I Want It All Right Now, Meekly (1 Peter 3:8-10)

 

A popular song by the popular rock group Queen, “I Want It All,” was used recently in a commercial for a  popular food delivery company. If you haven’t seen it and aren’t familiar with this song that harkens back to 1989, take a minute to watch the commercial here. Caution: it easily gets stuck in a warped loop in your head once you hear it.

I thought of this today when my Bible reading and my personal reading collided as it usually does, requiring me to act. I saw God’s description of Himself in Number’s 14:18 (slow to anger, lovingkind, forgiving of wickedness . . . but not a God who will overlook sin or clear the guilty; rather He reminds of the long-lasting and far-reaching consequences of sin). In my personal reading I have been digesting (I say that because it is a slow process for me) The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit by Matthew Henry. It isn’t my normal read, and I’m not sure what compelled me to buy it other than I love Henry’s commentaries and prayers and God was generous enough with me to set it before my eyes. 

The book’s introduction begins with this Word: “Even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price” (1 Peter 3:4, KJV). And lest the KJV daunt you or you feel excused from the passage knowing what comes before it to be related to women specifically, here is expanded context in a more modern version:

Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, 2 when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. 3 Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. 4 Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. 5 For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, 6 like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

7 Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. (NIV)

Henry also points out that “though [Peter] writes to women” in this text, “he uses a word of the masculine gender because the ornament he recommends is such as both men and women must be adorned with” (11). Did I mention Jesus is meek? This part of the God-head not only demonstrates a slowness to anger, an abundance of lovingkindness, and the willingness to forgive, He also demonstrates the method of forgiveness by dying a death He didn't deserve, didn't earn, but willingly took on Himself for wicked people.

Confession #1: Questioning whether or not I have ever truly wanted to be meek; but Jesus was meek, and as His follower, I am to walk according to His example. I spent much of my school career in a kind of meekness that wasn’t healthy nor is what Peter speaks of here. We live in a world that neither wants nor seeks meekness, a world where we function as “this is just who I am.” We accept less than instead of seeking Christ and His power within us. Lord, let me not lie to myself and think, “I’m okay as I am.” 

Meekness also asks us to consider the circumstance, to calm the spirit within us, to curb the tongue that would lash out at others, and to cool the heat and passion of temper quickly (Henry, 23-30). Matthew Henry goes on to say that meekness teaches us to be forbearing with others, even being quiet when wronged (gasp!). 

This makes me think of the “social media” world in which we live and the quickness to lash out at trivial things like buggies left in parking lots, trash not picked up in a timely manner, the rudeness of a cashier/business/service provider, etc., these perceived slights (not always real) called out loudly for all to chime in and give their two-cents’ worth instantly with no time to reflect on whom we represent. We want it all. We want it now. We want it our way.

Often, social media makes me ashamed for not only the person posting but all who chime in to agree with them and add heat and passion, and it shames me because in my heart there is a corner that would love to jump right in there with them. Henry asserts, “We have been often the worse for our speaking, but seldom the worse for our silence” (32). Let that soak in for a minute. Hold onto it tightly when it is needed. I promise it will be needed soon--you're reading this.

Confession #2: Quietness has not always been (still isn’t?) my forte in the sense of a quiet spirit. I enjoy being alone, probably far more than many people do, but a quietness of spirit is not the same as being quiet. Ps. 55:21 even points out that words may be “softer than oil while war is in the heart.” This isn’t merely outward, not just quiet, but a stillness that runs deep within me.

Henry says this about quietness of spirit: it “is the soul’s stillness and silence from intending provocation to, or resenting provocation from, any with whom we have to do” (40).  I don’t want my heart to be “the seat of war”; much rather would I have it be peaceful within its borders (43). Colossians 3:8-10 speaks also of this war within that keeps the waters of my heart turbulent and how I should respond to its tossing: 

But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. (NIV)

Confession #3: Questing for meekness and quietness of spirit might actually break me, though the getting of it is worth it, and really, isn’t being broken in this context a good thing? (I just thought being content and “blooming where God has planted me” was hard, but now I know that it is directly related to my willingness to be governed, my meekness.) To help you understand how it makes me feel on the inside, refer to the picture above I recently took of my grandson, who wasn’t interested in doing anything but playing from his arrival at my house that day even though his mother assured him the day would be full of play if he would just give her the picture she wanted of him and his new baby brother together. He eventually pulled himself together, smiled wonderfully knowing good food and his toys and lots of attention were waiting for him. Don’t I have much better assurances of the time that is to come for all eternity spent in the presence of God in the heaven that Jesus has prepared for those who love Him and are saved by His blood?

I told a friend recently that studying meekness was just showing me how much I need to be meek, how much I fail at it. The irony is, I didn’t even think that I struggled with not being meek to begin with (I hear my husband's laughter even now). I have never considered myself an angry person or even someone who is easy to anger. I have always looked at myself as a meek person willing to take much more than most in the world would. 

That right there shows that I am not using the standard I need to use in measuring myself. It is only the Word of God that can be a plumb line for my soul and my life! The Word speaks sharply, cutting deeply into the things I am holding onto of the world, rooting them out. So I keep reading it, studying what it means, digesting it piece by piece until I am no longer who I used to be, until God is finished with the work He is doing in me as I live my life here on this earth in preparation for living with Him eternally. I hope one day I won't even recognize the me I used to be!

I am not quite finished with Henry's little book on meekness, and I had intended to wait to write anything much about it until I was done, but today God spoke through it to my heart, so I write.

Confession #4: Querulously, I want Jesus to have done all the work for me, not only for salvation, which He did, but also for the here and now. I want seriously to be zapped into meekness, not subdue it through work with the Spirit’s help. I have been given self-control, but I don’t want to actually use it, apply it to any of the passions I would love resolved within myself. Henry speaks of “the design of Christ and of his holy religion” being to “shape men into a mild and merciful temper, and to make them sensibly tender of the lives and comforts even of their worst enemies” (110). I am still a far cry from this, but I want to arrive. Lord, help me!

While I am at times insensibly lazy and often unreasonably expectant, I cannot dwell in ignorance of the truth that I am to follow Christ where He leads me; I am to do the work He gives me to do. That isn’t always easy. It isn’t always work I would choose. It is not always applied towards another but aimed at myself. Often, the rub of the Book against my soul is like sandpaper. It chafes. Other times it is a hammer. It crushes. Sometimes, it is a quiet whisper that penetrates my will to want to have it all and to have it all right now. 

Meekness is not for the faint of heart. It isn’t for pansies and sissies and girls and boys as the world might think. Jesus, the Lamb of God, meekly bore my sins even though He was also the Lion of Judah. He “sets the copy we are to write after at a mighty distance, for God is in heaven and we are upon earth” (111). We need the visual. We need the words of the Word who walked this world so that we could have his pattern to follow. We are to be people of the Book and people of the Word, not people who want it all right now their way.