Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Don’t Speak; Listen: Instructions on How to Navigate Our Spiritual Highs

When the apostle Peter encounters the transfigured Christ whose “clothes became white as light,” the apostle (somewhat understandably) does the one thing he should not do…he speaks (Matt 17:4). Before he can fully explain why he wants to create three tent or hut like structures, the heavenly Father graciously interrupts the apostle’s meandering daydream. Matthew reports: “He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him (Matt 17:5).” In this brief rebuke, the Father reveals that the proper and best human response to divine glory consists not of human ingenuity but of human listening.  In other words, to make the most of our experiences of spiritual euphoria, we must not first speak but listen.

Does Jesus Still Speak?

Were it an option, I suspect all of us would happily purchase a ticket to the next transfiguration. But Jesus does not offer us or even the other disciples this opportunity. Jesus no longer invites us to climb mountains. Rather, Jesus instructs us to read the Scriptures. Speaking of his experience on the mountain and of the centrality of the Scriptures to all future Christian experience, Peter writes, “And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (1 Pt 1:19-20).” God’s glory does not abide permanently upon the mountain but in his revealed Word.

Least we think Peter has gone rogue and replaced the glorious revelations of Jesus with the boring binding of a book, we should recall Jesus’s words in John 14:26. The ideas found in 1 Peter have their genesis in Jesus who said, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” Jesus always intended for his earthly ministry teaching ministry to give way to the completion of the Scriptures. Thus, as John Piper often says, if we want to hear the voice of God, we need to read the Scriptures out loud. To commune with Jesus, we must listen to his Word.  

Today’s Mountain Tops

As we submit our lives to the Scriptures, we should expect to experience moments of joy, euphoria, and inspiration. Just as Jesus led the disciples atop the mountain, Jesus through his spirit continues to expose his children to the glories of his presence. We can experience such moments on walks while reciting scripture, at church while the service weaves its way through prayers, songs, and sermons, and at home while reading the Bible in the quiet of the early morning.

 And when they do occur, we like Peter can be tempted to think that our next idea (especially if it has a religious bent to it such as going on the mission field) is of the Lord. Why yes, I should start an orphanage, travel to the South pacific, marry that girl, preach that sermon, or give that donation. While we should praise the Lord for such impulses, we still must stop and listen to Jesus before we act. We must ensure that our newly discovered desires line up with Scripture and our spiritual gifts and competency. Perhaps you should start an orphanage but maybe you should not because you lack organizational skills. Perhaps you should go to the mission field in time, but if you leave college now, you will break your promise to finish school that you made with your parents whom you are to honor (Eph 6:2; Ex 20:12). Perhaps you should be a preacher or a missionary, but you first need to stop sleeping with your girl-friend and earn the support of your local church (1 Tim 3:1; 1 Thess 4:2-8). Yes, the desire for marriage is a good desire, but that boy is an avowed atheist and not someone a faithful Christian should marry (2 Cor 6:14; 1 Cor 15:33). And yes, God does love a cheerful giver, but he also calls you to pay your bills and would not be glorified by you defaulting on your rent so that you can meet that need (2 Cor 9:6-7; Jas. 5:4,10).

Before we act, we must check our desires and motives against the Scriptures. A profound spiritual experience does not guarantee that all that comes out of our mind has been sanctified or redeemed. Though God’s Word is always true, our hearts are not. We must take time to listen to the Son, trusting that he will provide us with the skills, resources, and opportunities to fulfill all that algins with the Scriptures.

What if We Spoke?

Though the Father calls us to listen to his Son, all of us at some point or other have inserted our foot into our mouth along with the apostle Peter. We have made a commitment, headed off to seminary, started a job, begun an adoption, or even entered a marriage without considering God’s revealed word. We have awoken to the disaster of a stressed schedule, a unhealthy work environment, a low GPA, a dysfunctional family, and an unbelieving spouse.

But even if we have acted foolishly and endured great hardship because we spoke before we listened, we should not lose hope. God will not cut us off from his grace.  When Jesus speaks to Peter at the end of the Transfiguration narrative, our Lord offers his impetuous and foolish disciple mercy. Matthew writes, “But Jesus came and touched them, saying “Rise, and have no fear (Mt. 17:7).”  Those who have trusted in Christ do not have to fear that their foolishness will forever separate them from the goodness of God. Jesus died for our sins and stands ready to help us. He came precisely because he knew that we have far more in common with the apostle Peter than we wish to admit. And the Jesus who lifted Peter from the ground will enable us to be more than conquerors through his Spirit who sanctifies us through his Word. Jesus will forgive us and walk with us. Hear the words of Jesus: “Rise and have not fear!”

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Jesus Didn’t Diss the Poor: Making Sense of Matthew 26:11

In perhaps one of the oddest moments of the passion narrative, Jesus seemingly sets himself at odds with his disciples’ concern for the poor. Breaking ranks with the twelve, Jesus did not think Mary should have “given to the poor” the money that she had used to purchase the oil needed to anoint Jesus’s feet. Rather, the Messiah praises Mary saying, “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me (Matt 26:11).” Some within the church have appealed to this passage to justify why they focus on everything and anything but caring for the poor. They assume that since Jesus said we will have the poor with us tomorrow, we can wait until tomorrow to care for them.

What’s Going On?

But when Jesus rebukes the disciples, he takes issue not with their ministry priorities (music team vs. clothing drive) but with the men’s lack of historical or temporal awareness. In other words, Jesus has not contrasted caring for the poor with preaching, singing, prayer, or any other faith driven ministry. Rather he contrasts the time needed to care for the poor against the time needed to commemorate his death and resurrection. In other words, Mary has grasped the temporal uniqueness of this historical moment and commemorated it in a right and meaningful way. There will be no second chances or opportunities for the next generation to prepare Jesus for his death. Had she done anything else at that moment including fasting, singing, or leading a Bible study, she would have chosen the lesser thing for Christ’s death alone saves!

Through the horrors of having nails driven into his hands and feet, Jesus would accomplish what the law could never do. Being fully man and fully God, he was the perfect sacrifice for us because he was us and yet was also God. He could satisfy the wrath of God with his blood and free us from our bondage to sin and death. To quote the apostle Paul, “By him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses (Act 13:39).” In that one act which also contained the hope of the resurrection as Jesus’s death implied his triumph over death, Jesus saved sinners. As John Stott noted, “The Christian faith is the faith of Christ Crucified.”

Finding herself on the approaching the crux of salvific history, Mary rightly spent a crazy amount of money (perhaps around 50K U.S. dollars) to prepare Jesus for death. Were there to be a Scriptural analogy to this evening, it would be the night of Jesus’s birth in which the angels told the shepherds to go and find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Had the shepherds spent the night feeding the poor, they would have chosen the lesser of things for Christ would not be born again.

Jesus, the Early Church and the Poor

Thus, this verse in no way absolves Christians from the general scriptural command to care for the poor. In Matthew 25:35-36, Jesus prizes caring for the “least of these” as one of the true marks of saving faith, explaining that he will invite his followers into heaven because, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” As we care for the least of the people of God, we care for Jesus.

Quite naturally, the early church shared Jesus’s concern for the poor. When the Jerusalem church came into being following Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, its members began to sell, “their possessions and belongings,” for the purpose of “distributing the proceeds to all as any had need (Acts 2:45).” And when Paul set out on his missionary journey, the other apostles asked only one thing of Paul and Barnabas, “to remember the poor (Gal 2:1).” Jesus and the early church knew nothing of a faith that was too heavenly minded to be any earthly good. As the apostle John concludes, “whoever loves God must also love his brother (1 Jn 4:21).”

How To Apply Matthew 26:11

Rather than excusing our neglect of the poor, this Matthew passage calls all Christians of all ages to base their actions upon Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. The believer never moves beyond the cross to greater things, but rather can do things such as making sandwiches for the poor, putting together sermon notes for Sunday, and deleting distracting social media apps off of his phone because of the crucifixion. It is faith in this event that guarantees our eternity with Christ and that unites our soul with Jesus so that today in conjunction with the Holy Spirit we can obey his commands and do things such as care for the poor. As the reformer Zwingli helpfully sums up, “Faith, then, is not acquired by deeds, but works by faith.” Without the cross and all that it means, we have nothing. But with it, we have everything. As the old hymn says, “Because he lives I can face tomorrow!”

In the end, Jesus never dissed the poor and nor should we.

Peter Witkowski Memos, Pain & Suffering

Anna Who Waited: How the Means of Grace Sustain the Grieving

When my dear wife stopped breathing, I instinctively and instantaneously began yearning for the wholeness that had been. Though I longed for a quick fix, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not guarantee his members two-day shipping. At times, we will have to wait weeks, months, years, and even lifetimes for God to restore and heal what has been lost. In other words to grieve well, we must learn to wait well.

Half The Story: Make Your Bed And Do the Next Thing

A few year back, Admiral H. McRaven made waves in American culture when he asserted that, “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” He explained, “It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another take and another and another.” Though there exists a whole litany of reasons why someone might not make their bed first thing in the morning (for example sleeping spouses and children generally don’t appreciate being folded into sheets at 5AM), the basic idea behind the “make your bed principle” still stands. When everything is not what it should be and when we feel like quitting life, we do not need to climb Mt. Everest. We only need to do the next thing: take a shower, pick up the kids from school, or organize those pillows at the foot of the bed. Such an attitude can keep depression from spiraling into an ever-growing vortex doom which grows in size with ever failed tasks. But while the determination ‘to do the next thing’ proves essential to survival while grieving (click here for a fuller discussion of this topic), it cannot restore and sustain our aching souls as they wait for wholeness.

That Something More: Prayer and Fasting

Life comes not from our resolve but rather from our dependence upon the author of life through prayer and fasting. In Luke 2:36-37, the gospel author introduces us to the prophetess Anna. Like all young women of her day, she had entered marriage at a young age anticipating all the joys that come with having a family. But the children never came. Before she reached her eighth wedding anniversary, her husband would die. She would spend at least the next sixty years (if not more) as a widow waiting for the appearance of the Lord. How did she survive all those long years of waiting in the midst of grief? Luke relays the secret of her success writing “She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day (Lk 2:37).”

Upon the death of her husband, Anna doubled down on her faith. As Asaph before, Anna trusted that she would find answers to her grief, sorrows, and afflictions in the house of the Lord. In the words of Psalm 73:16-17 “But when I thought how to understand this it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went to the sanctuary of God.” Eternal perspective and its resulting hope comes not through relaxation, new friendships, or our contemplative walks. It comes through worship that is facilitated by the people of God in the house of God. As the author of Hebrews notes God uses liturgies, songs, sermons, and corporate prayers to stir us up “love and good works (10:24).” If we hope to make sense of our longing, our sorrow, and the goodness of God as we wait, we must enter the temple of the Lord.

And we must do so actively. Once inside the temple, Anna prayed and fasted. She deprived her body of food to represent the brokenness that she felt and to affirm that her salvation did not reside in God’s good gifts but in God revealed through Scripture. To quote Psalm 119:92, “If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction.” In other words, the power to keep waiting, to survive the sorrows of grief comes from the Lord through the Scriptures. Moreover, the very ability to understand and obey those scriptural promises also comes from the Lord. He must open our eyes so that we can “behold wonderous things out of” his law (Ps 119:18). Every time her stomach growled, Anna affirmed afresh Deuteronomy 8:3, which declares, “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

Not only did Anna depend upon the word of God and his means of grace, but she also knew the God of the temple would act. The great king David had written in Psalm 34:6 that: “The poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles.” God had acted and saved David from his political enemies. She also knew she was not the first woman to fast and pray in the Lord’s house. Before there was a king David or a temple, Hannah the future mother of the great prophet Samuel, entered the tabernacle (a holy tent structure where the Jews worship the Lord) desperate for a child. Scripture said of her, “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.” In taking her sorrows to the Lord, Hannah shows us that those who have been overwhelmed by the waves of grief can and will find hope, relief, and encouragement in the knowledge that “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love and at night his song is with me (Ps. 42:3, 8).” Though her soul was melting away with sorrow, Hannah found contentment, hope, and eventually a son through her prayers. Likewise, Anna remained faithful to the Lord for over six decades and got to see the Christ child because she never stopped taking her concerns to the Lord who sustained her. In the words of John Flavel, “It is not your inherent strength that enables you to stand but what your receive and daily derive from Jesus (130).” To take one’s concern’s to God is more than an psychological, therapeutic exercise. It is an expression of faith in God’s goodness that in turn produces more faith, the very faith that will sustain us as we wait.

The Apostle Peter and What Not to Do

The worst thing we can do as we wait for wholeness is to trade prayer and fasting in God’s house for self-reliance. If we switch out the things of God for shopping, nights out, and vacations, we will find ourselves buddying up to the apostle Peter on the night when he betrayed Jesus three times and then descended into deep despair. As theologian D.A. Carson helpfully notes, “People do not drift towards holiness.” Or as Jesus warned Peter, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Because Peter neglected the normal means of grace, Peter found himself not at Jesus’s side as the events of the crucifixion unfolded but fleeing into the darkness of the night. Neither made beds nor vibrant faith come about through magic, well wishes, or happenstance but through intentionality.  If we neglect the means of grace, our waiting will not end in joy but in the unrelenting despair of unnecessary sorrow.

Admittedly, we can attend church, fast, and pray for all the wrong reasons. Jesus cautions us against retooling such things for personal gain, saying, “But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your father who is in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you (Mt 6:17-18).” But the solution to bad rhythms and misuses of God’s good gifts never proves to be the elimination of those means of grace but rather the proper usage of them. We do not abolish speech because of lies nor marriage because of sexual sin. Similarly, we should not avoid church, fasting, and prayer because we or someone else we know fasted or prayed poorly.

And when we do find ourselves reading, praying, and fasting with a cold or faithless heart, we need only to confess those sinful motives to the Lord and ask for fresh love. Grief is not a time for new inventions or indolence but rather a time for pressing into those simple and yet extraordinary means of grace that we were hopefully employing before the tragedy of death struck our hearts.

Our Hope

And we do all of this because the God who hears our prayers promises to answer our prayers precisely because we are poor and needy. One day soon, our waiting will come to an end. We will see the redemption of Jerusalem. For some of us, that answered prayer might take the form of a spouse, a child, or a new friendship. For some of us that moment will come when God reduces our desires and thereby brings them into line with his secret will for us. And for some of us, that moment may not come until we see Christ face to face. But it will come. Just assuredly as Anna saw the newly born savior and bore testimony of that joy to all who would listen, we too will soon see Jesus. And when we do, all grief and sorrow will be made well. Friends do not grow weary in your waiting. Do not neglect the means of grace. Go make your bed, but even more importantly go with Anna to the house of the lord to pray and fast. God hears our prayers!