By Jesse Jost

What are you frustrated with right now? Is your church spiritually dry and apathetic? Are there people who just don’t understand you and continue to torment you with words of slander? Is your body letting you down with weakness and sickness? Has your vehicle broken down again?

We start each day with different goals and agendas for what we want to accomplish. But usually we don’t get very far into the day before we discover that life has other plans for us. Sickness, injury, red tape, human incompetence, and the internet can each appear as an obstacle to our goals.

The Bible calls these interruptions to our agenda “trials.” We want sleep and the stomach flu leaves its calling card all over our kids’ bathroom. We want to live a sanctified life for God’s glory with a sweet spirit, but tiredness and hormones make the day an emotional struggle. Life with other broken humans means that you can’t get too far down the path before someone does or says something that shatters your peace and tranquility.

When our purposes and plans are derailed, we feel angry and frustrated. We believe we are justified in indulging frustration, because it is, in a twisted way, very ego stroking. When we are frustrated by other people’s stupidity or incompetence, we inwardly delight in our superiority, that were we in their shoes, we would do things better. When we are frustrated by spiritual immaturity, or ineffectiveness in our church body, we believe we are among the truly spiritual ones. When we are frustrated by breakdowns and delays, it is because we believe that our plan for the day is the best and that it is being hindered.

Is frustration a spiritually healthy condition to be in?  Is frustration proof of our righteousness? Is God ever frustrated?

This world is not as it should be. Babies are mutilated and sold for research. Women are raped in the name of religion. We are saddled with corrupt bureaucratic governments, and a society that seems determined to flaunt its self-destructive ways in the face of God. Surely God must be so frustrated with us down here. Right? Well, if by  “frustrated” you mean, “feeling or expressing distress and annoyance, especially because of inability to change or achieve something,” then no. According to the Bible, God cannot be frustrated because “no purpose of His can be thwarted,” (Job 42:2) and God “works all things according to the counsel of His will.” (Eph 1:11)  Continue reading…

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By Jesse Jost

What robs you of joy?

The gap between what we expect and what life gives us can vary wildly. What we want does not usually match what we experience. We want to be liked and find approval; instead, we get criticised. We want credit and glory for our accomplishments, to be admired, but we’re ignored and our achievements go unnoticed. We want control, to tailor life to our specifications, but life always has other plans. We set goals for ourselves and expect a level of maturity and sanctification, only to be discouraged by an emotional revolution that takes us captive and prompts an embarrassing display of immaturity.

Sometimes, we feel content or even pleasantly surprised by how rich life is. But other times life’s disappointments suck us deep into the bog of despair and self-loathing.

Disappointment hurts. Having hopes raised only to be dashed creates more misery than if the hope had never been there.

What a strange world we find ourselves in! How can a world so full of marvels and pleasures be such a source of disappointment?

What creates our expectations for what life should give us?

Certainly we have cultural expectations that are conditioned by advertising and media. Our tendency to compare also creates expectations. You don’t feel short until you are in a room full of giants.

It is strange how our habit of comparing rarely makes us happy. Our world is full of disparities. Some people are living in total luxury, while others live in filth, torment, and struggle to even have their most basic needs met. Most of us are not in this bottom tier of misery, but rather than being grateful for this, we still want more.

Desire, longing, wishing, searching, tasting, but it is never enough.

We have a disappointment in what life gives us, but we are also disappointed in ourselves. We expect more from ourselves than we accomplish. We fight our limitations and resent them. Our helplessness to change our imperfections is discouraging. Our inability to break bad habits is depressing.

What created this gap between our expectations and the reality of life?  Continue reading…

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By Jesse Jost

I must confess some things about me that are pretty ugly. I crave admiration and recognition. I want to be liked and appreciated. Actually, I want to be worshiped. In short, I want what rightfully belongs to God. My illicit addictions to these things have brought me great sorrow and depression over the years. Only now am I just beginning to see these desires for what they really are. Pride: The great anti-God state of mind.

God put His glory on display by creating a world ablaze with beauty and He filled it with worshippers. It was an act of love. Worshipping God is the most thrilling and satisfying experience there is. But it all started to go wrong when one of God’s insanely magnificent creations, Archangel Lucifer, fell in love with his own splendour and began to crave worship for himself. He fell from heaven and his pride has led to him becoming the most destructive being in all creation.

Pride: What’s the big deal? Continue reading…

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By Jesse Jost

Love. We use the word a lot; we kind of have to if we want to be biblical. Love is at the heart of Christian teaching, and it is one of few words used to describe God’s essence. It is easy to curl the tongue to the teeth and then bring the lower lips to those same incisors to form the word “love”, but what does the word really mean?

It seems that when Satan hates a truth he tries to employ one of two strategies. First, he tries to prevent people from talking or thinking about it. Out of sight, out of mind. But if that doesn’t work his next strategy is to get people to talk about it a lot, but then subtly change the meaning of the words so that what is being said sounds like the truth, but is actually very different. I think this is what Satan has done with the word “love.” We hear it all the time. God loves you. Love one another. But what is true love? What do you think of when you hear the word love? More importantly, what does God mean by the word love? A quick look at the Bible will show how vital it is that we understand what love is supposed to be.

Love matters

When the Creator of the universe, the One who defines right and wrong, the One we will all stand before on judgement day, walked among us, He was asked what the most important commandment was. This is what he said: “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)

The Apostle John goes so far as to say that if we do not love, we are not of God and we “abide in death.” (1 John 3:10,14) He adds that “everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:7b-8) We like to evaluate our level of spirituality based on our knowledge of correct doctrine or how well we are abstaining from certain things that other worldly Christians are participating in. But God says the distinction that matters is this: do we love Him and love others?

According to these and many other verses, if we get love wrong, either by not loving or by misunderstanding what love really is, we have gotten our whole life wrong.  Continue reading…

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In the film “Dead Poet’s Society” Robin Williams plays John Keating, an English professor at a boys’ prep school. He starts the year by leading his class to the hall where the school’s early class members are enshrined. Keating tells them to look closely at the pictures, “They are not that different from you, are they? Same hair cuts, same hormones. Invincible, just like you feel…They believe they are destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope. Did they wait too long to make their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because you see, gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you…Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” It is a powerful scene. The psalmist gives us a similar message, “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Life is but a vapour. None of us knows which day will be our last. At the same time, none of us wants to waste our life. We want to know that what we did was “meaningful.” But what is the meaning of life? Which actions matter and which ones don’t?

The secret to life?

The meaning of life is a questioned often pondered by filmmakers. In City Slickers, Billy Crystal plays Mitch, a middle age man facing midlife angst. His buddies take him on a desert cattle drive, led by a leathery, tough-as-burnt-biscuits old cowboy named Curly who commands instant fear and respect. Crystal’s character cautiously develops a bond with Curly.

On a side trip to save a pregnant cow, Curly asks, “Do you know what the secret to life is?” He holds up one finger and says “This. One thing. Just one thing. You stick to this and the rest don’t mean (nothing.)”

Mitch replies, “But what is the one thing?”

Curly cryptically smiles, “That’s what you have to find out.” Unfortunately, Curly keels over, before disclosing any more information. Mitch later has an epiphany while rescuing a calf in a flash flood. He realizes that the “one thing” that gives life meaning is not some universal truth; it is what you decide it is. Mitch decides his ultimate meaning in life is his family.

Whose story is this? Continue reading…

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