{"id":14121,"date":"2017-11-28T01:00:14","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T09:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/?p=14121"},"modified":"2017-11-28T01:07:09","modified_gmt":"2017-11-28T09:07:09","slug":"renewing-our-minds-for-rejoicing-pt-8-think-patiently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/2017\/11\/28\/renewing-our-minds-for-rejoicing-pt-8-think-patiently\/","title":{"rendered":"Renewing Our Minds for Rejoicing, Pt. 8 \u2013 \u201cThink Patiently\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Pastor James Lee<\/em><\/p>\n

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”<\/em> (Philippians 4:4-8)<\/strong><\/p>\n

To think well is to think patiently, slowly, thoughtfully, over time, to \u201cdwell on these things.\u201d<\/em> To think patiently, also means, to think persistently, faithfully, continually, consistently \u2013 we\u2019re to ponder them without ceasing, as patience requires lots of time and humility, for we don\u2019t get it all at once. It\u2019s why we see things later upon restudy. The Greek word for \u201cdwell\u201d is logizomai<\/em> which is the root word for logarithm. We need to have the same deliberate, prolonged, patient contemplation of \u201cthese things\u201d as it takes to weigh and solve a difficult, complex mathematical problem. We don\u2019t do that quickly, nor superficially.<\/p>\n

Remember that 1 Cor 13 declares love is patient. So then impatience is not loving. It\u2019s a form of self-love. Sometimes I sin against my wife Sandy when she\u2019s talking to me, and I\u2019m not listening or not listening well, trying to multitask. But that\u2019s not loving her when I do that, especially when something important from her heart is being shared. The truth is that we do that with the Lord. We\u2019re not fully there, are we? If you want an argument for the grace of God, then there\u2019s at least one right there. He doesn\u2019t treat believers as they deserve, and He doesn\u2019t treat us as we treat Him. T. David Gordon wrote, \u201cWe become acclimated to distraction, to multitasking, to giving part of our attention to many things at once, while almost never devoting the entire attention of the entire soul to anything.\u201d<\/em> Wow. That\u2019s pretty descriptive of the age and even us as Christians, who are products of this age. That\u2019s hardly loving God with all our entire being, is it? We sort of mechanically do that. Remember who was quite good at that? The Pharisees…they were always hearing, but not understanding. They were busy in religion and life, but their hearts were far from God.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve generally neglected the art of biblical meditation. We don\u2019t seem to know what it means to be still and know that He is God. Try to convince someone you love them by giving them 10 minutes a day, or by saying the same rehearsed lines every time you speak to them? We need to concentrate and camp out in God\u2019s Word. We need to fill up our minds with biblical truth, instead of never drawing from its deep well, with only sips, here and there, when we\u2019re in trouble. Rather, we need to chew it over in our minds until it becomes a part of us and how we think. Gerard Chrispin says, \u201cWe read and rush off too quickly. We listen to the Bible being expounded and leave too thoughtlessly. We must meditate on these things in order to cultivate that mindset of holiness that we had been considering.\u201d<\/em> We shouldn\u2019t be assigning \u201cpatient thoughtful mediation\u201d such little value, while assigning greater value elsewhere.<\/strong> We need to make for a quiet time early in the morning, or in a private space at lunch, or in a corner of the house at night. So we\u2019re reading and rereading, meditating, asking questions, praying over a word or phrase, contemplating a concrete application, sharing with others, and taking every thought captive to Christ! It requires us to think patiently, to think slowly, to think devotionally, and not just check it off our spiritual-to-do list.<\/p>\n

The Puritan Isaac Watts wrote a standard introductory book on how to think in 1724. For about 200 years, it was the go-to-textbook at institutions like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale, and is still regarded highly. The title of that book was Logic: The Right Uses of Reason in the Inquiry After Truth With a Variety of Rules to Guard Against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as well as in the Sciences.<\/em> That\u2019s the title! Some say my sermon titles are long? Now do you think Isaac Watts knew how to mediate and think deeply? It seems so. That\u2019s why his book has stood the test of time. Not just the content, but how it was communicated as part of the writing process. That\u2019s why most of us can\u2019t just read Shakespeare quickly. We have to sit there and decipher it. We don\u2019t read poetry or philosophy like we read our daily newspaper. So when we read our Bibles, how much more<\/strong> we have to give patient attention to every single word, phrase, thought? In contrast, Kent Hughes says, \u201cThe greatest danger in our busy, increasingly post-literate world is that we make little or no effort to think God\u2019s thoughts after Him, to hide His Word in our hearts so that we might not sin against Him. We cannot be profoundly influenced by that which we do not know.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Why are we all in such a hurry? I know there is no virtue in being not busy, as we should be diligent stewards of what the Lord has entrusted to us\u2026 which is everything we have and are. So the question is what are we so busy in? Do we love Christ? Is He our all in all, sufficient for all our needs? Is He our overarching priority directing all other priorities to be subservient to His glory? Are we seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness? Or is the reflection of our lives not very different than the rest of the world\u2026 run the rat race, make money, get a home, have 2 \u00bd kids, or whatever else it might be? Some of us need to stop watching TV as much as we do, or some of us, perhaps frankly need to throw them away. TV as a medium is impatient and suited for the insignificant. Watching the news or reading an online article about Aleppo might inform us, sadden us, cause to pray, and I\u2019m glad we have that access. But it\u2019s quite different if we were there on mission or if we were to read a book, giving lengthy contemplation to what\u2019s going on there. For example, the book by Mindy Belz, a reporter who was on the ground with fleeing refugees, titled They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East.<\/em> If you read that, you don\u2019t think you\u2019ll be profoundly affected? Don\u2019t get me wrong, any news and prayer and care is good, because we can\u2019t dwell on everything equally. That\u2019s not what I\u2019m saying. But I\u2019m outlining what our media does…it makes those things so disposable…<\/strong>so sadly trivial to our hearts.<\/p>\n

We need time to think. Anything hurried usually is shallow, declining toward the opposite of deep. It is NOT something even close to being worthy as God\u2019s loving Revelation to us! Carl Honore in his book In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed<\/em> wrote, \u201cWe live in a world of scarce understanding and abundance of information. We complain that we never have any time, yet we seek distraction. The modern storm of bits and stimulation relents only when we sleep. And only if we remember to turn off our iPhones. Lost in all of this is the art of stillness. We have come into the belief that the simple act of reading confers understanding. We rush, we skim the surface, and fail to make real connections with the world or other people. Thinking requires time and space. It\u2019s slow. It means saying I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/em> It means, he says, saying I don\u2019t know. Ultimately, it\u2019s about humility.<\/strong> Listen, sports fans leave games early, no matter how close the score, just to avoid the traffic out. The curse of multitasking is that people think they\u2019re so clever, so efficient, so modern, but all it usually means, is that they\u2019re usually doing 2 or more things…not very well.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve lost the art of doing nothing, shutting out the background noise. Did you know that \u201cboredom\u201d was a word that didn\u2019t even exist 150 years ago? Somehow we say we\u2019re so busy, but then have the gall to say we\u2019re bored. And we get all fidgety, panicked, awkward, looking for something to do or say. We don\u2019t like silence, whether we\u2019re with people or whether we\u2019re home alone. Being bored demands repentance, and I don\u2019t say that flippantly, because you\u2019re not then doing what God calls you to do. We should never be bored. As children of God, called to be a light to the nations, we have too much to do…to be \u201cbored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actress Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia in Star Wars, once quipped, \u201cinstant gratification takes too long.\u201d<\/em> We\u2019re so impatient, and that\u2019s not a fruit of the Spirit. And I\u2019m not patient, I\u2019m a type A, gotta do this or that, burn myself out type of person. As I age, I\u2019m still as passionate as ever, but not only have I had to slow down and learn the sanctification of rest. I\u2019m learning the utmost importance of quiet study, prayer, and meditation. I have to say no to say yes. Honore said, \u201cFast is busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, stressed, superficial, impatient, quantity over quality. Slow is the opposite: calm, careful, receptive, caring, patient, reflective. Fast eats time. One consequence of fast is that we make poor decision after poor decision. It\u2019s not like we make a bad decision and we\u2019re done with it. No, they come back to haunt us, creating issue after issue.\u201d<\/em> To dwell on these things is to give thoughtful thought to, with the goal of God\u2019s glory and the spread of the gospel! It\u2019s not hearing a few facts from a guide as we stop to click a few photos and nod to each other \u201cit\u2019s so cool\u201d while on a bus tour. It means getting out and spending time there, taking it in and allowing it to become a significant part of us. It\u2019s to set up base camp at the foot of Yosemite Valley and marvel. Even further, it\u2019s to explore the back country wilderness, and feel the incline and thin air, to brush against weather, hang your bear proof food canister up on a tree, lay down next to the camp fire and see a night sky like you\u2019ve never seen it. The inverse irony of our times is that the average length of a sermon has declined 10 minutes each of the last four decades where 40 years ago the average sermon was 60 minutes, and today, it\u2019s 20 minutes. I argue that to think that less of the Word of God is making real progress, is NOT thinking well?! That\u2019s NOT thinking well! That\u2019s thinking like the world. We\u2019re all busy, but the question is with what are we busy? We should not deprioritize the Word of God and prayer, we should re-prioritize it!<\/p>\n

John Piper urges us to swim in the deep end of the Bible, \u201cToo many of us settle for too little from our Bible reading. Often, we are content simply to check off the box of our Bible reading, and if we come across something we don\u2019t understand, we\u2019ll run to a commentary or give up without a fight. The payoff of this type of shallow reading is too small. If we want to walk away from the Bible with authority in our bones like fire, we must learn to grow hungry in our Bible reading \u2014 we must learn to grow discontent with splashing in the shallows and learn to swim in the deeps. We must labor in looking at THE book.\u201d<\/em> Humility means saying I don\u2019t know. So when we\u2019re rushing, we\u2019re only cultivating our arrogance towards God and man. That\u2019s the opposite of prayerful dependence in v.6-7! Which is why I believe, we don\u2019t pray deeply, why we don\u2019t pray at length. It is why prayer meetings are usually small, very small, or not at all in our day\u2026 and always far less attended than Bible study. It\u2019s our prideful independence, not prayer dependence. It is also partly why we don\u2019t read our Bibles, or take it more seriously. Because in that prideful independence, we entertain in defiance of its very clear instructions…such \u201crespectable sins\u201d as bitterness, discontentment, indifference, immodesty, clear non-evangelism, laziness, neglect of fellowship, subtle greed, worldliness, etc. As Sven Birkerts warned, \u201cThe harder it is for you to slow down, the more you need to be rescued.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Pastor James Lee “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":469,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastors-corner"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14121"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14138,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14121\/revisions\/14138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}