Ben Zornes

Living and Dying to Show the Preciousness of Christ

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Give Thanks

Give Thanks

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We live in an age of overwhelming abundance, while simultaneously in an age of overwhelming discontent. We’re not the first such culture to have great prosperity mingled with ingratitude. This is what Paul describes in his opening of Romans. The rebellion of mankind is such that it can look at a world full of fertile soil, mines full of minerals, innumerable flocks and herds, and sprawling oceans and rivers and respond to it with ingratitude. Here’s how Paul described sinful man’s rebellion: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened (Rom 1:21).

One of the safeguards against a descent into such sinful darkness is simple gratitude and thanksgiving. Over and over again in the Psalms we are enjoined to “give thanks.” The Apostle tells us to “give thanks in all circumstances.” Elsewhere we are taught that “godliness with contentment is great gain.” Abundance without gratitude is like trying to swim after amputating all your limbs. It really is spiritual suicide.

So then, remember what your prayers should be. Robust prayer is comprised of several different attributes: praise, adoration, petitions, requests, supplications, intercession, and thanksgiving. We should work to make sure our prayers are well-rounded in this way. Of course we ought to go to God with even our smallest requests and needs, but if we do this without regularly giving Him thanks for how He answers our prayers, provides for us, and preserves us, we are doing our own soul real harm. Giving thanks is like watering the grass. Neglecting this chore will make for a really unpleasant lawn, while faithfully watering it makes it a place of delightful refreshment and rest. So, give thanks in all things, for all things. 

Reasonable Sacrifice

Reasonable Sacrifice

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Sacrifice is reasonable (Rom. 12:1). But the mindset of most people is that self-preservation is more reasonable. We think that sparing ourselves difficulty & discomfort is sensible. We’ve built a framework that incentivizes selfishness. From the smorgasbord of the entertainment industry, to the twisting of the medical field to drug and carve and indulge the patient’s imagined vision for themselves, we are a culture consumed with self. But this is unreasonable; like trying to grow a crop of corn by planting popcorn.

Both Moses’ Law and throughout the Psalms we see that thanksgiving is expressed through sacrifice. The sacrificial system was the way in which Israelites demonstrated their gratitude for God’s covenant mercies. The Psalms further revealed the ethical reality that thankfulness is demonstrated by sacrifice (Ps. 116:17). 

If we put this together with Paul’s instruction to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice we can see the necessity of the material discomfort of obedience. Thankfulness ought not to be merely in an inwardly felt affection; but rather it is to be manifested in the actions of obedient sacrifice. Preparing a feast, raising children, supporting a ministry financially, caring for aging parents, protecting your nation from invasion, and feeding the impoverished all require your material expense and physical exertion.

If you insist on self-preservation you are insisting on self-ruination. That’s just how God made the world. He made it such that sacrifice reaps glory. Scattering seeds in the soil looks momentarily like wastefulness; but in the harvest those seeds have multiplied. So, in the end, selfishness, in all its forms, is the truly unreasonable ethic. The Lord’s wisdom turns our sensibilities upside down. True reasonableness is to sacrifice yourself. As you celebrate Thanksgiving this week, decide beforehand to not begrudge the physical, financial, and relational sacrifices you must make. Those sacrifices will soon become glories. 

Prayer fo Confession

Father God,

You summon us to imitate Your generosity & goodness. Yet we become tight fisted, irritable with strained family relationships, unwilling to endure the inconvenience of welcoming strangers to our feasts. Forgive us for how we have embraced the unreasonable ethic of selfishness and grumbling, instead of what Your Word commands us to: sacrifice and generosity. Instead of trying to hide from danger & difficulty, give us grace to gladly endure hardships, as good soldiers.

You have called Your church to truth in the inward parts, so we now confess our individual sins to You. Selah.

We do this in Jesus’ mighty name, and Amen.

A Thanksgiving Word

A Thanksgiving Word

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David says in the 30th Psalm: “Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning (Psa 30:4-5).” Three things are of note here. First, our means of giving thanks is not by conjuring up thankful feelings, but by embodying our thanks in melody. Second, it is the remembrance of God’s holiness which should spark in us a depth of gratitude. God is not like us, and this is good. His ways are not our ways, and this is good. Third, this holiness is displayed in both His wrath and His favor. He has not only been far more merciful than our sins deserve, but He’s also bestowed entirely unmerited favor upon us. Truly the lines have fallen for us in pleasant places.

The Pilgrim story of 1621 is striking in how much pain preceded the thanksgiving. Something like half of the Mayflower passengers died in the voyage or in that first winter. But on that first thanksgiving, they still offered their Psalms to the Lord, offered their scant bounty in faith to the Indians (who I rediscovered brought popcorn to the feast), and then they extended the celebration over three days (my kind of people). They ate, drank, wrestled, had a shooting contest, and did it all trusting the Lord to provide and resting in His comfort. The way had been hard, but underneath were the everlasting arms.

And so, here we are, and as Grandpa Christie would have said, “I’m just glad we’re all together.” May we enjoy new versions of old traditions, or old versions of new traditions, take your pick. God has washed us clean. God has grown our family. God has met our every need, even in Biden’s economy. Today’s world is a madhouse on fire, but the King reigns, and evermore. So, let us shout with joy together: “To the King, to the Kingdom, to the Restoration.”

What Ingredient to Leave Out of the Thanksgiving Meal

What Ingredient to Leave Out of the Thanksgiving Meal

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Are you known for being content? Or is your inner life a long trail of grumbles muttered under your breath? We too often think of contentment as being the result of some math equation. Subtract all the nasty stuff from all the good stuff, if the answer is positive than––tada––we’re content; but if it’s negative we have good reason for the grumps.

But contentment isn’t a math equation of weighing our various circumstances. It isn’t a philosophical height that can be gained by walking through enough zen gardens. It isn’t a physical achievement which can be found by contorting into the right yoga pose.  It’s a result of grace in the heart. Without grace, nothing is ever sufficient to bring about contentment.

By grace, prisons become cathedrals. Bitter waters become sweet. Trials become times of thanksgiving. Chains become musical instruments for praise. Blessings aren’t taken for granted. Joys aren’t presumptuously enjoyed. Grace shapes our heart like clay into a vessel overflowing with gratitude for all things––whether hard or easy––which the Father brings into our life.

However, as one pastor remarked, “Discontent adds greatly to the burden of living.” It makes the weights heavier, the gloom darker, the burdens more cumbersome. The blessings are never bright enough. There’s fault to be found in everything from the seraphim to the salamander. At its root, discontentment arises from a graceless heart. A heart which has deceived itself into thinking it’s the sun at the center of the solar system.

Discontentment makes the turkey dry, the gravy bland, and the pies dull. Worse yet, it makes the fellowship frigid, the conversation barbed, and the relationships strained. Contentment, on the other hand, can make a meager meal a feast, it can make enemies into friends, it can turn hardships into joys. It does this because it is rooted in the fact that God is on the throne.

Israel murmured in the wilderness, and were we in that company, we’d have likely done exactly the same. If you’ve found yourself murmuring, turn to the Lord in repentance for all your complaining, muttering, grumbling, and discontentment with everything and everyone. Further, if you peel back one more layer, you’ll find you’ve been masking your complaints in all sorts of excuses as to why your complaining is justified. All such grumbling and discontent comes from a heart which thinks it is god. This is idolatry, and is the root of ungodliness. But as the Apostle Paul taught, godliness with contentment is great gain. Which means, when we receive grace to be godly, along with it comes the trust that the Lord will supply all your needs, in all circumstances, all for His glory.

Ingratitude & Idolatry

Ingratitude & Idolatry

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Idolatry is the necessary result of ingratitude. We see this very evidently in Romans 1. We are taught that God has revealed himself to mankind–from the very beginning–through the clear evidence of creation, and mankind is therefore without excuse (Rom. 1:20). We are then told of mankind’s proclivity, that: “when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened (Rom. 1:21).”

Though God had made Himself manifestly evident to mankind, we both refused to glorify God (i.e. rendering to Him the honor, worship & obedience due Him), and we were ungrateful for the two-fold fact that God had shown Himself to us and given us the faculties of understanding and recognizing Him as the only God. We know there is a God, we see His handiwork all around us in creation (i.e. Natural Revelation), and refusing to glorify Him (which, as the confession puts it so well, is our chief end) is nothing more than arch-ingratitude.

God made us wise, sentient, able to perceive Him in His creation, and instead we refused to render Him the proper thankfulness for His good gifts unto us. He gave us eyes and we chose to spite Him and pluck them out. The following two verses points out the profound folly of such disobedience and ingratitude “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things (Rom. 1:22-23).”

God gave us the gift of wisdom and ability to know which far surpasses the dumb beasts; rather than worship Him, obey Him, and be grateful for His gift of making Himself known to us and making us able to know Him, we chose to debase ourselves and worship idols in the likeness of things far beneath us, and render worship unto them instead. The irony is, God made man in His image and man is far more like God than the chimpanzees are like man. Whenever man worships idols he is by necessity also profoundly ungrateful. One would think that we would see the folly of worshipping that which is inferior to us instead of what is infinitely superior to us; but our rebellion is such that we willfully debase ourselves.

This week we set aside a day for a reflection of what we are thankful for; first on our list should be the fact that we are not dumb beasts, and we can actually reflect on what we are thankful for and that this blessing (and all the others) flows from God alone. Thanksgiving is as intrinsic a part of our worship of God, as turkey is an intrinsic part of the Thanksgiving Feast.

Please do me a favor: comment & share!

Analytics for a Non-Analytic

Analytics for a Non-Analytic

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ben zornes - thank you - blogpost 05-31-16I’ve been tinkering with my blog recently, and I have some changes to be revealed soon. But one thing I came across as I was making these adjustments was the data for the traffic that has visited my site over the last three years. It took a bit for me to start to realize what these numbers & stats mean, and I was shocked when it began to sink in. Over the last three years my little blog here has had visit from 150+ countries, the top ten are as follows:

  1. United States: 28,701
  2. Canada: 2,506
  3. Australia: 1,308
  4. South Africa: 799
  5. Brazil: 592
  6. United Kingdom: 577
  7. Philippines: 386
  8. Germany: 290
  9. India: 249:
  10. New Zealand: 212

On an average month, 1,057 spend a spell reading my blog posts, or perusing the other resources on my site. Even over the last year, since we’ve moved to Moscow, ID for me to attend Greyfriars Hall, and my blogging has been less frequent, there’s been a considerably faithful following. That humbles me, and spurs me onwards in living a life to the glory of Christ, in service to His saints, and reaching the lost through all means available to me.

The top ten most read posts are:

  1. George Muller: For the Benefit of the Church (7,037 views)
  2. Bamboozling Our Inner Pharisee (3,920 views)
  3. Think About Porn (2,714 views)
  4. To Destroy the Works of the Devil (2,581 views)
  5. The Ministry of Intercession (2,476 views)
  6. Your Days (of Singleness) Are Numbered (2,104 views)
  7. The Recipe for Spiritual Starvation (1,839 views)
  8. Leaven in the Lump (1,590 views)
  9. A Bunch of Baby-Haters (1,526 views)
  10. Summer Advice for Sons (1,463 views)

Ironically, the term that has brought in the most traffic via Google searches is: “destroy the works of the devil”. This is because one of the first things I did on my blog, clear back in 2009, was a series on “5 Reasons Jesus Had to Die”, and the last one was “To Destroy the Work of the Devil”. Numerous variations of that phrase have brought in traffic, and I’m grateful that as people are grappling with how to fight the Adversary of the church, somehow they land on my site and, I pray, are guided into understanding that the cross of our Lord Jesus has dealt a death blow to Satan and his kingdom.

If I were to pick which post is the most important to me, that’d be tough, but perhaps A Great Mountain, and a Crumbling Statue would rank highly. With Beware Erasmus ranking highly as well. He Will Answer, from about a year ago, is also one that is profoundly important for me and I think for all the saints.

All of this is simply to say, thank you. Those who have returned with each post and shared and tweeted out quotes from my posts, you have left me humbled and grateful. I do this all to present the preciousness of Christ to the church and the world. Reviewing the last three years’ analytics has only deepened my gratitude for the readers/visitors of this site! I profoundly value your support and disagreement, as both are important to me. Every time you re-post, share, tweet, email, print it out and hand it to a friend…I’m blessed that the thoughts I’ve cobbled together have been a blessing to others. So, here’s to the next three years…onward and upward.

No Grumblies Allowed

No Grumblies Allowed

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After a spell of grumbling and complaining at the Zornes’ house, my mom had my sister, Jaclyn, and me make these little 13156700653_0e3c71a599craft-paper signs which said, “NO GRUMBLIES ALLOWED.” We had to put these signs on the different areas of our house where we were most prone to complain. The closet where disorder seemed ever to reign which mom had asked us to clean. The dishwasher and sink where the laborious duty of scrubbing plates and unloading silver-wear was performed. The bathroom where, every week, we were supposed to scrub and clean the shower, toilet, sink and floor. Those signs lingered around the Zornes’ house for quite awhile, if my memory serves me correctly; and they taught me an important lesson in learning how to discern God’s will for my life.

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Ben Zornes