Ahhhh... How liberating to post about whatever I feel like posting for a change. Sighhhhh.

 

Well said, Daniel. This convicted me.

 

Daniel,

I've been going through a really rough patch, so-to-speak, for the last few months. I am living this post through much trial and tribulation and many tears. Yet I can testify that what you say is true, even in seemingly utter despair, the Lord has been faithful to me and has given me joy and peace. God is good and if I did not know He was in control, I'm certain I would go insane.

Thanks again for posting truth. Not just doctrinal truth, but day by day, minute by minute, "in the trenches" truth of God's grace.

"....without holiness no one will see the Lord." Hebrews 12:14

 

Also, for what it's worth, this is the only blog I know of that has a trademark on the word "spiritual". That has to be worth something in God's sight.

 

Gary, I am indeed given a rare privilege when something I write is used to draw someone nearer to our Lord. Thank you for the encouragement.

Matt, One of the things I have had to personally work through, and am still working through is the problem of motivation.

The Judaizer mindset says, obey because that is how you stay saved. We rightly recoil from that. But many in the church, I suspect, recoil all the way over into erring on the other side, and do so using orthodox language.

They rightly recite that it is God himself who is at work in us to will and to do His own good pleasure, and correctly repeat the truth that without Christ the man who labors does so in vain. They know that God grants grace and power - that we are to do what we do in the strength that God supplies - but then comes the disconnect.

These same think this "power" is something they don't have and so they do nothing out of fear of working in their own strength.

They wait for some unquantifiable kind of holy feeling or "spiritual energy" to come upon them. They expect to be lifted up out of their current state, and put into a more productive one wherein what is presently difficult will be thereafter easy-peasy.

They don't understand that God is already in you, in the person of the Holy Spirit, working in you not only the desires you have to obey, but providing you already with the strength and means to do so. They don't understand that Christ is with them, so that when they labor they do not labor in vain, for Christ is at work in them.

They rightly shun the idea that our own works justify us; but then they imagine that God doesn't want us to do the very work He has commanded us to do until we should receive even more than those who waited at Jerusalem. When were they fit for ministry? They were fit for ministry the moment the Holy Spirit filled them.

The are waiting for some kind of blessing, not understanding that they are already blessed - that they possess the same Spirit as fell on the day of Pentecost, and are as spiritually equipped (already) as any saint can be.

But they refuse to walk in the Spirit, that is, in faith and in obedience, instead they flounder neglecting their duty because they are waiting for the right motive to fall out of the sky.

In the parable of the talents, the master goes away, and leaves his servants with all they need to conduct business - that is, he leaves them with everything they need to do what he told them to do. Two of the three took what they received, and employed it to their own profit, and the profit of their master - the other refused to use what was given, but instead focused on simply not losing it altogether.

The parallels are not coincidental.

There is so much more I could have said on this - it is a present passion of mine.

 

Daniel,

Thank you for sharing your insights. I agree with you. My experience has certainly at times been as you have described (and I have the audacity to call it "faith"!!!). My biggest struggle is when I set my mind to obedience, and then fail, I tend to say in my heart, "well, God must not really want me to have victory in that." As if it's God's fault. I struggle with truly seeking to walk in the Spirit and be obedient, to seek blamelessness, knowing it is God in me working according to His will, and the BOOM! I sin without even blinking. So I say, "if it's God in me, why do I continue to sin?? Am I deceived? Why do fail to walk in the Spirit all of the time?? What is wrong with me??".

Maybe I'm not really saved, but only self-deluded.

The more I concern myself with not just doing what is right, but also having the right motives, sincerity of heart, and deep seated desire to please God, the more I question the authenticity of my faith. If I am a servant of God, then I am a most worthless one.

 

Matt,

I am sure that when Paul called himself the chief of sinners, he wasn't being poetic.

Sin is funny. We want to be absolutely free from it so that we will never again be tempted to doubt that we are saved. In fact, we want to be free from sin, primarily as a sort of concrete assurance that we are God's children.

We are redeemed souls sojourning in unredeemed flesh, so that the influence of the Holy Spirit presents us with desires that are not only absent from our flesh, but in fact contrary to our flesh. The Holy Spirit strengthens us against the flesh by causing us to abhor it - to see sin for what it is, and to war against it rather than make peace with it.

The victory that we seem to want is an entirely carnal one. We want to defeat the flesh in such a way that it no longer has any power over us. This is due in part to an immaturity in our faith, and again, to a flaw in our understanding. We have an expectation that doesn't come from scripture, but rather from our fears. We are afraid (on some level) that our struggle "proves" we are not legitimate, and so we desire to end the struggle to satisfy our fears.

The hardest thing for a believer to do is to go back to that place, if it has been set aside, where we first came to Christ. When we were first torn over the magnitude of our sin, and first felt the weight of that certainty that our sins have condemned us, and that if we were to die in that moment we would absolutely be damned. For without that moment who could ever truly understood both their need for Christ, and the beauty and simplicity of the Gospel. It was in the well of despair that God reached down and opened your heart to the gospel. It was there that God met you and made you see this one thing: He would save you, not because you were good, but because He was not a liar, and in His mercy and Grace He promised to save you if you would turn from your sin and obey Him. As soon as you knew it was true, and that the offer was real, you had a struggle. You had eternal life put in your lap, and you suddenly realized that you didn't really want it if it meant serving God. That was the penultimate expression of your old man, the death cry, if you will - the final temptation of the enemy to turn you aside from God's promise, and your eternal redemption. Yet if you are Christ's you know that even in that dark place where you first saw yourself as you truly are, something happened. Where once you could not imagine being a Christian, and submitting yourself to God, yet into your heart poured a desire to do just that - a desire that ran entirely contrary to your fleshly ones, and under the influence of this desire, who in truth is the Holy Spirit, you rejected the voice of your flesh, and for the first time turned to God in truth, and the faith that welled up within you, caused you to call out for salvation, and to receive it.

I hope I am speaking of things you remember. Some were saved as children, and have no real recollection of these events. But if you were saved as an adult, you should know what I speak of.

My point is that you received the Lord Jesus in spite of the knowledge that you are a wretched sinner who deserves only damnation.

Paul wrote, as you have received the Lord Jesus, so walk in Him. Which is to say, that same desire to obey only yourself, and that refused to surrender to God - this desire is the desire of the flesh, and you overcame it in the moment you were saved, by faith through the Holy Spirit. That is how you must walk every day. That is how we must all walk.

Having said that, it is the easiest thing in the world to forget it if we do not exercise ourselves daily in this truth. By this time many of us ought to be mature, but we still need milk.

 

I have to admit, this is the one perspective I never truly considered, and now that I have, it has really opened my eyes and heart to some hard core facts about my own struggles with sin. I had never seen myself a slave before, as the word itself dredges up images of wicked pain and suffering, abuse and callousness. You have shown me an entirely different side to it, one I had never thought to imagine and for this I thank you greatly. You have inadvertantly helped me a great deal with this one entry and I am deeply touched and appreciative for it. Bless you brother.
In him I dwell and he in me, it seems all so painfully simplistic now that I look at it. (feeling rather sheepish about not seeing this sooner!!) But like GI Joe, (ha ha) knowing is half the battle. You have my gratitude.