Obeying God and Knowing God

Good stuff here from the Pirate Monk guys in thinking about last week's post on obedience.

"Jesus said if you love me you will obey my commandments. And so I often think if I want to love God more, practically speaking, all I have to do is be more obedient. As long as I don't do (fill in the blank) or as long as I do (these five things) I am in "The Zone" and I'm obeying God. Obedience becomes just my own man-made construct. And if that is how I am going about feeling better about loving God, then this really doesn't have anything to do with God..this is really just about me.

What Paul says is I want to know Christ. Forget all these other duties; loving God will be the most natural by-product of knowing him more. Once I know God more, as I draw close to him more, those are the times where sin actually looks distasteful to me."

Week 2 Video: Strategies

A few strategies are included in this week's video from the Conquerer DVD series.

Do any of these strategies seem ridiculous? If so, perhaps that is the strategy you most need to try. One action suggested in this video deals with access to the internet, especially before bed. I know that, for years I kept my phone beside my bed. I never questioned whether I might put it in another room...or even out of arm's reach- in an effort to maintain purity. The phone location was defensible. I mean, I needed it for an alarm clock! On a more practical level, the mere presence of a cell phone is known to adversely affect the quality of sleep.

The same could be said for any of these. Does the idea of signing a covenant of contention seem corny? Or the idea of taking the SAST seem a bit overkill? And while we don't force anyone to implement any of these strategies, realize that if you are reading this blog and these steps seem ridiculous to you, don't dismiss them out of hand.

The point is, Jesus says twice in the book of Matthew "If your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out." Almost every time I have heard an exposition or commentary on that passage-almost in the same breath- the statement is followed by ...now clearly, Jesus wasn't being literal!

Or was he? Because in reviewing my failure to mortify sin, I see a history of rather comfortable mortification. That is, I will put sin aside as long as it doesn't cost me anything or inconvenience me too greatly. 

As Spurgeon wrote: Better to be but a maimed believer than to be an accomplished unbeliever. Better that thou lose an eye, or lose a hand, than lose thy faith in God and his word.

Or Calvin wrote: Christ must employ an exaggerated form of speech expressly because men allow themselves too much liberty. It might be thought that Christ pressed too severely on men, and therefore he anticipates complaints. However difficult, or severe, or troublesome, or harsh, any commandment of God may be, no excuse ought to be pleaded on those grounds, because the justice of God ought to stand higher in our estimation, than all that we reckon most precious and valuable. You have no right to object to me, that you can scarcely turn your eyes in any direction, without being suddenly drawn away by some temptation: for you ought rather to part with your eyes, than to depart from the commandments of God. 

Or Ligon Duncon in his sermon God's Law vs Human Tradition: 

The Lord Jesus is saying that sin must not be pampered; it must be put to death. And notice that He uses the most graphic language:"Tear out your right eye" and "cut off your right arm." Mortification is not passive. This is a striving against sin. The Lord Jesus is calling on us to wage war against this sin in our hearts and in our lives. It must be flung aside immediately and decisively.

What does that mean? It means that that book which is causing you to think thoughts that you ought not think needs to be turned aside from. Perhaps it needs to be burned. It means that that film which is titillating your heart, your mind it needs to be turned aside from. It means that social relationship that we have begun to develop and we sense the inappropriateness of the action that we have with another, it needs to be turned aside from. 

Believers should know that we are no match for this temptation. What are we to do as believers when faced with this temptation? There are several things which we should be prepared to do. First, we must immediately resort to Christ. We must be absolutely dependent on Him. Human resources cannot match this desire. We must have desire for Christ which exceeds our desire for the pleasure of the flesh. That means going to Him in prayer. That is the first step back to Christ. Our first step is back into His arms because the desires that are building in us are so powerful that they can be matched by no desire except a supernatural desire implanted into our hearts. 

[Then] we must deal with the real cause of our sin. If there is an occasion which is causing us to stumble, we must not come back to God and negotiate with Him by promising Him to read our Bible more and pray more as long as we can keep going back to that occasion of sin. Obedience knows no negotiation. When we see an occasion for sin, the Lord Jesus says, "Don’t go back and read your Bible and pray more, you cut off your right hand. If that is an occasion for sin, don’t put yourself there." He further more says that we must do this decisively and immediately. It requires drastic action. 

If you are in the grip of this sin you know how hopeless it is to struggle against. Let me tell you that very hopelessness is your greatest hope because if you have learned that you are hopeless against this sin, you have just learned that there is no hope in you. Only hope in Him and in Him alone. Now Satan will be saying to you, "If I confess this sin Christ will reject me," and Satan will be saying to you, "If you confess this sin they (the church) will reject you." I assure you these are lies. Christ's arms are open wide, His peoples' arms are open wide, and there are few men in here who cannot sympathize and empathize with this temptation. Put aside the obstacles of Satan and come to Christ. The only way you will ever overcome this temptation is in the arms of Christ, who will give you a greater desire that the flesh can ever fulfill.

Hope to see some of you this week for our meeting. Information is at the top of the screen.

Midweek Nugget

Enjoyed this section from Nate Larkin:

I have found that for short stretches of time I can convince myself that I am being faithful to God if I define faithfulness in terms of only one behavior. If I decide that holiness consists of not drinking, for example, I can feel pretty good about myself as long as I don't drink. Even though I treat drinkers with contempt and sin against love in a thousand other ways, I can swagger through the streets and parade into the temple with my head held high, noisily thanking God that "I am not like other men."

Self-righteousness, however, is a double-edged sword. If I have reduced holiness to a single behavior, then I am standing on one leg. One slip and I am nothing again, absolutely useless. Either way, the commandments of the gospel mean nothing to me. I do not hear "Love your wife" or "Love your enemies" or "Love your neighbors as you love yourself." I only hear "Don't drink."

God, in his grace, has used addiction to shatter my moralistic understanding of the Christian faith and force me to accept the Gospel. I am not a faithful man. That's why I need a Savior. I cannot live victoriously on my own. Thats why I need a Helper and brothers. I cannot keep my promises to God--the very act of making them is delusional-- but God will keep his promises to me.

As a Christian, I am perpetually reduced to the role of supplicant.  No more can I offer God a bargain, his favor in exchange for my faithfulness, or go toe-to-toe with him, demanding payment for years of service. But when I approach him humbly, as a restored prodigal son, he responds with overwhelming generosity to my request for aid.

No fancy prayers are required. In fact, God finds fancy prayers repugnant. He loves it, however, when I acknowledge my need and my belief in his benevolence with a simple one-word prayer: Help.

Shame and Guilt

Last week we discussed "wounds" and how they lead to an identity of shame and guilt. If you weren't able to attend last week's meeting your assignment was to define for yourself the terms: embarrassment, guilt, humiliation and shame. It was also to write on a notecard Philippians 1:6 and then on the back of that notecard write your own paraphrase of that verse.

Last week, we heard the explanation of guilt and shame in our Conquerers DVD in terms of a football analogy. Guilt was defined as "you stepped out of bounds" while shame is "no matter what you do you can't get the ball in the end zone."

Below is a discussion of guilt versus shame from the Pirate Monk Podcast.

In this clip, Ramon Presson describes the two main sources of a man's shame: a sense of 1) weakness and 2) failure. He reports that the mindset of a man becomes "I didn't just fail...but rather, I am a failure" and therefore the natural flesh tool becomes "powering up" rather than understanding that the person of Christ is already strong and that were are liberated as we find our identity in Christ. 

I really relate to the conversation about countering the narrative playing in our individual minds. When we get isolated, our inner thoughts become the only source of audio in our life. I tell myself "I am a failure" and subsequently I begin to believe that I must, indeed, be a failure. 

But Jesus says: "If you knew the truth, the truth would set you free" and in his reinstatement of Peter answers him in a very different way: 

Shame over past failures and sins can haunt and inhibit us in many ways. And Satan seeks to steal and destroy our faith by shoving our failures in our face. But Jesus intends to redeem us completely.

When Jesus chose you to be his disciple, he foresaw your future failures as sure as he foresaw Peter’s. We may not want to believe that we could deny Jesus by engaging in a sin that contradicts everything we believe. We must remember what Jesus said to Peter before his failure: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Peter was going to sin — miserably. But Jesus had prayed for him. Jesus’ prayer was stronger than Peter’s sin, and it’s stronger than our sin too. “He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. 

And Jesus is the great restorer of failures who repent. Jesus had said to Peter “when you have turned again [repented], strengthen your brothers.” And there on the beach he again gave Peter the greatest invitation any of us can receive on earth: “Follow me.”

The failure was to be left behind, there was kingdom work to do, and eternal life to enjoy.

Peter’s failure did not define him. And ours will not define us. They are horrible, humbling stumbles along the path of following Jesus, who paid for them all on the cross. And Jesus specializes in transforming failures into rocks of strength for his church.

From Desiring God

Week 1 Video: Wounds

A clip from this weeks discussion from The Conquerers DVD: Wounds.