The wellbeing of our lives is not threatened only by persecution, as in the book of Revelation. All kinds of situations can challenge us to consider whether we love this present life so much that the prospect of losing it can depress and destroy us.

Todd Billings writes about such a prospect in his book, Rejoicing in Lament. A brilliant young theologian with a young family, Billings was diagnosed with incurable cancer in his late thirties. His life would soon be over, and, obviously, much sooner than he’d ever imagined.

Faced with such a prospect, human emotions run the gamut from confusion to resentment to anger to complete and utter dismay. The life they love so much is about to be taken away from them, and not even the very best efforts of modern science can keep that from happening.

Such situations remind us to keep things in a Kingdom perspective, and to remember that the life we should love above all else is not that which we enjoy in this temporal domain, but that which is ours in God.

Dwelling in His beauty

This is where Todd Billings had to come, and he found his way there by learning to pray the psalms. In the book of Psalms Billings found a way of facing and dealing with the emotions that flooded his soul as his young life began its rapid ebb.

But because Billings had made the Kingdom turn, he understood that this life, for all its wonder, joy, challenge, love, and fun, is not ultimate life. Therefore, it is not the life to be loved and desired above all else. That life – ultimate, eternal, indestructible life – is found in God and Jesus Christ, as all who have made the Kingdom turn realize more and more each day.

For Todd Billings the psalms helped him express, manage, and redirect his passions, so that he was able to struggle through his fears and sadness to enjoy a deeper love and hope, which can never be taken away.

He writes of his experience praying through Psalm 27: “This prayer was hard work. I had to repeat these words many times for them to become my prayer. Gradually my mind would focus, tense muscles would release, and I was brought into a place that was not just the story of my cancer, my steroids, my chemo. By the Spirit, I was led into God’s presence with my fear, with my anger, and with my hope being recentered on life with God, to ‘dwell in the house of the LORDall the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.’ The fight with cancer was not repressed or left behind…[b]ut in praying the Psalms – in soaking in its words – I was moved toward trust and even hope.”

Through his experience of cancer Todd Billings came to realize that Jesus was asking him the question, concerning everything good and desirable about his life in this world – “Do you love Me more than these?”

And he was learning to answer, “Yes, Lord, I do!”

A triumph of the heart

Todd Billings’ book, Rejoicing in Lament, is a song of triumph, a testimony to the power of the Word and Spirit of God to shape our passions from fear to trust, despair to hope, sorrow to joy, loss to great and everlasting gain. Cancer might destroy his body in this life, but this life is not the life to be loved above all else.

Those who have made the Kingdom turn understand this, and they do not love their lives in the here and now so much that they love their lives in Christ less. Life is a gift, a wonderful package deal of loves, joys, challenges, achievements, delights, disappointments, and mysteries. But life in this world is only a foretaste, a foreshadowing of the true and eternal and imperishable life of glory we know with God in Jesus Christ.

Christians understand that the heart is the heart of the matter when it comes to what really matters in life. Whatever we love or desire or enjoy or serve more than Jesus is merely “one of these” mundane, passing things that can keep us from directing all our truest and most enduring passions toward Him Who lives forever and ever.

As the new perspective which is the Kingdom turn comes to dominate our hearts, we will find our affections changing so that knowing Christ and loving Him become the thing we desire above all else – above even, “all of these” things that make up the wonder, pleasure, and challenges of our earthly lives.

Next steps

How would you answer Jesus’ question to Peter? Is there anything in your life that you love more than Jesus? How do you know? Talk with a close friend about these questions.

Additional Resources

Download this week’s study, The Kingdom Turn.

T. M. has written two books to complement this eight-part series. You can order The Kingship of Jesus by clicking here, and The Gospel of the Kingdom by clicking here.For a brief study of what it means to pursue culture every day for the glory of God, order T. M.’s book, Christians on the Front Lines of the Culture Wars by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.