WAITING EAGERLY FOR GOD'S PROMISE
O Lord, keep me from the folly of following what the world tells me to clamor for. I realize that biblical faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And I know that it takes a great deal of trust and risk to pursue the invisible over the visible and the not-yet over the now. But hope that is seen is not hope, and if I hope for what I do not see, with perseverance I will wait eagerly for it. I will welcome Your promises from a distance and confess that I am a stranger and exile on the earth. May I trust You enough to treasure Your invisible promises over the visible promises of the world, knowing that only Your promises will endure in the end, and that the world is passing away. You have been faithful to me in the past and I will hope in You for the future.
THE PROMISES OF GOD
How Generous Is God? 1 Timothy 2:3-4
"What does she want?" we may wonder, as we watch a generous person in action. "I'm going to keep my eye on her; there's got to be some ulterior motive at work."
Why do these thoughts enter our head when we see someone acting generously? Perhaps because we have seen too many examples of people (including the one in the mirror) who sometimes have mixed motives for their generosity. If they give, it is to get. If they share, it is only because they have kept back plenty for themselves. If they have a tip to pass along, they have already checked it out for their own advantage before relaying it to others. Those are, unfortunately, our initial suspicions when we see an act of generosity. But after spending time around the generous-acting person, we may discover that they are actually generous. No motives, no agendas, no well-planned moves on the chess board of life and relationships. Just . . . well, generous.
How do we decide that a person is truly generous? They don't play favorites, they give with no strings attached, they share every piece of news that might benefit or harm, they give more than is expected or required, and they rejoice in another's good fortune. If it were up to them, they would want everyone to have whatever good fortune they have. Conversely, they are never envious of good fortune which goes to another instead of themselves.
In a word, generosity describes God. In requesting prayers conducive to the spread of the gospel, Paul says that God "wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." Is there salvation to be had? Then proclaim it far and wide! Is there forgiveness of sins available? Then tell every guilty one to come and be set free! Is there a bubbling spring of cool, living water? Then bring every parched and thirsty soul! God is generous!
Like God, truly generous people discover that liberality empties them of the need for self-protection or promotion. Like God, they become defined not by what they keep, but by what they give away.
God's Promise to You: "I promise to give all that I have and all that you need."
THE PURSUIT OF GOD - PART 18
The Parable of the Married Bachelor
"Our trouble," says Tozer, "is that we have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other world." Later, he writes that, "The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible, the temporal, of the eternal." He concludes that the fundamental problem is "our uncorrected thinking, influenced by the blindness of our natural hearts and the intrusive ubiquity of visible things." We have erected an imaginary wall between the spiritual world and the real world. So that what we perceive as being real has nothing to do with what we consider spiritual, and what we believe to be spiritual has nothing to do with the world of reality. Thus the world of faith becomes nothing more than an irrational and unrealistic leap into the unknown while the world of verifiable facts is irrelevant to faith. In fact, no such wall exists. Rather the opposite is true. The world of the spirit is far more "real" than the world of the physical, which is not always what it seems. The Bible tells us that, ". . . the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18). Our minds have again been polluted with relativism so that we falsely assume that if we want something to be spiritually true, such as being dead to sin, we must imagine it is true and hope that it actually becomes true.
But you may ask, "If my spiritual blindness has been removed at the moment of regeneration, why then can't I immediately apprehend God with the eyes of my new heart?" Scripture answers by teaching that even though you have been freed from the captivity by sin, you have not yet been freed from your capacity for sin. That is, while the penalty for sin has been paid, and you are no longer a slave who is unable to break free from its domination, you still retain the capacity to sin if you choose to do so. Only now that you're a Christian, it is totally inconsistent with the person you have become in Christ. Your power to choose is at the core of your God-given design, reflective of his image, and is therefore still operational. And while that power is now free to pursue God, it still has the option of being employed by the old self to sin.
To illustrate the point, consider this parable: Once upon a time there was a bachelor who lived a commitment-free lifestyle, never building any lasting relationships, preferring instead to aimlessly roam from one female to another in an endless search for selfish pleasure. One day, exhausted by the emptiness, he found a woman like none other and decided to settle down in marriage. They exchanged vows before family, friends, and God, symbolized with rings. One night during the honeymoon, the new bridegroom decided to "take a night off" from his wife and hit the singles bars in search of someone willing to share their affections. Not wanting to be a hypocrite, he took off his wedding ring and placed it on the nightstand. As he left for the evening, he silently convinced himself that by removing the ring he was once again a bachelor, free to return to his former habits as a single man.
The next day, upon his return his worried wife asked where he had been. He told her the truth, explaining that his bizarre behavior was permissible since he had taken the time to remove his wedding ring. He said that a man wearing a wedding ring should act like a married man, but a man without a wedding ring has every right to act as a single man. After all, for years he had worn no ring and developed certain culturally acceptable habits characteristic of a single man. And anyway, don't old habits die hard?
His wife folds her arms, taps her left foot, and takes a deep breath before informing him that his old habits had better die immediately or she would pawn that ring and take a singles cruise to Bermuda with her girlfriends. He's stunned. Why in the world can't she understand that if the ring made him married, the removal of the ring should make him single again? Where did he go wrong?
The answer is obvious, is it not? Wearing or not wearing a ring is not the issue. The issue involves a vow of commitment; the ring is only a symbol of that commitment. Therefore when he said, "I do," that vow transformed him into a different person, and everyone, especially his new bride, expected him to act like the new person he has become. Therefore, how he feels in a given moment, or what lifestyle habits he finds difficult to control, or whether or not he wore a ring is completely irrelevant. The only way forward for our "married bachelor" is for him to begin to reckon himself dead to bachelorhood and alive to marriage. Then based on that reckoning, he must consistently live in that truth and live out that truth.
Upon becoming a Christian you have undergone a total transformation into a new creation. That means that, ". . . the old things have passed away, behold, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). But before you can begin acting like the new creation you are, you must first change your mental picture to correspond to your new identity. You must reckon that which is true, to actually be true. You must begin seeing yourself as a beloved child of a Holy Father, as one who is dead to sin and alive to God.
But, unlike the bachelor in the parable, you can count on more than just your own disciplined efforts, for there is another power in you that is greater than personal willpower. It is the power of the Holy Spirit, who has taken up residence within you and who is able to supernaturally strengthen your confidence in your new identity. Paul indicates as much when he write, "For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption . . . the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God" (Romans 8:15-16). Having first reckoned yourself alive to God and dead to sin, you can begin living out that truth in the power of the Spirit.
THE SPIRITUAL WARFARE
Father God, I know that I am engaged in a spiritual warfare on the three battlefronts of the flesh, the world and the devil. These forces are opposed to Your rule and authority, and the most chilling of them is the flesh, because it is internal. I affirm that the good I want I do not do, and instead practice the very evil I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but the sin that dwells in me. There rages a warfare between my deepest self in Christ and the sinful remnant of what I was in Adam. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! You have given me the power of Your Holy Spirit so that I can put to death the deeds of the flesh. Let me never trust in my own devices and desires, but only in Your power.
