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Sunday, September 5 |
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| For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God Eph. 2:8) | |||
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God or My Feelings?
In the last few weeks I found myself struggling in my focus on
the Lord. Much of the time I felt distant and unable to draw close. I would try
to draw near to Him in prayer in the morning, but my thoughts were constantly
drifting elsewhere. I found this to be very frustrating and didn't know what to
do. I tried to worship Him, but I just couldn't stay on track.
If you look carefully at the preceding paragraph you may be
able to identify what my problem was. Do you see a particular one letter
word that occurs six times? It's cousin "my" occurs twice this same paragraph.
Of course, it's the word "I". The word itself is fine, but how the word "I" can
trip us up in our walk with the Lord.
What I now recognize is that I was trying to
get it right. I wanted to have a pure, unbroken fellowship with
our Lord and when this didn't happen, I would try to figure out
why. I would be disappointed in myself and then
I would try harder or just give up. Time would run out in the
morning with no particular focus on the Lord and I had to go on
with the rest of my day. I felt like
I had to do better in my thoughts to really enjoy a good time
of fellowship with God.
As I worked through this I went back and looked at what I had emailed out
several weeks ago entitled, "God or My Failings". I
could see that I must have only identified the potential struggle without
actually incorporating this truth into my daily walk.
What I now see as a reality in my heart is that I can rest and
draw near to Him regardless of how I feel or what I have done. It really has
nothing to do with me and everything to do with God. I am going to struggle with
sin for as long as I live on this earth. I am going to disappoint myself and
others countless times. Praise God; none of this matters one bit in my
relationship with God. Scripture says it best:
As I had said in the previous article, "God or My Failings",
just as we are saved "just as I am" without any pre-cleaning or anything, so we
can enter into His presence at any time covered by the blood of the Lamb. There
is no requirement for penance or sorrow. I simply enjoy and rest in His arms
anytime and all the time. Nothing, including sin, can keep us away. The
only things that can keep a believer away from a deep abiding
relationship with God is ignorance and personal choice. We may not have a good
understanding of the incredible, full access we have to God in Christ or we may
choose other things in the world to be the center of our attention rather than
God. God has provided a complete salvation. We must understand it, accept it and
enjoy it.
I am not in any way advocating that while dwelling in sin we
can have fellowship with God. Sin and God are mutually exclusive. We also cannot
live a "double life" where we purposely enjoy the sin and then, without
intending to turn our back on our sinful ways, seek to enjoy fellowship with
God. I am saying, though, that we don't (and we can't even if we tried) have to
have some pure track record to enjoy an intimate fellowship with God. I don't
have to look back at the last hour, day or week and see how I have been doing
and then, based on how well I've been walking with Him, approach Him with
confidence only if I've done well. As we all know, holiness comes from God
alone. If we somehow have in our minds that we must do better or just get caught
up in self analysis and self focus, we will never be able to draw close to Him.
The truth of the matter is that we will always be sinful people coming into the
presence of a Holy God. Our "salvation", of course, is the blood of Christ which
so completely and effectively covers our sin. So, we can never really come to
God with a pure heart (which is from God alone) until we allow ourselves to come
into His holy presence, covered by the blood of the Lamb, and let Him purify our
heart (we can never purify our own hearts).
Scripture speaks so clearly of what I describe:
It is a work of God and God alone to cleanse us. It is His
presence alone which makes us holy. We can freely and readily come into His
presence even though the memory of our sin and failure is still fresh in our
hearts. I say it again, The Blood covers all. Turn your heart to Him and you in
that same motion you will be turning your back on sin. Regardless of how you
feel about yourself, you are perfectly clean in His presence and He is
incredibly and fully delighted with you.
Mechanics of Forgiveness
Let me ask a question. Does sin hinder, hurt or diminish our
relationship and fellowship with God? I think most of us would quickly respond
with a "yes". Is the answer really that simple? I don't think so. I think in our
effort to discourage sin we may have painted sin as overly destructive to our
relationship with God. It's almost as if we have said that the covering of
our sin by the blood of the Lamb somehow "goes away" when we sin and God can't
look at us or have fellowship with us again until we confess the sin and turn
back to Him. Some people may even have in their minds that if they die with
"unconfessed sin" this will somehow cause a problem. These thoughts have no
basis in scripture. Yes, sin is supremely ugly and most abhorrent to God, but
the blood of Christ has overwhelmingly and completely conquered over sin.
Sin's power is gone. It does say in 1 John 1:9 that we must confess our
sins or agree with God about our sins, but this in no way implies any break in
our fellowship with God. In fact, I firmly believe that God is 100% in
fellowship with us as believers all the time because the blood of Christ covers
us for all sin: past, present and future. He never, ever turns
His eyes from us because He always sees us as completely holy in Christ. The
problem is that sin takes our eyes off of God. Once we turn our hearts away from
the sin we can be 100% in our focus on Him. He always has 100%
focus on us.
Do you feel you have to go through some "process" or
"steps" when you sin in order to get back to God? After you "stumble" do
you need to "get up and wipe yourself off" before enjoying fellowship with God
again? Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no place for
guilt. There is no mention in scripture of a "waiting period" or "penance" we
must pay for our sin. When we turn back to God, as I said in the previous
paragraph, God is always there 100%. We must simply turn our attention to Him as
well and gratefully accept His free gift of complete forgiveness and
cleansing.
Like many of believers, you probably have areas in your life
were you continuously struggle. For years you have found frustration and have
never gained "victory". Does this cause you feel distant from God because you
are not measuring up? Don't remain in this trap a moment longer. All is covered
by The Blood. You should not give one moment of thought to the past. Enjoy His
presence, even when you stumble again. Don't look at yourself. Forget about
yourself and your failings and cling to Him and Him alone in your
heart.
Motivation
Also, looking back at my spiritual performance, I feel like a
spiritual failure, particularly because I haven't been praying for other people.
I have this expectation of what a good Christian should do and if I don't do
this, I don't feel good about myself. Again, these thoughts have the effect of
pulling me away from Him. It is probably true that I need to be praying for
others more, but is feeling bad about it the way to motivate myself to pray
more? Certainly not. Getting down on myself as method of motivation is
unproductive. I need to completely forget about the past, good and bad, and
enjoy Him in the moment. I can learn from what I have done in the past, but I
must not look to my past for motivation for actions. The only proper motivation
for us as believers is from the Lord. A lingering guilt about sin, a
disappointment about something you did or any other feeling, is a false
foundation from which to motivate yourself spiritually. I think a good way to
describe this type of motivation would be the term "transitory
motivation".
I have discussed what I call transitory motivation from a
negative experience, but it can also come from a positive experience as well.
This can come in the form of an uplifting worship service, a bible study, a
great quiet time with the Lord or even some spiritual victory. We can be
"charged up" by these experiences and have a false joy based on the passing
feelings, rather than a deep faith in The Rock, Jesus Christ. We may find
ourselves addicted to this cycle and see a spiritual decline in our lives as
time passes. If we find our transitory motivation from a weekly service or
meeting, for example, we will see a spiritual decline through the week until we
are "recharged" at the next service or meeting.
Obviously, our motivation must be from God alone. The nagging
voices of guilt or expectations of who we should be have no place in our minds
or hearts. Certainly God speaks to us through fellow believers and Christian
leaders, but they must be speaking on God's behalf for us to listen to them. An
inappropriate sense of guilt of false expectation can cause us to distort what
we hear from others as well as what we read from the Word. When we are exhorted
to obey God in some way, this is not a call to increase or personal effort to
change ourselves. We must see exhortations to obedience as from God and seek His
strength and leading.
God-Awareness (Faith) Rather Than
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is an important ability for us to look honestly
at ourselves and who we are and take corrective actions to improve ourselves. It
is an awareness of our external environment, how people are responding to us and
the ability, then, to change our behavior accordingly. We as believers must
manage our self-awareness and how we feel about ourselves in light of our faith
in God. I would submit to you that we need to rather become God-aware and let
our self-awareness be completely taken over and consumed by Him. Rather than
evaluating ourselves and feeling good or bad about ourselves based on our
judgement, we must listen to God and God alone for input on "how we are doing".
Another word for listening to God and not ourselves is faith.
The account of Moses as he was commissioned by God to deliver
the Israelites from Egypt comes to mind as an illustration of an overly
strong self-awareness or lack of faith. As God told Moses to go and speak to the
Israelites, Moses looked at himself alone and only saw limitations and past
failure
Moses was focused on himself as the key to any work which God
might wish to perform.
In the same manner we can look at ourselves and our past and
allow this to limit what God can do and even has done. It can be for a
particular work God would have us to do, but the focus of what I am writing
about is the salvation God has accomplished on our behalf through Jesus Christ.
We are completely saved by Him and there is no regard we need to give to
ourselves in any way.
It is 100% God and 0% us. God is everything and we are nothing
and we are wonderfully complete in Him. I am not just speaking of the
security of our salvation, but about our relationship with God. Our salvation in
Christ and our relationship with God are inseparable. There is nothing you must
have done, no track record of righteousness, not great quiet times, not
completing some level of bible study, nothing at all. God has done it all. God
is incredibly delighted with you beyond what you could possibly imagine. Don't
look at who you are or what you have or haven't done. Look to Him alone. Don't
let guilt, remorse or personal limitation drive you anymore. Rest in the
finished work of Christ on your behalf and listen alone to the Holy Spirit. Any
words of inadequacy or accusations of unworthiness or failure are not from God
but from ourselves. I speak not the power of positive thinking or some mantra
you must chant to yourself. This is the rock solid truth of the gospel of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
If we are perfect in Christ, why do we need to improve
ourselves in so many ways? We can't just lay around and remain the same
person we are forever, can we?. How do we reconcile the fact that we need
to study the bible, grow in the knowledge of God, pray better, witness more and
all this other stuff? Yes, we need to "get better", but we need to do so knowing
that we are 100% complete already. This isn't just a head knowledge that we are
complete, but a continuous understanding every moment we live that we are
wonderfully complete in Him. We can't let the fact that there is more for us to
know and learn cloud our relationship with Him in any way.
What do we do? Enjoy Him and delight in Him all the time.
There is no baggage you need to worry about in your relationship with Him. Walk
with Him every moment of your life. You will naturally grow in Him as you spend
time with Him. You can focus on the areas of your life that He might
bring to your attention where you need to grow. Knowing that He loves
you as you are, you can focus your eyes on Him and not yourself as you seek to
step out in faith in new ways in your life. As you stumble along the way, keep
your eyes on Him alone and don't look to yourself.
A Place for Spiritual Discipline?
As I write these things, I wonder about the proper place of
what might be called spiritual discipline. I think of this in the context of
disciplining ourselves to study the bible and have quiet time on a daily basis,
for example. This is a good thing, but I wonder if it is the best thing? Can we
really know the life which God has promised to us if much of how we live is by
personal discipline? If I am maintaining my spiritual walk by shear force of
will, is that the life God intended us to live? I think we must see the truths
of our salvation in Christ and if we miss this and we must force ourselves along
each step of the way, I would have to question if we are on the right track.
Yes, we must make the choice of the will to set the alarm to get up early to
spend time with Him, but if this time is devoid of joy and delight in Him, I see
little profit in it. We do have to choose and make
priorities for our lives. Maybe that's where discipline comes in.
Three Points
I now see three key points or truths which are the foundation
for a healthy, thriving relationship with our Lord. I do not claim that this in
any way is authoritative or exhaustive, but these points have helped me distill
the truths about the gospel and our relationship with God in the best way I know
how. No doubt, I will add to and/or refine these points as a walk with and grow
in the Lord and as others share with me their understanding of our wonderful
Lord and the incredible salvation He has freely given to us.
For those of you who I have read my web site (www.christmylife.org), it all started as
I had revelation of how incredibly wonderful God is and how we can worship Him
every moment of our lives (as described in point 2 above). This understanding
changed my life, but I still had ups and downs and my walk with the Lord never
seemed to be what I thought it should be. As I have come to an understanding
just recently how I can completely ignore how I see myself (described in point 3
above) and rest completely in what He has done on my behalf, I see an incredible
new freedom and joy in my walk with Him. I am just starting with this new
understanding in my walk with Him, but I am excited as to where it will lead and
how I will grow in Him more and more.
Not What is Typically Taught
I will conclude this long monologue by pointing out that what
I write about is not what I see taught in mainline evangelical circles. I don't
think anything I have written is particularly unique or profound, but the
emphasis you probably get in your church is more focused on doing
particular things rather than on our relationship with God. By doing I
think of being involved in church ministry, praying for others, witnessing,
being involved in missions, loving our spouse, raising children, etc. These are
all great things that we should be doing, but these must be outgrowths
of a thriving, joy filled relationship with Him. I think you might find, as
I have, that there are believers you know who have a wonderfully close walk with
the Lord and are effective in ministry. I think they see past the teaching which
is typically obedience focused (not legalistic per se, but emphasizing our
active response to a teaching rather than heart change) and simply enjoy a
close, loving relationship with our God.
So, I think the typical evangelical Christian would read what
I have written and say it all sounds fine, but they are programmed to be doing
things so they wouldn't really catch on to the centrality of our relationship
with Him. They would agree with the truths I write about, but would continue
with the "standard program" of reading the bible, praying, sharing their
faith and being involved in Christian fellowship, etc. I see it as striving to
make themselves more like Christ rather than letting God make them more like
Christ. I have used the analogy before of our Christian life being something
like a life size inflatable doll. Without any air (without the filling of the
Holy Spirit) it is something of a limp thing. We as believers attempt to take
this inflatable doll and shape it ourselves into what we perceive to be is what
God would have us to do. We try to stretch it and prop it up to make it look
good, but it really looks quite pitiful. What is supposed to happen,
obviously, is the doll is filled with air (the Holy Spirit) and it
naturally takes on its intended shape.
In the same way we must let God fill us with Himself, with the
Holy Spirit, and allow Him to shape our lives as He has designed them. We cannot
shape ourselves into Christ likeness. Holiness is from God alone and cannot be
generated in any way by us. We must be intimately abiding in Him at all times
enjoying His perfect forgiveness and cleansing in Christ. In unbroken fellowship
with Him and with 100% of our attention on Him and 0% on ourselves, we walk each
step in a simple faith and trust in our wonderful Lord.
Final Note
As I write these things, I am aware that I am a
fallible, imperfect human being. It is my sincere desire to write and speak
of the truth in complete harmony and agreement with God's truth. Any error or
mistake in what I have said is unintentional. I do honestly seek to know and
understand His ways and to convey this understanding to others. I sincerely ask
that you bring to my attention anything I have written about which is not
correct. I am certainly not a one man team. I wish to learn and grow and I know
a valuable way this occurs is through the fellow believers working together to
understand His word and His ways.
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