by Ryan Smith | Jan 8, 2019
I wade into this territory delicately for two reasons.
One, I am a man. As a man, I recognize my experiences and perspectives are likely different from the majority of those reading this article. I ask in advance for grace regarding any unperceived lines I may cross. Second, I recognize this topic is highly personal and ingrained deeply in the conscious of my sisters in Christ. I hope to provide encouragement and peace – not anxiety. That being said, here we go:
Ladies, don’t be afraid to grow old.
As I consider the mass marketing strategies and walk past aisle after aisle of beauty “correction” products, I can’t help but feel a degree of hurt for my sisters in Christ. From an outside perspective, it seems much of what is daily put before you is a standard and expectation of physical appearance that can only be daunting to strive for.
Beyond that, it seems you are being continually pushed toward a fountain of youth that not only is a mirage, but seeks to orient you toward reversing the effects of age – a tide no person can swim against. Time only goes in one direction, and physically, so do we.
I hesitantly admit, it seems the majority of women I love, admire and respect are engaged in battle against a perceived enemy at work in their own bodies. My dear sisters, you must be tired.
If I may ask, who told you your wrinkles are wrong?
Who told you the younger, leaner, more colorful version of yourself was better – that it is to be coveted?
Who waters those seeds of discontent in your heart?
Proverbs 31 talks about a woman of true beauty – an ideal – one who fears the Lord. She is marked by unique traits which can be viewed in three categories of life: Relational, Volitional and Physical.
Relationally, she does good to her husband (v. 12), is generous and benevolent to the needy (v. 20), teaches with kindness (v. 26) and, as a result, is praised openly by her trusting husband and children (vv. 11, 28).
Volitionally, she is industrious (vv. 13, 14, 16, 19, 22, 24, 27), works diligently (vv. 15, 18, 27) and, as a result, dwells in security (vv. 21, 25).
Physically, she is strong (v. 17), dignified and joyfully confident (v. 25).
Notice, the physical aspect of the woman who is to be praised is the least mentioned. However, if we were to speculate what such a woman would look like, we might assume a few things:
As one who has children, her body probably bears a few scars, and her hair has likely grayed from weariness.
As one who is generous and benevolent, she probably is not clothed extravagantly or in excess.
As one who works with her hands and travels distances to buy and sell, she likely has some callouses, bunions and travel fatigue.
As one who stays up late and rises early, she probably has bags under her eyes and a functional hairdo.
Her joyful expressions over time result in well-worn wrinkles. Her hours of prayerful concern line her forehead.
She grows older – and she is beautiful.
A woman does not have to be married, have children, own a business, or even be old to be praised. She does not need messy hair, wrinkled crow’s feet and subdued clothing to be beautiful. But she also shouldn’t be afraid of these things.
Taking care of our bodies is important, and we should always present our capable best in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. The Bible has much to say about being a caring steward of our physical person.
But we must always remember that the way we display our bodies tells something to the world about what we believe. If we place the world’s voices, images and standards above God’s, it shows where we genuinely find value. If we continually chase youth, we may resent age, experience and accumulated work.
As a Christian man, when I see women vainly chasing an image of youth, it does not make me admire them – it makes me sad.
Ladies, wherever you are on your journey in life, don’t be ashamed of the path on which God has brought you and the scars that show you were there. Don’t be conformed to the idea that youth is the standard of beauty, but embrace the surpassing beauty of experience, wisdom, relational investment, volitional aptitude and physical strength.
We, your Christian brothers are rooting for you. Grow old with grace and dignity, and you will be truly clothed with beauty and adored by those who call you blessed.
“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised” – Proverbs 31:30.
by Ryan Smith | Dec 19, 2018
“Why couldn’t we do it?”
They had done it before, and Jesus celebrated! The news of their work had even reached the ears of the king causing him to greatly fear this new rival to his authority.
Yet here, with just a silent little boy and a desperate father, their combined efforts produced…nothing.
The Gospel of Mark, chapter 9, captures a stunning scene. The disciples who mere chapters before (6:12-13) were sent out by Christ Himself – proclaiming repentance and healing the sick – now found themselves powerless before a little boy.
You may be familiar with the story. Jesus comes back, the father begs Jesus to heal his mute and seizing son. In an extremely honest moment, the father shouts, “I believe! Help my unbelief!” Jesus commands the evil spirit to leave; the boy convulses and falls still; the evil spirit is gone. Jesus takes the boy by the hand and raises him up.
We have many accounts of Jesus healing the sick and casting out evil spirits. Yet this account includes a discreet postscript between Jesus and His disciples. Alone in the house with Jesus, they sheepishly ask, “Why couldn’t we do it?”
Jesus replied, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” The deficiency Jesus points to is not personal prowess, but private prayer.
Interestingly, Mark doesn’t record Jesus praying before he heals the boy. Jesus directly rebukes the spirit. The spirit gives one final thrash and leaves – never to return. Why then does Jesus identify the key to success as something He does not appear at the instant to employ?
The answer is not that Jesus failed to pray at the moment, but that the disciples failed to be people of prayer, thus preparing them for the moment.
In their success as Jesus’s supposed understudies, the disciples were walking tall. The crowds grew large. The people celebrated. Heaven was bending to earth, and the disciples had a backstage pass to it all.
So why, at the height of their prominence, could the disciples not heal one little boy?
What happened to the disciples is what happens to many of us. Things start to go well. Our small group study seems vibrant. Our kids begin to behave. That sin we most struggle with appears to have relegated itself to the shadows. We are effectively leading in the church, at home and in the community. God is good. Ministry is fruitful.
In these times, it is easy to be thankful to God, yet also less-reliant upon Him. The storms that caused us to cling desperately to the Word pass and the wind slows to a quiet whistle. We thank God and begin to loosen our grip. The struggle-filled path of loving God, the church and our family starts to even out and our steps relax. We thank our Guide for His help and pack up the map.
However, God is not a sage we visit for guidance – He is the very sustenance we daily need to survive.
“Abide in me,” Jesus says in John 15. “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches…apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5).
What we don’t see in Jesus’s exhortation in John 15 are the words, “when” or “if.”
The reason the disciples were powerless to cast out the demon in Mark 9 is that they had failed to abide in God through prayer. They had become branches with fruit that grew so heavy they fell from the vine and disconnected from their source.
When ministry goes well, it is easy to let our serving God replace our knowing God. Sadly, we often don’t recognize we have abandoned our power source until something goes wrong and ministry stops working. Then we turn to Jesus and ask, “Why couldn’t we do it?”
May I encourage you to remember the lesson I am so prone to forget: people of God must be people of prayer.
As Jesus reminded the disciples, the privilege of prayer is not an incantation of access, but continual nourishment at the table of God. We must pray not so that we may have success, but that we may have life. Whether God brings success or struggle is not the point. Ministry is not pragmatic. It cannot merely be measured in numbers. Ministerial “success” can be deceptive when measured by the ends and not the means.
May we first be people of prayer – then people of ministry. You alone don’t make your ministry effective, but prayer will make you effective in your ministry.
“Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” – Jesus.
by Ryan Smith | Dec 5, 2018
The majestic words of Psalm 98:4-9 ring with exulting joy:
“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises!
Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody!
With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD!
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it!
Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the LORD,
for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.”
While we may have read these verses before, few would identify them as the source of one of the Christmas season’s most recognizable hymns. After all, where is the stable? Where is the star? Where are the angels and the sleigh bells jing-jing-jingling all the way?
Interestingly, one of the church’s most prominent Yuletide tunes is not even a song about Christmas.
In 1719, Isaac Watts sat down to pen a poetic paraphrase of one of his favorite psalms, Psalm 98. He broke the psalm into two parts and summarized verses 4-9 under the name, “The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom.”
For Watts, the psalms were a direct link to the New Testament. Reading the words of liberation, musical instrumentation and nature’s vibrant exaltation of its Maker brought to mind the ideas expressed in verses like Romans 8:19-21, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
This liberation of all creation at the arrival of the conquering King led Watts to the closing chapters of Revelation. Revelation 21 celebrates Jesus’ triumphant return as a new heaven and earth replace our decaying cosmos of sin, and the One who has come to judge the earth with righteousness proclaims, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).
The Christmas song known today as, “Joy to the World,” was originally an apocalyptic paraphrase of Psalm 98.
Joined by Lowell Mason in 1836 to a melodic portion of Handel’s Messiah, the poem came to be known in its present form as a joyful song of the King’s arrival. Since we commemorate the breaking through of the Light into the darkness at Christmas with Jesus’ first coming, the church has celebrated these two arrivals almost synonymously through the song for centuries.
At Advent, we anticipate the final arrival of Christ the King as the early Jews awaited the first arrival of the Messiah. We long with the thrill of hope for the weary world to rejoice at the revelation of its Savior.
“Joy to the World” is a particularly appropriate song during the season of Advent. We celebrate the coming of the King in the manger; yet we anticipate the arrival of the King on the clouds.
Joy to the World; the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King:
let every heart prepare him room,
and heaven and nature sing.
Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns;
let men their songs employ;
while fields & floods, rocks, hills & plains
repeat the sounding joy.
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground:
He comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found.
He rules the world with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove
the glories of his righteousness,
and wonders of his love.
by Ryan Smith | Nov 27, 2018
The Christmas season, for many, is a season of hope. We hope for that special present. We hope for snow (or no snow…Scrooges). Our Christmas songs are tinseled with words of hope for peace, joy and love.
For many of our churches, the Christmas season has become synonymous with Advent. Advent is the time we light sequential candles in church and watch the flames dance as we sing the familiar songs of the season.
As a child, I was always dazzled by those flames. However, I didn’t truly understand what they meant.
Historically for the church, Advent and Christmas have been two separate seasons. Christmas is a celebration of the Son of God’s arrival as a baby in Bethlehem. At Christmas, we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises, salvation through the Messiah and the Light of the world who penetrated the darkness.
It is because of Christmas we celebrate the fulfillment of hope, joy, love and peace.
Yet there is no celebration of hope without a season of unfulfilled longing;
no joy without a season of sadness;
no love without a season of isolation;
no peace without a season of war.
Advent is that season.
For centuries, the people of God anticipated the arrival of the Messiah – the Savior who would restore all things and redeem His people. Every page of the Old Testament pulses with the heartbeat of a broken, sinful world and the promised Christ of restoration.
Their faith, like a candle, illuminated the darkness around them in anticipation of this Savior. They longed with great hope, and this hope was their faith.
The arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, is the fulfillment of that hope.
Today, in Christ, we have joy; we celebrate His love; we rest in His peace.
Yet we too long for a day when all things will be made new.
Like Abraham looking to the stars, we know we are people set apart by a God who keeps His promises. Jesus’s words in the closing verses of Revelation linger with every sunrise, “Surely I am coming soon” (Rev. 22:20).
Yet like John, our response echoes with every sunset, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”
During the Advent season, as we light candles, read from the Scriptures and sing songs of Christ’s arrival, let us do so at the highest level of bittersweet.
Our song is sweet because Jesus has come! The gospel is true, and God is faithful!
Our song is bitter because we still walk the fallen path of sin and rebellion and anticipate the glorious Kingdom to come when Christ returns.
Hope. Love. Joy. Peace. Christ. This is the season of Advent.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
by Ryan Smith | Oct 25, 2018
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:1-2).
I have been thinking about plants. I don’t know much about plants other than you put them in soil, add sunlight and high-quality H2O, and voila – a plant. It seems like a simple, almost transactional process.
However, any kind of growth is not that simple. There are no vending machines for maturity. In John 15, Jesus says He is the vine, we are the branches, and we must abide in Him. Again, this seems like a simple, almost transactional process. But as any true disciple will tell you, following Jesus is anything but simple.
We know many of the essential ingredients and processes – prayer, Bible reading, the church – but John 15 gives us another key and vital process necessary for growing and bearing fruit: pruning.
Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t identify the Father here as the Plant Waterer. He doesn’t even call Him the Planter or Gardener. While these descriptors may be accurate of God the Father, in this reference, Jesus calls the Father the vinedresser. Why? He prunes His branches.
As I understand it, the process of pruning takes away smaller or less healthy stems from a branch so that fewer but more robust stems may have increased nutrients and there more growth. Pruning also removes parts of the plant that don’t cause it to grow.
Later in John 15, Jesus says the nutrients that flow from Him, the true vine, come through His Words and commandments. In other words, by abiding in God’s Word, we abide with Christ – connected to the source of life.
If I am one of God’s branches attached to the vine of Christ, I wonder what it is that God the Father needs to prune so that the parts of me drawing life and spiritual nutrients from the Word can grow and flourish. What diverts my time away from the Bible?
We often assume God will only take away bad things in our lives to make us grow. As a vinedresser, we assume He is looking for the dead stems to tear away that we may be vibrant and aesthetically pleasing.
While right pruning does take away the dead or dangerous weight, it also takes away parts that provide some fruit so that more and greater fruit may grow. There is a parallel here with the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. In this parable, Jesus portrays a servant who has one amount of his master’s money but produces no more with it. The master’s response? Take it away and give it to the one who has 10 talents worth. In other words, he gets pruned.
In the Christian life, it is easy to give our time and attention to many good pursuits. As long as they are not bad things, we believe, they can stay in our lives, and we can flourish. God the vinedresser, however, may have a different view.
What are the things that draw time, energy and effort away from learning, trusting and applying God’s Word? If some things were cut out of your life – even good things – would you be more fruitful for Christ? What produces some Gospel fruit in your life but could provide more fruit if it were removed?
There are times as Christians we need not only examine our lives for bad things, but also for underperforming good things or activities that draw nutrients of time, energy and attention away from God’s Word and our obedience to it. A busy Christian is not necessarily a thriving Christian.
May we ask God the Spirit to examine our lives and show us where God the Father may need to prune our lives that we may most glorify God the Son.
“And I pray this; that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God” (Phil. 1:9-11).