A Letter for You
Dear church,
Beginning on July 5, 2021, my family and I will begin a 12-week sabbatical. Right away, I want to express my gratitude to the pastors and to you for this opportunity.
Since August 2013, in my first attempt to organize a core team meeting to talk about planting our church, I don’t think a single day has passed that I’ve not thought about you. By February 2014, when our core team meetings finally started, Cities Church moved to the forefront of my mind and has never looked back.
Because thinking about you has become so habitual for me, I doubt I will stop over the next three months — and I don’t want to. The difference, however, is that a sabbatical is engineered to translate thoughts into prayers, not actions or potential actions that pile up under the heading of things we should do or consider or fix or discuss. My lists are many, but what of my prayers? I promise to pray for you in this season, and not to work, and therefore, I would not be surprised if these next three months are filled with blessings beyond our dreams.
Because God does that kind of thing.
I’ve already written a version of this letter to the pastors, but I wanted to send this to you, to thank you, first; to exhort you to expect God’s blessings, second; but then also to guide you in how to understand such blessings.
I offer Psalm 115:1 as our help:
Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory,
for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!
The psalmist begins with a negative-positive petition:
Do not give glory to us,
but do give glory to your name.
That’s straightforward enough, and we say amen! The part to ponder, however, is the connection this two-part petition has with God’s steadfast love and faithfulness mentioned in the last part of the verse.
How is God not giving glory to us, but to himself, for the sake of his steadfast love (the Hebrew word, hesed, which also gets translated “faithful/loyal love” or “unfailing mercy”)?
How is God getting glory, not us, an expression of, or reference to, his mercy?
The answer is that it is God’s mercy to us that he gets the glory he deserves and we don’t distract from it.
When that happens — God getting glory, not us — is when all is well, even when so many other things might seem sideways. God getting glory — his glory being magnified over all else — is maybe the clearest echo of the new creation in this broken world.
He gets glory, we don’t — that is his mercy to us.
This means, for sure, that we are not “doing a favor” for God when we pray Psalm 115:1, but our praying Psalm 115:1 is actually the evidence of his favor on us.
Sometimes it’s easy to mistake God’s mercy to us as pats on our back. We might think that God’s kindness is that we are recognized by people, that we receive worldly acclaim, that we garner a good reputation. As pastors, we’re tempted to think that God’s mercy must mean that everyone have a positive experience with our church. It doesn’t take long for that house of cards to crash, like this past Sunday when a guest let me know how much he hated the sermon on suffering. He said he’d never be back. Is God’s mercy supposed to please everyone? Does it mean we always get it right?
That is not what we read in Psalm 115:1.
Not to us, O Yahweh, not to us, but to your name give glory, because that is the true showcase of your mercy to us — when you get the praise you alone deserve and we just get out of the way.
By God’s grace, I will definitely be out of the way the next three months, but I hope you will be too, and I pray that God get all the glory. I’m asking him for that mercy on our church. Not to us, but to his name. I want us to preach it and sing it and say it every chance we get. Direct praise to him as much as we can. That is his mercy.
My family and I will be in worship this Sunday, eager to hear Pastor Joe preach the word, and then we’ll be in the Carolinas for about five weeks. While I’ll continue in the office of elder, I’ll be stepping away from my elder duties during the sabbatical. We’ll be back for Sunday worship by mid-August, happily worshiping with you as fellow covenant members. Any emails sent my way will get redirected. My prayers will be constant. My affection for you, I expect, deepening. Thank you and I love you.
Because Jesus is real — and because he died on the cross for our sins and was raised from the dead and is ascended to the right hand of the Father and is coming again to judge the living and dead,
Pastor Jonathan
