Is it proper to treat God as our heavenly Genie-in-a-bottle? As in, “Lord, I ask you to . . . .” Or, “Please, dear God, we need you to . . . .” Always asking, always seeking, always knocking.

We all do it. When we pray we commonly ask for benefits or we tell God what we want him to do for us, for our family, or for our friends. So much so that some people measure his care and goodness by their perceptions of having prayers answered.

But doesn’t God ask for it? The invitation to ask, seek, and knock came from Jesus himself, and he meant it. In his last conversation with the apostles before he was crucified Jesus underscored the invitation: “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24).

So it is true: God wants us to come to him not only with our needs but our wants. He is a gracious, merciful, gift-giving God. This remarkable disposition reveals God’s heart as loving and self-offering. The bond between God as our creator and ourselves as his beloved creatures is one of utter, complete dependence on our part: apart from him we can do nothing. Every breath, every step, every aspiration that we have as humans exists within the realm of God’s sustaining word.

Yet some have taken this reality to be a lever, a way to pry benefits out of God. This is the concern we must consider. Is there a proper and an improper way to come to the God whose limitless capacity of love and giving is before us?

The answer is yes. We are meant to approach him in love—as those beloved—so that our requests are familial, asked as children delighted with their father. As children whose ambition it is to please, to delight, to draw near to the one on whom we depend.

Sin has spoiled this intended mutuality of joyful giving, receiving, and returning care. The greatest gift between God and the male-female “man” was the bond of love, with the particular gifts shared among us serving as signals of that bond. God’s very being—as one who exists eternally in the triune communion of mutual love—was the basis for our own creation: “Let us make man in our image . . . male and female.”  Our very being is relationally defined by God’s own image of mutual love.

And so it is that the reciprocity of giving and receiving is divinely inspired in all who turn to God in faith. The life of faith is to participate in Christ’s life as branches grafted back into the vine of our original creation purpose: to bear the fruit of his presence. To share with others what we have been given. To love as we have been loved. And to use gifts as signs of our love.

Yet whenever and wherever fruitful branches offer their produce some will gather who see vines, branches, and fruit in selfish terms. Where is this from? From the serpent, whose chief characteristic is to gather wealth to himself. In Ezekiel 28 and Revelation 18 we find a creature who rejects reciprocity, despises mutuality, and who insists that it is better to receive than to give. He denies his dependence and invites us to be “like God” yet without ever telling us that the God he has in mind is unloving, selfish, self-seeking, dissipated. In other words, he offers a status of god-ness created in his own image—an utter corruption of God’s true being. Thus Satan is the ultimate consumer, and all who follow him are themselves consumed by him and by his ambitions.

So the Bible regularly warns us against those who have outward forms of religion but who lack any power. What power? The power to love others selflessly. To receive gifts in order to give them away again. To find delight in mutuality and reciprocity.

The Satanic alternative to the true God can still appear religious in many ways. The deceiver’s main device is the offer of contractual mutuality. That is, a religion that expects a quid pro quo benefit for any gift that is given: God, if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. If you want my tithe, okay, but I expect blessings in return. If you need to be glorified then I want a cut of glory for myself.

The real object of this charade is self-advancement and God himself is reduced to the status of a warehouseman—with his powers as the ultimate commodity. It is like a cancer that can betray our well-meaning prayers. Even as genuine believers we can slip back from our salvation delight in Christ to the old days of seeking our personal security and advancement as if God is obligated to make this life into our own heaven.

My heart was moved to write this entry after reading Revelation 2:4 yesterday morning. The church in Ephesus was among the most dramatic centers of God’s working in the first century. Paul had taken the church from infancy to maturity; John had ministered there as well. It was a church that was noted for its orthodoxy—it had all the right answers. But it was a church that was beginning to treat God as a resource. He was no longer their greatest delight: “I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.”

I am a bachelor, never married, but I can still imagine what it must be like for a married man or woman to realize that their spouse has a competing love that has displaced them. This is God’s own grief. He made us as lovers, to receive and to reciprocate his love; and to share that love with others by finding—after his own heart—that there is greater joy in giving than in receiving. And for his part he refuses to be a commodity. For that we can give thanks, and respond to him as our ultimate love.

The Bible presents readers with some sharp oppositions. One instance, in James, pits the wisdom from below against the wisdom from above. Another is the truth of God’s word set against the serpent’s ultimate lie in Eden. Let me take up yet another for today’s reflection: the opposition of the love of power versus the power of love. Jesus lived by one, his enemies by the other.

A way to picture the two approaches is to visualize two pyramids sketched on paper next to each other. One is a standard pyramid with a broad base that supports a peak at the top. The other is an inverted pyramid with the narrow point at the bottom widening to the widest dimension at the top. In most life settings the working model is the standard pyramid: success is measured by “reaching the top”. The Bible, on the other hand, turns that model upside down: success is measured by serving others from below—always taking the position of a servant.

The two contrasting pyramids can be a problem among believers as often as it is in the workplaces of the world. It accounts for church splits, split marriages, and any number of the conflicts we find all around us. Call it an expression of self-love: those who seek to climb to the narrow upper reaches of success do so at the expense of those who are placed “below” them, even if—as Christians will do—they justify their advancement as crucial to God’s kingdom. Those who have been stepped on by the power-seeking climber will readily sniff out whose kingdom is really at stake! The sour smell of selfishness is evident to everyone but the sweaty climber himself.

Think of the times Jesus needed to confront his own disciples on this very issue.

A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them would be the greatest. And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them . . . . But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.” (Luke 22:24-26)

In what was, perhaps, the same episode as restated in another gospel—or (what I suspect) a recurrence of the same problem—James and John approached Jesus with a request for the highest positions in what they presumed would be the soon-coming kingdom. One asked to be seated at Jesus’ right hand and the other at his left. Jesus answered by asserting his commitment to the inverse pyramid of love.

But whoever would be greatest among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:43-45)

Paul certainly got Jesus’ point and often summarized the upside-down quality of Christ’s mission of love—I think of the text in Philippians 2 in particular: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” The measure for this reversal of fallen self-primacy was Jesus himself:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing . . . .

Indeed, it is the measure of the cross that expresses the love of both the Father and the Son to us. And it is this love that the Spirit pours out into the hearts of believers as the launching quality of salvation. Jesus told his apostles, as found in John 15, that there is no greater measure of love than a willingness to die for others, and that is the measure Jesus sets before us who are his own. In the upside-down realities of God it is in our service to others that we become feature figures in God’s realm of love.

Let me press the point to another stage. For many Christian readers the texts and examples I just cited are absolutely familiar and will invite ready calls of “Amen! Preach it, brother!” But my concern is that we have ingrained, systemic commitments to the love of power—the standard pyramid of life—in our Christian communities that utterly undermine what the Bible is telling us. It’s as if a man who lives one way for most of the week happens to be a hypocritical pastor who climbs into the pulpit on Sundays. There he uses his “preacher’s voice” to say things that aren’t the least bit true of the way he lives for the rest of the week. Like the discreditable pastor too many of us have “Scripture-listening-ears” that listen but don’t actually hear what has just been said!

Let me step on my own toes to make the point. For more than twenty years I served as an academic in a Bible College and Seminary setting. Our program was based on a standard pyramid of status. I moved up the ranks from instructor, to assistant professor, to associate professor, and was invited to apply for full professorship before I ended my climb. And over the years I found that the number of times we were called on to wear our academic regalia doubled; and the garments clearly denoted those who had doctorates and who didn’t—with more and fancier gear always encouraged. But no one on the faculty seemed to mind. Nor did the students, who had been well trained by our grading system to pay attention to who was higher and lower on the academic stair steps to higher status. We love elevation, even if we deny it when we use our preaching voices.

If the world shows any sensitivity about pyramid matters it has more to do with making sure that everyone has equal access to power. Power is crucial to those who see it as the chief measure of their significance. Yet battles over equal access to power quickly disappear if the power being sought is the upside-down power of loving service. There the queue is very short!

What is so striking about Jesus is that he avoided the sort of tension I felt when I held my teaching post and the academic status of “Dr Frost” with its modest but still captivating trappings. He rejected any roles in the power pyramids of his own day. Yet he also taught his followers that he was their head, their Lord, and their teacher. Was he being inconsistent?

The answer, of course, is no. Leadership and headship is altogether different if it has no other ambition than to love and serve those who are being led. And such leadership is never based on the power of a position, but on the strength and persistence of devotion and sacrifice. If someone says, “I love you and am ready to give myself away for your sake”, and I find them to be sincere and active in that ambition . . . well, I find them easy to be around! And I consider them to be natural leaders!

So, we have before us the love of power versus the power of love. Jesus lived by one, his enemies by the other. My prayer is that we will all become followers of Christ.

I thought I knew all about Jesus by the time I was a teenager. I had been raised in a Christian home and was well-churched. Throughout my childhood I heard about Jesus in a number of venues: at church, in Sunday school, at church camps, and in moments of Bible reading. Yet when I actually met Jesus he startled me. He was very different to all my earlier impressions; and whenever I return to the gospels in a new read-through those surprises are reawakened.

For one, I found Jesus to be deeply compassionate. This was hardly one of my biggest surprises—most people affirm this as a proper starting point in speaking of him—but it was more than I expected and to a different crowd than I expected. He cared for the broken, hungry, and needy and not just the good folks who deserve his care [I'm using my pre-conversion view of things here!]. When he and the disciples were ready for a retreat he delayed it as an act of compassion in order to feed the hungry thousands who were following them. He spoke of Jerusalem as a city that he longed to draw near to himself like a hen gathering her brood of chicks. He offered his power to heal and exorcize freely and often. He asked the Father to forgive those who carried out his own crucifixion while he was dying on the cross.

Jesus is also his Father’s delight; and he, in turn, is devoted to the Father. He did whatever the Father called him to do—even up to his willingness to die on the cross. He responded to the Father’s lead in everything. Whatever the Father said he accepted and obeyed from the heart. And he invites us to share in the glory of their mutual bond—a glory the Father gave him because he loves him.

So the surprise for me was that the gospels open a larger window into the Father-Son relationship than I ever expected. The view was at once attractive and shocking: the Father loves the Son and the Son reciprocates that love. Yet the Father wanted the Son to go to hell and back for our sake; and the Son—despite a momentary hesitation in Gethsemane—agreed. Why? In order to draw us, by the wooing of the Spirit, into their own familial love relationship: making all of us who respond to that love into the Son’s collective bride. All of this by way of the cross.

And from that invitation into God’s eternal embrace comes Richard Sibbes’ aphorism that “God has a spreading goodness.” The Father and Son share their love freely and boldly in order for us to enter into their bond of love through Christ. This trumped my teenage views that faith is mainly a function of legal demands and benefits.

What surprised me most, though, is the revolutionary Jesus. He came to overthrow the status quo of religion, of society, and of every person’s self-concerned view of life and meaning—a status quo based on human interests but not on God’s values.

This picture of Jesus keeps most people—including believers—from reading the Bible boldly and with open hearts. To the degree we idolize our self-focused personal identities, all that Jesus says represents just so much nonsense to us! And, with my own residual habits in play, I still find the three weeks it normally takes me to read from the beginning of Matthew to the end of John to be a jolting trip.  There Jesus regularly reminds me of how he views life and it is never “Frost-centric”!

What I see in the gospels is a man who held the social structures of his day in contempt. He challenged societal leaders, both in the government and in the religious society. He called Herod a despicable animal [a "fox"]; he excoriated theology professors ["teachers of the Law" or "Scribes"] and Bible-quoting moralists ["Pharisees"] again and again; and at his final trial he gave the High Priest, the Sanhedrin, Herod and Pilate only the most cryptic answers while boldly advancing God’s ultimate Kingdom—a realm that would dismiss their own respective kingdoms as inconsequential—without a hint of fear.

At times he even challenged his own disciples for not getting it. At one point, for instance, he challenged Peter for being aligned with Satan by setting his mind on “the the things of man” rather than on God’s ways. So Jesus was and is always a polarizing figure: pressing people to either love him or to hate him. He insists on God’s full mastery over our lives.

How, then, would he respond to today’s social expectations that we all affirm relativism, pluralism, and diversity in life and religion? Not warmly!

These are values that speak to superficial social issues birthed in human autonomy rather than in a bond with God, shaped and guided by his love. Jesus, in opposing our autonomy, calls for repentance and offers a transformation that is only birthed by his renewing love. And from this repentance will come passionate yet compassionate disagreements with those who differ from us.

The point is that Jesus refused to blend the world’s values with the ideals of God’s Kingdom—the two are utterly incompatible. Instead he offered parables, sermons, and provocative actions that challenged the status quo of his day, and ours. And he refused to accommodate himself to the ever devolving social mores of his day, and ours; yet he reaches out to all who were and are hungry to be healed and set free from the ravaging outcomes of autonomy.

Jesus, in sum, lived in the world but he was never of the world. He lived a life fully oriented to the Father and that was always running against the flow of his earthly culture. One visual picture that regularly comes to mind for me—after trips on a jetboat on the Snake and Salmon Rivers in Idaho some years ago—is of a ministry that drives forward against plunging currents and massive rapids. He followed his own Spirit and insisted that his way is the only option for all who wish to join him and his Father in eternity.

In the end his stubborn nonconformity led his foes to kill him. Which is exactly what the Father sent him to experience: to go into the hell of our broken world in order to bring about resurrection for all who come to love him and what he stands for. He offers real life to all who repent—by dismissing the world’s fixation on personal security and status—and follow Jesus in his revolutionary ways. What haunts me is that most churches, Bible colleges, and social structures in society today are non-revolutionary by biblical standards. So it is that within this environment I often find myself being pulled out into the powerful currents of media, of societal expectations, and of friendships that move me away from a full devotion to Christ. I find myself being swept downstream, even while among groups of believers, by those who find accommodation to be preferable to revolution.

In my Bible reading, then, whenever I come to the gospels I find a jetboat awaiting me with Jesus speaking: “Come aboard, my son; let’s enjoy the ride!”

So the final question for today: is anyone else ready to get on board with us? The trip is a thrill and the destination is even better.

Let me propose a possibility. What if God—who we know loves books—is now producing the greatest of all stories? And what if we are part of that Story, a Story we will all get to read once we reach eternity? Let me suggest, too, that our own part in the Story will be interpreted and expressed from God’s own point of view.

What is exciting about this prospect is that we have the first segment of this possible book in hand: the Bible. In the Bible—to make the point of how our own story may fit into the whole—we find people who never knew they would be known to subsequent generations as stars, villains, or something in between.

Noah, for instance, had no clue when he was a twenty-some year old that he would become one of the most famous people in history.

Rahab, when she was hosting the men of Jericho as a prostitute, could never know that she would become a noble figure in Israel, a woman devoted to God.

David, when he was watching over the sheep and composing poems about the stars he watched at night, never knew his poems would eventually be included in the book of Psalms. Or, that later when as King David—with the security of wealth and position—he would be exposed for having gone up on his highest-building-in-Jerusalem rooftop one night to sneak a peek into a nearby private courtyard to watch a naked woman bathe herself. He never guessed this would became a tragic chapter in the Story of stories—forever shocking and disappointing later readers.

There are different sorts of people in any story, what we call stock figures in novels. But, while novels create fictional figures with features we recognize in real life, the Story of stories has true stock figures. And the profiles they present to us in the Bible can still be found among our friends and neighbors. Each of us fits loosely—uniquely—within a category of characters, so that in the expanded Story of stories readers in a future day will be able to locate us within a recognizable profile. Let me suggest some possibilities.

There are the sympathetic figures. Ruth comes to mind. We all know and admire a Ruth, even today. She comes from another country, culture, and religion. She suffers from tragic circumstances. She is as poor as dirt, yet is still an attractive person and a hard worker. But most of all she has a depth of character that God touches, cultivates, and brings to a full bloom that is breathtaking to see. Call her a transformational character.

There are people like Eli: the religious moralist who is ready to challenge Hannah for being drunk—when she was actually praying—but who ignores the gross misconduct of his sons. Eli, it seems, is one of the more common figures in the Story: the religious imposter who doesn’t actually hear God’s voice, but who is in a very high position of religious authority. Jesus lumped this group together as the “scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites” in his own day. They draw near God with their lips even if their hearts are utterly distant from him. They have the form of religion but no power: towering weeds dominating the actual wheat. Call Eli an antagonist.

Another version of religious characters was represented by Balaam. He was equivalent to the media stars of today who proclaim high values. He was treated as a spokesman for God by the world at large, and he even had the benefit of receiving God’s clear directions in certain respects. But the real measure of Balaam was his pragmatism: he earned money for performing religious duties. People had to pay him to perform. In his brief chapter he was able to reap a host of service fees—although never the big bonus he was being offered—and in the end he happily betrayed the people God loved. Call him an attractive betrayer, or a surprising villain. An unattractive villain was Judas Iscariot—while he lacked Balaam’s star power he loved money just as much.

Money is a major theme in the Story. The profile of the wealthy individualist is mainly a non-religious category—including people who don’t really believe that God exists. The term, God, is simply a token concept that attracts other power-brokers in search of networking opportunities. In our modern world we have the helpful profile of ancient Babylon to look to. That biblical chapter, along with emerging stories of greed found in today’s newspaper, will expose the emptiness of materialism for the rest of eternity. A love for wealth is good for a time but it always leads to social collapse. This theme is called a tragedy.

There is also the good Samaritan. He fails to fit any of the categories we expect good people to fill. He has the wrong background, limited resources, no prospect of gain, but he does exactly what we all hope for from others when we are desperate: he offers profound and inexplicable compassion. Call him a paradoxical hero.

Yet the greatest number of participants in the ultimate and final Story of stories will only be present as part of the faceless crowds milling around in the background. In the Bible we find them as members of two groups: some shouting “hosanna!”  Others calling out “crucify him!” We may not have major roles but our direction of travel will be unmistakable.

Finally, what if we have an angel meet us if and when we arrive in heaven? And we ask our kind guide, “Was Frost right? Is there an extension to the Bible Story that God has been writing until now, the ultimate Epic that includes my own story?”

What if the angel says, “Yes, of course! You had all kinds of cues in the Bible that you should expect that to be true!”

And then we ask, “May I look at the section that mentions me and my role?”

In some cases, perhaps, the angel may say: “Oh, you were so disinterested in God until now that he couldn’t say anything meaningful about you—so take a look at the “.” at the end of this sentence. That’s all the space you’ve been given. You really didn’t have much time for God’s kingdom before now, did you?”

Or, possibly, the angel may answer: “We’ve all been waiting for you! Your chapter is fascinating—even though you had absolutely no human prominence in your lifetime you were famous here in heaven for your selfless devotion to the small group of needy people God gave you to serve, and in such tough circumstances. You showed off your love for Christ in all you did. It was a delight to watch … may I have your autograph?!”

So while the Story of stories has, in some fashion, already been set out in God’s plans from eternity past, it is clear from the Bible narrative that God involves us in the process. So, given that remarkable reality, here’s my prayer:

May each of us have a wonderful chapter that has God’s faithful angels enthralled from first to last!

I’m writing this in Boise, a city where I was touched by God’s grace many years ago. In 1976 I had been invited by a church there to launch a ministry to young adults. Now, decades later, I’ve spent the weekend visiting friends from that era—Nick, Howie, Way and Beth. Each has gone on to satisfying, if varied, careers with at least one feature in common: all of us have lived the good life!

But what is the good life? Is it linked to material comforts, to social standing, or to personal pleasures?

By those measures all five of us have missed the mark. None of us have big portfolios. None of us have any status except in very small circles. And our set of personal pleasures—using the ordinary sense of the phrase—are modest. We are, in fact, all ordinary folks living in modest circumstances. Nick picked up a 12 foot used sailboat for $250 so he may be the most extravagant one among us. Both Way and Howie are pastors in small churches. Nick works as a Christian education specialist with a mission agency. Beth supports her husband, a house church pastor, and teaches in a grade school. And I’m a pastoral care consultant with a small mission support agency. Not the good life by most measures, but it is a life all of us treat as a gift from God.

One biblical theme offers a basis for our own version of the good life. It came into focus for me as we held our first young adult group retreat in McCall about a month after I arrived in Boise—in February of 1976. It was a time for me to invite the 20 or so participants to a focus. The topic I selected was new to me. I called it “The Truth versus the Lie” and used John 8 as a focal point. Steady readers of this site will recognize that text as a favorite of mine as I take it up again and again. Why? Because it offers a distinctive basis for measuring whether a life is good…or something other than good.

Let me say more about it with a bit of technical commentary (bear with me, please!). In earlier years, during my college course in biblical Greek, I noticed that the underlying text of John 8:44 uses the singular form, “the lie” and the related particle “it”, but our English translations all globalize the usage so that it reads (as in the ESV here): “When he [the devil] lies [literally: "speaks the lie"] he speaks out of his own character, for his is a liar and the father of lies” [literally: "it"]. The same switch from the singular “lie” in the original language into a globalized form is also found elsewhere in the New Testament.

Let me give a literal reading of two such texts. One is Romans 1:25, “because they exchange the truth about God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator…” Another is 2 Thessalonians 2:10-11, “and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so to be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe the lie.”

So in my winter talks at the McCall retreat center I proposed that even if the globalized version of “the lie”—translated as “what is false”—has merit for the translators, there is a biblical basis for identifying one original lie: the persistent ambition of Satan to attain independence from God by taking up a god-like status. Think, for instance, of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness when Satan asked Jesus—the Son of God—to worship him! And it was this ambition that was the lynchpin of Adam’s fall: “you can be like God” by becoming a new and self-appointed moral agent: “knowing good and evil.”

The reality—or “the truth”—however, is that there is only One God, namely the Father-Son-and-Spirit God, and he alone is worthy of all worship; and he alone establishes the distinctions of good and evil. Not Satan; and not us.

So what is the truly good life? A Christ-based life: united to Goodness himself. A life lived with and by the truth that God alone is God. We are not gods and we should know not to compete with him. He alone is the source of life, truth and goodness. Apart from him we can do nothing. The measure is his own eternal life which owns us. And—now sharing in the life of faith—we find him to be the source of our love, joy, peace, patience, and more.

As we visited this weekend we all talked about some of the challenges we have faced or are facing at present. Beth’s husband has an aggressive brain cancer, discovered just a few weeks ago, and no health insurance. Yet as we spoke he told me that much to his surprise he experienced a distinct sense of joy at the same time he and Beth were processing the news. Joy? The good life? Yes.

Way has a church made up mainly of recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, and recently incarcerated people who are now believers—some making it and others still struggling. Yet we talked of the pleasure we share in God’s care for us.

I found that we all still have one thing in common. We know that God likes us. That is, that he loves us with a genuinely affective care! We know this to be true not only as a promise offered in Scriptures; but as a truth we have all shared for the past three decades. I’m not sure if any of the others recall the McCall retreat in the winter of 1976—probably not!—but the truth that God alone is God, and that the Lie is not to be embraced, is a reality shared by each of us even today.

Let me end on a more practical note. How does the good life of “living in the Truth” compare to “living in the Lie”? Let me leave that to you, the reader, to sort out in conversation with the Scriptures and with the greatest of all Guides to understanding the Word—Christ’s Spirit. But I can suggest a few possibilities to prime the pump.

Instead of seeking greater standing and status, live as if others are more important than you are. Instead of defining yourself by your skills and your knowledge, embrace the role of a servant who freely shares personal resources as gifts to build up others. Instead of seeking your own pleasures, delight yourself in pleasing others. Before judging others for their sinful behaviors, invite God to increase your compassion and love for them.

So, living the good life is all about being captivated by the one who, alone, is good: God himself. It’s a joy that will never end!