Book Review: "Honor"

“Honor” by Adam Ramsey. The Good Book Company, 2024.

I have been so encouraged, inspired, challenged and fed by The Good Book Company’s “Love Your Church” series. Every book that has come out in this series so far has been a gift to me both as pastor and simply as another Christian disciple. They are short enough to be quick reads, but dense enough to have substance. Rich with Scripture and biblical insights, and ascetically pleasing too!

All that to say, as I picked up Adam Ramsey’s latest contribution to the series I had high expectations, and they were absolutely met.

As the title suggests, Ramsey writes on the topic of honor. His main ambition in the book is to paint for readers a biblical picture of what honor is supposed to look like in the Church and in the lives of believers. Of course that sounds simple enough, but it may just highlight for you how little you actually understand honor as it is defined and described in the Bible (at least that’s what it did for me).

While defining honor Ramsey at the same time casts a vision for what an honouring church could and should look like. What does a church look like that properly honors God, that has an honorable witness, that honors its leaders, that is led by honorable leaders?

Let me just say, that I needed this book. In my home, in my community and in my church, I fail on a weekly basis to honor others, lead honorably and to give all honor to God. Ramsey spoke so clearly to the shortfalls in my life when it comes to honor. More than that though he stirred in me something that needed to be stirred up; a conviction and a passion to want to be an honorable and honoring Christian and pastor, leading an honourable and honoring Church.

What God Can Do Through My Rejection

Rejection hurts.

I remember once being in the middle of a job application process. I had just finished an online interview with an assessment team, when I noticed a new email in my inbox from one of the assessors. I was surprised to see an email show up so quickly, but I thought, “Maybe I wowed everyone in the interview to the degree that there was no question about offering me the job. A no brainer.”

I clicked the mouse, the email opened, and then my head sunk. There was no job offer. Instead, the assessment team had accidentally sent me the document that contained all of the raw notes from the most recent interview and the ones previous. The notes spoke for themselves. “His answers are rambly and uncompelling, as mentioned in previous assessments” and “Struggles to articulate any clear sense of direction.”

I can’t tell you how much that situation stung. But it wasn’t anything new. Rejection always hurts, no matter what I am being rejected from. It always makes me squirm; makes me want to disappear. And yet, I have come to realize through the years and over the course of many rejections that God can and does use rejection in my life to do a myriad of beautiful things. These days, even though rejection is still uncomfortable, I find myself almost eagerly anticipating it because of what I know God is going to do through it and how He is going to be glorified by it.

If you think that sounds crazy, then allow me to share some the ways that consistently uses rejection in my life for my good and His glory.

1. Rejection reminds me that God’s opinion is the only one that matters.

Acceptance can be like a drug. The more you get it, the more you need it. You increasingly long for applause and embrace, and at least for me, the desperate pursuit of it is only broken when I am rejected. Rejection forces me to stop the pursuit and reflect on it. And that reflection, when it is led by prayer and carried out in Scripture, leads me every time to remembering that I am unconditionally accepted by the God. He is the only one with the power to truly condemn me, and if He accepts me, then who cares who rejects me!

As Paul writes in Romans, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8.34-35).

2. Rejection gives opportunity for the fruit of the Spirit to flourish in my life.

Rejection never creates me in an immediate affection for the person doing the rejecting. I don’t instantly want to take that person out for a nice gourmet meal. I want to share some carefully chosen words with him/her before I march away. When I am on the receiving end of rejection, there is no one in that moment that is harder for me to show love to then the rejector. So, what an opportunity to practice the love of God! Acceptance doesn’t give you that opportunity. It is easy to love the person that accepts you. Jesus himself said, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6.32). But to receive the rejection and in turn love and serve the one that rejected you, that requires the Holy Spirit in you. That produces for you a reward in heaven and leads to your growth on earth.

If we are willing to see the opportunity and rely on the Spirits power, then rejection can be the tool that God uses to foster and grow the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives

3. Rejection reveals to me what I am worshipping that is not God.

One way of identifying idols is to simply pay attention to the things that make you sin in anger when you don’t get them. If you are rejected from a job and it makes you walk away cursing under your breath or leads to new dry wall work in the basement, then there is probably an idol there. You are worshipping something as ultimate. It could be the job itself; it could be people’s applause and acceptance, or it could even be the power and authority that comes from the job and the applause. Whatever it is, if its absence causes you to sin its probably something you are convinced that you need.

John ends his first letter with these words, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5.21). If rejection is an accelerated way of identifying the idols in our lives so that they can be removed from our lives, then maybe we ought to say, “Bring on the rejection!”

4. Rejection puts me in the company of Christ.

It is not that Jesus is not with me when things go well and I am accepted, but there is a different kind of nearness and kinship that I find when I experience rejection, since Jesus Himself was rejected. John writes in the introduction to His gospel, “He [Jesus] came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1.11). In other words, the God of the Universe knows what it is like to be spurned and to be refused. His own people turned their backs on Him right from the beginning of His ministry, and it eventually climaxed at the cross.

In as much as we experience rejection that is not a result of our own sinful choices, we find ourselves in the company of Jesus. He understands it. He comforts us through it, and He relates to us in it, because His own people did not receive Him. Jesus knows rejection.

5. Rejection gives me sympathy for others.

Not only does Jesus relate to us in our rejection, but we relate to others. Everyone is rejected at some point, and probably at many points. And everyone, after being rejected, is looking for comfort in their rejection; looking for someone who can understand and who can give them some shred of hope. Well, who better to do that than the Christians in their lives, who have also experienced rejection. More then that, Christians who have found through their rejection that Jesus is better than whatever they were rejected from; that as Jesus said to the apostle Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12.9).

Rejection gives us the ability to relate to and sympathize with the rejected; to weep with those who weep (Romans 12.15). It gives us the opportunity to learn what others are growing through, and it opens the door for sharing with them the Gospel of the rejected Christ.

6. Rejection leads me to prayer.

Rejection often initially creates in me a lot of internal turmoil. I start asking why God would let this happen to me. Why would He allow me to be rejected? I begin questioning what His will is for my life, and wondering if maybe I had misheard Him. I wrestle. And how do I wrestle? In prayer. I talk to God. I petition Him; I call out to Him. I share with Him and confess to Him. And eventually through my wrestling and processing, I always find my back to praying “Lord, your will be done.”

The disciples once said to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11.1). I have made the same request many times. I think that rejection has been one of Jesus’ consistent answers to my request. I don’t plan it, it is the near jerk reaction. Rejection leads me to pray, and prayer leads me closer to Jesus.

7. Rejection creates in me a fearlessness.

As terrible as rejection can be, it also becomes for me a case-study of the unbelievable faithfulness and goodness of God. Every time I am rejected, I get to witness and experience firsthand the nearness God, the care of God and the power of God. I get to watch as He sustains me, provides for me, and gives me the strength to endure. I always end up after each rejection more sure of His faithfulness to love me and look after me. And the result of that realization is an increasing fearlessness for the Kingdom of God in the face of men.

If God is faithful to walk with me through rejection, then who is there to fear? More than that, what risk is there that is not worth taking for the Kingdom of God if it would serve to advance it? Instead of running from rejection you begin expecting it and welcoming it for the sake of the Gospel. You begin sounding like the Paul, “If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Galatians 1.10)

Rejection still hurts. Its still not fun. And yet, these days I anticipate it more than I try to avoid it. I am convinced that there are few more powerful tools in the hands of God to shape me, mould me and glorify Himself through me. So, let me simply end by encouraging you in this way: Don’t miss the incredible potential that your rejection holds. The next time you experience rejection, don’t underestimate what God might do with it.

Spiritual Devolution

I often hear people speak of the deconstruction of their Christian faith as spiritual evolution. When I hear that title given to it, I wonder, what if it is actually spiritual devolution?

Why do we always think that any movement is forward? Or that going forward is always progress? Or that we are always nearing the correct destination?

What if we are actually just getting more lost?

Why is it that simple faith, clear convictions, unwavering obedience to Jesus’ commands, and white-hot passion for him is the embarrassment? What if this is the real embarrassment: the palatable, shape-shifting, powerless Jesus that we call thinking clearly?

What if fifteen-year-old you was closer to the centre than you think?

Maybe it is worth deconstructing our deconstruction sometimes, instead of just assuming we took down the right building and built a better one.

Maybe not all growth is good growth, and not all movement leads you home.

Phones Should Be Illegal

It’s funny.

Time is my most precious commodity, and yet I part with it so easily.

My phone doesn’t even fight me for it, I give it to it willingly.

In different packaging I might call it my sworn enemy, a monster, not a friend to me.

But that’s what its become to me, a friend that does great harm to me.

A demon cloaked in all tranquility.

Deep thoughts I have given up in exchange for ultimately unsatisfying stimulation, mixed with nothing.

Deep community I have handed in, in exchange for a short lived feeling that I am something.

In the moment I think that I am gaining something left to gain.

In reality all that has happened is that another handful of my life’s been spent in vain.

Phones be damned. Smart phones should be banned.

Simply because we are all too dumb to realize that we are the ones being held inside a hand.

J.I. Packer, a Skateboard and the Bible

When I was four my parents took me into my first skateboard shop and bought me my first skateboard. I guess it was a big moment in my little life, because everything about it has always stayed with me. I can still picture the layout of the room. I can still see the worker reaching up with some kind of long metal instrument to bring the board down off the wall. I can still remember the board itself, black and neon green with the words Hot Stick written across the bottom in a kind of Friday the 13th styled lettering. And most importantly I can still feel that feeling of pure excitement as I got on the board for the first time and headed down the hill with my parents jogging to keep pace beside me.

Ever since that early memory, I have always had in me this gnawing and drawing desire to find more and more adventure. I don’t know if my parents buying me a skateboard at four years old was the catalyst for it or if they were just responding to what they could already see growing in me; but either way, the yearning for and pursuit of excitement has never waned. I think it is for this reason that school always proved difficult for me. It just felt boring. Reading books and learning equations felt dull and tedious. I wanted to be outside on a skateboard, or up the mountain on skis, or on the water behind the boat. I wanted to be thrilled.

Now I tell you all that not for no reason, but because it has a lot to do with how and why I started really following Jesus and then how and why I became obsessed with studying God’s Word.

Half-hearted at best

I became a Christian like lots of little kids do who have parents and/or grandparents that love Jesus. Being maybe six or seven years old (a few years after the skateboard purchase), I sat on the side of the spare bed in my grandpa’s house and prayed along with him, asking Jesus to forgive my sins. For many years after that, based on that moment and prayer, I called myself a Christian. Whether I truly was or not I don’t know, but what I do know is that I definitely was not thrilled about any part of the Christian life. At best I gave it all a half-hearted effort. It was again the same situation as school, it just felt boring.

Skipping ahead a bunch of years and over a bunch of situations and circumstances, I ended up reaching the ripe old age of twenty-four years and I found myself back in school and sitting in a Bible College classroom. If you’re thinking that something must have drastically changed in terms of that need for excitement for me to have ended up in a college classroom, well you are wrong. Nothing changed. On a kind of whim, I followed some friends to Bible College just for something to do because I wasn’t doing anything else, and in every class I attended I wondered why I was there and how fast I could unenroll, get my surfboard and get to the ocean.

That Class on John

But then one day, against all odds, all of a sudden something did change. In fact, everything changed. I enrolled in a class simply called The Gospel of John. As I am sure you can guess by the course title, the class was aimed at one thing and one thing only: studying the Gospel of John. It was the first time I had taken a strictly Bible class, and it proved to be the most important class I would ever take. Just like remembering that skate shop when I was four, I remember everything about that class on John. I remember where I sat in the square seating arrangement. I remember where other people sat in the square, and what books we were assigned to read. And most importantly I remember the feelings that I felt from the first moments of the first class and on: pure, unadulterated thrill.

Having had spent my life up to that point incessantly pursuing the feeling of thrill, I knew exactly what it felt like so I knew precisely when I had found it. And while I never in a million years expected to find it in the confines of a second level classroom on the campus of a small Bible College, that is absolutely and completely what I found.

Just to be clear, the professor didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t show up on a skateboard or drop down out of a hole in the ceiling. He just showed up, prayed and began teaching us about John’s gospel. He spoke about contexts and backgrounds; He unpacked terms and metaphors. He explained the double entendres and John’s literary techniques. And through all of it, He made the story of Jesus come alive; He made God’s Word and the Gospel story it tells come alive. For the first time in my life I realized some seemingly simple or obvious things, like that there was history behind the stories in the Bible, and history that I could learn about. That there was actual meaning in the texts that really could be uncovered beyond just what I thought or felt they meant. All of this was a new revelation to me, and the result was a realness to who God was and what He had done. And there arose in me a newfound obsession with studying the Scriptures, and seeking to know the God of whom they spoke.

I began everyday sitting down with the Bible, opening piles of commentaries and books and just reading and studying and meditating on it all, believing for the first time that I really could come to know Him through His Word. And as I would sit their sifting through the pages of the Bible, God seemed nearer than He ever had before, His gospel became more and more powerful and heavy on my soul, and I found that I could only explain what I felt in one way: as I drew closer and closer to Him through His Word I over and over discovered the same thrill, only magnified, that I had felt and chased for years on skateboards, on surfboards, on skis and behind boats.

Today

Fast-forward, I am now thirty-nine years old. I still skateboard every morning before work. I am still on the ski hill in the winters and still in the ocean whenever I find myself near one. And yet now I know that those things could all go away, and I would be fine, because the feelings they produce are no longer what I am after. Not because I got old and boring (though that is possible), but because I found the superior adventure and excitement. On that day in Bible College and through the classes that followed, I found an infinitely more satisfying, unfading, ever-increasing thrill of which I have never stopped pursuing, and it is this: knowing God.

Shocking new to some, I am still in school, still in Bible classes, and everyday the most exciting thing I do is to study God’s Word, aiming and desiring to come to know Him more and more fully. And it is without question the most exciting pursuit I have ever and will ever experience on this side of the new heavens and new earth.

You know I used to quote famous skateboarders to sum up my life. Now I quote men like J.I. Packer, because now I understand what they meant, and I feel what many of them so perfectly identified: “Knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a man's heart.[1]”

[1] J.I. Packer, Knowing God (InterVarsity: Chicago, 1973), 36.