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- An Eclectic Spiritual Life
Philippians 3:14 "I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." “We are all on a faith journey. Some are far along, but some are further behind, and we are to come alongside those that God has put in our path and help them press on to lay hold of Christ Jesus.” Those were words that formed the beginning of a friendship for me at a time when I felt so alone in church. I didn’t know it then, but this man was coming alongside me, pushing me further along my faith journey and encouraging me to press into the call to care for souls, chiefly by pressing into Christ Jesus myself. He is one of many the Lord has brought along in my faith journey ‘toward that upward call of God in Christ Jesus.’ Those words are from a friend who, although he is American, spent the majority of his life in Africa serving as a missionary. I met him during a short stint as the pastor of a local church near me. I have a friend who went to his church, and this friend came to me one day to say, “You must listen to this man; he sounds like someone you would enjoy.” I was skeptical. I was used to hearing formulaic preaching Sunday after Sunday. The almost therapeutic message that convicts no one and helps no one. It always makes you feel good by pointing your finger outward at the world while remaining numb about the inward corruption of sin that lingers. So, I did listen to this new preacher’s first message to his new congregation, and right after that, I found myself calling the church and asking to speak with this man. There was a spiritual reality to his words. His intimacy with which he spoke about our Lord was convicting and encouraging at the same time. “Let’s get coffee today!” was his happy reply. That was the beginning of a much-needed mentor and friendship. I had found a kindred heart. At our first meeting, I wasn’t sure how to interpret the situation. We were sitting across from each other in a coffee shop, getting acquainted, when he suddenly stopped listening to me mid-sentence. Something distracted him, pulling his attention away. “Excuse me,” he said, but he spoke absent-mindedly, as his eyes were already fixed on something outside, and he leaned halfway out of his seat. I watched as he stepped outside to a disheveled man who seemed likely to be homeless, and he started talking to him. Then he hugged the man and sat down on the curb, gently patting the back of his dirty jacket. I noticed that he was praying with him. After a heartfelt goodbye, he returned inside, and I noticed a tear streak on his cheek. “I’m sorry, Nate, what were you saying?” I couldn’t remember or care about what I had been saying. I began asking him about being sensitive to the Holy Spirit and walking with Jesus as a friend. He smiled, and thus began a significant period in my life with my first mentor in the faith. Of all the lessons and stories he told, I want to share with you the one thing that has helped me the most, and I believe it will help you greatly on your journey. He always encouraged me to press on toward intimacy with Christ Jesus, “He wants to be far closer to you than He is now,” he would always say. “He wants to walk with you daily; He truly is a friend of sinners. He is not aloof; he is ever present and ever near. It is our awareness of Him that lessens. Do not settle for what you see in others in the church. Lay hold of Christ Jesus for yourself.” As I’ve walked this faith road, I’ve come to fear that many have come to Jesus out of fear of the penalty of sin, but they go no further with Him and care not about the Spirit’s work in stopping the power of sin. They have “come to Him” because they are weary and heavy-laden, but they have stopped there and have never “learned of Him”. (Matthew 11:28) They are content to wade in the shallows, unwilling to appropriate their inheritance, and learn to walk in Him. My friend has returned to the mission field. He was often misunderstood in his own church due to his eclectic ways and lack of traditional church decorum. He was not a wild man; he was kind and gentle but indifferent to the mechanisms that often operate our churches here in America. He was not concerned with large numbers for church growth but with the spiritual development of his flock. Before he left, we sat in the same coffee shop where our friendship began. I’ll never forget some of his parting words to me. “Nate,” he said, “I would rather return to Africa and fight the darkness of shamans and ancestral spirit worship than confront the spirit of apathy so prevalent here in America.” Those words did not dissuade me from the ministry the Lord has called me to here. However, they have embedded themselves in my heart, urging me never to succumb to that apathy, that emotionless sense of hollow religion. May we all continue on in our faith journey and help others by wrestling with God for that blessing of more of Him for ourselves. Persevere in prayer, fighting that enemy that lies and tells you, “That life is not for you.” The price of a deep spiritual life is high, but it is worth it. My friends, where is that soul who will go on with God? Meditate on the Word until He sets your heart ablaze so you may be light to others. Ask God to create in you that spiritual hunger and thirst you so desperately need. Set your will, that great decision maker of the soul, to seek the Lord so that you may spiritually live, not in the future but here and now.
- A Heartfelt Confession
I grew up the son of a preacher. I have heard stories of my childhood, shaking everyone’s hand and wearing a suit and tie. As long as I can remember, I have been taught God‘s word, and I love to joke when I say that growing up in my father’s home, I received sermons every day of the week, not just on Sundays and Wednesdays. By the time I was converted at the age of 20, I had a treasure trove of biblical knowledge. I love the story in Matthew 15, where the woman tells Jesus that if she were a dog, she would leave with her crumb from the Master’s table. She comes desperately but expectantly. Unfortunately, I resemble the disciples who are satisfied and guilty of little faith while we’re blessed to be seated at that table. Like the disciples, there are times when we realize that we are guilty of being satisfied with good gifts and forgetful of the Giver. Somehow, over the last several generations, I believe we American evangelicals have morphed the Christian life into something that falls extremely short of the lived experience that the early church had in the New Testament. Have you read your Bible, encountered the life of Paul or another old saint, and asked yourself, “I wish my life could be like that”? You probably weren’t thinking of their trials or suffering, but when we look at their lives and then glance over our own, are we left with the sense that something is missing. The Saints in the Bible seem to have a strength that has somehow evaded the church today. Since the local church is only as strong as its members, it stands to reason that we, as individual Christians, have lost something vitally important. Without even realizing it, we exchanged the biblical description of being a disciple of Jesus, keeping a list of religious expectations, and growing in biblical knowledge. No one would say this out loud, but it’s almost as if we don’t care if the content doesn’t drastically change our lives over time; just as long as we are growing in some knowledge and I’m checking off religious boxes, then I am doing my Christian duty. We do the best we can just as we would do anything else, and then go day after day just to wake up with the reality of going through the motions and no heavenly reality lingering in our daily lives. We go to church week after week, trying to act like we have it all figured out and all together, not realizing that most of what we do is powered by self. We say that we are walking with Jesus, but the dust on our Bibles grows thicker, and if we pray, we don’t expect our requests to go any farther than our breath may take them. After being saved for almost 20 years now, I can tell you that I have learned a very valuable lesson that all of us, as born-again believers, must learn. This lesson shows that there is a difference between religion and relationship. Is it important to grow in our knowledge of God’s word? Of course, it is. But what good is it if it just stays between your ears and never finds its way to your heart, where it changes you inside and out? It would be like a married couple who speak to each other if necessary and don’t spend much time together, wake up one day, and are very unsatisfied with their marriage. But friend, is this what you and I do to our Savior? We may do many religious things and think we are walking with Jesus, but are we experiencing Him in our lives as we would experience any other human relationship? Are Christians new creatures? Yes. Are we a new man? Yes. Has our criminal record been made clean by the blood of Christ? Yes. Are we perfect immediately after being born again? No. As the old song goes, “He is still working on me” because I don’t always act like Jesus. Even though my heart has changed and I will never be the same, my flesh must be reprogrammed. Oh, brother and sister, we cannot afford to let the devil ensnare us to go about our daily lives like the rest of the world. We are so busy doing this and going there and working a job that can hopefully provide for our families and grab our piece of the American Dream. This is a worldly mindset that cannot please God. 1 Cor. 3: 1-3, I believe, really makes this as plain as possible. And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? There must come a time in the lives of believers when we must, with intention and perseverance, take God’s sharp sword and put to death our flesh. Maybe the fact is that we spend so much energy trying to be comfortable and ensure smooth sailing that we are never able to let ourselves feel the desperation that would drive us to wrestle with God as Jacob of old. I want to be liked and have as few problems as anyone else may, but if that causes us to never take a stand for Christ, then we will fall for anything the world dangles in front of us. Oh, brother and sister, it is time for us to listen to the rumbling of our souls and stir up a desire to grow spiritually until we reach the full measure of Christ. We need to see God move in our lives and churches with the power to save lost souls and perfect the saint. It’s time that we turn the TV off, put the phone down, clear out the rooms of our hearts filled with entertainment, hobbies, and frivolous things galore, and throw them away so that Christ may have more room. May He increase in our hearts for the sake of those around us. But may He also increase in our hearts as a husband and wife grow in the depths of their love for one another. May we increasingly want Christ Himself more. May He be the treasure that we sell all to obtain. Do not settle for just forgiveness of sin and the promise of eternity one day. You were made to live for more.
- The Beauty of master substitution
One year before ink was scrawled upon that beautiful document known as the Declaration of Independence, a man by the name of Patrick Henry stood in what is now known as St. John’s Church, giving an impassioned speech to rouse his fellow countrymen to take up arms against the impending British army. His final words in that tremendous plea have made it into our history books, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” This was no hollow claim either; many men did pay the ultimate price for freedom from Great Britain. All mankind has an innate longing to be free, hardwired into us by our Masterful Creator. As noble as our desire for freedom is, there is a devastating way this longing plays out in the human soul, for in our desire to be free from all rule, we become enslaved to our own self. No soul is truly free until the bonds of self-rule is broken and that soul is immersed into Christ himself. From the opening pages of scripture, God warns us of an upside-down ruling principle. Adam and Eve, in their desire to be free from the rule of God, sought freedom in taking the right to rule their lives as they saw fit upon themselves, leading to further confusion in their life. “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Here we see mixed-up ruling in the most intimate of human relationships. God warned Cain that “sin desires to rule over you,” and yet, we find in the next paragraph that Cain slew his brother. Page after page, we find mankind making a mess of trying to rule. Page after page, we find the Lord waiting for us to bend the knee but letting us try and go our own way until we end up in a pit of despair and frustration before turning to the Lord. I remember the time my wife and I took a trip to visit the nondescript graveyard where the British evangelist Leonard Ravenhill was buried. I couldn’t help but grin when I saw the headstone of the fiery preacher. With one last quip to the world, his famous words were etched forever on his headstone, “Is what you are living for worth Christ dying for?” Even after passing from this earthly realm, Ravenhill still points us towards Christ’s securing work of redemption and chagrining us for our obsession over worldly pursuits. “Is what you are living for worth Christ dying for?” To answer that question, we must consider what Christ died for . Patrick Henry’s words will live so long as America lives, but Paul’s Spirit-inspired letter to the church in Galatia highlighting a freedom worthy of dying for will never pass away. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” The church in Galatia was quickly returning to where every human heart wants to turn, apart from the Spirit’s work in our lives: bondage. Bondage to the flesh. Bondage to the Law. Bondage to man’s opinion of us. Bondage, bondage, bondage . . . it is all around us and threatens to tighten around our hearts like a chain that squeezes the life of Christ out of us. Paul told the Galatians, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free.” Paul does not mean that Jesus saves us so that we may become free-roaming moral agents for good. Earlier in the same letter, Paul describes himself as a “bondservant of Christ.” In a letter to the Corinthians, he says, “though free from all men, I became a servant to all that I may win some to Christ.” What gave Paul, a man free from all men, the power to submit to others for the sake of their souls? Consider Jesus’s words to a field of farmers who were familiar with plowing fields with a team of oxen. Matthew records the words of Jesus, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30) Jesus is not promising to just unhitch those who are heavy laden from their yoke that they may run free. He does something far better; he promises to yoke you to himself. Jesus is teaching a beautiful principle here that I call ‘master substitution.’ For as much as we Americans enjoy talking about our freedoms, we are never truly free until we understand Christ sets us free even from ourselves. I need the plow to furrow deep into my soul, breaking the fallow ground of self-sufficiency. The blessed truth we often forget as Christians is that Christ does not set us free to leave us floating around by ourselves. The promise of Jesus is that He will yoke us with His yoke. We will be joined to Christ in a union of souls of which even marriage is but a shadow. It would be cruelty to the highest degree to leave my heart to itself. I know that I am “free from the Law” and the curse thereof, but our Lord does not abandon me and call it ‘freedom.’ Salvation is freedom from the mess of trying to be the ruler of my life. Do you believe that? Do you truly believe that if you called the shots, it would be a disaster of epic proportions? Does your prayer life reflect that you need the guidance of our Good Shepherd? Does your time in the Word reflect that you believe God's commands are life to the soul? Does your time spent in fellowship with other believers whom Christ is leading reflect that you need anyone other than yourself? Come on, Christian, quit playing nice with your heart and deal honestly with yourself. Do you desire to be a good servant of Christ Jesus? Press into that union you have with your good Master. “For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men— as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God .” (1 Peter 2:11) Christians, fight for the faith to believe that true freedom is only found in nearness to our Lord. Be free from all men, free from works-based righteousness, free from the love of the world, and most importantly of all – free from self. Dive into the endless depths of Christ’s love for your soul and find true freedom for your soul.
- TRUSTING CHRIST FOR FAITH
The Lord Jesus is the Author and Finisher of our faith. This means He is the Creator of our faith. He, not us, creates our faith, initiates it, and stimulates our trust in Him. This does not negate our responsibility to exercise faith, nor can we excuse ourselves for not trusting in the Lord. Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, only means we cannot create our faith in God. It is a grace from the very One who calls us to trust Him. It took a long time for me to understand this since I am a slow learner. But the problem isn’t my intellect. I learned the principle of where my faith comes from a long time ago, within three years after my conversion. But my stubborn pride prevented me from believing it. You can know something is true in the realm of the intellect but not understand experientially in your spirit. Something in all of us resists absolute trust in God, whether it be a felt need to impress the heavenly Father with our faith and service or a fear of not being in control. This something is the flesh. The flesh deceives by hiding its impulse behind your knowledge of God’s truth. You do not see your heart because you can say, “But I know the truth, and therefore I am in compliance.” You are convinced you are walking by the Spirit only because you know the commandment and its meaning. But knowing something to be true and doing it are not the same. Somehow, knowing and doing get garbled up as being the same. In my case, I know I can’t have faith in God without God’s granting faith and helping me to exercise it, but instead of looking to Christ, the Author and Completer of my faith, I look within to strengthen my faith and cause it to grow. The result is stress, frustration, and exhaustion. Several years ago, the Lord once again enrolled me in the school of faith by putting me on a path of frustrating failures. I sensed that my help would come by reading John chapters 13-17. And so, on my knees, I began reading, slowly, prayerfully, Jesus’ discourse to His disciples on the eve of His crucifixion. When I got to chapter 15 and read the parable of the Vine, something clicked. I knew that within these verses was the answer I was seeking. Day after day, I would read the words of this simple illustration, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser . . . Abide in Me, and I in you . . . I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” The words washed over my starving soul like rainwater, removing the dust and filth of a long, dry, barren season. The Lord began to open my spiritual understanding to what my brain could recite and even preach with ease. But this time, it was mine—it was my truth; it was affecting my heart and not just my mind. What became real to me? It was that I couldn’t even have faith in Christ without Him. There was nothing I could do without Him, including abiding. We are completely helpless in the realm of the spirit, and if it were not for Jesus, we would be hopeless. After this, I remembered reading Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret . I recalled that I did not understand what the man was talking about. In theory, it sounded right, but I couldn’t make it happen. I would read well-intentioned brothers attack Taylor’s position on abiding in Christ as unbiblical passivity. I remember thinking that perhaps these detractors were right. But after the Lord opened my eyes to understand, I saw it’s not passivity. It is no more passive than a branch is passive in the production of fruit. However, the agenda, ability, and energy to produce fruit come from the vine and not the branch. Here is what Taylor said. When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before. McCarthy, who had been much exercised by the same sense of failure, but saw the light before I did, wrote, (I quote from memory): “But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.” As I read I saw it all! “If we believe not , he abideth faithful.” I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, “ I will never leave you .” “Ah, there is rest!” I thought. “I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more. For has He not promised to abide with me - never to leave me, never to fail me?” And, dearie, He never will ! (Emphasis mine). The title of this blog post may sound confusing: Trusting Christ for Faith . But really, it is quite simple. Instead of trying to trust, I rest in Christ to grant me the ability to trust. In other words, I ask Him to give me the faith I need for whatever His will is for me. I am convinced of this. I know this is more certain than the sun rising tomorrow. And He never fails. I still sometimes fail at this and therefore fail Him, but “He remains faithful.” Truly, He is the Author and Completer of our faith. Without Him, we can do nothing, not even trust Him. And that is why the author to the Hebrews says, “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). Looking unto, upon, and at Jesus is faith increasing. So, then, start looking!
- LOOKING AWAY TO FAITH’S ORIGINS
Turning our attention to Hebrews 11, we see faith described and portrayed in men and women. Many of the names are very familiar to us; they make up a list of the heroes of our faith. In addition to the famous names, Hebrews 11 mentions the unnamed heroes who demonstrated remarkable faith in the face of fierce persecution. Only God knows their names. In a future blog, I will return to chapter 11 of Hebrews, but in this blog, I want us to look beyond the eleventh chapter and set our eyes on the first two verses of chapter 12. Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. (Hebrews 12:1) The writer of Hebrews turns his attention to you and me. What about you? What should you do in light of these champions of faith? Whatever I do, I surely don’t want to be compared to these “witnesses.” That’s what the author calls the heroes of chapter 11, a “great a cloud of witnesses.” My immediate reaction is that I don’t belong in this assembly. I do not have enough faith to be associated with such a prestigious listing of men and women of faith. But I am. I am associated with this group by virtue of having faith in Christ. And so are you. We are a part of this club of faith even though we feel unworthy to be granted membership. The writer of Hebrews makes it definitive that we are a part later in chapter 12, But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn [who are] registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, (Hebrews 12:22-23) How can I have this kind of faith that is demonstrated in Hebrews 11? The answer follows. But let me remind you, you are not a faith factory. You cannot produce faith. All of your attempts to manufacture faith fail. Understanding this, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us our responsibility. First, he says we should gain inspiration from the heroes he has cited, “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight.” Some have thought that the author is suggesting that the saints in heaven are able to see us as they look over “the balconies of heaven.” I'm not sure where that concept came from, but I know one place it didn’t—the Bible. This is not the author’s meaning. Rather, he is saying, in light of what these others have done who have gone before us, let us emulate them and do all we can to persevere in faith. Let us, as they did, throw overboard everything that would slow us down, especially that one sin that hinders and ensnares us all: unbelief. This is the one sin that the author has singled out throughout the entire book of Hebrews, and that has kept others from finishing their race. The sin of unbelief. The stories of the men and women who demonstrated faith in God should motivate us to do the same. These people are, in the final analysis, no different from us. They are frail and fallible people who need a Savior like I do. So, their testimonies should tell me I, too, can trust God. But inspiration will only go so far. I’ve been inspired by reading a great biography and resolve to be like that person, only to lose my motivation in a short while. Surely, you have heard a rousing sermon and vowed to do better with honest intentions. What happened? The same as me—your steam ran out. It will always run out. Why? Because faith, the opposite of unbelief, cannot be humanly sustained. Yes, the author commands believers to sustain their faith and increase it, but he knows that is impossible for you and me. Therefore, he bids our gaze to quickly leave the coronated saints and look upon the “Author and Finisher of our faith.” Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of [our] faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2) It is Jesus who is the origin of our faith. He is the One who gave you your faith, and He is the only One who can complete it, or in other words, increase it to its full measure. The word finisher means “one who perfects.” Jesus is the One who perfects our faith. Therefore, the greatest attention I can give to my faith is to give all of my attention to Christ. I run the race of faith by a simple act of looking to Christ to sustain my faith in Him. If the Lord should allow, I will elaborate on this in my next posting.
- You Are Not a Faith Factory
By S. Michael Durham We have seen thus far, in this series on faith, that I have a faith problem emanating from my fallen nature. I was born with a heart that does not want to trust God in the least. I want to trust me. The problem of faith is never the absence of it but faith in the wrong thing or person. The temptation in the Garden of Eden came down to whom Adam and Eve were going to trust—God or themselves. Of course, we know how they chose. And as a result, we have opted right along with our first parents. We inherited their rebellious nature, and it determines all we do. We were born with a sinful nature that does not have faith in God. What hope, then, does any man have? If we are bound to our natures and can do nothing else but what our nature dictates, what hope for change? If I am bound to trust in myself alone and not in God, how shall I hope to be saved from my sin, my depravity, and myself? In the face of certain doom, comes the words of the prophet, “Salvation is of the Lord.” If you are to have deliverance from you, you need someone stronger than you. Again, you can only act according to nature, and your nature is contrary to God. Therefore, the very One we naturally distrust and hate, is our only hope of rescue. What does a merciful God do to liberate the sinner? He creates by recreation. He takes the sinner and rebirths him anew. The new birth counteracts our first birth. The new birth is the birth of a renewed nature, not a perfect nature, but a renewed nature. To be born of the Spirit is to be given a spiritual impetus that is from above, given to us by our Spiritual Father. In no way does that make us divine, but as the Apostle Peter says in his second epistle, we partake, share, or participate in the divine nature. This new man, as the Apostle Paul calls the Christian, has holy affections and desires. By this grace work of the Spirit, we can exercise faith in God. It is standard equipment for the new heart to trust in God. In conjunction with the giving of spiritual life is the fact that our old man, who we were before conversion, is gone. The Bible says the old man has been crucified with Christ (Romans 6:6). To put it another way, the old man is our human nature, ruled and dominated by sin. This is not a small thing. Let me explain. When God regenerates you, the sinner, and you put your trust in Christ, there is a literal conversion or change. A transformation occurs. The principle of sin enslaving and controlling you is broken. You, as a new believer, are free to break with sin and no longer do sin’s bidding. You can now obey God from a heart of faith because sin’s power to enslave is gone. But as wonderful as the gift of salvation is, it is not perfection. Not yet. The new believer confidently hopes for a day when he or she will be absolutely and completely rid of the corruption of sin. Even the ability to sin will be vanquished. However, until that day, we still have a mind and a body polluted. We may be dead to sin, but sin is not dead to us. We are still corrupted in our human nature and, therefore, still capable of sin. The mind and the body are not sinful, but within them are appetites and desires that are contrary to the Spirit. This is the remnant of the fallen human nature, with which we were born. The Bible calls it the flesh. The Bible describes in Galatians 5:17 a hostility resides between the flesh and the Spirit within the Christian. The flesh promotes self, and the Spirit promotes Christ. Flesh trusts itself, whereas the Spirit trusts only Christ. So how are we to put our faith in God if we feel this tension between ourselves and God? Thankfully, the answer is to walk in the Spirit, and we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). We consciously reject faith in ourselves and look to the Savior. This is all Jesus meant when He described the conditions of being a Christian, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). Self-denial means I deny myself the right to trust in myself. I refuse to live my life by my own wisdom or strength. This is the key to faith. One of the most difficult things for the Christian to learn is that he cannot trust God without God’s help. If I trust myself to trust God, then it is no more than my flesh trying to meet God’s requirement of faith. The sad fact is that even though I have a new heart, and the Spirit of God resides with me, I am still insufficient to trust and obey the Lord. I must look away from myself totally and look to the One who gives faith. Only He can maintain my faith, increase my faith, and preserve my faith. Only He can strengthen the faith that He has already given. Faith is still a gift from God. It is a spiritual gift, having spiritual substance. Otherwise, faith becomes me, straining my brain to believe in God. Sadly, this is what so many Christians think faith is—mere mental assent. If they can hurdle their own minds’ objections and feel like they believe, then they consider themselves to have faith in God. If you are to have a strong faith, you must have a weak faith in you. Faith that is strong in God is based upon a strong belief in human helplessness. You must be absolutely convinced that without Jesus, you cannot even hope to have faith in God. You believe that Jesus meant what He said, “for without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Your will must be exercised to renounce any self-sufficiency so that you may receive God’s sufficiency. Is not this the lesson of nine frustrated disciples who could not cast out a demon from an afflicted child? Did they not pray to the Lord, “Why could we not cast it out?” Note the “we.” They tried to cast out the demon. Contrast that to the poor father’s prayer that was answered. The father of the demonized prayed, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” You and I are not faith factories. We do not nor cannot produce faith in God. All we can do is exercise the faith that He gives. Maybe that is why the disciples eventually, after this event, prayed more accurately, “Increase our faith.”
- The Pilgrim’s Path of Sanctification
The Lord of Life once shared with us a maxim from His treasury of infinite and eternal wisdom; every living soul walking upon this earth is journeying along one of two pathways. Most of us are familiar with the way Jesus described these two paths; there is a “broad path that leads to destruction” and a “narrow path that leads to life.” These familiar verses are taught to the unregenerate and the new believer in the hopes they would look within to see which path their souls are taking. I would argue there is powerful spiritual truth found in these words that are of infinite value for the child of God who seeks to follow in their Lord’s footsteps. Let us look down the well-trodden paths of life and meet the souls walking along. First, we come to those walking along the broad path. Crowded, though it may be, each soul is ultimately walking the road alone and under their own willful strength. People rarely stop to help one another when one stumbles or loses their footing. Though surrounded by many, it is a lonely path, for everyone ultimately only looks out for their own self-interest. The narrow path, on the other hand, is one in which the travelers are never truly alone, despite what the obscene harasser of those on the life path may whisper and scream at them. These travelers, even when they think they are walking alone, are never truly alone, for the Lord of Life Himself is leading and guiding their steps. At times, the Lord points to pitfalls and dangers. At other times, He is covering their ears from the hate spewing accuser and reassuring them with whispers of His great love for them. At this, the travelers wipe tears from their dirt-stained cheeks, set their faces, and press on. You can see the great relief on the faces of these pilgrims as the Lord points out great unnecessary burdens that they had not noticed they were carrying with them. You see the relief from the weight on their shoulders as they toss these weights off into the ditch. If you could watch these travelers journey year after year, you would notice that their steps are lighter and lighter. Not always easier and easier, but lighter. These pilgrims, while each maintaining their own distinct characteristics, begin to look increasingly like their Lord because they stick by His side, knowing their utter reliance upon Him as their protector, comforter, and teacher. You see, we must dispel a common misunderstanding about our travel on the path of life so that we can find rest on our faith journey, even when the life path takes you on precarious precipices and hard roads. Many mistake the path of life for being one of hard-fought self-effort, where the trail ends at the gates of Heaven. I am not advocating for a do-nothing type of faith where we do not strive or put forth effort. However, I would ask that we take a serious minute to reconsider why Jesus called it “the path that leads to life.” Jesus does not call it the “path of someday life.” He calls it the “path that leads to life” because He is on it with us. The way Jesus used the word ‘life’ could be interpreted as present and active life as well as future life. He has promised never to leave us nor forsake us and has sent His Spirit to us. He is with us and in us, it is in Him that we live and move and have our being. I would spare you days, weeks, months, and even years of fruitless toil on the path of growing in holiness that we call sanctification. There is one very common way we get it wrong in this Christian life: We think that justification was God’s doing. He put us on the path, but now it is our part to work out our own sanctification. Here is how it is commonly stated: “Sanctification is our work, to be performed under the power of gratitude we feel for being justified – and by the aid of the Holy Spirit.” However, soon a Christian will find how small of a power supply ‘gratitude’ is to power a believer. Believers everywhere, are under a trap that prayer, as indispensable as prayer is, or bible reading, will be enough to supply them the power they need for sanctification (growing in holiness). Often a believer will struggle for years, until they listen to the Spirit’s teachings. The Spirit comes along through various means and simply reveals Christ to us – who is our sanctification. 1 Corinthians 1:30 “Christ is made of God unto us… sanctification.” One day, in Heaven, the question was asked, “How can sinful man be made holy?” The answer came, “Christ, the Holy One of God.” In Christ, the one the Father sent, God’s holiness was revealed to us. God’s holiness was on display and brought within reach of mankind. Holiness is the very nature of God, so it only tracks that the only way for a person to be made holy is for God to take possession of them and fill them with Himself. Jesus said in John 17:9, “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” There is no other way for us to be made holy than by becoming ‘partakers’ of Christ's holiness. There is no other way of this taking place except by our personal and spiritual union with Christ Jesus. As we are united to Him through His Holy Spirit, His holy life flows into us. “Of God you are in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us…sanctification.” Abiding by faith in Christ, our sanctification is the simple secret of a holy life. The measure of our sanctification will depend on our measure of learning to abide in Him. As the soul learns to rest in Christ, sanctification is increased. Believer, Jesus delights in you and cares for you; willingly surrender yourself to Him. We have Christ strengthening us and caring for us as sheep of His fold. We derive our life and sustenance to nourish our souls from the fullness of Him. We do not work this out ourselves, but we fellowship with Christ. We commonly go wrong in our thinking by assuming we must produce fruit in ourselves, but this is simply wrong. Christ is our sanctification; trust yourself into the tender hands of the Good Shepherd.
- The Origin of Our Faith
By S. Michael Durham The basic problem we have in the realm of faith in God is our human nature. Our fallenness works against trusting someone else completely. We don’t mind trusting someone as long as we maintain some control, but our Heavenly Father requires absolute trust, which translates as no control on our part. You and I must relinquish command of the situation in order to exercise faith in God. The Lord requires a dependency that relies completely on Him. This way, trust means trust. You really must trust God completely so that you can take hands off and rest in Him. This struggle is not unique to you but a shared experience among all believers. It is not natural for our humanity to trust others, but it is especially not in the DNA to trust God. Although we are redeemed with a new heart, we still have fallen human nature, i.e., flesh, which is opposed to the spirit of faith in God. Therefore, our problem is that part of us wants to trust God, and part of us wants to trust ourselves. How, then, can we have faith in God? The answer to this all-important question is found in how we were able to exercise faith in Christ when we were converted. How could a sinner, dead in trespasses and sin, utterly opposed to God to the degree that he hated God, ever wind up putting his confidence in Him? The answer is grace. It is this grace that grants to the sinner faith. It is a gift given to all who do believe, otherwise none would believe. In Philippians 1:29, the Apostle Paul says, “For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.” What does he mean, “It has been granted on behalf of Christ . . . to believe in Him”? Would it help to know that the word granted is translated from a Greek word that means to give graciously? In other words, it is a gift of grace. To believe in Christ is a gift of grace given to us by God. This grace is a profound and humbling reality that we should always be grateful for. Does not the Bible say that to every Christian God has given a “measure of faith”? Are we not told, “for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8)? There is no other explanation for how a God-hating, sin-loving, self-centered, Christ-rejecting sinner can suddenly trust the One he has never trusted. It is a gift of God’s amazing grace. It is part and parcel of what it means to be born again. The new birth is the beginning of a new life. Whereas the old life was full of self-trust and void of God-trust, the new life created by God is the opposite. It is full of faith in Christ and not in self. Faith is, surely, a gift given to a person, as much as forgiveness is a gift. You did not manufacture your faith in God. You did not just decide one day to cease your unbelief in God’s promises. Nor did you, apart from God’s grace, decide you could now trust the Lord. It is a part of the miracle we call the new birth. Someone may ask, “Why then do I still find it, at times, hard to have faith in the Lord if God has given me faith?” Well, the answer may ring a bit with simplicity, but it is, nonetheless, true. The answer is that although God grants faith, you and I must exercise it. God will not do our trusting for us. We are involved in the act of faith by exercising belief in God. That’s why Jesus often scolded the disciples for their lack of faith. If He didn’t expect them to employ their faith but God to exercise it for them, then the Lord would not have rebuked them. If that is the way faith works and He censured them, the disciples could have replied that the fault was not theirs but the Father’s since He had not moved them to believe. God gives us faith, but it is ours to use or not. The measure of faith in Romans 12:3 that Paul says every believer has received is an ability to trust God and not the very act of faith. It must not be confused with the “gift of faith” listed in 1 Corinthians 12. I must will to act on this ability to trust. It is exactly here that the battle to believe is waged. The flesh will be opposed until we learn how to bring the flesh into submission to the Spirit. How this battle is to be engaged and won will be the subject of our next entry. Until then, may the Lord help you to trust in yourself less and Him more.
- A Faith problem
You would think that believing God should be a relatively easy lesson to learn since God has a track record of never playing someone false. He does not lie; He cannot lie. He is completely trustworthy. So, what’s the problem? Obviously, it isn’t with the Lord; the problem is me. There is something wrong with me that I can’t trust the most honest Person in the universe. Perhaps my problem is that I’m an untrustworthy person, and I’m judging the Lord based on my performance. We do that; we often judge other people’s motives by our own motives. I know I can’t always be trusted. I sometimes have ulterior motives, so why couldn’t God have a few? Maybe He is up to something other than my good because often “my good” hurts. I can’t handle too much of that kind of good. Yet, that seems to be the kind of good the Lord is often dishing out. Maybe my faith problem is an intellectual problem, meaning I just can’t figure God out. I mean He sometimes asks me to believe Him for things that don’t make sense to me. He requires strange things that appear unreasonable. He tells a 100-year-old man he’s going to have a son with his 90-year-old wife whose womb never worked when she was younger. And then once the miracle boy arrives a few years later, God tells the same dad to take his son and offer him as a human sacrifice on an altar. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t compute. Perhaps my faith issues have stemmed from a problem I have with control. I like to have my hands on the helm of my ship if you know what I mean. I’m not so kosher with the idea of someone else doing the driving, especially if I don’t know where we are going. I want to sit down and plan my course. I want to Google map my trip and think of possible contingencies before heading in any direction. But it seems the Lord has this thing about taking me to places I’ve never been without consulting me or at least letting me see the map. Or could my faith problem be an odd mixture of all the above? And if so, wouldn’t that indicate that my real problem is a problem of my nature? I mean, it could very well be that my human nature is fallen and doesn’t like to trust anyone more than me. But don’t take my word for it. Remember, I’ve already confessed I’m not so honest. How about you? What’s your reason for faith in God being so difficult? Our basic problem of distrust stems from our human nature. Our fallenness works against trusting someone else completely. We don’t mind trusting someone as long as we maintain some control, but our Heavenly Father requires absolute trust, which means no control on our part. But we are redeemed with new hearts that want to trust in Christ. The flesh is opposed to the spirit of faith in God. Therefore, our problem is part of us wants to trust God, and part of us wants to trust ourselves. How, then, can we have faith in God? The answer to this all-important question is found in the Bible which says that to every Christian, God has given a “measure of faith.” Are we not told “for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8)? There is no other explanation for how a God-hating, sin-loving, self-centered, Christ-rejecting sinner can suddenly trust the One he has never trusted. It is a gift of God’s amazing grace. It is part and parcel of what it means to be born again. The old life was full of self-trust and void of God-trust, the new life created by God is the opposite. It is full of faith in Christ and empty of faith in self. We can say that faith is a gift given to a person as much as we can say forgiveness is a gift. You did not manufacture your faith in God. You did not just, all by yourself, decide one day to cease your unbelief in God’s promises. Nor did you, apart from God’s grace, decide you could now trust the Lord. It is a part of the miracle we call the new birth. Someone may ask, “Why then do I still find it, at times, hard to have faith in the Lord if God has given me faith?” Well, the answer may ring of simplicity, but it is, nonetheless, true. The answer is that although God grants faith, you and I must exercise it. God will not do our trusting for us. We are involved in the very act of faith. That’s why Jesus often scolded the disciples for their lack of faith. If He didn’t expect them to exercise their faith but God to do it for them, then Jesus would not have rebuked them. God gives us faith, but it is ours to use it or not. The measure of faith in Romans 12:3 that Paul says every believer has received is an ability to trust God and not the very act of faith. It must not be confused with the “gift of faith” listed in 1 Corinthians 12. I must act on this ability to trust. It is exactly here that the battle to believe is waged. The flesh will be opposed until we learn how to bring the flesh into submission to the Spirit. How this battle is to be engaged and won will be the subject of our next entry. Until then may the Lord help you to trust in you less and Him more.
- The Lord Our Righteousness: Christianity's Desperate Fight
When I was a boy, there was a mall near where I lived that paid homage to veterans by displaying a replica statue of the Marines planting the flag at Iwo Jima. The soldiers are stacked atop one another and fighting to raise the waving flag, signaling victory at Iwo Jima. If there is one flag that must be fought for in the Church today, it bears upon it the inscription ‘THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’ During the days of that passionate and pleading prophet Jeremiah, the Holy Land lay under siege from without and within. Within the walls of the Kingdom, the line of kings that ruled over the kingdom of Judah had led the people further away from the heart of God and further into the abyss of self-reliance. Outside the walls, grim soldiers armed to the teeth stood at the ready with chains in hand, ready to shackle those who survived the siege. Rightly dubbed the ‘Weeping Prophet,’ the man of God was the mouthpiece of God during the violent and turbulent times that would see Judah torn apart. One of the loveliest messages came down out of Heaven’s throne room of grace to the prophet Jeremiah during these dark days. “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness; a King shall reign and prosper, and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell safely; now this is His name by which He will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” (Jeremiah 23:5-6 NKJV) The banners that flew atop the walls of Jerusalem were about to be torn down and unceremoniously trampled upon by the muddy boots of the enemy. Strongholds would be pulled down and homes destroyed. The devastation was going to be real, but so was the promise that Israel would have a king again. In the hands of this king, the salvation of the people is held firmly in his grasp, for God’s name shall be upon him, ‘Jehovah Tsidkenu,’ meaning ‘THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’ A grim enemy stands outside the walls of the Church today, shackles in hand and ready to cart its citizens away. It is an enemy which seeks to tear our eyes away from Christ and his righteousness. There is a real danger we are facing that requires a fight of faith to believe. The grim-faced enemy outside our gates is crafty; the enemy's battle plan is not to just drive people into lives of complete debauchery – although he does do that. The real plan of attack is to pull you away from a life of dependency on Christ and into a life of self-dependence. The propaganda of the enemy has even infiltrated our church walls today. The message usually comes as “the enemy doesn’t want you to know your value, that you can do whatever lies before you.” The enemy’s tactics are to subvert the gospel message and turn our preachers into therapeutic teachers. “You are enough; God loves you just as you are” is spiritually killing people. Satan smiles at this message. We must point people to the banner, “The Lord Our Righteousness.” Yet another enemy exists, not just inside the walls of the church, but inside the walls of the heart. Even inside our hearts, we need to take up arms and fight the fight of faith against this insidious enemy. Our inner fight is to fight to believe that we were saved by a Person – and that Person is the Lord Jesus Christ, the one in whom is God’s own righteousness. Nobody is saved by faith in theological concepts; they are saved by faith in a Person. My growing fear is that many people are trapped in this wrong thinking, not enamored with Christ but with the gospel as a concept. Do a bit of self-diagnosis and ask yourself these questions: how real is Christ to you today? Are you trusting in Christ’s righteousness today or your own? Did you become a Christian by trusting in Christ’s righteousness, but now you live by your own? These are hard questions, but they are ones worth asking. We must remove all traces of our own flesh from our faith. The Coming Righteous One In Old Testament times, some people rightly understood that only Jehovah could supply the required righteousness to obtain legal standing with God. Isaiah wrote of this ‘I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,’ (Isaiah 61:10). He also wrote of how the perfect servant of God would make many people to be accounted righteous ‘Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities’ (Isaiah 53:11). This servant would bear the punishment for the iniquities of others, and through the knowledge of him, many would be accounted as righteous. We must understand that we are not cleared of our guilt ONLY because Jesus was killed on a cross. Many criminals were killed on a Roman cross, yet they did not procure salvation for anyone. Post-resurrection, many people were later killed on a cross because they followed this king, and many of these people went singing hymns of praise. Our Lord, on the eve of his horrific death, was sweating blood at the agony of the thought of the cross. Why is this? The answer is simple and should be taught to our children. The agony of Gethsemane was much more than the beating, the whipping, the spitting, the thorns, and the nails; the agony our righteous King felt was the cup of cursing he was drinking from. That bitter cup full to the brim with the wrath of God that you and I deserve. It is important that we make this distinction: you and I are not saved just because Jesus was tortured and crucified. We are saved by His obedient and righteous life that He lived on our behalf then he took the cup of cursing so that we may drink the cup of blessing. The Righteous One is living and dying in our stead. He did not just die for you, Christian; he lived and is living for you! We know today that the promised King was murdered at the hands of lawless men. But this is where we need to press into something important that I fear we overlook today. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, has made and will make many to be accounted righteous, not just by his bearing of our iniquities, but by his beautifully obedient life it was made possible that he could bear those iniquities on our behalf. Let us ponder the beauty of this truth for a brief moment. While the infant Jesus lay in the arms of his sweet mother, he was fulfilling the life of obedience. When the tears of Anna and Simeon fell upon the infant Lord in their arms, he fulfilled our righteousness requirements. When the young boy Jesus stood in the temple and taught the teachers, he was fully obedient to the Father’s will. When he wiped the sweat off his brow as he toiled under the hot Galilean sun, he was loving the Lord God with all his heart, perfectly obedient to the Father’s will. From the moment of inception to the moment of crucifixion, Jesus was performing the work of redemption. He was at work on behalf of his people from beginning to end. By his death, he washed away our sins; by his life he covered us from head to foot. His death was the atonement to God, and his life was the gift to man that satisfied that righteous demand of the law: perfect obedience with all the heart and complete love of God and neighbor. This is the one you have obtained – “we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:10 NKJV) Spurgeon said of Christ, “He was through his life spinning the web for making the royal garment, and in his death, he dipped that garment in his blood. In his life he was gathering together the precious gold, in his death he hammered it out to make for us a garment of gold.” Going Deeper Into Our Faith How does understanding this help us go deeper into our faith? Dear reader, let us press on a bit further, and let me help you understand something that has taken me nearly a decade to begin to fully understand. When first a sinner is led to trust in Christ for salvation, he looks more to Jesus’ work than His person. As he looks at the cross and knows Christ suffered there, the righteous for the unrighteous, he sees in that atoning death the only sufficient foundation on which he can come to God and ask for pardoning mercy. However, as time goes on and the believer seeks to grow in the Christian life, something must take place. He must learn that he doesn’t just obtain peace with God, but he obtains Christ. He begins to understand something of the union Christ has with believers. This is where we must take up arms and fight the fight of faith to believe. Once you begin to understand how inseparable righteousness and life in Christ are, contentment doesn’t come from ‘imputed righteousness’ as a robe only but as the putting on of Jesus Christ. Your righteousness is a person who has given himself to you and taken you for himself. Christ is more than a shield by which we thwart God’s plan to smash us and judge us. We have Christ! He is our life! (Colossians 3:4) As we grow, or rather to grow, we understand not just that we are pardoned but that there is union with Christ. The condescension of Christ is almost too good to believe if you know anything of your own sin; faith is required to venture down this path of understanding. The gospel is not a concept to be believed. The gospel is a person: The Lord Jesus Christ. Because we have Him, we have his righteousness. More than that, we understand that we have all the riches that are found in Him because we have Him. First, we understood only that righteousness comes through Jesus dying for sin, but as we advance, or to advance, we come to know that Jesus, the Living King, IS our righteousness – in fact, is everything – and because we have HIM, we have righteousness too. We began our Christian walk because we pursued righteousness. We came to know of our desperate need, and we gave a desperate plea – we saw our only hope was in the work of another. We sought righteousness through faith in Christ. We then continue the Christian life pursuing Christ. The banner flag that flies atop our hearts, that conquered battleground, must be a flag that carries that old promise: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. In me, there is no good thing, but Christ has been made unto us—righteousness. The beauty of the Christian life isn’t that we get to go to Heaven someday when we die. The beauty of the Christian life is that Christ has been made ours now and forever – and because we are his and he is ours – we have his righteousness.
- Christ our wisdom
This is the first part of a short series focusing on the riches found in Christ. I pray this series will encourage at least one dear saint. The first part of our four-part series focuses on a common theme I hear among Christians struggling to understand doctrine and theology. It is my burden that they be unburdened from anything other than dependency upon Christ, in whom are all the unsearchable riches. 1 Corinthians 1:30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption If we were to scour the entirety of the Old Testament and find every little detail that points the soul to Jesus Christ and his great work of redemption on our behalf, we would find that we need several lifetimes to mine beneath the surface of understanding. It has been said of Charles Spurgeon that his preaching was so remarkable because every bit of scripture was used to point to the redeeming work of Christ. Spurgeon’s preaching has been compared to a jeweler, who holds up a diamond to the light to inspect it for quality and finds that when light hits the jewel, light is cast forth from the diamond in every direction, bathing the room in a myriad of colors and splendor. Such was the way he preached Christ, bathing his hearers in the splendor of Christ’s majesty and beauty. If Spurgeon was still alive and preaching (he would be 190 years old), there would be no danger in that light diminishing through any fault of the jewel, for the richness of Christ and the treasures that are found in Him are limitless. Paul calls the riches of Christ ‘unsearchable’ in Ephesians 3:8, not because they are unknowable, but because they are so vast that they cannot be fully explored. Truly, we should spend our lives like cave explorers, searching through the depths of the rich caverns of Christ. When we became Christians, we knew very little of the magnitude of all that Christ is, we simply came to understand our helpless estate and desperate need of rescue. One way we know that we are maturing in Christ is that we still understand we have not arrived, but we press on toward the prize of that upward call of God in Christ Jesus. We search, we press, we pray, and we scour the pages of God’s Word, and as we do, we gain Christ. Not facts about Christ or first century life nor about moral examples to follow, we gain Christ, “who has become for us wisdom from God.” Paul writes something more astounding than just that Christ has become wisdom for us from God; he tells us before he pens those words that, “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus.” Believer, if you have placed your faith in the person of Jesus Christ, then you are “in Him.” Paul makes that abundantly clear through his letters. Union with Christ is the bedrock of all the doctrines that Paul lays out; it is the foundation upon which the house is built. Christian, in Christ you are – and in Him is wisdom. This is good news, Christian! Oh, how I love to meet a hungry soul eager to learn about Christ! Yet, what I often hear is, “My understanding is not where I want it to be,” or “I can’t understand the deep doctrines of the faith; I guess I’m just simple.” That is a fundamental misunderstanding of how we learn Christ or why we learn Christ. Read this carefully, “Of God you are in Him, who became for us wisdom.” Christ is our wisdom. You are in Christ. You have only but to abide in Him to be made a partaker of these treasures of wisdom. In Him you are – and in Him is wisdom. We are to abide in Christ, the Great Revealer, Wisdom incarnate. Our job is to abide in Christ, who is ready to communicate to us knowledge from God. Do you have a desire to grow? Feast upon Christ. Do you have a desire to know Christ? Good, He has a desire to reveal. When you abide in Jesus, God’s redeeming love, His power, and His infinite glory will – as you abide in Jesus – be revealed to us. We go wrong because we seek knowledge rather than seeking Christ. There are a thousand questions we can ask about different things in regard to our spiritual life – and these can become a burden to us, wearisome even – if we forget that we are ‘in Christ’. God has made Christ to be our wisdom. Always let our first care be to ‘abide in Him’ with an undivided heart. When the heart and life are right (rooted in Christ), knowledge will come as Christ sees fit. Believer, abide in Jesus and expect from Him, confidently, I might add, that He will reveal whatever teaching we need. Do not think of our spiritual life as a mystery or problem we must solve – abide in Jesus. Surrender your own wisdom and depend upon Jesus for the reality of truth to be made known. Not mere facts, but the reality of truth, that is what shakes us to our core. Consider with me that beautiful tree in the garden of Eden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree itself was not evil in nature; there was nothing wicked about it. The tree was not the source of sin; mankind was. God gave a clear mandate to Adam and Eve to abstain from its fruit in Genesis 2:17: “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Adam disobeyed God and lost the right to eat of the Tree of Life, lost the right to eternal life. But you are no longer ‘in Adam’, you are ‘in Christ’! (1 Corinthians 15:22 NKJV) You belong to the one who said, “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:54 NKJV) Believer, your job is to abide, Christ’s job is to provide, and oh, what a provider we have. Does He not richly bless us with Himself? Is He stingy with His treasure? To draw upon Spurgeon, that Christ-centered preacher, we began with, “Oh, how richly you are fed! The flesh of God’s own Son is the spiritual food of every heir of heaven. Hungry souls, come to Jesus if you would be fed.” Go to the Word of God hungry, dear saint, and the promise is you will not leave hungry. In Him you are – and in Him is wisdom.
- The Missing Ingredient In Our Evangelism
I recently found an old and faded picture of my late mother being baptized in a shallow river when she was in her early teens. She was standing next to a man that I presume to be the pastor. The man was waist-deep in the dirty water, wearing slacks and a white dress shirt. The witnesses stood at the water’s edge with hands clasped in joy and smiles on their faces. There is something beautiful about baptizing a new believer outside in a river or creek while the church watches from the bank. There is something beautiful about a man wearing his Sunday best and wading into a river to baptize one little girl. My guess is that the rejoicing over the soul outweighed the care of the nice white dress shirt. Christian, if you would see conversions, you must care about souls more than your comfort. John the Baptizer certainly cared more about the souls of a nation over his own comfort. The great prophet lived in the uncomfortable wilderness and donned clothes to match his surroundings. John was a living illustration of the spiritual state of the nation. Like his prophet predecessors, God called him to be a living testimony of how God saw His people’s spiritual state. The nation was spiritually impoverished and living in the wilderness. John’s message was equally uncomfortable; it was a call to die. To come and plunge themselves beneath the waters of the river Jordan signified the ancient path the Israelites had taken, a path from death to life. John’s call was to a nation of impoverished souls, urging them to enter the water and pronounce judgment on themselves. The offense of the message to the self-righteous was high, as was the cost John ultimately paid. John gave up his comfort, his popularity, and ultimately his life because he refused to conform to the message of the world but harkened the world to conform to God’s message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 3:2). If we would see souls saved, our message must be of the same nature. A missing ingredient in our evangelistic call today is leading to either false or no conversions. Consider John’s message in place of one we often hear today. John’s preaching urged total surrender through baptism. To be baptized by John was an acceptance of one’s own undoing in light of the holiness of God. It was a call to judge oneself a sinner through and through, from toe to soul. Today, the evangelical call is often this, “Lay all your burdens, all your sin, and all your shame at the cross.” That is a true statement, but it misses the mark in one aspect—most people do not understand their total ruin. Sin has been reduced to only the bad things a person does. What about the good things? What must we do with those? They must go to the cross as well. John didn’t stand on the riverbank and make the clarion call, “Come and lay down your troubles, your anxieties, and all the bad things you have done.” John’s call was one of complete death to self-righteousness. I come across many people today struggling with assurance of salvation. After a little conversation, it is almost always diagnosed as a misunderstanding of their sin. I will usually ask something like this, “Have you repented of all your known sin?” To which the answer is usually, “Yes,” and a nod. But then I like to ask, “Have you repented of your righteousness?” Now, I am met with confusion, but we have found the root of the problem. They fundamentally misunderstood that even their ‘goodness’ added nothing to their salvation but rather stood in their way of completely putting on Christ Jesus and His righteousness and making NO provision for the flesh (Romans 13:14). Dear soul, you may have repented of all your awful deeds, but have you repented of your righteousness? Paul said, “Not having my own righteousness…but that which is through faith in Christ.” (Philippians 3:9). The call of John was so offensive to the Pharisees because it was a slap in the face to their goodness. They were not good people who had transgressed the Law because they did some bad things; their ruin was total! They needed to be totally saved; they needed to lay down both transgressions and self-righteousness—and so do we! Let us peek into a typical story of evangelism: We begin a relationship with an unbeliever, maybe they are agnostic or just do not think much about spiritual things. We stick with that relationship, and over time, our new friend comes to an agreement that there is a God. Good, step one is complete. The next step is usually to convince them that this God is not some far-away concept that watches at a distance, but a person that wants to be intimately involved with them. Now comes the cross, the only way to enter that relationship. The debt has been paid on their behalf by another, Jesus, the Son of God. Finally, we ask them something like this, “Would you like to lay down all the bad things you have done and accept Jesus?” I think most people would readily agree with this. What’s the drawback? Just lay down all my bad things, and I can go to Heaven when I die? That’s not very offensive; I can convince people to do that. Just let go of the bad things; check, I got that. Now take that same scenario, and the final step looks like this: “Friend, you must die to self. Even the good things you think you have done are tainted by the stain of sin. You have no righteousness of your own, not the slightest bit. You must put all your faith in another, Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us.” This creates a desperate dependency on Jesus. The good news is that God saves souls despite our imperfect witnessing. Our aim is always to point others to their need for Christ. What better way than to preach the peace that comes from letting go of even our good deeds and laying them at the cross? Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee; let the water and the blood, from thy wounded side which flowed, be of sin the double cure; save from wrath and make me pure. Not the labors of my hands can fulfill thy law's demands; could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone; thou must save, and thou alone. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked, come to thee for dress; helpless, look to thee for grace; foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me, Savior, or I die. While I draw this fleeting breath, when mine eyes shall close in death, when I soar to worlds unknown, see thee on thy judgment throne, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.