As this book comes to a close, I believe it would be a pity if we wrapped it up as it is at present. We could acknowledge all the right answers and close out the book with a nice pretty bow, and never get practical.
My dad taught my sisters and I how to drive. My uncle Matthew is actually a professional driving instructor, but typically, our dad would get us girls behind the wheel and functional and then our uncle would prep us for our exams. It was a great tag team effort on the part of the brothers. Dad has nerves of steel, but out of the daughters, I was definitely the one who gave him the most terror.
Nobody could have seen it coming. I am the most cautious of the sisters, the most “let’s not climb the tree because it’s not safe”, the most “we shouldn’t do that - I’m telling”, the most quiet. I should have been easy to teach. On the contrary, I drove like a terrorist.
It took dad a few life threatening instances to pinpoint my issue. Meanwhile, mom was convinced that I had several angels assigned to my vehicle at any given time. Perhaps it was when I rammed the family minivan into the carport support or when I made a left turn in an intersection, just narrowly dodging oncoming traffic, or when I totally unintentionally blew a stoplight driving my sisters home from Youth Group. But whichever scenario it was, mom had some telltale signs of miraculous intervention.
But it was my dad who diagnosed my issue. I was seeing the road in complete black and white. We already knew I was hopelessly literal. I had other tendencies too: at that time, I could quote 1 Peter from start to finish but could not remember my dad’s phone number. I had some intelligence imbalances that made it very difficult for me to do some basic practical things. What we didn’t know was that my literal nature could be extremely dangerous on dynamic Northern British Columbian Highway 16.
If it was not according to a rule, I would not do it. But worse, if it had not been explicitly taught as a rule, I would not think to do it. (This includes common sense typical human impulses such as checking for other drivers even if you have right of way, etc.)
I was a terror to the streets until my rule brain met impulses, common sense, and observational skills. And those traits were not strong in my driving brain - I could retain a long passage of poetry, but not a simple list of defensive driving checks. Typically, if you’re good at something, you are weaker in another corresponding area. But for me, that tendency was dramatic. Because I had an exaggerated strength in the world of words, I had an exaggerated weakness in the world of logic, common sense, spatial awareness, and directional skills.
Even if you’re not imbalanced in your right brain/left brain capabilities and tasks, you probably know the feeling of wanting to find a rule or a principle that will automatically fix everything. On that note, there is something I’d like to point out to you from this silly story.
The last thing I want is for this book to be helpful in theory and then flop in the realm of practicality. If you study this book like I studied my driver’s manuel, you may find yourself so caught up in the principles that your emotions and impulses and daily practices are completely divorced from what you believe in theory.
That’s why this last portion of our journey is not about doing - it is about resting. My dearest hope for this book is that it will encourage you to rest in the Lord. End of story. Glorify God by resting in Him.
To start, I’d like to share a short testimony with you that I’ve affectionately taken to calling “The Mystery of Finlandia". It happened about two years ago and was an uncanny and unsubtle call from the Lord to rest in Him.
It all started with a sermon recording. I didn’t pick the recording though. There I was, on a beautiful Saturday morning. That day, my uncle and aunt were flying out to engage in what God is doing in the country that they like to call “Hesed”, (Hesed means God’s steadfast love) and is fitting name for the nation that is not safe to explicitly name in a book such as this. My head was in the clouds a bit, imaging my family that were quite literally in the clouds, flying across the ocean.
Dad brought me back to earth, chose an online sermon, and called our family into the living room to listen with him. It was good old John Piper, just giving it everything he’s got. What was he preaching about? The Great Commission! (Of course, it was kind of fitting for the day, although dad didn’t realize just how fitting. He didn’t know that our relatives were leaving to go to “Hesed” that day.)
Well that’s a topic that I particularly enjoy, so I grabbed my journal to take some notes. The sermon was from January 7th, 2024, so it was fairly recent. As best as I could tell, John Piper was speaking at some sort of missions fest. He was preaching about the call to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus: classic discipleship. Dad had been asked to preach on that passage to some local churches, so he was trying to learn from Dr. Piper. Dad made a good choice, for it was a beautiful and encouraging sermon. Towards the end, John called anyone in the room at the missions fest who felt called by God into missions to come up to the front of the room for prayer. He explained that they were going to sing the song that the missionary Jim Elliot and his friends sang before they were martyred by a native tribe in South America. I knew that story, but I didn’t know that song.
“How cool it would be to be in that room!” I thought to myself, earnest desire swirling. So I listened as the people on the recording walked up to the front of the room, and were all about to sing. I was just kind of just holding my breath for them in anticipation, and what do you suppose happened? The recording shut off! And at that point, I’m thinking, “Come on! Really? Now I’ll never know what song they were singing! I’ll never hear their voices! And I’ll never be there.” I made a note in my journal to investigate the song further, but I kind of shoved the notion to the back of my priority list.
A few days later, I was conducting a recording session. I chose some of my poetry to record audibly while playing instrumental hymns in the background, kind of like an audiobook, but just for poetry. I chose a poem called “Cast Their Cords” that the Lord had given me from Psalm 2 in 2020. It’s essentially about giving your life to serve Jesus and laying down all you are to remain loyal to Him in a world that hates Him (and that hates you because you don’t hate Jesus). Simple, but not.
I was wracking my brain to come up with a hymn that could be played in the background as I recited the poem. That’s when I thought of the melody for “Be Still My Soul”. The lyrics of “Be Still My Soul” did not fit the context of my poem, but the melody was pretty. For all you hymn nerds out there, the tune is known as Finlandia. As my fingers touched the keys, my mind drifted into another dimension. I’m not a great piano player, but oh, this was a great melody! Each note seemed to hold a color, a tone of its own with a hint of emotion unspeakable. The words of my poem seemed to dance over the notes, the strong melody fortifying stanzas in a way that only piano keys can truly understand. Every note, rest, and chord embodied the lines of the poetry, and I was kind of wrapped up in ecstasy. I was deeply moved by the melody, sometimes elated and other times immensely sorrowful, and I thought to myself, “Oh yes! This can definitely work. This tune is perfect!”
But then I remembered that John Piper sermon - the cut-off recording that disappointed me to no end. What was that song that those soon-to-be missionaries sang? I figured that whatever song that Jim Elliot and his friends sang would be a better choice than Finlandia because of the amazing story of how God used it in Jim’s life (whatever it was). The moment those men sang that hymn embodied the thrust of my poem, so the two just had to go together! I had no clue what song they had sung, but I figured that I’d best get busy and figure out what it was so I could use it in my poem recording.
This being so, I did what any good little millennial would do: I asked “uncle google”. I typed in “what song did Jim Elliot sing before he died?” What a weird thing to type into the search bar! But wonder of wonders, the answer actually popped up right away! Go figure…I guess there are some upshots to the technological age. “We Rest on Thee”, it said.
Okay. Well, that meant nothing to me. I had no clue what that hymn was, so I googled “We Rest on Thee” and found a lyric video, clicked on it, and then my jaw promptly dropped: “We Rest on Thee” is sung to Finlandia! That toon that had touched my heart so deeply was the toon they sang! Suddenly, it was as if I were in that room on the sermon recording. The choir to which I was listening sounded exactly like a bunch of future missionaries. There was that melody through which I had been pouring out my soul not two minutes earlier! But the marvel of marvel was the lyrics!
“ We rest on thee, our Shield and our Defender!
We go not forth alone against the foe;
Strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender,
We rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go;
Yea, in Thy name, O Captain of salvation!
In Thy dear name, all other names above:
Jesus our righteousness, our sure foundation,
Our Prince of glory and our King of love
We go in faith, our own great weakness feeling,
And needing more each day Thy grace to know:
Yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing,
“We rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go”
We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender!
Thine is the battle, Thine shall be the praise;
When passing through the gates of pearly splendor,
Victors, we rest with Thee, through endless days”
That was crazy to me because over the past few months, the Lord had been teaching me some pretty intense lessons through Hebrews 4 which talks a ton about entering into the rest of God. I was amazed and thought to myself, “I will never doubt God again.”
Well, I am a fallen sinner, and just a few days later, I was dealing with another terrible bout of the “have a blasphemed the Holy Spirit?” rabbit trail. I’m sure that was disappointing to God, but here’s what He did about it. I distinctly heard the Lord tell me to read Micah 7. I was apprehensive, not expecting to find much comfort in a minor prophet’s declaration of judgment. It seemed like such a random passage, but I figured I should listen to Him and look up that chapter, not knowing what it was. After all, when God says to do something, you do it no matter how much it hurts. That day, I was wrestling with doubt, guilt, and fear, especially fear of God’s rejection, but I took the dive into Micah 7. And wow! Here’s what I found:
“Do not rejoice over me, my enemy;
When I fall, I will arise;
When I sit in darkness,
The Lord will be a light to me.
I will bear the indignation of the Lord,
Because I have sinned against Him,
Until He pleads my case
And executes justice for me.
He will bring me forth to the light;
I will see His righteousness.” Micah 7:8-9
Now how is that for reassurance of salvation! But I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t get it at first. I didn’t make the connection that those words actually applied to me. I was being stubborn, but God wasn’t finished with me. How does all this tie back into Finlandia? Time would tell.
You see, just a few hours after reading Micah 7, I was considering beginning to read a book I had grabbed from my parents’ bookshelf called “When I Don’t Desire God” (Piper). Now, at that point, I desired God more than life itself, so I was skeptical of whether or not the book was for me. But, the subtitle mentioned fighting for joy, so I thought I’d skim through the book to see if I should give it a go.
So I began flipping through the book randomly, trying to decide if I wanted to start reading it. I’d never really taken it down from the shelf before and was trying to assess what it was all about. What was this fighting for joy thing? That’s when I stared down at a page and found myself gaping at Micah 7, the passage that God had told me to read that afternoon! Well that sure piqued my curiosity and my astonishment. Micah 7 was just such an exceedingly random passage! What was God trying to tell me?
So I started reading that page, and oh that chapter just spoke to me as if it were written for me alone. Of course it wasn’t, but that’s how directly applicable it felt. How do you respond when the devil tells you that you’ve sinned so grievously that God will not forgive you? How do you fight that lie? So I’m reading along, and then, I see something that completely blows my mind:
Dr. Piper is writing about John Bunyan, the writer of Pilgrim’s Progress. Piper shares a quote from Bunyan about how, when Bunyan was exactly my age (early twenties), he was terrified by the thought that he had committed the unpardonable sin! I started weeping because I was amazed that somebody else had struggled with that anguish - and had overcome it by God’s grace. Now, Bunyan was quoted as saying, “Oh no one knows the terrors of those days, but myself”.
And I’m instantly thinking, “Oh no brother! I totally get it, John. I live with that insane terror and I hate it. You’re not alone, and neither am I!” I realized that I wasn’t crazy nor defective for struggling with that very fear, but more comforting was the fact that both Johns (Piper and Bunyan) were being used by God to show me the way out of it!
The pages explained, as demonstrated by Micah 7, that God supplies us with all we need: forgiveness, courage, and redemption. By that point, I was in complete and total awe of the mercy of God.
So then, to close off the chapter, as an example of the justification that God gives sinners who come to Him in “gutsy guilt”, John Piper wrote out a quote from a song that Jim Elliot and his friends sang…. Yes, that’s right! I was once again staring at “We Rest on Thee”, Finlandia, my piano lovesong, the calling of Micah 7, and John Bunyan’s fear of the unpardonable sin - all wrapped into one concise chapter that told me beyond the shadow of a doubt that I belonged to Jesus! And suddenly I realized that I hadn’t missed out!
That sermon recording from earlier with the future missionaries had totally cut out, but God never cuts out of doing what He wants to do. I thought I missed that moment, but God had different plans. And that song touched me more profoundly than it ever could have if I had been able to hear those future missionaries singing on January 7th, 2024. Instead, God waited until April 2024 for me to hear it. God is so creative! He had me play Finlandia before I knew it was “We Rest on Thee”! He told me to read Micah 7 so that when I saw it as I randomly flipped through a book, I’d start reading and find the lyrics of “We Rest on Thee”, so I could read how that hymn teaches about God’s victory. He had John Bunyan’s story confront my fear that the chapter could apply to any Christian except me (because it literally quoted a guy who thought he had committed the unpardonable sin!) I was not ruled out by my own fear then! He had the sermon recording the shut off so that I would not just listen to what He did for other people, but that I would experience what He was doing for me.
Hebrews 4 had been my theme chapter for the past few months as God was teaching me how to enter His rest. Resting and the Great Commission are not in conflict: you can’t have one without the other! Rest in God is precisely where obedience finds its momentum. And what a wonder that the hymn they sang was all about rest - my word for the last few months!
So that’s the mystery of Finlandia. Googling that “We Rest on Thee” lyric video for the first time was one of the most powerful moments of my life. I literally felt like God was actually sitting with me, as if I could look over and almost see Him! I can’t describe that feeling or calling, but that’s okay. Here’s what I can relay: there is nothing better than being able to pray the words, “Strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender, we rest on Thee and in Thy name we go.”
The children of God have rest in a world of riots and rage: our God as Shield, Defender, and King of all nations. What a wonder that we belong to Him! Oh God, how blessed are those who rest on You!
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