Take a Break? Free to Follow, Free to Rest – Purity 751
Purity 751 06/07/2022 Purity 751 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a group of palm trees on the beaches of Fort
Lauderdale comes to us from a friend who enjoyed a long weekend getaway to the Lago
Mar Resort and Club back on May 27th.
Full disclosure, I did take some creative liberties with the
photo by cropping out my friend’s resting feet at the edge of this photo in the
shade of an unseen palm tree, to give their feet privacy?, and to highlight the
natural beauty of God’s creation.
Well, it’s Tuesday, and even though it is only the second day
of the first full work week in the month of June, I was moved to spontaneously
take a nontypical break from my normal morning discipline of exercise and instead
caught a few extra z’s and some restless rest before my nonnegotiable time with
the Lord in prayer and Bible study.
As we have committed ourselves of a lifestyle of walking in
the Spirit we have chosen to be a disciple of Christ and that is a path that
requires discipline. If you didn’t know
it, the root word of discipline is “disciple” and the root word for disciple is
“student”. So in our choice to be a
disciplined disciple of Christ we have decided that we will seek to learn from
Jesus and be determined to apply his wisdom to the way we live our lives.
But unlike, the other “disciplines” of the world, our
membership to the body of Christ is not based on our rigid adherence to a moral
code or based on our performance, our adoption into the family of God is a
product of God’s grace. It’s a free gift of love from the Creator of the
universe and once you place your faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior there
is nothing that can separate you from God’s love or take you out of His royal
family.
We can do nothing to earn our salvation and status as a child
of God and there is nothing we have to do to maintain it.
What? Are you serious? I thought being a Christian was all
about “doing stuff”, that if I become I become a Christian I inherit a long
list of “gotta’s” as in:
“I gotta go to church”
“I gotta be good”
“I gotta read the Bible”
“ I gotta do this, I gotta do that”
And I thought it included a whole list of “can’ts”
As in “I can’t do this or I can’t do that.”
Unfortunately, this is how most people view being a
Christian. Ignorance and some legalistic church cultures have led to this view
but it’s an immature understanding of who we are in Christ and what being a
Christian is all about. This view of “gotta’s”
and “can’ts” is looking at our Christian faith as a religion, not at what it actually
is: a relationship with God.
Unlike human relationships and memberships to certain worldly
clubs or disciplines, our relationship with God is not performance based. It is
not something that can be lost through our failure to perform .
When God invites you into His family, it is with no
conditions and it only requires your humble surrender to the Lordship of Christ.
When we become Christians. we stop
relying solely on our abilities and decide to put our faith and trust in Christ
to save us and to guide us through life.
Our faith is an acknowledgement of the truth of who Christ is:
the Messiah, the Son of God, and God the Son, and it includes our decision to
follow Him. Like the original Apostles
call, we are invited to follow Christ, but we are still free regarding how we
choose to follow.
That’s the amazing thing about grace, it’s God’s unmerited
favor to us and for us. Unmerited means we didn’t earn it and since we didn’t earn
it we can’t lose it. Our position in Christ is steady.
But the harmony of our relationship and the peace we enjoy
will depend on how much we abide in Christ and depend on how we relate to
God.
If we approach our relationship with God as a list of
requirements and that is something that is based on our performance, rather than
a relationship that is permanent and based on love, we will struggle with the
acceptance of our identity in Christ and will be an emotional mess as we will
cycle between anxiety, anger, and depression by trying to meet the perfect standards
of attitudes and behavior that we feel we need to have in order to be accepted
by God.
But the thing is, we were completely accepted by God, the moment
we placed our faith in Christ.
If we are anxious, angry, or depressed about our performance
as a Christian, we have wrongly taken God’s invitation to relationship and turned
it into a religion where we separate ourselves from the Lord based on our performance.
The joy of our relationship with God comes from knowing that
we are free to follow Him in the way we choose.
But the thing about being in God’s family is that you quickly
discover that your old worldly ways and sins don’t really match up with who you
are now in Christ and when we behave in our old ways it doesn’t feel right
anymore and the more we push to stay in our old ways the more pain it causes
us.
When we decide to obey and follow God’s call on our lives, we
begin to discover that the gospel is true, we really are new creations in
Christ. But our old patterns of thinking and behaving, and the world, the
flesh, and the devil, beckon us to stay in the darkness because those shadows
are familiar, and the light of Christ is bright and good but when we approach
it there is no place for our sins to hide.
God sees us for who we are and loves us anyway. He loves us
so much that He doesn’t us to stay in the confusion, ignorance, and pain of our
sin and gently beckons us to trust Him and to come into the light of our new
lives in Christ.
But He doesn’t force us to go, and we are free to stay in the
shadows even though God, and we, ourselves, know it would be better to go His
way. But God doesn’t force us to march
in obedience to Him, Christ came to give us rest. When we decide to follow Him, we discover that
His burden is light because His path is the path of righteousness and
blessings.
The old adage of “choose to sin, choose to suffer” is so
true. But the opposite is also true, when we choose to obey, we choose to
prosper in the riches of God’s grace, mercy, and love.”
The amazing thing about grace is that, we don’t have to obey
perfectly to receive the benefit of our relationship with God. The more we put in the more we get out of our
relationship with God but God knows us and realizes we are not perfect, so He
allows us to follow Him at our own pace, and by God, He even gives us the
option of taking a break! He will even call us to rest or to wait on Him.
So this morning, as much as I thrive in my normal morning discipline
of exercise, it was okay to rest. It was okay to take a break and to do so with
the full assurance that God wouldn’t love me any less.
I could have taken a break from my normal Bible study and
prayers too, but I have come to know the benefits of drawing into God’s
presence and while I am not 100% in anything I do, those means of communication
with the Lord are about as “non-negotiable” as I can get. They are something I simply don’t want to
take a rest from, normally.
But guess what, sometimes I don’t sit down and do my normal
prayers or read the Bible, and that’s okay too. Because I do it all to draw
close to God, not to be accepted by Him.
But I have to admit that there isn’t a day that passes where
I don’t at least take a moment to thank the Lord for who He is or for what He
has done in my life. Because of His grace, I know His love and His rest and
that causes me to thank Him, and love Him a little more each day.
So, don’t beat yourself up for not following perfectly, or
for not doing all the gotta’s, or for not forsaking all the cant’s, that God’s
word indicates are a good idea or practice for His children. We are not accepted by our performance.
But keep walking and talking with God, because even though our
acceptance, significance, and security as a child of the King is assured, the
measure of the fruit of the Spirit growing in our lives does depend on how much
we are enjoying God’s presence, how much we are learning about Him, and how
much of His wisdom we are applying to our lives.
So take a break, take a rest. It’s okay. But after you rest,
jump up and rejoice because God never leaves you and is always there waiting to
walk and talk with you again,
______________________________________________________________
Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book
for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
1 Corinthians 3:10-11 (NLT2)
10 Because of God’s grace to
me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building
on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful.
11 For no one can lay any
foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ.
Today’s
Bible verse talks of how, because of God’s grace, we can continue to build on and
allow others to build on the foundation that we have in Christ.
As
Christians, the foundation of our new lives is faith in Christ alone! Our faith
in Christ saves us and brings us into God’s royal family through the forgiveness
of our sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us. We are new creations the moment we put our
faith in Christ. That saving faith is a solid foundation that we can stand on
from here to eternity, to infinity and beyond!
This
passage in Corinthians describes the process of growth in our Christian faith. With Christ as our foundation, we can build a
life of a Christian disciple. We can allow others to teach us what they have
learned from God’s word and from their walk of faith. We can allow them to help
us build up our life as a Christian.
So
that is good news, and it indicates that we are to be in a Christian community
where others can help and encourage us in our maturation. We are not in this by
ourselves. We have the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, we have the word
of God, and we have the body of Christ to help us build our lives as disciples
of Christ.
But
as today’s verse also warns us, we have to “be very careful” and be discerning
in who we choose to build on the foundation of our faith. We must know the word of God for ourselves
because the enemy would like to like to lead us astray and may send false
teachers and counterfeit brethren into our lives to build lies into our
faith.
Christian
cults, society at large, false religions, and those who push legalism or
licentiousness are all out in the world looking to push us to extremes and would
love to build lies upon our Christian foundation.
Syncretism
(the blending of faiths), the belief that there is more than one way to God, disrespect
for God’s word, and moral compromises are all bricks that the enemy would love
to put on top of our pure foundation of faith in Christ.
So
we must be very careful to reject what is false and only build up our faith
with the wisdom that is confirmed by the word of God.
Hey,
we are all works in progress and if we know the word of God we will know “what’s
up to code” and what’s not. We can recognize counterfeits by being familiar with
the real. If we measure by the word of
God twice, we’ll only have to cut once with the way we live our lives. And we
can be assured that we are building on the pure foundation of our faith in Christ,
with only that which is good, pure, and holy.
As
always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from
prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and
sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today
we continue sharing from John Piper’s “Don’t Waste Your Life”.
As always, I share this
information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase John
Pipers’ books for your own private study and to support his
work. This resource is available on many websites for less than
$5.00.
Ponder the Amnesty
Offered to the Nations. Take a Retreat
The point of that
fragmentary list is to simply illustrate whole populations living in rebellion
against the true God and cut off from the only One who can reconcile them to
their Maker. This means destruction for the unbelieving and dishonor to Christ.
He owns this world, and the allegiance of every person is his right. Every soul
and every state is his. Abraham Kuyper put it memorably: “There is not a square
inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is
Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’ ” Christ has come into this
mutinous world, which he made for his own glory, and paid for an amnesty with
his own blood. Everyone who lays down the weaponry of unbelief will be absolved
from all crimes against the Sovereign of the universe. By faith alone enemies
will become happy subjects of an everlasting kingdom of justice and joy.
Advancing this cause with Christ is worth your life.
No,
you don’t have to be a missionary to admire and advance the great purposes of
God to be known and praised and enjoyed among all peoples. But if you want to
be most fully satisfied with God as he triumphs in the history of redemption,
you can’t go on with business as usual—doing your work, making your money,
giving your tithe, eating, sleeping, playing, and going to church. Instead you
need to stop and go away for a few days with a Bible and notepad; and pray and
think about how your particular time and place in life fits into the great
purpose of God to make the nations glad in him. How will you join the great
global purpose of God expressed in Psalm 67:4, “Let the nations be glad and
sing for joy”?
The Meaning of Your Discontent
Many of you should stay
where you are in your present job, and simply ponder how you can fit your
particular skills and relationships and resources more strategically into the
global purpose of your heavenly Father. But for others reading this book, it is
going to be different. Many of you are simply not satisfied with what you are
doing. As J. Campbell White said, the output of your lives is not satisfying
your deepest spiritual ambitions. We must be careful here. Every job has its
discouragements and its seasons of darkness. We must not interpret such
experiences automatically as a call to leave our post.
But
if the discontent with your present situation is deep, recurrent, and lasting,
and if that discontent grows in Bible-saturated soil, God may be calling you to
a new work. If, in your discontent, you long to be holy, to walk pleasing to
the Lord, and to magnify Christ with your one, brief life, then God may indeed
be loosening your roots in order to transplant you to a place and a ministry
where the deep spiritual ambitions of your soul can be satisfied. It is true
that God can be known and enjoyed in every legitimate vocation; but when he
deploys you from one place to the next, he offers fresh and deeper drinking at
the fountain of his fellowship. God seldom calls us to an easier life, but
always calls us to know more of him and drink more deeply of his sustaining
grace.
Should I Go on Being a Pastor?
I try to take stock of my
own ministry in this way. Every year at our church we have a “Missions Week.” I
preach on missions; we have guest speakers. The challenge is given. People move
toward missions, make commitments, and join the pre-missions nurture program.
And every year I reexamine my life as a pastor at this church. I look at what I
am doing in the light of God’s global purpose, and in view of the incredible
spiritual darkness and misery of the unreached peoples of this earth. I ask
myself, Is this the most strategic investment of my life for the sake of God’s
purpose to make the nations glad in him? I ask my wife, “Noël, are you sensing
any tugs to move closer to the front lines of the unreached peoples?”
Our
church mission statement puts the world “spread” in the dominant position: “We
exist to spread a passion for God’s
supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” So I
ask, Am I fulfilling this mission best in the role I now have? When the Lord
calls me to give an account of my ministry in the last day, will I be able to
say, “Lord, I stayed at Bethlehem because I believed I could be most
instrumental there in accomplishing your purpose to make a name for yourself
among the nations, and to gather your sheep from all the peoples of the earth”?
When I can no longer say yes to that question, then my leadership here will be
finished.
And You?
And so it is with many of
you. Big issues are in the offing. May God help you. May God free you. May God
give you a fresh, Christ-exalting vision for your life—whether you go to an
unreached people or stay firmly and fruitfully at your present post. May your
vision get its meaning from God’s great purpose to make the nations glad in
him. May the cross of Christ be your only boast, and may you say, with sweet
confidence, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.[1]
---------------------------more
tomorrow------------------------
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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
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