Questions for Spiritual Decline

"To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—  to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen." Jude 24-25

One of the main indicators of legalism is when a pastor or church leader asks questions that focus on what you are doing for God rather than on what Jesus Christ has done for you. The following five groups of questions were written by a pastor and presented to his congregation prior to his message this morning. The title of the paper was "Questions for Spiritual Growth." Question #1: How are you actively learning about who God is? What are some ways you can practically know Him better this year? Question #2: Think back on God's faithfulness over the last year. Write down some of "the wondrous works He has done." Question #3: How well do you know God's promises for the future? Which promises can you meditate on to fuel your faith in God this year? Question #4: In what areas has your forgetfulness led to a lack of thankfulness? Write down five things you are thankful for. Question #5: In what ways are you remembering the wrong things? What hurts, disappointments, failures, self-efforts, etc. are you holding on to? What promises of God can you focus on instead? While some of the questions are okay, the general theme in them is one where the individual is operating from a position of lack in their relationship with the Lord. To "actively" learn about who God is, you have to remove the barriers you believe separates you from Him; namely the forgiveness of sins. If you don't believe you are forgiven, you will struggle to get to know God, if at all. You will always have to focus on getting right, clean, in good standing, or whatever you want to call it, before approaching God. With the focus on you then God's faithfulness will be seen in relation to the positive events of your life you believe God rewarded you with for your works. Just the fact that you are asked to fuel your faith by focusing on God's promises for the future means there are things you don't have from God and must find a way to somehow obtain. What five things will you be thankful for when your life as a Christian is based on promises not yet yours? The last question is the logical byproduct of a life consumed with your behavior and not knowing what you already have been given by God through your faith in Jesus Christ. Remembering the "wrong things" is why you are holding on to "hurts, disappointments, failures, self-efforts, etc." It will only lead to your spiritual decline as your life in Christ is defined by you trying to fill the emptiness you are experiencing in your walk with Jesus.

In the book of Jude, we are clearly reminded that God, in Christ, is the one who "keeps us from stumbling" and presents us "before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy." In other words, it is all about Jesus and not about us. This truth allows you to focus on all the promises of God you have already received; namely that you are completely forgiven, unconditionally loved, totally accepted, holy, righteous, sanctified, justified, assured of your salvation, and more. The byproduct of all this is that you can rest from your works and be thankful for His. When you understand your identity in Christ the "Questions for Spiritual Growth" will change significantly. Question #1: What is preventing you from knowing about who God is if He is not counting your sins against you? How does knowing you are forgiven allow you to know Him better? Question #2: How do you define God's faithfulness? Write down some of the wondrous things you have in Christ. Question #3: How well do you know your inheritance in Christ? How does knowing that fuel your faith moving forward for the rest of your life? Question #4: How can you give thanks in all circumstances knowing your identity in Christ? Question #5: In what ways are you believing things that aren't true? How are these false beliefs preventing you from resting in the promises of God? I hope you can see the difference in these questions. You can't grow spiritually without a firm foundation of what you already have in Christ; the promised inheritance of God you already possess. Knowing all of this is the difference between faith and works. It is the difference between grace and legalism. It is the difference between operating from a position of lack and operating from a position of abundance. The challenge is to ask yourself, "Do you know who you are in Christ?" If you do, the next question becomes, "What are you believing that has you living like a "foolish Galatian"? "You foolish Galatians! ... Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh (Galatians 3:1,3)?" Legalism forces you to "finish by means of the flesh." The Spirit of God will have no bearing on your life because you will only have eyes on yourself. Which questions are you answering? Your relationship with Jesus Christ is riding on how you answer. You can grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord or you can spend the rest of your life in spiritual decline as you try to obtain those things you have already received from Him. The choice is yours.

All your Heart, Soul, and Strength

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."  Deuteronomy 6:5

Have you ever heard it said that "To love God is to enjoy God’s sustained favor"? In order to enjoy God's sustained favor, it is said that to love God with all your heart means "without one’s will, desires, passions, affections, perceptions, and thoughts rightly aligned, the life of love is impossible." When it comes to loving God with all our soul, "we are to love God with our passions, hungers, perceptions, and thoughts. But we are also to love him with how we talk, and what we do with our hands, and how we utilize our talents, and how we react to challenges — our entire being is to display that we love God." But, it doesn't stop there. We are also to love God with all our strength as well. "This means that the call to love God is not only with our physical muscle, but with everything we have available for honoring God — which includes our spouse, our children, our house or dorm room, our pets and wardrobe and tools and cell phones and movies and music and computers and time." To sum it all up, we are told "that every closet of our lives needs to be opened for cleaning, and every relationship in our lives must be influenced. This call to love God this way destroys any option of being one person at church and another person on a date. What you do on the internet needs to be just as pure as what you do in Bible-reading. The way we talk to our parents needs to be as wholesome as the way we talk to our pastors." Deuteronomy 6:5 has been deemed the "Supreme Command" or the "all-command" because of the threefold "all" to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength. Often times when a verse like this is read, the reaction by those hearing it is usually to respond with a hearty, "Amen!" From my experience when verses like this and others that command us to love God and live a certain way are proclaimed, everybody seems to assume that they are loving God and living in the way in which He is commanding them to do. However, if you were able to pull them aside and ask them individually if they are loving God with all their heart, soul, and strength, they would probably reply with something like, "I do my best." In other words, what they are really saying is, "No, I am not loving God with all my heart, soul, and strength." This is, actually, a good thing that they recognize this, but based on their belief that God expects them to live up to His command, they either continue to recommit to trying to live this way, or they live in quiet shame; afraid the God they so dearly want to love is disgusted and ashamed with them. All they have to do is keep reading in Deuteronomy 6 to gain more insight into the so-called "Supreme Command."

The first thing to realize is that God gave this command to the nation of Israel. But, that never seems to stop Christians from trying to obey commands that were never given to us in the first place. But, I digress. How do you love God with all your heart, soul, and strength? It is by "keeping all his decrees and commands (Deuteronomy 6:2)." Otherwise, you will face His wrath for your disobedience. Neither Israel before or a Christian now can love God like this. All of God's decrees and commands were designed to focus on the individual's fleshly behavior. It is up to the individual, in the energy of their own strength, to find ways to obey all of these commands with the promise of physical blessings for obedience or terrible punishments, including death, when you fail. Furthermore, God never promised that He would love you if you somehow found a way to obey all his decrees and commands. Neither did He promise you eternal life for your obedience. The appeal in trying to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength, is the physical rewards and the ability to boast about your accomplishment. There is not a person alive who wouldn't want all the physical blessings God promises for obedience or the ego boost for telling others about what they did. Unfortunately, there is one problem; us. "For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said: “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah (Hebrews 8:7-8)." God found fault with the people. There is nothing wrong with the law, but everything wrong with our ability to obey it. God designed the law to lead us to faith in Christ by revealing to us that the only way we could enter His Kingdom was through His grace and mercy. In Matthew 19, a rich man asked Jesus what he must do to get eternal life. After Jesus finished His reply to him with the famous verse, "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24),” the disciples asked Him, "Who then can be saved (Matthew 19:25)?" Jesus replied, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).” This question to, and response of, Jesus is the key to all the discussion about loving God with all your heart, soul, and strength. It is impossible for us to do so. God wants us to understand that He told us to do this so we would realize that we cannot. Therefore, when we reach that point, we are ready to accept His grace and mercy through faith in Jesus Christ. He is the one who did for us what we cannot do. God loved us with all His heart, soul, and strength, in Christ. That is why it says, "We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19)" and that "love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10)." It is not about our futile effort to obey God's decrees and commands to show our love for Him. Our love for God is shown in our resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, receiving God's love for us, and bearing the fruit of His love to the world.

Covenant Eyes

"If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." Colossians 2:20-23

There is a story of a young boy who had gotten himself into trouble. He was told to go sit in the corner. When he arrived at the chair, he refused to sit down. After his parent told him again to sit, he refused. Under the threat of increased discipline, he finally relented and sat down. However, prior to sitting, he said, "I will sit, but I am still standing on the inside!" That is pretty funny. Humor aside, this story serves as an anecdote to something more serious. In Job 31:1, Job is giving a defense of his personal purity when he says, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman." Job made this covenant because of His knowledge that God could see everything. Therefore, His sin would not be hidden from the Lord. "Does he not see my ways and count my every step (Job 31:4)?" The Bible later records the reaction of his friends. "So these three men stopped answering Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes (Job 32:1)." Many of us have been like Job's friends and given up talking to somebody because nothing was going to convince them they were full of themselves; i.e. righteous in their own eyes. If we are honest, perhaps we have even been like Job at a time in our lives. Early on in my Christian walk, I attended a church that was heavy into teaching about overcoming sin in our lives. Once, the church made everybody fast from certain things like sugar. Everybody was talking about how they can avoid donuts, sugary cereals for breakfast, drinking their coffee without sugar and so on. You soon realize that sugar is in everything. Then there was a time when they challenged  people in the congregation to be like Job and make a "covenant with our eyes." Therefore, I took on this challenge and tried to avoid lusting. It didn't take long before I realized this was next to impossible. As a young man in my mid 20's at the time, this challenge buried me. My entire focus became, "don't lust." It was like the number of attractive women I encountered tripled. It was hard not to focus on not lusting! I cannot remember what we talked about in church after the challenge was issued, but if other people were like me, there was nothing to talk about. I failed miserably. Come to find out, that was not a bad thing. I should have failed. Enter the Apostle Paul.

In Romans 7:7-8, Paul writes, "Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting." Paul says that sin produced every kind of coveting. The Law said "You shall not covet" and all he did was find more ways to covet. It was no different with my experience with making a covenant with my eyes not to lust. All I found was more opportunities to lust! The same thing was true with fasting from sugar. That is why Paul would also say, "I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death (Romans 7:10)." We tell ourselves that we must discipline our bodies to the point that we rid ourselves of sin because we believe that is what God demands of us. Now, don't get me wrong, we should try and avoid sin. Sin is so terrible that it required the death of God, in Christ Jesus, to pay the penalty for it. However, when all we do is focus on sin, we will only produce more of it. Paul would also write that, "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law (1 Corinthians 15:56)." The laws or covenants we try to impose on ourselves in order to discipline our flesh against sin, only give power to the sin we are trying to avoid! We end up getting consumed by sin. That is why at the end of Romans 7, Paul exclaimed, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:24-25)!"In his attempts to overcome sin by subjecting himself to the Law, he only gave sin the green light to consume him. But, he also found the answer to overcoming his wretchedness; Jesus Christ. The Law did its work in Paul; it led him to trust in and depend on Jesus Christ. When a person discovers that Jesus Christ is meeting the deepest desires of their heart through His unconditional love, their focus turns towards Him and the Spirit of God and off of themselves and their flesh. The challenges, fasts, covenants, or whatever religious or self-imposed regulations we submit ourselves to have their place, but they do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh or its desire to be indulged. Only when we submit to the rest we have been called to, through faith in Jesus Christ, will we begin to see our hearts change. And when our heart changes, so will our behavior and we will start to indulge the Spirit of God living inside of us.