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Do not treat God’s supreme creation with contempt, any of them.

Posted in commentary, Quotes, Sermons on January 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength
Because of Your adversaries,
To make the enemy and the revengeful cease.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;

What is man that You take thought of him,
And the son of man that You care for him?

Yet You have made him a little lower than God,
And You crown him with glory and majesty!

Psalm 8:2-5 NASB

Some argue that rationality and self-awareness are necessary for a human being to be considered a person.  That leaves out all kinds of people with certain kinds of disabilities.

Pastor John points out something a little different – human dignity is not granted based on rationality, but granted by the one who created them!  And though this is not specifically about little ones with disabilities, the connection is clearly evident:

Why is it that what comes out of the mouth of these little humans has such strength that it can overcome the enemies of God? I think the answer is, at least in part, given by verse 5—these little ones are made by God. Job said in Job 31:15, “Did not he who made me in the womb make him [my servant], and the same one fashion us in the womb?” Little infants and sucking babes are each made by God in the womb.

Moreover they are made in the womb, like no other being, a little less than the angels, and they are made in the womb by God and crowned with glory and majesty. In other words, their supreme place in creation under God (or the angels) is so profound even at the stage of being sucklings that when they open their mouth to cry or to coo or to babble as a human being, they are bearing witness to their unspeakable dignity in creation and therefore to the majesty of God’s name in all the earth. God does not wait until a sucking babe is rational and independent to ascribe to him the glory and majesty of verse 5—he doesn’t have to be a NASA scientist. When the suckling opens his mouth, God is praised, strength is established by the sheer truth that a human creation in the image of the majestic God is here.

Let all the adversaries of God take note and tremble. If they treat God’s supreme creation with contempt, they will lose. They will be silenced.

And so I appeal to you, do not join with the adversaries of God in killing unborn children or scorning any race of human beings. Because the truth of this text stands sure: You cannot worship and glorify the majesty of God while treating his supreme creation with contempt.

John Piper, What Is Man?, delivered January 16, 1994.

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Someday, justice will reign for all the babies

Posted in commentary, News on January 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It seems right on this national Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday to recognize that someday little black babies and little brown babies and little babies with disabilities of all colors will no longer be subject to the horror of abortion.

It is a focused horror.  I’ve covered the issue of abortion and babies with disabilities many times before, but it isn’t limited to disability.  Black babies are also targeted (thank you to The Radiance Foundation for this video):

It also seems right to warn those who would destroy them because they are black or brown or disabled or poor that this injustice will not stand, and it won’t be human judges who make the verdict:

For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:30-31 ESV

Jesus can cover this sin of abortion.  Isn’t that what we want – more people clinging to Jesus?  And that doesn’t just turn people away from doing horrible things to babies, but leads to joy!

And that’s the kind of justice I think we all want:

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36 ESV

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Where we can all point the blame for our sin

Posted in commentary, Helpful things on January 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

God used Paul Tripp to protect me from myself, again.  It doesn’t really matter what the circumstance was, I was letting a situation dictate a growing scoffing, sneering, dismissive attitude.

Then I read this:

I still need to be rescued from me because as long as sin remains I’ll be drawn to desire, think, say and do what God names as evil.

Quickly followed by this:

It’s my heart that’s the problem. People, locations and situations don’t cause me to sin, they’re where the sin of my heart gets revealed.

Paul Tripp, via @PaulTripp, Friday, January 13, 2012.

APTAT!

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As Christians, knowing isn’t necessary (and it’s ok to ask)

Posted in commentary, Scripture on January 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

This past week, two men who pastor churches – one a veteran, the other in his first years – sent out information about their children.  The little girl’s multiple issues are still a mystery, but probably genetic in nature.  The little boy has an unknown and as yet undiagnosed issue that causes him to vomit multiple times a day.

Both men (and their wives) want answers, and are actively pursuing answers.  Yet both are living with a serenity in the sovereignty of God that is beautiful and convicting.

Paul Tautges, the father of the little girl, wrote this on his blog last November:

Biblical faith does not require answers. Our daughter’s neurologist has gone out of his way to request a secondary funding source (genetic array costs a minimum of $20,000) not because we cannot live without answers, or because our faith in God is threatened. On the contrary, our faith in the sovereignty and goodness of God is surer than ever. Our confidence in Christ and the eternal hope of the gospel is richer now than if our lives had been free from having children with physical disabilities.

Trusting God doesn’t mean we are passive.  On the contrary, having the foundation that God will strengthen us for the task he has given provides impetus to act!

We’ve all been there at some point – not knowing what is really going on in our children.  Dianne repeated something last night we’ve said to each other a hundred times: not knowing is much harder than knowing, even when the knowing is devastating.

So I pray for these families, that God would grant them the knowledge that would help them serve their children.  I know they are praying earnestly for it!

And if he chooses not to reveal it, we can still rest in this: God knows it all, he is the eternal source of love, he designed those children with a purpose, and nothing can stop him, for his glory and for our good.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39 ESV

 

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Bitter or angry? APTAT

Posted in commentary, Sermons on January 13, 2012| 6 Comments »

Dianne to me: the doctor’s office called and he wants to increase Paul’s meds to 8 ml morning and evening.

Me: you’ve got to be kidding.  What are they thinking?

Backstory: Paul’s medications have helped control his seizures, until a recent five-day span when he had multiple seizures every day.  Dianne has been trying to get some answers and possible changes.  This particular medicine makes him sleepy.  We’ve already seen what happens when we increase this medication – the sleepiness just gets more pronounced.  We don’t want to lose any more time with him!

So, my first response started me down a very bad path, which I don’t say out loud but is rather intensely going on inside: they aren’t paying attention; we’ve gone down this path before; they really don’t care at all about him; what if there’s no real help for him; what is God thinking in adding to our. . . . . . . . . . . .

Then God spoke:

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Romans 8:32 ESV

Time to refocus and engage:

APTAT (from Pastor John’s sermon of this past Sunday, The Word of God Is at Work in You):

Admit – Lord, I hate this and I’m angry.  And I know this could swallow me up whole; I can’t beat it.

Pray – Lord, we need a good answer for Paul and I don’t believe this is it.  Please provide a better course to help him.  Please give us wisdom to do the right thing – what if this is the right thing? And please don’t let me turn my anger into doubting your goodness; I hate that I used to do that and I never want to go back to that.

Trust -But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children. . . Psalm 103:17 ESV  He has not stopped loving Paul or me. Whatever he wants to do, he can do and will do.

Act – Dianne reminded the doctor about the sleepiness and asked for another course. He has prescribed yet another medication, and we are investigating it for ourselves before starting.  We are inclined to pursue this course of action.

Thank – Lord, thank you for 1) helping the doctor to hear Dianne’s concern and thinking through another course, and more importantly 2) reminding me that you did not spare your own son, which immediately reoriented my heart.  Even before I asked for help, you were already providing it.

And here is APTAT in Pastor John’s own words in less than four minutes:

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Sentiment won’t win the day, but it helps!

Posted in commentary on January 12, 2012| 1 Comment »

The response from Tuesday’s post on teaching the Bible to our severely cognitively impaired family members has been encouraging.

And sobering.  We really do live in a different reality than people who don’t know God through Jesus Christ.  The idea that there is a supernatural joy given as a gift, among many gifts, from a super-capable God just doesn’t make any sense outside of actually knowing this God and experiencing his love.

We all know parents who do not embrace Jesus who are doing their best for their children with disabilities and who love them intensely.  They stand as examples of the common grace God grants, both to the parents and to the children.

But we do something extra – we attach meaning to this life that is full of hard things:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 ESV)

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:17-18 ESV)

We define our experiences in light of God’s word and his sure promises, even when we need to fight to do so. The delight we have in God is because of who God is and how purposeful he is in all things – and that magnifies the delight we have in our children even as we grieve the suffering.  It is not mere parental sentiment at work, but God at work on our behalf to increase our joy.  And it is worth fighting for.

And that’s the sobering part.  People will see our delight and be genuinely happy for us.  They will understand that delight in the midst of hard things is a precious thing.

But they won’t attach it to anything beyond our own sentimental attachment to our children, not seeing the divine handiwork behind it.  Or worse, they attach it to some good in us!  Who among us hasn’t heard, “God only gives you what you can handle,” as though we were somehow just waiting for all the mess associated with disability to be given to us.  I know it is meant well, but how foolish!  Even the parents I know who have adopted one or lots of children with disabilities (thus actually choose this life, in one sense), don’t believe themselves to be anything special – and desperately need God’s help every day.

Not attaching our joy in hard things to God’s work in our lives leads to our cultural schizophrenia about people with disabilities.  I’m using the definition of schizophrenia that means “a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements.”

On the one hand, as a culture we want to alleviate suffering and promote the development of the gifts of those with disabilities, thus the myriad of governmental, church and non-profit programs that exist to provide services for those living with disabilities of all kinds.  This is what ‘good people’ do.  On the other, the abortion rate of children with disabilities suggests we really don’t want them around.

Only God can win this day because only God can transform hearts.  From the comments on Tuesday’s post, he has already done that miracle in a lot of people’s lives, including mine.

And I know God has used my son to pierce dark hearts, and sometimes it is a testimony of joy that God uses.

So let us not neglect to tell our stories when we can, but also not be too surprised when the real story – God’s magnificent, overwhelming love and power – isn’t understood or shared.  God knows what he’s doing for his glory, and for our joy.

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Tempted to fear? APTAT

Posted in commentary, Scripture, Sermons on January 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’m going to blatantly steal from Pastor John the next couple of days, from his sermon The Word of God Is At Work In You.

His closing remarks were very practically and particularly helpful:

It helps me to have an acronym called APTAT.

A — I admit I can’t in myself do what needs to be done.
P — I pray for God’s help.
T — I trust a particular promise he has given.
A — I act to do whatever God is calling me to do.
T — I thank him for his help when I am done.

So here’s how it works.

The Temptation of Fear

God has called you do something. You know it’s right, but you’re afraid. What do you do?

You admit honestly and humbly: “I am afraid and I cannot do this by myself.” Then you pray: “O God, grant me courage. Please don’t let me be ruled by fear. Take it away.”

Then you call to mind a specific, tailor-made, blood-bought promise that Christ has guaranteed for you by his blood: “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). You trust this promise. You say to God, “I take this promise for myself. I trust you. You are now my help.”

And you act. You act, believing that God, the Holy Spirit, is acting in you by his word through your faith. And when you are done, you bow your head and say, “Thank you. Thank you.”

Fear is something I know; I’m guessing you do as well.  In fact, with Paul’s seizures seeming to have returned, I’m often thinking about how much I don’t want to return to what happened this past summer.

A – I don’t want him to hurt like that again and I’m afraid.  I can’t do anything about them.  I can’t help him.  His body hurts; he hurts; I hurt.

P – Lord, please help him.  Help me know what to do.

T – I frequently go to this verse: “in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (Psalm 139:16 ESV).  I remember that God knows his days, including the hardest days, and that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39 ESV).  The days are hard, yet we will say with God that it was all worth it.

A – We clean him up, and make sure he is safe and warm and as comfortable as he can be.  Dianne pursues his good through doctors and medicine.  We don’t stop pursuing his good.

T – It is easy to thank God for this boy, and for the help that God provides; “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7 ESV).

And we live ‘as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing’ (2 Corinthians 6:10).

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Should we teach the Bible to those with severe cognitive disabilities?

Posted in commentary, Scripture, Sermons on January 10, 2012| 38 Comments »

Pastor John’s message, The Word of God Is at Work in You, was exceedingly helpful to me and I commend it to you.

As he made seven observations about the text, 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16, to open the sermon, observations 3 and 4 particularly caught my attention.

3. The Thessalonians heard the words of Paul.

Verse 13b: “When you received the word of God, which you heard from us . . .” God spoke, humans gave his word through their words, and the Thessalonians heard that. They heard the sounds. They knew the Greek language. They construed meaning with their minds.

God uses humans to deliver his word, and he delivers it to humans. Human minds hear and understand the word from God, and then another set of human minds receive it from those human mouths and again hear and understand it.

From the perspective of having a child with severe cognitive disabilities, this appears to raise a problem.  My son Paul can ‘hear’ from the sense that his ears work, but he cannot understand or make sense of most of what he hears.  And he also cannot communicate much of what he actually understands.  Is the Gospel closed to him?

Thankfully, the fourth observation follows:

4. As they heard, God acted on their minds and hearts.

What did he do? And how do we know this?

What he did was enable them to receive Paul’s words as the word of God. Verse 13b: “When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God.” That’s what God did.  He opened their mind and heart to know that Paul was speaking the word of God, and he gave them the inclination to receive it for what it is, not mere human words, but God’s word.

How do we know God did this? Because at the beginning of verse 13, just before saying that they received his word as the word of God, Paul says, “And we also thank God constantly for this.” For what?, “That when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God.”

But why would Paul thank God for this? Why would he thank God that the hearts of the Thessalonians grasped the divine nature of the human word? Why would he thank God that the hearts of the Thessalonians embraced the human words as divine word? The reason is that God enabled them to do this.

I may be going out on a limb with this, but if it is necessary for God to make this understanding possible for people with ‘normal’ cognitive abilities, is it not also possible for God to do so for those with limited cognitive abilities?  After all, he knows everything about every human being that he has made, and when compared to God, all of us live with pretty impaired cognitive abilities!

The Thessalonians could communicate that they understood these words were coming from God, but that doesn’t change the primary actor being God.  Paul was obviously encouraged to know how it was being received!  But the evidence of their receiving it was only that – evidence of God’s prior actions to give them understanding.

So, I don’t think it is a stretch to include those who have limited abilities to understand anything and no ability to communicate what they understand as being entirely able, through the work of the Holy Spirit, to embrace truths about who God is and what he has done for them.

When Paul was younger we spent time teaching him Bible verses. He even earned a bag after reciting five verses.  But I gave up on that because I didn’t think it was really worthwhile; he was just repeating a string of words.

Or so I assumed.  Maybe there was more going on than I realized through the work of the Holy Spirit.  It raises questions about whether I believe Isaiah 55:10-11 to be true:

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
(Isaiah 55:10-11 ESV)

What do you think?

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God kindly prepared us for worship in the Word – then blew me away

Posted in commentary, Sermons on January 9, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Church was about as good as it gets yesterday.

I ran into this verse on a wall before we headed into the sanctuary:

And the ransomed of the LORD shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
(Isaiah 35:10 ESV)

What a comfort – sorrow will flee rather than cling to us!  Joy – everlasting joy! – will be on our heads!

That was a good start.

Then the service began.  Over lunch every member of the family commented on how helpful the music was!

This was new for me: All Flesh Is Like the Grass

A favorite of mine: Our Great God:

Especially appreciated by the children: Christ is Risen:

And then the sermon!  Pastor John addressed a significant issue for those of us with children with severe cognitive impairment – not intentionally and not specifically in those words and I’m guessing he didn’t even have us in mind.

But as soon as the words left his lips, the connection between the point he made and comfort for those of us raising children with severe cognitive impairment seemed clear.  Lord willing, I’ll raise it later this week, after the sermon is up at Desiring God so I can read and listen to it again to make sure I heard what I think I heard.

Paul slept through the sermon and then through Sunday School, so he didn’t get as much out of it as I did!  But even that was a grace, in a way.  God is good.

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Grateful God values this kind of sight that doesn’t require physical eyes!

Posted in commentary on January 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

After kind of a long hiatus for me, I’m back to reading materials on disability and the Bible.

Since one of Paul’s disabilities is that he can’t see because he has no eyes, I tend to pay closer attention to any discussion about blindness and the Bible.

I keep bumping into arguments about blindness and physical sight and God’s purposes, usually attempting to make God justify himself in some way.  It gets a little discouraging.  I may write about that someday.

But Paul’s lack of eyes isn’t all that important in an eternal sense.  God has already told us what kind of sight we need, and it is a kind of seeing he gives as a gift:

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.
(Ephesians 1:15-21 ESV)

I don’t pretend to understand all God’s purposes in making my Paul blind (or his other disabilities).  But I know he was created for God’s good pleasure and to bring him glory.  And he doesn’t need eyes, or a rational, orderly mind, or a strong body to do that.

Someday the whole world will know God creates purposefully, and that ‘all’ really did mean ‘all.’

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they existed and were created.”
(Revelation 4:9-11 ESV)

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