We all have our battles to fight – things that keep us all night with the same thoughts and questions that plague our days: “what if“…”what now“…”whynow“…and “what’s next?” We go to bed wore out and wake up unrested with no answers, only bags under our eyes and the wrinkles of worry streaking across our faces. Peace eludes us more than the fish on a Sunday afternoon at the coast.
We all have our battles to fight.
Today my friend and pastor Mike Hurt, preaching from the book of James, started a series titled “Life Hacks for Tough Times.” He reminded us to hit the pause button when times get tough – to respond instead of react; he reminded us to pray.
But what stayed with me most of all was the plain counsel of God he shared from the first part of (Psalm 46:10):”
“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!“
I’ve been thinking about those words, “be still and know” all day.
How can something as simple as leaving all of our deepest cares, concerns, griefs and troubles in the hands of an all knowing and all powerful God be so hard? The Psalmist even tells us in (v.11):
“The Lord of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our refuge.” Selah
The same God who made that promise to the wandering, wicked and wayward Jews of the Old Testament reminds us again in (Hebrews 13:5): “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” He is present and powerful and still so many of us lack peace.
Myself included…sometimes.
It is far easier and more natural to worry about fearful and grieving things than it is to give them to God, patiently waiting and trusting in Him, but what would your life look like if you did?
It would look like sitting back, poll in hand and cancer in the body, trying for the “grand daddy” of all Red Fish. It would look like a blissful trip to the zoo with the grandkids after the loss of a dear family member. It would look careless even reckless and irresponsible to those who didn’t get it but it’d be right where God wanted you in the midst of it.
Yes, we all have our battles to fight but by faith and because of His grace we do not fight alone. My friend, it may only be when you stand still before Him in the most worrisome moments of your life that you will see His glorious deliverance.
The psalmist, after he finished going on about exalting the God who would be known by those who just stood still in confident reliance upon Him finished his psalm with a word ~ selah; musically it means to pause but to the child of God, it means pause and ponder the words you have just read.
In my devotions today I was again reading about the anointing of Saul to be Israel’s first king by Samuel the prophet (1 Samuel 10). What grabbed my attention was another general principal for the Christian found in a very specific prophecy (v.6):
“Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you(upon Saul), and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.“
The principal involves what happens when the Spirit of God is in anyway involved with human beings — they are changed. Saul received unction, or an special enduement to prophesy when the Spirit of God came UPON him. In other words Saul was enabled to do what he otherwise could not – he was changed. As we read on about Saul, after he had been made king, he began to do wickedly before the Lord resulting in the Lord’s rejection (see 1 Samuel 15:26) and ultimately the departure of God’s Spirit from upon the man (see 1 Samuel 16:14).
For those who trust in Christ it can NEVER be as it was for Saul because the Spirit of the Lord does not reside temporarily UPON us but dwells WITHIN every believer (Roman’s 8:9-11):
“But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”
(See also 2 Tim.1:14, 1 Corinthians 3:16 and James 4:5)
My focus today is however on our understanding that the presence of the Holy Spirit either within or upon us will make us new ~ it will change us. If our understanding is correct, why are so many believers living what seem to be unchanged lives?
The Spirit cannot help but manifest the character of God. The fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) is that character but I don’t have to tell you that those traits (love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance), which are not incrementally added to a believers life but present all at once in the Spirit are often not ALL apparent in those who have received the Lord.
We block, we quench (1 Thess.5:19), we hinder and grieve (Ephesians 4:30) the Spirit through our own choices and attitudes and as result do not bear witness to the change Christ makes in a life.
Are such people not really Christians?
Didn’t Paul regularly deal with believers who didn’t act like it (for an example read 1 Corinthians or Galatians) and yet he called them brethren – brothers and sisters in the faith and he challenged them to change.
In light of all this I want to challenge you today as I am challenged: if you want to move your little part of the world closer to Christ – if you want to be more like Jesus then learn to cooperate with the Spirit within you; your yielding will usher in a change that will be unmistakable.
Just a few thoughts on the subject of prayer today.
So, what do you say to the God who knows everything? Do you need to name every name, describe every illness and need and above all demand what it is you think needs to be done in every situation? What does God desire and expect of us when we pray?
As we unpack these questions let me make it clear that brevity is NOT my concern when it comes to the important privilege of talking to God. As much time as we need to speak to and more importantly hear from God is exactly how long we should take in prayer. One passage which has always been a sort of guideline for me concerning prayer is (Ecclesiastes 5:1-2):
“Walk prudently when you go to the house of God; and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they do evil. Do not be rash with your mouth, and let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God is in heaven, and you on earth; therefore let your words be few.”
While the thrust of Solomon’s words are clearly aimed at the rash vows which men make before a God who will hold you to every word, a general principal is also identified which caries into our concern for prayer – “God is in heaven, you are on earth; therefore let your words be few.” In light of this, consider the words of the Lord Jesus Himself as found in (Matthew 6:7): “And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.”
The reason that we should keep our part of prayer short should be obvious – we are to defer to Him who is greater in knowledge of yesterday, today and tomorrow and to Him who with the tiniest part of His own wisdom made Solomon wiser than any other man. We are to defer to Him who has all of this – everything we see and even everything we can’t see under control.
God has a plan.
In (Jeremiah 29:11) a very specific word is given to the Israelite captives in Babylon, the Lord says: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Within this verse however is another general principal, namely that God knows the thoughts (machăshebeth – thought, intention, plan) that He has towards each of us. He knows His plans for the believer and the unbeliever, every man, woman and child – every one individually; this important truth comes into play in our prayers as we petition the Lord for individual needs. While we only see the illness, calamity, tragedy and suffering and ask for relief accordingly the Lord KNOWS what He is doing and as hard as it may be to hear, God has a plan for the pain He allows in our lives. This does not mean that we should not ask for relief – Job did but it does mean that like Job we must accept the adversity that sometimes comes asking instead of “why me Lord,” the question, “Lord, what are you trying to teach me” or “Lord, what is Your plan in all of this?”
So what does God desire and expect from us when we pray?
He expects faith. “Without faith,” the writer of Hebrews declares “it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Likewise James declared a principal in his instruction concerning a prayer for wisdom when he said: “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord…” Jesus also taught that faith was an important component to prayer (Mark 11:24): “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” It should be stressed that your faith should not be in your ability to believe but rather in our God who is faithful (Mark 11:22; Lamentations 3:22-23).
He expects submission. Jesus taught in (Matthew 6:9-13):
“In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
Rather than , “Lord gimme what I want” we are to pray “Lord, whatever you want “- this is our expression of surrender to His superior plan. In the example of prayer from which we are to model our own prayers we also find that our dependency on the Lord is also an expected part. In reality, we won’t pray over anything we think we have covered by our own strengths and abilities. My advice is to check those along with any self-righteousness you or I may have at the door; our best is always nothing more than filthy rags (see Isaiah 64:6) – no one more so that God can sing “anything you can do – I can do better; I can do anything better than you.”
Finally, thanksgiving is expected and deserved every time we pray: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” Paul wrote in (Philippians 4:6). It is the will of God that we always be thankful (1 Thessalonians 5:18) – thankful when we have cancer (not for it), thankful when we’re broke (not because we are), thankful in abundance and in poverty, thankful for even the tiniest infusion of God’s grace in our lives. We are to be thankful to the God who chose to allow His Son to suffer for our sins, granting those who believe on the name of the Lord eternal life instead of what we deserve. The fact is, that believers in the worst of situations are still most blessed because of God’s great grace towards us.
It isn’t an exhaustive list but you get the gist of it – pray for people and situations, express your heart of concern and your hope but in the process defer to the will of God in faith, submitting to His will rather than demanding your own way and be grateful to our gracious God; these are a few of the things God desires and deserves from us when we pray.
The idea that a person can maintain their status while at the same time doing whatever they wish doesn’t gel too well with what we’ve experienced in life. For instance, if a man commits a crime against society, he cannot remain a free man; the law dictates that there is a price to be paid. Likewise, if a man commits adultery against his wife, typically their relationship either suffers greatly and they fight to fix it or the relationship is over – in either case his standing between he and his wife is changed. But those same failures, as shameful as they are for a believer, do not end the relationship that the man has with the Lord.
This is the understanding we have of eternal security – we were saved by grace apart from works (see Ephesians 2:8-9); we were saved by the precious blood of Christ rather than tradition or personal sacrifice (see 1 Peter 1:18-19). If as unbelievers, we could do nothing to save ourselves from the wrath of God over our sins, it carries that neither can we, as the redeemed of God, do anything to remove ourselves from the relationship with God the Father gained through Christ the Son.
But there remains a menacing set of elephants in the room to
be dealt with concerning the doctrine of eternal security and Paul rhetorically
pulls them out in (Romans 6:1):
“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that
grace may abound?”
Here, the voice of the legalist and the liberal are heard in
their extremes. The legalist shouts with indignation, “WHAT?!!!!! Do you
mean to say that a person can continue to sin and still be saved???!!!” At
the same time, the liberal gleefully sings, “I can do whatever I like!!! I
am a child of the King!!!”
Paul had just finished saying in (Romans 5:20-21) “Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Just as the truth about Jesus which our pastor reminded us about again this morning (and you can never be reminded enough about this important truth) that Jesus is not less than or equal to whatever we are or ever will go through but “Greater Than” – the grace He made available to us all though His blood is also greater than any offence we can commit. The hymnist writing of the Grace Greater than Our Sin called it the “marvelous grace of our loving Lord – grace that EXCEEDS our sin and our guilt…”
After preaching or teaching on God’s Great Grace, I have had people posit the argument Paul anticipates in (Romans 6:1), usually with the voice of the legalist and it is usually because that person fails to really grasp the grace of God. Such a person is speaking the words of the prodigal’s brother after the wayward son returns to his Father and then is graciously loved on (Luke 15:29-30):
“’Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’”
The legalistic brother here was maximizing his brother’s sin, minimizing his own sinful attitudes and behavior and ignoring the fact that his father had been exceedingly gracious to BOTH sons.
Can we sin and still be children of Almighty God? Yes.
Will we desire to sin in order to test the limits of His
grace? Listen to Paul’s answer (Romans 6:2-4):
“Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any
longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into
Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him
through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
Paul’s words are stronger in the original than we have translated them, (v.3) actually answers the absurdity of the question with – “Are you ignorant” of the realities born out of our connection with the Lord Jesus?!” (emphasis mine) Arguing that (v.6) believers should no longer be slaves of sin Paul stated in (v.7) that “he who has died has been freed from sin.” We have been cleared of wrong-doing, justified and set apart for eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ – the new man in Christ is associated with Christ’s death: Paul wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20, NKJV)
Since this is true, rather than testing the limits of God’s
grace as a liberal or His patience as a legalist let us all do as Paul
suggested in (Romans 6:11) “…reckon (consider) yourselves to be dead
indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Do I, does the Lord advocate and condone open sin from those claiming to love Him? No. Sin DOES have an effect – how long is up to you – on one’s relationship with God. But grace and restoration ARE available to the one who confesses rather than attempts to conceal their failure (see 1 John 1:9). As a wise believer once taught, “when you become a believer, your ‘want to’ changes;” you won’t always DO as you should and that WILL affect your relationship but not your identity as a child of God nor your destiny of shared glorification (see Romans 8:17,30) with Him.
Remember, from the arms of the Lord will no believer be torn (see John 10:28) nor will He turn away or “cast out anyone who comes to Him” (John 6:37) by faith.
Blind. That’s the
best way to explain our lives before Christ – we were spiritually blind.
We thought that we were ok – no better and no worse than the
next guy; we hadn’t killed anyone after all and on the whole felt that we were
pretty good people. I’d say that our blindness was more of a color blindness –
you know, the kind of sight that allows you to see things but just not entirely
as they are; or maybe it was more like tunnel-vision – we only see what is
right in front of us. In reality, both are true to an extent but they don’t
really hit the nail on the head: spiritually speaking, people DO NOT see things
entirely as they are, not only that but their spiritual vision is further
hampered by their limited perspective and understanding; most of all they are
literally blind to the fact that they have a need that God saw fit to meet from
the beginning of time.
The Bible states in (Revelation 13:8) that Jesus, “the
Lamb of God” was “slain from the foundation of the world.”
In other words, in God’s grace and omniscience a plan was set in motion from
BEFORE time began to redeem people who had yet to be created. The apostle Peter
says in (1 Peter 1:20) that Jesus (the Lamb of God) was “foreordained
before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for
you.”
Why? Why, should be the question you ask when you read such
words.
The answer pertains to the other blind-spot in our spiritual vision – our need. Most of us didn’t know Adam from…well, Adam and many still don’t know today that as the pater familias of us all, his sin and the curse that resulted from it has been inbred into and applied towards every single man, woman and child of his race. Adam wasn’t a Jew, wasn’t Greek, wasn’t a Muslim, a Christian, an African American, Caucasian or Hispanic – he was the first man and he is the human father of the human race. He doubted God’s goodness and disobeyed (along with his wife Eve) the clear instruction of the Lord (see Genesis 3). His sin changed our standing before God. The Bible says in (Romans 3:23) that “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and that the payment or “wages for sin is death” but through Jesus Christ a gift has been given – “eternal life” at the expense of the life of the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Jesus wasn’t killed in eternity past; He was killed right smack dab in the middle of time – at “just the right time” or “in due time” the Bible says in (Romans 5:6) but it was for grace that He died – grace towards all of Adam’s race. Grace towards you.
Still we couldn’t see. He rose again from the dead (see John 20-21) sealing His promise of eternal life to all who believe (see John 3:16 and John 11:25-26) and still we couldn’t see. We have had the word of God concerning Jesus for over 2,000 years – we can all read what I’ve written here for ourselves in the pages of scripture but most don’t because most don’t see their need of grace as I said in the beginning of this article. In God’s grace, after Jesus had finished his redemptive work and returned to His Father (see Acts 1:1-11) the Holy Spirit of God began to “draw” sinners to God – to open their eyes to the fact they were sinners in need of God’s grace (see John 6:44; John 16:8-10) so that when their eyes ARE opened, they may “call upon the Name of the Lord and be saved” (Romans 10:13, see also 1 Corinthians 6:11).
When you have called upon the Lord, receiving both spiritual sight and life and having then been “sealed by the Spirit for the day of redemption” (see Ephesians 4:30) you become eternally secure by the grace of God (see Ephesians 2:8-10).
The life of Jesus Christ – His blood sacrifice, His resurrection from the dead and the grace He makes available to each of us IS the cornerstone of the doctrine of eternal security; without the grace of God made available to us through His Son, eternal security – a peace and a place with God forever could NEVER be possible.
Let the Lord open your eyes and see all that has been done to make such a peace possible for you…
*Yes, last week I did write on this same topic, stating that this week I would write about one of the dangers of an immature understanding of eternal security. But I realized that I needed to establish the foundation of God’s grace upon which the doctrine is built first. In the next post, we WILL address some of the concerns which a faulty understanding of this grace can produce in our thinking.
Is it ever a bad idea to make sure that you know where you stand with the Lord? Yes and no. While on the one hand it IS good to be sure of your salvation it is never good to doubt it once you have appropriated the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ to redeem you to your life. Our salvation after all, though it is processed in our minds is NOT solely academic; we hear the word, receive the word and believe the word but believing is not merely intellectual assent, in other words, we are not saved simply because we agree with the word of God concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ – we are saved when we not only agree but apply the word to our own life specifically.
Jesus did not die for us in general – He died for you specifically (see John 3:16).
This is why the question He asked Martha in (John 11:25-26) is not only important for her to answer but for us as well. Consider it as we read it:
“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?‘”
Do you believe that Jesus is enough?
The message series begun at church today was titled “GreaterThan” and today our youth pastor, Russel spoke to Jesus being greater “not equal to or less than” but greater than anything we have faced, are facing or ever will face; to that I would add that the works which He performed to make our redemption and eternal life possible are greater than any effort you could ever make on your own behalf. When we doubt our salvation or fear we have lost it, it is because we have forgotten that it was “not by works of righteousness which we have done,” (Titus 3:5) “but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”
Can you lose what you did not labor to gain? Can you lose what you could not obtain by your own effort? No and no but can you lose a gift? You can lose a gift but you cannot lose the gift the Jesus Christ gave you because – “eternal life IS eternal.” He said in (John 6:37) “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.” His work of redemption on your behalf never becomes less than enough to save and KEEP YOU SAVED!
Still we struggle – we sin, we fail to live up to our high calling in Christ Jesus and in those moments when what is closer to us seems more apparent we forget the fact that we are saved (Hebrews 7:25) “to the utter most.”
In my years of Christian life, being one myself who more than a few times has failed to live up to my calling, I have found myself in terror as I gazed into the warnings we find in Hebrews to those who (Hebrews 10:29) “treated the blood of the covenant by which (we) are sanctified” (the covenant made between us and God through the blood of Jesus) “as a common thing” and in their backsliding put the Lord (Hebrews 6:6) “to an open shame.” I thought either I had lost my salvation or that I never had it because of my sinfulness. I lived in doubt, confusion and fear – is THAT what the Lord has called us to? Didn’t John write all that he wrote so that we could “KNOW that we” (1 John 5:13) “have eternal life“?!
Words like those found in the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians where he wrote in (v.5): “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified;” had me in a constant state of self-examination to the point of self-condemnation. Word’s pulled out of context can do that…
Let me give you the gist of his rhetoric in that section – Paul was being harassed by some who called his calling and apostleship into question; his second letter addressed that issue in some detail and there was perhaps a concern that some of the weaker brethren might be overtaken by the false teachers pushing that narrative about him. As it happens to men of great passion and zeal, Paul’s exasperation and irritation may have found a vent with words like those found in (v.5) where he seems to turn the table on those who would question his relationship with the Lord saying – “take a look at your own life” or “are you hearing yourselves?” But whether it was a rebuke or a sincere call on Paul’s part for the Corinthians to see if there was either evidence of conversion or ongoing relationship with the Lord, the believers at Corinth were the PROOF – they were (2 Cor. 3:3) “an epistle of Christ, ministered by us” (by Paul and team)…”written by the Spirit of God“…”on tablets“…”of the heart.“
Paul was NOT calling their salvation into question – He was trying to get them to do likewise concerning him.
In a round-about way, my hope for this post is simply this: that each of us would come to fully know WHO we are in Christ, understanding that we are who we are based not on anything we have done but on everything which Jesus has done for us. Today you are either a non-believer who has yet to come to trust in Jesus for salvation or you are a believer who has trusted in the Lord’s finished work on your behalf but you can NEVER lose what the Lord has granted you eternally.
(Next week we will consider the danger of making the above truth a license to sin…)
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