A Thrill of the Soul: Part 1: Inventing Euphoria.

I am a relatively recent roller coaster enthusiast. Seeking to overcome old fears and start a new hobby as I began my working career, I started spending many of my vacation days from work at theme parks. Last summer, I was fortunate to spend two days at a coaster lover's paradise: Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. With seventeen roller coasters, Cedar Point is tied with Six Flags Magic Mountain for the most coasters at any one park in the world.

Then, while I was having lunch in one of the restaurants at Cedar Point, I started to think.

At Cedar Point, many people were waiting over an hour for Raptor, in search of a thrill for their senses. Like many other rides of its type, Raptor can deliver some of the greatest thrills of this generation of theme park rides. And if a ride on Top Thrill Dragster doesn't give you a great adrenaline rush, your heart might not be beating. But 20 years from now, another ride could greatly outdo Dragster.

On these rides, your heart pounds for a couple minutes at the most. Then what?

You go back in line, perhaps to a different ride, in search of the next thrill.

Maybe you will be thrilled again; maybe not.

And at the end of the day, real life continues. If you have a job or are in school, you go back to "Adam's curse".

After a while on the theme park circuit, rides that once seemed amazing become average. After enough time on Screamscape and YouTube, I decided that most parks were only worth the trip if they had roller coasters by B&M or Intamin (or GCI or Gravity Group, and so on).

But at the end of the day, men are only men.

They cannot build true euphoria from wood and steel - or from food, from drink, or from drugs. They work with created things that they could not create.

Their creations can bring excitement, but not joy. They can make the heart beat faster; they can cause people to make much of them. They can give people rest from their everyday labors – for a day.

Meanwhile, their souls could be starving.

And it has been this way since the Fall: the "broken cistern". Before they sinned, Adam and Eve had direct communion with Very God of Very God - the Inventor of Euphoria - the God whose Son, Jesus, holds each atom of the universe together and does not consider it to be work! Eden was perfect, untainted by the curse of sin that continues to plague the whole world to this day. The relationship between Adam and Eve and God before the Fall must have been amazing. Why would they trade it for a piece of fruit?

I also thought of trust. At Cedar Point, I thought I was going to fly off of Wicked Twister when I was sitting in the front. I was really trusting in that brake at the top to keep me from flying off and ending up falling 215+ feet to the ground, dead. On Millennium Force, I was trusting in an imperfect lift hill to not cause the train to get stuck at its 310-foot-high summit almost directly above a deep lake. And I had a healthy respect for that 300-foot drop.

Is that not like the picture we should have of the fear of God? That this cliche that we "can't live without Him" is not just a saying, but very much a reality for any believer? Do we not trust Him more than a brake, a cable, or the tests of engineers? A ride gone wrong could kill the body in a largely wasted death. We need to trust Him as the Protector of our souls, which have a far higher value than the bodies we occupy during our earthly lives.

And we trust Him not only for the eternal things, but also for the details of life: from big decisions to the vital signs of life. I continue to breathe because God has willed to give me breath. He could take it from me any second. So if I try to get through the day on my own strength, how then can I live?

Lord, do not let these rides grow dull to me. They remind me of how to express joy and passion. But You must thrill my soul to a level many times beyond that of these playthings of mankind, and give it rest and peace and satisfaction and contentment in who You are and what You have given me. It must all go back to You.

"Joy exalts what we rejoice in. If we rejoice in revenge, then we exalt the value of revenge. ... [This is] clearly sinful. But what about innocent pleasures? If we rejoice in a beautiful sunrise, what do we exalt? The sunrise? Or the Creator of the sunrise? Or both? And what makes the difference in our hearts and minds?"

- John Piper, When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy.

"He [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together."

- Colossians 1:15-17 (NIV)

Hello world!

Grace and peace to you.

I suppose I should say a few words as to why I write.

Who am I? I am a young man, mid-20s; a citizen of the United States in this world, but eternally a citizen of heaven. I am a layman, called to glorify the Lord by pursuing Him, living out Biblical manhood, and working hard in secular work. As far as I can ascertain, the Lord saved me during my grade-school years. I grew up in a mainstream American church studying the Word of God regularly but applying it in a sort of "cool" cultural Christianity. By God's grace, I remained in the faith and did not rebel, unlike some of my friends who have since become Christians in name only or left the faith, showing that they never truly had the faith. The Lord has used sermon podcasts, hymns, and Christian hip hop to teach me more about true historic Christianity and sound doctrine and to give me a greater desire for Him. For that, I am forever grateful to Him.

What is my objective for writing? I write primarily as an act of worship to the Lord. If I write for any other reason, I should not write. Much attention has been given to writing blogs specifically to defend the faith; those have been a great benefit to me, and I continue to read some of them. Yet, I do not consider apologetics my main subject matter for A Love Unspeakable. Rather, I want to give special attention here to the pursuit of God and seeking to glorify Him in every area of life. Consider this writing a 21st-century layman's quest to pursue God hard, imitating the Apostle Paul and many other Christian men down through the ages that have loved the Lord and praised Him because He is worthy of that.

Why do I write anonymously? I have several reasons. You may consider none of them good, but they will have to do. First, I do not want to be famous. There is a tendency, even in the Reformed Baptist camp, to exalt our teachers rather than the God to whom they point us. I myself have been guilty of name-dropping John Piper and Alistair Begg and Eric Mason and all my other favorite pastors in order to impress people or win arguments. And that, many times, does not edify. And it brings glory to the teachers and writers, many of whom are rightly telling us to give praise to God instead of them! Therefore, I do not want you to know my name on this site because I want to guard against pride. Second, I try to maintain some level of anonymity in my forum participation on the internet. I do have brothers in the faith who know the real-life me and help me to stay consistent in my walk with Christ.

Why "A Love Unspeakable"? I love to read many of the saints of old - not "saints" in the Roman Catholic sense, but saints in that they knew the Lord Jesus Christ, loved Him, and showed that love to others through their deeds and their writing. They practiced a radically God-centered Christianity and sought to make much of Him in all things. This God-centered view allows us to gain a better appreciation for verses such as, "You are loved with an everlasting love" (Jeremiah 31:3). A God-centered view shows us this love of God that is perfectly pure and unconditional, far greater than any love that a man can have for a lady or any love that a father can have for a child. This love is infinite; you cannot describe it fully with any amount of words. Yet believers through the ages have, by God's grace, used their words to at least climb the foothills of this mountain and show each other and unbelievers something of its indescribable beauty. These other saints and I are weak and broken. Brother Paul Washer says it well: "There are no great men of God", only weak men used by a great, powerful, and merciful God. And being used of Him is a blessing, but simply knowing Him and being able to commune with Him daily is a blessing much, much greater.

I will be writing periodically as time allows and as new material comes to mind. I already have a great deal of new writing available on several topics. May the words on this site magnify the name of Him who is most wonderful.

"³Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace ⁸that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. ⁹And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, ¹⁰to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ."
- Ephesians 1:3-10 (NIV)

"May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, O God, my Rock and my Redeemer."
- Psalm 19:14 (NIV)