What I’m Reading: All Things New

On April 3, 2019June 8, 2022 By CaitlynIn End Times, What I'm Reading2 Comments

(Full disclosure: I love to recommend resources to help you in your journey, and when I do I use Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase something through my links, I may receive a small commission. But if there’s a resource you want, I encourage you to get it wherever works best for you!)

This past Christmas, my family blessed me with a big stack of books I had put on my wishlist. (Yes, we do wishlists in my fam, and it’s great!) One I was especially excited about was All Things New by John Eldredge. If you’ve been reading Fragrance Arise for a while you know that I quote him every chance I get (like in Why The Beauty of Jesus is My Life Message) and recently reread and blogged about his book Epic. Few authors have impacted me more. Normally I wouldn’t blog about the same author two What I’m Reading posts in a row, but this one is fresh on my heart and I’m so excited to talk about it.

John Eldredge is probably– no, is definitely– my favorite contemporary nonfiction author. His perspective on the Story of God and the sacred romance of our relationship with Him has captivated my heart’s imagination and given beautifully potent imagery to the way I think about God. (Fun fact– John Eldredge’s book The Sacred Romance was a key inspiration for Ted Dekker’s portrayal of the “Great Romance” in the Circle series of novels. So I even owe my Dekker obsession to John Eldredge!)

All Things New is John’s newest book, and it draws its name from a verse toward the very end of the Bible:

“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.'”
(Revelation 21:5)

It’s a portrait of the “happily ever after” at the end of the story of this age, after Jesus returns, when God restores everything that has been stolen and broken, and fully gives us every good and perfect gift to enjoy forever.

I have to admit– I was nervous to start this book. As excited as I was, I actually procrastinated several months after receiving it. The idea of the “restoration of all things” (as Acts 3:21 says it) in the Millennial Kingdom and beyond is not new to me, and ever since I started studying the end times about seven years ago, the hope of that final glorious restoration has been an anchor to my soul and a theological truth very near and dear to my heart.

However, I know that there are many different end time beliefs in the body of Christ, and I LOVE John Eldredge so much that I just really didn’t want to be disappointed. It took the encouragement of a friend whose judgment I have grown to trust for me to take the plunge… and holy crap, I’m so glad I did. (He actually barely touches specific beliefs about the return of Jesus. The tribulation isn’t mentioned once. I think people from across the eschatological spectrum would be blessed by this book and wouldn’t find much to argue with.)

What I love most about this book is that as much as it is richly biblical, it’s far more deeply emotional. None of the theology was new to me, but John’s way of drawing out the emotional implications moved me to tears more than once.

The book begins with John sharing very candidly about some heartbreaking losses he and his family experienced– a grandchild, a best friend. Amid the agony of that season, the need for a vibrant hope in a future restoration became desperately clear. We need more than the vague idea that “they’re in a better place” and someday we’ll be together again in some vague cloud of ethereal bliss. We need a “wild hope” (a phrase which both C. S. Lewis and John Eldredge are fond of) in a very REAL, tangible, concrete Restoration.

“The secret to your unhappiness and the answer to the agony of the earth are one and the same–we are longing for the kingdom of God. We are longing for the restoration of all things. That is the only hope strong enough, brilliant enough, glorious enough to overcome the heartache of this world.”
(John Eldredge, All Things New, p 17)

Isn’t this what we have been dreaming of? Most of us don’t have words for it, but whenever we experience those rare moments of pure joy, something in us longs for it to last forever. Even more, when we experience the terrible, ripping pain of loss, we cry out for “everything sad… to come untrue”, as Tolkein’s Samwise Gamgee put it. Deep in our gut, we know what we were made for. We feel the brokenness of the world and know that we were made for more. And we’re going to get it.

We must dare to imagine a very real, future, restored Kingdom on Earth.

What can we look forward to in the Restoration?

Our bodies will be resurrected and infused with glory. All pain and physical limitations will be gone. This hope especially has become central in the mythology of this generation– the heroes of Marvel and DC. The vampires of Twilight. We know deep to our core that our very bodies were made for more.

Earth will be made new, which is not to say that it will be destroyed and Earth 2.0 will take its place, but it will actually be made new— renewed, restored, made young and bright and innocent again. Earth, our Earth, not an ethereal swirly realm of heavenly fluff.

WE WILL LIVE IN RESURRECTED BODIES ON A RESTORED EARTH FOREVER.

This is a huge point which John develops carefully and biblically in chapter 2:

“This passage [Revelation 21] isn’t just about heaven, the Sweet By-and-By. John is shown the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven… the city of God comes to the earth. The dwelling of God, which has heretofore been heaven, comes to humans, who dwell on the earth. Notice also that God promises to make current things new–as opposed to making all ne wthings. If God were wiping away reality as we know it and ushering in a new reality, the phrase would have been ‘I am making all new things!’… Annihilation is not nearly as impressive as redemption.”
(John Eldredge, All Things New, p 25, 31)

The animal kingdom will be restored to rightful balance. The lion will lie down with the lamb and so much more! We will all be Steve Irwin, with even more perfect and fearless harmony between species.

We will be reunited with loved ones. My last memories of my grandma are of tiredness, illness, and forgetfulness. I can’t wait to see her in the renewed world– younger than I ever knew her, with perfect stamina and memory, no more mental blocks from childhood trauma, her beautiful operatic voice never breaking or tiring. She will want to show me her favorite places in Oregon, where she grew up, I’m sure– her favorite rivers where the deer will gather and eat out of our hands, her favorite bike trails and mountaintop views.

We will meet the heroes of renown (and also the unsung heroes) from generations of the family of God. My friend Hannah and I have made a plan to sit down with C. S. Lewis for coffee in the New Jerusalem just as soon as we get a chance. We will have all eternity for good old Jack, the father of Narnia, to become our best friend.

All relationships in Christ will be restored. The old friend who let hardness overtake them and won’t speak to me anymore… if reconciliation is not to be in this age, we WILL have it to the full in the next age. We will love each other perfectly forever. I actually think of this often… it frees my heart to smile and forgive, knowing that they will embrace me again one day, like it or not!

Jesus will fully vindicate us of every injustice. He will give us real, specific rewards that publicly make known how He felt about us in the hardest times, when we chose humility through pressure and pain. He will loudly tell our story the way He saw it, without distortion. No matter what people say about me now, a day of vindication is coming.

Hope: The Anchor of our Souls

If hope in the Restoration becomes a very real expectation in our hearts, it will change everything. Every loss seems more temporary and bearable. Every moment of joy isn’t fleeting, but just a down payment of future bliss. Every lost opportunity is nothing compared to the infinite opportunities in an eternal, renewed Kingdom.

One of the simplest stories from All Things New perhaps impacted me the most. John’s daughter-in-law Emilie had been looking forward to a backpacking trip with some old and dear friends. When the trip was canceled, she smiled and said confidently, “Never mind. I’ll see them at the Restoration.”

What a perspective of confident expectation! How silly are our “bucket lists” when we have all eternity to adventure, explore, and experience.

Maybe someday I will write another post developing some of these ideas directly from Scripture, but today I’m just sharing my imaginings and musings. For now, read All Things New (get it on Amazon), and if you like, check out my post on resurrected bodies called Easter: The Promise of Future Resurrection.

May we always set our hope on that Day.

“…that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”
(Acts 3:20-21)

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What I’m Reading: Epic

On March 6, 2019February 19, 2022 By CaitlynIn What I'm Reading

“What if all the great stories that have ever moved you, brought you joy or tears–what if they are telling you something about the true Story into which you were born, the Epic into which you have been cast?”
Epic by John Eldredge, page 15

Continuing my What I’m Reading series, today I want to talk about one of my all-time favorites. There are few books on my shelf I’ve reread as many times as Epic by John Eldredge. I first read it in high school, and it has become one of the books I most love to recommend and give away. (Luckily, it’s super cheap on Amazon! You can stock up and pass them out like candy!) This small book feels like a tiny treasure, the secret story of the universe wrapped in poetry and movie references. It has captured my imagination and given me a framework for life, theology, and Story in so many ways.

The premise of Epic is two-fold: 1) all of history is a Story told by God, a sweeping epic of eternal proportions, and 2) this Story is reflected and illuminated by the stories we love.

From the time before time, the eternal fellowship of the Trinity before creation, to the roller coaster of humanity’s fall and redemption, to the future restoration of all things, our great “happily ever after”–the gospel is a story, a sweeping epic of love, loss, war, sacrifice, betrayal, romance, homecoming, and adventure. The trouble is that most of us don’t realize “what sort of tale we’ve fallen into”, to borrow a phrase from Samwise Gamgee, as John Eldredge does. Epic says that for most of us, life feels like a movie we’ve arrived to 45 minutes late. We feel a bit lost and confused. We missed the opening exposition and never saw the trailer. What is happening and what kind of story should I expect?

We need to know the Story.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has planted eternity in the human heart. He’s given us an instinctive sense of the story of the ages, longings that point to the truth, and it comes out in the books we write and the movies we film. The Story of the ages is retelling itself in our stories.

Epic draws on familiar imagery from some of the most beloved stories of our culture, from The Lord of the Rings to Titanic, to paint a vivid and living picture in the reader’s mind. I love this approach because it brings the emotions of the gospel to life, which may be dull in us due to overfamiliarity or total unfamiliarity. We may not always weep over the gospel or feel the surging longing for Kingdom adventure, but we sure do for our favorite movies!

After the prologue sets up this premise of Story, the rest of the chapters go through Act One, Act Two, etc of the gospel, beginning with the fellowship of the Trinity in the time before time…

the devastating betrayal of the fall of Lucifer…

the breathtaking dawn of creation…

the war for the human soul and the victory of redemption…

and the future, final restoration of all things, our great and glorious “happily ever after” for all eternity.

This is the sort of tale we’ve fallen into, an Epic more brilliant and breathtaking than the greatest our imaginations have ever produced.

I can’t recommend Epic enough. It’s always super cheap on Amazon and about 100 pages… really, you have no excuse NOT to read this book!

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Why the Beauty of Jesus is My Life Message

On September 22, 2017January 9, 2022 By CaitlynIn Bible Stuff1 Comment

A few years ago, someone asked me what my “life message” is. I don’t remember what my answer was at the time, but having taken some time to think about it, I think I know. My life message is the beauty of Jesus.

As I put it on my teaching resources page:

I want people to see the supremacy of the beauty of Jesus in a way that makes their hearts come alive with love for Him and catches them up into the Story of what He’s doing in our generation.

First, here’s what I mean by the beauty of Jesus. The Bible repeatedly refers to this idea, and here are a taste of my favorite references:

“One thing I have desired of the LORD…to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD…”
(Psalm 27:4)

“You are fairer than the sons of men…”
(Psalm 45:2)

“My beloved is white [radiant, ESV] and ruddy, chief among ten thousand…”
(Song of Songs 5:10)

“Your eyes will see the king in his beauty…”
(Isaiah 33:17)

The beauty of Jesus is mostly the beauty–the excellence–of His personality. I used to think of Jesus’ beauty as only the visual aspects of light and glory described in passages such as Revelation 4 and 5. While those are certainly a part of Jesus’ beauty, the full truth is so much deeper than that. Jesus is beautiful because of who He is. Every single facet of His character is gloriously beautiful. His love, joy, playfulness, fierceness, humility, honesty, cleverness, justice, dedication, wisdom, faithfulness, and a thousand other traits are what make Him stunning. As mere humans, we can never be all of these things as fully as we wish we could be, and no person in our lives could fulfill all of these needs for us, but Jesus possesses all of these characteristics to their fullest possible extreme, all at once!

I’m going to say that the beauty of Jesus draws us into four things: 1) Worship, 2) Relationship, 3) Discipleship, and 4) Partnership.

1. Worship

“Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”
(Psalm 29:2)

Jesus’ beauty is directly tied to His holiness, which is His complete OTHERness. Part of what this means is that His every characteristic is higher and more pure and perfect than its earthly equivalent.

Jesus is beautiful in every single facet of his character, in His love and mercy as well as His wrath and justice. Think about that. Every justice system on earth is guaranteed to screw up. Human justice will always be imperfect, no matter how hard we try to refine the system, because no man can really see into the heart of another. But Jesus’ justice is completely perfect. Every single time.

That moves me to awe. Everything He is and does is absolute perfection, and not just harsh, to-the-standard perfection, like a starched white cleanroom. No, this is vibrant, colorful perfection, like an overwhelming symphony of music and movement and color in wild extravagance and perfect harmony. There is a fullness and a richness to His personality that is completely unique and stunning.
How can I not give myself over in awe and worship before such a God?

2. Relationship

My favorite quote about the beauty of Jesus is from the book Beautiful Outlaw by John Eldredge:

“We all know brilliant minds who could do with a touch of humility, humble folk who ought to stand up for themselves, driven types who need to lighten up, jokesters who should grow up, and gracious souls who really ought to get good and mad once in a while…

But imagine if you found it all in on person—superb before a jury, terrific taste in movies, ready at the drop of a hat for a riot of a vacation, and also able to handle your deepest, darkest secrets. Wouldn’t you want that person to be your friend?!…

He is not glistening white marble. He is the playfulness of creation, scandal and utter goodness, the generosity of the ocean and the ferocity of a thunderstorm; he is cunning as a snake and gentle as a whisper; the gladness of sunshine and the humility of a thirty-mile walk by foot on a dirt road. Reclining at a meal, laughing with friends, and then going to the cross.

This is what we mean when we say Jesus is beautiful.”

(Beautiful Outlaw, page 136-137)

Isn’t that a Person you want to know?

This is someone I would never get tired of spending time with. This is someone I would never get bored of discovering more about. He is fun, and fascinating, and brilliant. He’s infinitely gentle and wise and also knows how to kick my butt when I need it.

And He wants to know me. He deeply, achingly desires relationship with me. Knowing who He is, knowing how perfect and amazing His love is, how could I not fall in love in return?

3. Discipleship

“What a beautiful example You are to me, Jesus”
– Caleb Andrews, “Beautiful Example”

The more I see of the beauty of Jesus’ character, the more I want to be like Him. Just being told to do things doesn’t change my heart. Moralism isn’t enough. My heart changes when I become captivated by the beauty of those characteristics in Him.

Growing up, I always knew that being humble was a good thing, but my attempts to “be more humble” were almost completely without vision until I caught sight of the remarkable humility of Jesus… how He came so low to take the form of a servant and become obedient to the point of death (Philippians 2:6-11), and even when He comes back as a warrior He’s coming to fight for truth, meekness, and righteousness (Psalm 45:4).

There’s a principle in Scripture often stated as “what we behold is what we become,” taken from 1 John 3:2, which says “when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see him as He is.” That’s true of our physical bodies on the day of His return, and it’s also true to a lesser degree of our hearts now. The more clearly we see Jesus, the more we are empowered to become like Him–and in fact, the more we want to become like Him.

4. Partnership

Part of being friends with Jesus is caring about what He cares about and doing what we see Him doing. We want Him to have the dreams of His heart come to pass, and we want to be part of making those things happen, because of love. Falling in love with Jesus drives everything else I do in my life. Intercession, discipleship, evangelism, social justice–they’re all about Him. I want Him to have what He so deeply desires, because I know that He is beautiful and worthy, and because I know the things He wants are beautiful and worthy. His desires are perfectly pure and holy. The more clearly I see His sense of justice and fall in love with that quality in Him, the more I want to see justice done in the earth–because I have connected with the beauty of true justice in the heart of Jesus.

There is truly no one like Jesus. He really is “fairer than the sons of men” and “chief among ten thousand.” He is worthy of all of our worship and all of our trust and all of our lives lived completely for His glory– because the extravagant beauty of His character actually deserves such an extravagant response.

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Download: The Beauty of Jesus Teaching

On December 23, 2015January 5, 2019 By CaitlynIn Bible Stuff

He is not glistening white marble. He is the playfulness of creation, scandal and utter goodness, the generosity of the ocean and the ferocity of a thunderstorm; he is cunning as a snake and gentle as a whisper; the gladness of sunshine and the humility of a thirty-mile walk by foot on a dirt road. Reclining at a meal, laughing with friends, and then going to the cross.

This is what we mean when we say Jesus is beautiful.

—Beautiful Outlaw by John Eldredge

A few weeks ago before I finished my externship at The Prayer Room DFW, I presented another short teaching to a few of the staff. I taught on the beauty of Jesus, and although I could never hope to encapsulate all that means in one 20 minute teaching, I simply wanted to invite us to gaze again on the brilliance of Jesus’ personality. I focussed on three specific aspects of His character: His justice, joy, and humility.

This is perhaps my favourite thing ever to talk about. Every aspect of who Jesus is is so perfect and incredible to me. Beautiful. I never want to stop being fascinated by this Man.

As with my previous teachings on Mary of Bethany and the Priesthood, I have both the audio and the notes available for download!

MP3 teaching – The Beauty of Jesus teaching at TPR 12-1-15
PDF notes – The Beauty of Jesus teaching notes 12-1-15

While you’re at it, listen to “Beauty Beauty” by David Brymer and “The Beauty of This Man” by Tim Reimherr!

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