miss them. But not this day. Not this day, with the raging wind and golden fields and red-tails carousing like kings. This moment I was given—a belated gift from the Spirit of God, the Spirit of life, the one Francis Thompson called the Hound of Heaven.

I thought then of those holy words men spoke as the Son of God told them stories from the beginning of the world: “Did not our hearts burn within us?” (Luke 24:32) My heart was burning, burning so fiercely it was hard to breathe.

There is a good burning by a holy God. And we so often forget it. That burning marks us—consumes us like flame does an old newspaper. The fire and smoke inside us make us lose our lungs for a moment. But for all the ecstasy, it is not the feeling that we want most, an experience we chase. Some, of course, will chase the feeling and forget the voice that calls behind it. No—it is not the feeling we’re after, but the Face, what Jacob called Peniel (Gen. 32:30), the face of God. We are all faces longing with furrowed brows for God’s Face—ocean-grand and galaxy-deep. By so bold and terrifying a beauty we want to be seen, and we want to see. Heaven is forever with a Face. It is, as one theologian put it, “a beautiful place because it is inhabited by a beautiful person.”

What do you chase? What do you long to look at?

I still chase red-tails. Maybe I’m just a boy who never gave up the dream of flying. Maybe I long for the weightless drift they enjoy with outstretched arms—effortless travel. Maybe I think it would be easier to don feathers instead of skin, to be clothed in something perfectly crafted for the wind. But no matter how many red-tails I see, it is never enough . . . because there is a hidden Face behind them, too broad and beautiful to take in. It is the Face we are made to chase, the Peniel.

It is a good thing to long for heaven as you stand on the earth, staring at birds that beckon you higher. It is a good thing to long for holy burning. But better still to seek the Face of the one we’re born to chase. Heaven will not just be a place where men fly and red-tails run. It will be a house for the Face we chase, beyond the high hawks and roaring wind and piercing sun—a house for the Face we long to look into.

That is why we hope every moment to see and be seen. That is why our lives are dim mirrors, even at their brightest. That is why we lean each morning and evening toward holy sight: face to Face (1 Cor. 13:12), made to Maker, eyes to Eyes.

We are so taken by hawks and heaven, by things and places. But the Face—what about Him? What of the One who is looking at us, at this very moment, with a love so fierce it would rend the earth in half?

What if we, like the birds, received the hollow bones of heaven by faith, and chased the holy Face, leaving all else behind? “Just one,” we would say. “Let me see just the one God. Let me see his eyes.”

And who could stop us? Not “death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation” (Rom. 8:38–39). We would be invincible. We would be chasers. And the red-tails would be right to run behind us.

Heaven is the Face we chase, my friends. And it sees us. And one day, we will see.

* * *

The Red-Tail

A redtail caught in an updraft
writes out his circles for me,
steady and slow.
He’s opened himself up,
hollow bones floating
in the hollows of the sky.
Only blue is at his back.
He has everything
because he has nothing.
I want his kingly poverty,
and I beg
in the deafening wind.
I would give my money,
my home,
my clothes,
to be that poor and free.

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There is a massive, deep, and wide country where we all live. It’s every person’s homeland, but we seldom talk about it. And yet so much happens there. Mountains rise. Glaciers break. Rivers run. Trees sing in the wind. Wars wage.

Kingdoms bloom, crest, and fall. Voices call and echo. Memories pulse. And always there is a God-gravity, a pulling of the whole land mass towards the unseen One. This is heartland, where the deepest, darkest, and brightest movements of our lives swell and settle.

I’ve been camping out in heartland lately. That’s what the late biblical counselor David Powlison called it. He often talks about this heartland and how the church, who was born to shepherd it, has left it in the care of secular shepherds—psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists. Here’s how he put it:

The church lost our heartland when it came to people and the reality of what’s going on with them. How do you help them? How do you understand them? Let’s get our hands dirty with real life, real people, real problems. That heartland became the province of essentially secular professions, and the church was squeezed out to the margins.

Heartland issues are things such as self-deception. Well, who talked about that? Freud talked about it. Anna Freud talked about defense mechanisms. Secular mental health professionals studied what ultimately, biblically, is the deceitfulness of sin. And yet the profound analyses of that phenomenon were all retooled to fit in a different worldview, not a Christian one.

Other heartland issues are the impact of our situations, traumas, suffering, being sinned against, abuse—all the ways life can come at you with a knife. But heartland issues also include the more subtle things: social shaping, the influence of models, sociocultural conditioning. These are things the Bible is about. This is just bedrock biblical stuff. We’re talking about the influence of the world; we’re talking about enemies, about oppressors, about being sinned against. But the real detailed examination of those things was done by secular professionals.

Or what about motives, why people do what they do? How do we take apart their belief system, their cravings, their fears? What makes people tick? What forms their identity, the workings of the conscience? Again, these are the themes and the issues that have become essentially the province of people outside the church.

Motives, cravings, fears, hopes, suffering, self-deception—these are all cities in the wild country of heartland. How do we enter them, live in them, or change in the midst of them? Those are very deep questions without pat answers.

But there is one thing that has been clear for the past century and a half: Others outside the church are happy to take a stab at answering those questions, especially when Christian responses lack depth and compassion.

The Church’s Competitors

Who are the church’s competitors? Powlison focused on psychologists and psychotherapists: Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Anna Freud, Carl Rogers, B. F. Skinner, and a list of others. What did all of these competitors have in common? They rejected the claim that the root problem of humanity is sin.

That may not sound too important, but whatever you diagnose as the problem controls the proposed solution. If trauma is the problem, then digging it up and coming to terms with it is the solution. If isolation or inferiority are the problems, then the solution is social integration and communal contributions. If others’ judgmentalism is the problem, then the solution is “unconditional positive regard” and self-acceptance. If poor behavior patterns are the problem, retraining in healthier patterns of behavior is the solution.

Powlison could look at all these secular approaches and see glimmers of truth. Trauma, inferiority, judgmentalism, and poor behavior are all problematic (though defining each of those things is its own task). But there’s something beneath these problems, something deeper, something that defies easy explanation and simple analysis.

Many Christians are quick to cite “sin” as the main problem with humanity. But few of them know how deep and mysterious that answer really is. Sin is not just “the bad things people do.” Powlison criticized that as a “Pelagian view of sin.” Pelagius was a fourth-century monk who thought sin was not some mysterious corrupting force; it was just the bad decisions people make. Sounds practical, doesn’t it?

But the Bible does not talk about sin that way. Sure, sin includes actions. But it also includes thoughts, feelings, inclinations, and a litany of other things. Basically, sin is a thousand-faced monster of the human heart. A broad list of heart-maladies fits under the headings “the world, the flesh, and the Devil.” Here’s the list the Apostle Paul gives in Galatians 5:19–21.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.

“And the like” is a great addition, because there are so many ways sin manifests in our lives. And notice that debauchery, idolatry, hatred, jealousy, envy, and selfish ambition are things stirring on the inside of us. Sin is an active and depraving rebellion against God always situated in the human heart. That’s why Jesus could say, “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matt. 15:19).

If sin—as an internal, corrupting, and corrosive heart rebellion against God’s holiness—is the root problem of humanity, then Christ is the solution: the one who atones for sin and gives us new hearts by the Spirit (Ezek. 36:26). A new heart has new motives, new passions, new desires, new inclinations, new goals. A new heart seeks continual repentance and relentless, God-dependent faith.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay attention to trauma, inferiority, judgmentalism, and poor behavior, nor should we ignore the countless observations others have made about these experiences. The exact opposite is true. We should study these things with carefulness and precision. But we should never detach them from the biblical category of sin as heart-sickness. And that means we should never detach them from Christ, the heart-healer. Put differently, there is no problem of evil, pain, or suffering to which Christ is irrelevant.

Why Sin Gets Rejected

While Christians believe that the mysterious and corrosive power of sin is what ails humanity, people in the broader culture reject “sin” as an answer to what ails us because they think it tells them nothing. It sounds mythical and hollow. It’s like telling them that “gravity” is what caused the Twin Towers to fall on 9/11. “Yeah, right,” they say. “You don’t know anything.”

The reality is that sin is diamond answer: an intensely compacted response to life’s wild and horrible realities, all squeezed into three letters. Sin is the irrational, self-focused, depriving, and ever-acting moral sickness at work inside us. It leads to false ideals, self-justification, corrupting passions, rationalizing harm, manipulating innocents, inflicting pain, and back-breaking comparisonism.

But the mechanization of sin—the way it operates—isn’t clockwork. It doesn’t always follow a traceable pattern. There is mystery in its movement. That doesn’t mean we can’t or don’t combat it, but it does mean that the broader world’s large-scale approaches to sinful behavior cannot get deep enough because they will never fully understand it.

Powlison used the image of people who wanted to dig deeper into the human condition but hit a glass floor. That glass floor is there because the Bible has already offered the deepest explanation for evil. It has said, in addition, that there is no deeper explanation for sin than . . . sin. There is not a deeper reason for the evils we face than that. And in some ways, that’s what secular psychologists have been looking for: the deeper explanation. What they have offered instead is a list of more specific secondary causes, what we might call “offshoots of sin.” It is good and wise to study secondary causes. But when we get fixated on that and forget the primary cause, we lose something utterly precious: purpose.

Only God can give people a purpose that transcends themselves and the culture they live in. Only God can read us into a story that’s much bigger than what we see—and that’s exactly what our souls long for, what’s at the pith of who we are: we want to thrive within and trust the bigger story.

When we forget that, we settle for little stories. The goals of little stories are more tangible:

• I want to get rid of my anxiety disorder.

• I want to gain confidence.

• I want to build respect.

• I want a higher salary.

• I want my relationships to “work.”

Compare those little goals to the ones Scripture gives to us.

• I want to look more and more like the Son of God himself.

• I want my life to ignite with self-giving love for those around me.

• I want my passions and my time not to be wasted.

• I want to know my life has meaning.

And many people, both outside and inside the church, settle for little goals. In fact, they become enamored by them. They read Freud, or Rogers, or John Bradshaw and feel illuminated. “Ah! This is the explanation I’ve been looking for. This is what tells me how people tick. This is what reveals why I do what I do. This is how I get what I’m after.” The Bible is written off as simply not powerful or perceptive enough to help us.

Taking Back the Heartland

But Scripture is far more powerful than we think. It is, after all, the voice of God. It speaks not just about human life; it defines, cuts open, and examines human life. It peels back the layers of our self-deception and says, “God . . . God is the one you are born to chase. And sin is what keeps you from him.”

Taking back the heartland of humanity means linking our litany of problems (and beauties) to our relationship with God. It means taking humanity’s biggest questions and diving into Scripture for the answers. That doesn’t mean ignoring other voices, but it does mean holding the authority of God’s own voice above that of anyone else. And if God says what ails humanity is sin, then that’s what ails humanity. Our task is the exciting part, in my opinion: we get to dive into the Bible and ask how. How does sin work? What happens inside people? Why do they get addicted? Why do they fixate on things that can’t help them? How do we deceive ourselves? Why are we so hypocritical? Why are we so self-obsessed? How do we retain hope in the face of trauma and loss? What lifts up the soul? What drags it down?

There is so much to discover. There are so many ways to take back the heartland. But we have to be intentional, and we have to start being more aware of the other theories the world offers and why the Bible goes deeper.

Here are some things we can do as a start.

1. Study and listen. Look at yourself. Look at other people. Read about the problems they’re having—all sorts of problems. Ask questions. Listen to people talk about their suffering, their turmoil, their hangups. What are the deeper issues at play? What are hearts searching for?

2. Think about motive. Motive is often treated as irrelevant because it’s unknowable and intangible. But David Powlison was intensely interested in motive because it propels all human behavior. We may not be able to observe it, but we can see it played out in words and actions. Ask about motive. And always assume it’s there, because it is.

3. Watch how Scripture takes apart sin. Psalm 10, for instance, has a vivid description of what goes on inside the heads of evil people (vv. 3–11). How do they approach life? What are they chasing after? What propels their actions? Listen to the voice of God tell you. Or consider a passage such as James 1:13–15, which gives a blueprint for how sin manifests itself: temptation —> desire —> sin —> death.

We can take back the heartland of humanity. But it requires a lot of intentionality. It also requires constant delving into the depths of Scripture, looking for its own examination of what makes the heart tick and what we long for most in a world riddled with evil.

Ours is the heartland. And the Bible is fully sufficient to help us explore it.

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