Dear Michael (my brother)

Dear Michael,

I thank God for you.

I hope and pray that this writing, a letter of sorts, will be a means of grace and peace to you. I pray that its words would reveal my heart towards you and towards God - that you would feel more truly both my love for you and God's love for you as a result of my writing to you. It is my aim to be frank and honest.

I write this, as well, for the sake of the others who might read, and because of our bond in the Gospel, our desire to see it shared, to see it take root in people's lives, to see the name of Jesus praised more deeply from more hearts, I am confident in Jesus that you will agree with why I have chosen to write this in a place where others can read. It is my hope that the Spirit would speak through me, with my honesty magnifying the grace of God, and that you would be encouraged, that this encouragement might see fruit in your straining toward the goal, and that other reader's hearts would be softened and strengthened to likewise speak with humility, grace, love, and Gospel-purpose to their loved ones.

You are about to leave for Brazil in two days for half a year, and I want to take this opportunity to thank you for who you have been to me. By way of entrance into that thanksgiving, I want to look at Psalm 119:97-104.

Oh How I love your law!
It is my meditation all the day.
Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
for it is ever with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the aged,
for I keep your precepts.
I hold back my feet from every evil way,
in order to keep your word.
I do not turn aside from your rules,
for you have taught me.
How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore, I hate every false way.

To me, when I think of how I should relate to Scripture, I think often of how you relate to it. You come to it, you tremble before it more than I do, you do not try to twist it and make it fit what you think. The Word is God's very breath, and it is this colossal, life-giving, sin-defeating, wisdom-creating, Jesus-pointing fountain. In handling it, you are humble. Your time spent in it tells the truth of its worth - that it is not only true, but also ultimate. God, the Creator of reality, has chosen to reveal himself... and we get to read it?!!! The lover of our souls, the Creator writing to us about himself!!! When you get an opportunity to speak, it is obvious that you believe the power is in the Word itself, preached simply and straightforward, not in your own wisdom or cute illustrations.

I contrast this with myself. Far too often I have been wrapped up in getting knowledge. I have delved into apologetics or into creating these elaborate theological structures in my brain, and I have failed to prayerfully sit before Scripture, letting it change me and break me and mold me. In speaking opportunities, the difference is subtle, but I think I often try to let my "nuanced" understanding of Scripture do the talking, instead of the Spirit doing the talking through the Word. Your example and deep trust in Scripture challenges me so much, and it makes me want to know God's Word better. Stay strong in this. Believe even more than you already do that, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." God has prepared so many good works for you, in Brazil and beyond, and he is glorified in your coming to meet those good works in the power of His Spirit, soaked in his Word.

Michael, you know my testimony. Much of my life has been driven by fear and a grasping for significance. Growing up, I placed my significance in my being seen as the best at everything - math, school, being a good church kid, Bible Drills, baseball, SAT score. People came to think I was a genius and all these other things. I was so afraid of losing that, it became my overriding aim to protect it. Oh, how empty is the success of this world! "But what gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ."

College has been a breaking down of strongholds for me. When I was in high school, I would have had a hard time telling you how I had sinned recently - maybe I should have been reading my Bible more often - because I knew of my sin in my mind, but the weight of it did not press on me. While I have not had a heavy public fall or a life-shattering circumstance, God has been drilling and crushing me, revealing to me how sinful my heart really is - how much apathy, idolatry, lust, prayerlessness, fear, envy, covetousness, and a million other hideous things were hidden in my heart under that layer of pride. God has been using different things to smack me, and in various ways, my life overflows with what is in my heart - often a dressed-up wickedness. My following of God back in high school, and sometimes even now, had more to do with me than it had to do with God. God is gracious in dealing severely with my sin, that I might know and enjoy him with a pure heart.

In many ways I believe you are more mature than me, more consistent than me, and I pray that God would keep you steadfast - a word I would use to describe you - and that I might in my walk be spurred on to a steadfastness. Though I may have taught you some things, you have more understanding than me because of your meditation on the testimonies of God (119.99), and though I am older than you, you have greater understanding because you have pursued obedience in God, keeping his precepts (119.100). Of course, I know you are still a sinner, but you really seem to fight, instead of, as Piper says, defaulting to murmuring about your imperfections. You are a quiet warrior, and in going into battle for God, I am so proud to have you by my side as my blood brother and my Blood brother.

As I pursued reputation and excellence in all the wrong ways, many times you were forced by default to live in the shadow of that, as "Daniel's brother". In my pride, I fancied myself to be wiser, having things to teach you, but I have been helped by God's grace to have the humility to learn from you, to be discipled by you. I beam now when I get to be known as "Michael's brother", because you have not placed your identity in anyone but Jesus. I get to be introduced as the brother of a godly man.

I want you to know that I will pray for you as you are gone. I encourage you to remain steadfast, to keep your trust in God, to keep your trust in Scripture, and to let Jesus reign, not just in the big moments, but in the thousands of small moments every day. That is the place where character is made, and that is the place where the Kingdom is built. You have hungered and thirsted for righteousness, you have tasted it, and I pray that you would hunger and thirst even more.

I pray that you would be ruined for Jesus. May he become your treasure even more so. I pray peace for you, but should suffering come, take joy in it, and know that you are suffering to fill up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions, portraying for lost people (and the saved) the love of Christ on the cross. In suffering, you portray God's love in a way more profound and more loving than you could ever do by simply saying true words coming out of a contrary, comfortable lifestyle. I pray that you would live long that we might grow old together, laboring for the Gospel until we are old men, sages. But if God in his sovereignty should call you to death, death has lost its sting in the face of Christ and has been made to serve Him and us, not as a thing of fear, but as the thing that ushers you into the presence of the Creator! Glory! We will both die. And in those times we will mourn the loss of the other. But it will be a glorious joyful mourning! Everything, everything, everything, everything, EVERYTHING is loss compared to knowing Christ. Be strengthened in God and in his grace.

"Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith - that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead." (Philippians 3:8-11)

Stay strong. I am blessed to have you for a brother. God is going to use you no matter where you are. Brazil is going to rock!

In His grace,
Daniel