When my daughter was old enough to sit on her own, she would often find herself at the edge of the bed, unaware of how close she was to a great fall. I would watch her sliding down the sheets, fully compliant with the pull of gravity. Just in time, I would jump and gather her in my arms before she made contact with the hard, tiled floor. There, in my arms, she would coo and giggle, completely unaware of the danger she had been heading toward—and of how her father had protected her. When this happened, I turned to my wife and said what was echoing in my heart: “How many times must God have protected us from unseen dangers, even when we had no idea we needed saving?”

Modern Christians like to be called the children of God (John 1:12), and friends and brothers of Jesus (John 15:13; Matthew 28:10). But they do not wish to be identified as slaves of Christ even though the Greek word for servant in the bible is “doulos,” which unequivocally means slave. John 15:15, where Jesus calls His disciples friends rather than slaves, does not eliminate the master-slave relationship but adds another. John 15:14 says that we are His friends if we obey His commandments. He is still the master, and we are still the slaves and will always remain so. The apostles continued to call themselves slaves (Romans 1:1; 2 Peter 1:1). On Judgment Day, Jesus will call us good and faithful slaves (Matthew 25:23).

Matthew 11:29-30 clearly tells us that salvation is an exchange of yokes or slaveries. Jesus rids us of the yoke of Satan and sin and gives us His own. His yoke is easy and His burden light and gives rest for our souls, but it is still a yoke, and we are His slaves. He possesses us. Earlier, we were slaves of Satan and sin, now we are slaves of Jesus and His righteousness (Romans 6:17-18; Colossians 1:13). We are not our own; we have been purchased with a price, namely the invaluable blood of Jesus (1 Corinthians 6:20). You do not purchase children and friends. You purchase slaves.

Those who do not want to be the slaves of Christ cannot be the children of God and friends and brothers of Christ either. Salvation happens when we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9-10). How can Jesus be the Lord if we are not His slaves? Can someone be a father without having children? Can a man become a husband without a wife? No. And yet, Christians call Jesus Lord (Kurios), but shy away from calling themselves slaves (doulos) and acting as such. Jesus warns such people in Matthew 7:21-23. He unambiguously says that not everyone who calls Him Lord will enter heaven, but those who not only call Him Lord but also do the will of the Father, which is to submit to Jesus as slaves (Luke 9:35). They will boast of their ministry on Judgment Day, but Jesus will say, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” Those who do not live in slavery to Christ are not His and will not inherit the kingdom of heaven (1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 1 John 3:9-10).

Unfortunately, modern Christians have lots of misunderstandings about freedom and slavery. They do not understand that we cannot not be slaves. We were made to serve and worship. The question is not whether we will serve. The question is whom we will serve. Adam and Eve chose to be independent of God and became the slaves of sin and Satan. Christ came to emancipate us from the oppression of an evil master, Satan and make us His own slaves. Unlike Satan, the Lord Jesus Christ is a good master. He doesn’t force us into slavery to Him. He gives us new hearts and new eyes to see His irresistible beauty and the true freedom that one gets when one surrenders his life to Him, and we willingly run into His embrace. Just as the OT slave who loved his master and would not leave him, but would willingly and happily serve him forever (Exodus 21:5-7), we gladly enter into an everlasting slavery to Christ. His yoke sets us free from the bondage to sin and Satan. His yoke saves us from the wrath of God. His yoke fills our hearts with true joy and peace. His yoke gives everlasting life. We love Him and will not leave Him because in his slavery does true freedom lie.  

Are you a true Christian? Have you submitted to the lordship of Christ (Romans 10:9-10) and found true freedom? Will you be allowed to enter heaven? Examine yourself, to see whether you are in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5).

Sorrow and suffering are woven into the very fabric of human life. No one escapes their grip, and yet, in God’s sovereign design, they are not purposeless. They are tools in the hands of the skilled Craftsman, chiselling away at our self-reliance and shaping us into the image of His Son. Biblically, sorrow is not a detour from God’s plan—it is an integral part of His sanctifying work. But let’s be clear—God didn’t create a world filled with pain and sorrow. The world He made was good, perfect even, without suffering or tears. It was sin—our sin—that opened the floodgates to all the anguish we experience today. The entrance of sin fractured God’s perfect creation, bringing death, sorrow, and suffering in its wake. Our world groans under the weight of that fall.

Yet here’s the beauty of the Christian message – God, in His infinite mercy, didn’t leave us to wallow in the chaos and destruction we brought upon ourselves. Instead, He redeems it. He turns our very pain and suffering into instruments for our good. Like a master sculptor, He uses the blows of sorrow not to destroy us but to refine us, moulding us more into the likeness of Christ. The very pangs of suffering become, in God’s hands, the means by which we are drawn closer to Him and sanctified for His glory.

So while the world aches with the consequences of our rebellion, God is at work, bringing redemption out of ruin. He uses even the deepest sorrow to shape us for eternity, to make us fit for heaven, where every tear will be wiped away.

Why Christians Are Slow to Leave

A friend recently asked whether I saw myself still living in Minneapolis five years from now. I had no compelling reason to say no: no alluring job prospects, no deep stirrings for change, no clear path from here to elsewhere. I had several significant reasons to say yes: we own a home here; our children were born here; I work and pastor here. Still, I hesitated.

Others in my generation probably resonate. Unlike our grandparents (or even our parents), we grew up breathing the air of transience. As young adults, we dwell in tents, not houses, always ready to pull up the stakes, often feeling we are on our way to somewhere that is not here. The idea of settling down for fifty years in the same neighborhood, job, or church can make our clothes feel scratchy. We move among our elders as tumbleweeds through redwoods.

No doubt, there are good and godly reasons to live lightly upon the earth, prepared for God to send us elsewhere. But I wonder how often we are blown less by the wind of the Spirit and more by the wind of our endlessly unsettled age. I wonder too how a renewed mind, rooted more deeply in God’s word, might discern the spiritual wisdom of staying put.

Tumbleweeds and Trees
As we consider what Scripture has to say to our more mobile age, we do well to remember that its books were not written to people who owned cars, who bought plane tickets, who crossed countries and continents with ease. Most ancient Jews and early Christians stayed put because they had to. That’s simply what (almost) everyone did.

We also do well to recognize that Scripture often holds in high regard those who do leave home. The word go marks two of the most momentous turning points in redemptive history: the calling of Abram and the sending of the church (Genesis 12:1; Matthew 28:19). We might also recall Moses, that cross-country prophet; Paul, the hither-and-thither missionary; or our Lord himself, who traveled from city to city to teach, heal, and usher in a new age.

Yet even still, we can’t escape God’s love for local places and the people who stay there. Moses uprooted Israel from Egypt, but only so he could plant them in Canaan (Psalm 80:8), where everyone might sit under his own vine and fig tree (Micah 4:4). Paul tumbled around the Mediterranean, but building and strengthening local churches was the labor of his life (Acts 14:23; 2 Timothy 2:2). And Jesus, as much as he moved through all Galilee and Judah, was still known as “Jesus of Nazareth” (Luke 4:34; 18:37; Acts 2:22; 3:6). The incarnate Son did not consider three decades in the same quiet town a waste of time.

Moses could have kept Israel on a constant sojourn. Paul could have called every convert to come with him. Jesus could have left Nazareth long before thirty. But trees grow shade, bushes bear fruit, and vines become beautiful only after patient years of staying put. And so with us, lasting fruit usually comes from lasting presence.

Roots for Restless Souls
Perhaps the Bible’s most explicit teaching about staying and going appears in 1 Corinthians 7:17–24, where Paul three times counsels the Corinthian believers to remain where they are:

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. (verse 17)

Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. (verse 20)

So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God. (verse 24)

Now, Paul wrote these words into a context quite different from our own. Some Corinthian believers, it seems, wondered if becoming a Christian necessitated a change in life status. Does Christian faithfulness require the uncircumcised to receive circumcision, or bondservants to seek freedom? Paul, while endorsing helpful life changes (1 Corinthians 7:21), nevertheless reassures the church that they can serve Jesus fruitfully wherever they’re found. So, three times he says, “Stay.”

Our own impulses toward moving or changing may come from different motives, but the principles Paul uses still apply. Consider, then, three steps the apostle might counsel us to take before uprooting from job, home, church, or other life situations.

1. Pay attention to providence.

In an individualistic society, we are prone to lean almost entirely on the subjective when making decisions. Do I like this job? Are we still happy in this home? Is this church still a good fit for me? Alongside these important subjective questions, however, Paul adds the objective fact of God’s providence: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him” (1 Corinthians 7:17). We are who we are and where we are not by chance, but by the Lord’s assignment and calling. And therefore, factors beyond our feelings are at play.

John Calvin draws out the merciful purpose of God’s providence:

[God] knows with what great restlessness human nature flames, with what fickleness it is borne hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once. . . . Therefore each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life. (Institutes, 3.10.6)

To be sure, the doctrine of providence, rightly grasped, does not produce passive, inert, immobile people who endure misery with a sigh of que sera sera. Calvin himself left his native France for Geneva. And Paul, after mentioning God’s assignment, still tells bondservants, “If you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity” (1 Corinthians 7:21). God in his providence not only plants us where we are, but sometimes opens pathways elsewhere.

Nevertheless, those who pay attention to providence will not be quick to abandon their present place, even under the sway of strong feeling. They will pray to the God of providence, and seek counsel from his people — so often the agents of his providence — wary all the while of their tendency to leave the Lord’s sentry posts for a life of heedless wandering.

2. See the potential in your present place.

Not only has God, in his providence, brought us to our present place, but he likely sees far more potential in it than we do. We may look at our life situation and see little more than a barren field, a fruitless tree, a dry and dusty Nazareth. But God sees more.

Surely, some of the bondservants in Corinth struggled to see potential in their present station. Theirs was not an enviable position. Yet Paul writes, “He who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ” (1 Corinthians 7:22). Paul is quite happy for bondservants to find freedom if they can (1 Corinthians 7:21). At the same time, he wants them to see that even bondservice can say something beautiful about Christ: Men may call me a servant, but in Christ, God calls me a son.

Our own situations are likely far better than a bondservant’s. Yet what potential in your present place might you have a hard time noticing? Living in an inner-city neighborhood brings some level of danger, but it also brings opportunity to give the gospel to the poor. A church in conflict may not feed your soul as another would, but it can also become ground zero for a new work of the Spirit, more beautiful than what came before. The mission field may seem like a waste of gifts once used, but it can also become soil for the seed of your fallen life, precious in God’s sight and poised for much fruit (John 12:24).

Who, if not Christians, will look upon the mustard seed of our present circumstances and see the coming tree (Matthew 13:31–32)? Who will recognize in the small stone a future mountain (Daniel 2:31–35), or the age of great things in the day of small (Zechariah 4:10)? Who will behold twelve common men as the beginning of a global movement (Matthew 16:18)? Who will stand upon an apparently godforsaken place and know that here, even here, Jesus holds all authority (Matthew 28:18)?

The humblest faith can transfigure the world, turning tumbleweeds into rooted trees, content to grow in the same ground for far longer than we thought possible.

3. Live where you are with God.

That kind of contentment, however, comes not only (and not mainly) from seeing the potential in our present place, but from seeing God in our present place. “So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God” (1 Corinthians 7:24). Don’t simply stay put; don’t merely remain. Wherever you are, live there with God.

If you are in Christ, then you have already found your true and eternal Home, your best and final resting place. Another job may make better use of your skills, another city may better serve your family, another church may better profit from your presence — but no new job, city, or church can give you something better than the God who is already yours (1 Corinthians 3:22–23). Those who feel as much may still decide to leave their present place, yet they will do so as Abram left Ur, or Peter left Capernaum, or Paul left Antioch: not searching for contentment, but satisfied with God.

John Piper, preaching on Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well, notes that “one of the evidences of not drinking deeply from Jesus is the instability of constantly moving from one thing to the next, seeking to fill the void.” Those who don’t have a well of living water within will seek some water without (John 4:13–14) — and when that spring dries up, on they go to the next relationship, the next job, the next hobby, the next car, the next home. But those who have drunk deeply from Jesus, those who live where they are with God, are free to stay and be satisfied.

Slow Decisions

If we take the time and spiritual energy to pay attention to providence, see the potential in our present place, and live where we are with God, we may still decide against staying put. We may discern that wisdom would have us lift these roots and plant them elsewhere. One of the defining marks of our process, however, will be that we decide slowly.

Sometimes, opportunities will come that call for quick decisions. But most of the time, we can take some weeks, months, or even years to linger where we are, living there with God, while we consider the benefits of staying or going. And if we feel we cannot take such time, we probably should slow down all the more. Quick decisions often show we want to move without thinking, praying, or hearing counsel that might contradict what we have already decided to do.

Just as men in midlife crisis should beware of buying boats, and those in spiritual darkness should hesitate to pronounce their own doom, so those who feel an urge to move, change, leave would do well to let time do its wise and patient work. If the move really is in line with heavenly wisdom, we have nothing to fear from slowness. And we have good reason to hope we will become more like trees firmly rooted, our branches rising and shade growing for the good of our present place, and any place God may plant us next.

On the days when my heart feels dull, dry, and drowsy, I turn to one simple prayer from David in Psalm 51:12 —

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.

This verse is easy to memorize and helpful to focus my prayer when my soul is dozy. The natural outline is my plea for the three things I need every day.

Refresh my joy — God, I need you to remind me again of the lengths in which you have gone to save my sinful soul. Remind me again of the holy wrath I deserve, so that I can rejoice again in the precious mercy that has saved me. Cause this joy to overpower the dullness I feel right now.

Restore my allegiance — God, my heart is dull because my loyalties are wrong. I long for ease and comfort and for human praise, which empty my soul. As I acknowledge my sin, re-align my allegiances to your name and re-commit my devotion to your glory. Give me a “right spirit” (Psalm 51:10).

Grant me willing obedience — God, help me obey you today, not compelled by obligation, but willed by your Spirit within me. I desperately want to obey you and to experience the joy of obedience. I need a free and willing spirit — I need your free and willing Spirit. Uphold me in this, I pray.

In my own words: God, refresh my joy, restore my fidelity, and grant me the freeness to obey you today.

This is a very short prayer I return to on my dullest days.

In Luke 17:5–10 the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith. How does Jesus help them? In two ways, both of which are by telling them truth. So even in the way he  responds he shows us that faith comes by hearing. Knowing certain things should increase our faith.

Uprooting Mulberries

First, he strengthens our faith by telling us in Luke 17:6 that the crucial issue in accomplishing great things to advance the kingdom of God is not the quantity of our faith, but the power of God. He says, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” By referring to the tiny mustard seed after being asked about increased faith, he deflects attention away from the quantity of faith to the object of faith.

God moves mulberry trees. And it does not depend decisively on the quantity of our faith, but on his power and wisdom and love. In knowing this we are helped not to worry about our faith and are inspired to trust God’s free initiative and power.

Debtors Now and Forever

Second, he helps their faith grow by telling them in Luke 17:7–10 that when they have done all they are commanded to do, they are still radically dependent on grace. Jesus gives an illustration. You might want to read it again in verses 7–10. The gist of it is that the owner of a slave does not become a debtor to the slave no matter how much work the slave does. The meaning is that God is never our debtor. Luke 17:10 sums it up: “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” We are always his debtor. And we will never be able to pay this debt, nor are we ever meant to. We will always be dependent on grace. We will never work our way up out of debt to a place where God is in our debt. “Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” (Romans 11:35).

When it says in Luke 17:9 that the owner does not “thank” the slave, the idiom for “thank” is provocative. I think the idea is that “thanks” is a response to grace. The reason the owner does not thank the slave is that the servant is not giving the owner more than what the owner deserves. He is not treating the owner with grace. Grace is being treated better than you deserve. So it is with us in relation to God. We never treat God with grace. We never give him more than he deserves. Which means that he never owes us thanks. God never says “Thank you” to us. Instead he is always giving us more than what we deserve, and we are always owing him thanks.

So the lesson for us is that when we have done all we should do — when we have solved all our pastoral care problems and fixed the attitudes of all our people and mobilized the most missions and loved the poor and saved marriages and reared godly children and boldly proclaimed Christ — God owes us no thanks. Instead we will at that moment relate to him as debtors to grace just as we do now.

Grace for the Unworthy

This is a great encouragement to faith. Why? Because it means that God is just as free to bless us before we get our act together as he is after. Since we are “unworthy” slaves before we have done what we should, and “unworthy” slaves afterwards as well, it is only grace that would prompt God to help us. Therefore he is free to help us before and after. This is a great incentive to trust him for help when we feel like our act is not together.

So two things increase our faith: (1) that God himself and not the quantity of our faith is the decisive factor in flinging mulberry trees out of the way, and (2) free grace is decisive in how God treats us before and after we have done all we ought to do. We never move beyond the need for grace. Therefore, let us trust God for great things in our little faith, and let us not be paralyzed by what is left to be done in our lives and in our church.